External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll

I voted non-skeptical realism because this is the most rational choice for me. Idealism just have too many important unanswered points that resemble a catch-22 situation. The rest of the choices are non-issue for me.

Speaking of the large number of votes that the non-skeptical realism received at PhilPapers, this is as close as we could get from philosophical consensus, an issue which, in another thread, @jgill had pointed out -- philosophy had not achieved a consensus on something.

I'm not surprised that the votes went this way.

Non-sceptical realism.

The danger of this poll is that it feeds the layperson’s impression that the existence of the external world is the central issue in philosophy.

Understanding the ways that realism breaks down is most interesting I guess. But that doesn't entail being an idealist. Agnostic might make most sense, but that implies indifference. I'm going to be agnostic to the poll :grimace:

Quoting Jamal

The danger of this poll is that it feeds the layperson’s impression that the existence of the external world is the central issue in philosophy.

This is a good point. It's easy to mistake the poll as a poll about existence, instead of epistemology or knowledge.

Quoting L'éléphant

This is a good point. It's easy to mistake the poll as a poll about existence, instead of epistemology or knowledge.

I think once again, this doesn't capture the nuances of the argument whether it's metaphysics or epistemological realism. Kant would say that there are true empirical statements, but still claims those statements are true for the human observer. What is that? Well, transcendental idealism, but that label alone doesn't say much as both a realist an idealist might agree with him epistemologically. Both would agree in regards to synthetic posteriori statements about the world.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Kant would say that there are true empirical statements, but still claims those statements are true for the human observer.

If Kant had said this, then he was just repeating what's already in his premise -- empirical statements are made by humans.

Quoting Banno

External World: I accept or lean towards:

It is interesting that none goes for idealism yet. I remember debating in some threads with members who were Platonist.

Quoting L'éléphant

If Kant had said this, then he was just repeating what's already in his premise -- empirical statements are made by humans.

Correct, I think? Humans make observations of the world. Insofar as these observations are contingently known through our experiences, they tell us facts about the world. Realists would agree with that. Yet Kant is an idealist. The structure is in yo head. So there are "real" facts, but their origin is not the external world. So that's why I said the "epistemological" part doesn't necessarily make a difference. It is needs both the epistemological and metaphysical for a complete picture.

I would have checked 'idealism' but for the fact that I think the usual notion of what it means is mistaken in such a way that is basically incorrigible.

But I've noticed a couple of recent intellectual trends which might serve in its place

[quote=Wikipedia; https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Radical_constructivism]Radical constructivism is an approach to epistemology that situates knowledge in terms of knowers' experience. It looks to break with the conception of knowledge as a correspondence between a knower's understanding of their experience and the world beyond that experience. Adopting a sceptical position towards correspondence as in-principle impossible to verify because one cannot access the world beyond one's experience in order to test the relation, radical constructivists look to redefine epistemology in terms of the viability of knowledge within knowers' experience.[/quote]

Note the convergence with QBism in physics:

[quote=Quanta Magazine; https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-bayesianism-explained-by-its-founder-20150604/](Other interpretations) all have something in common: They treat the wave function as a description of an objective reality shared by multiple observers. QBism, on the other hand, treats the wave function as a description of a single observer’s subjective knowledge. It resolves all of the quantum paradoxes, but at the not insignificant cost of anything we might call “reality.” Then again, maybe that’s what quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us all along — that a single objective reality is an illusion.[/quote]

I will admit I am interested in Bernardo Kastrup's 'analytical idealism'.

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Quoting Jamal

The danger of this poll is that it feeds the layperson’s impression that the existence of the external world is the central issue in philosophy.

[quote=Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B519]It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.[/quote]


Plus ca change....

Quoting javi2541997

It is interesting that none goes for idealism yet. I remember debating in some threads with members who were Platonist.

I myself waver between idealist and neutral monist, but I’d vote for “the alternatives provided in the poll are too unclear to answer” - which, unfortunately, is not an alternative provided in the poll.

If philosophers categorize “non-skeptical realism” then there should also be such a thing as “skeptical realism”. Both of these are to me very muddled concepts in need of further clarification. Assuming this is possible.

Then the categories of “idealism” and “realism” are presented as though they were somehow incompatible when it comes to an external world. C.S. Peirce’s views serve as one clear-cut example to the contrary. Posing idealism against realism is about as philosophically astute as would be posing realism against materialism. Muddled, or at least so I find.

Reply to javra

I am agree with you that those concepts are muddled. One option is "agnostic/undecided", when, in my humble opinion, these two are different concepts and the first tend to be connected with religion rather than the big debate on realism.

As I expected, most of the votes went to "non-skeptical realism" because after reading and taking part in some threads, most of the members founded their arguments based on such theory.
Nonetheless, a few years ago I started a thread on "Gödel's philosophy of mathematics" and it truned out in a platonic idealism conversation.

I appreciate that at least, you deeply considered the option of "idealism" but it is true that is complex to answer.

I voted for "non-skeptical realism" because I lack compelling grounds to doubt that the "external world" is real (i.e. ineluctable, subject-invariant, fatal).

Reply to Banno Quoting Jamal

The danger of this poll is that it feeds the layperson’s impression that the existence of the external world is the central issue in philosophy.

The central issue ?f Philosophy is the construction of wise theoretical frameworks capable to expand our understanding on all aspects of the world.The existence of the external world is the epistemic source and starting point for ALL philosophical inquiries and the only available way we have to evaluate our conclusions as wise or not.
This poll shows that most Academic philosopher finally took seriously the 10 main problems of modern Philosophy highlighted by Mario Bunge in his book : Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction (2001).

Quoting Nickolasgaspar

The central issue ?f Philosophy is the construction of wise theoretical frameworks capable to expand our understanding on all aspects of the world

What about the existence of ourselves rather than finding knowledge on external world? Cartesian thought can be important to develop such theories frameworks. I don’t think that external world is necessarily the main point or cause of every philosophical theory...

Quoting Nickolasgaspar

and the only available way we have to evaluate our conclusions as wise or not.

And how we "evaluate" conclusions?

Quoting javi2541997

What about the existence of ourselves rather than finding knowledge on external world?

Our existence(self) is one of the aspects of the world we experience.

Quoting javi2541997

I don’t think that external world is necessarily the main point or cause of every philosophical theory...

-well you can not study your self without taking in to account your environment. We are the product of the external world.

Quoting javi2541997

And how we "evaluate" conclusions

By evaluating their knowledge value. A claim is wise when it is based on knowledge

I voted "Other" because it left room to explain why "The question is too unclear to answer".

Is there an external world? Yes.
Do we experience it as it is? No.
Is our knowledge of it an accurate representation of it? We try.

Quoting Nickolasgaspar

well you can not study your self without taking in to account your environment. We are the product of the external world.

I see it reverse. The external world is a product of our consciousness and how we interpret it. If it is "real" or not depends on the theories, and that's why some are Platonist, agnostic, skepticism, etc... all of those help us to understand if everything around us real, but we start with the basic affirmative premise of Cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am", not taking in account if the environment is real or not.

Quoting Nickolasgaspar

A claim is wise when it is based on knowledge

And knowledge is based on what?

Reply to javi2541997 your inverse view has zero epistemic or philosophical value. As Wolfgang Pauli would have pointed out, its "Not even Wrong". Whether a scientists or a philosopher (who is truly interested in wisdom) subscribes to a Pseudo philosophical worldview(Idealism, Materialism) is irrelevant. In order to do his job he will still need to scan the empirical world for data in order to produce any meaningful framework.


Declarations of this short can never be part of Philosophy since the acceptance of such ontological not only offers zero understanding about the world, they also fails to explain the External Limitations and Empirical Regularities that we register and we have to obey in order to survive and flourish.

Consciousness is a label we use to describe a phenomenon with specific properties.(Mind being able to direct its conscious attention to important stimuli, external or internal).
Mistaking the label of an abstract concept (quality) to be an entity is a common error Idealists do in their effort to provide answers to their questions. i.e. Many things that Knowledge or truth is something out there to be found, or Mathematics is not a descriptive tool but a constructive "agent".
This is bad language mode.

Quoting javi2541997

And knowledge is based on what?

Knowledge is nothing more than an evaluation term. We declare a claim to be "knowledge" when it is in direct agreement with objective facts and it with demonstrable instrumental value.
If a conclusion is in conviction with what we know, then it can not be wise by definition.

Quoting Banno

A recent thread has me wondering how far the community here differs from the general community of philosophers. It seems, from the noise, that there are more folk hereabouts who reject realism than in the wider philosophical community.

Who in that tread was rejecting realism?

Funny thing is: it doesn't make sense to call a world "external" unless you think there's an "internal" somewhere. :razz: :razz: :razz:

Quoting frank

Funny thing is: it doesn't make sense to call a world "external" unless you think there's an "internal" somewhere

:100: :up:

Quoting Fooloso4

Do we experience it as it is? No.

What does it mean for an object to be 'as it is' (or the oft substituted 'as it really is')?

Reply to Isaac

Things are for us as observed or conceived or experimented on by us.

Quoting Fooloso4

Things are for us as observed or conceived or experimented on by us

As opposed to what?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

As opposed to what?

As opposed to claims about how things are independent of us.

Quoting Fooloso4

As opposed to claims about how things are independent of us.

That's the concept that's unclear. What do you mean when you say that a thing can be some way independent of us. What sort of properties could it have, what might it's boundaries be? I can't make any sense of an object having a 'way' it is that is the way it 'really' is.

Take a tree. I think its a tall plant with a trunk and green leaves. What might it be 'as it is'?

Reply to Isaac

You are making my point.

Quoting Fooloso4

Is there an external world? Yes.
Do we experience it as it is? No.
Is our knowledge of it an accurate representation of it? We try.

I guess this would be my answer too. But...

I struggle with the words 'as it is'? Can there ever be a final 'as it is' that is not also subject to a particular perspective? Isn't the implication of such wording a god's eye view? (I know you are not arguing for this)

Quoting Tom Storm

I struggle with the words 'as it is'?

Part of the problem is that a dog having four legs, for example, is independent of us. That is just the way it is. But I think we go too far if we draw the conclusion that there is a way things are that is independent of us that we can know or talk about in a meaningful way.

Reply to Banno

How about “the fact that we’re even talking about an ‘external world’ is kind of ridiculous” as an option?

I'm not sure why idealism is on there. Idealism is not a position on whether or not there is an external world, but about whether that world (external or not) is independent of any minds.

Quoting Fooloso4

we go too far if we draw the conclusion that there is a way things are that is independent of us that we can know or talk about in a meaningful way.

Then what is...

Quoting Fooloso4

Do we experience it as it is? No.

...?

That sounds an awful lot like someone talking about the way things are that is independent of us. You're describing one of its properties - that it differs from the way we experience things. Another of its properties is apparently that we cannot 'see' it. Another is that it is responsible for our sense data...

That's a surprisingly comprehensive description of something you apparently can't say anything meaningful about.

Reply to Isaac I hold a similar position to @Fooloso4 in as much as what we call reality is of a human perspective - which doesn't make it unreal or not real... it just means that the representation is specific to our apparatus, cognition and worldviews, etc. The idea of 'as it really is' seems to me to be intellectual quicksand, however. It can surely only ever be something in relation to something else? Do you think this is bad thinking?

Quoting Isaac

That sounds an awful lot like someone talking about the way things are that is independent of us.

If I understand you correctly you are claiming that by denying that we can talk about the way things are independent of us I am talking about the way things are independent of us?

Quoting Isaac

that it differs from the way we experience things.

No, I am saying that we experience it in accord with how we are. That is not to say that it is some way independent of us, but simply that we cannot experience in some way other than the way we experience it.

Quoting Isaac

That's a surprisingly comprehensive description of something you apparently can't say anything meaningful about.

In that case, you can congratulate yourself for your surprisingly comprehensive description. It is yours not mine.

Quoting Tom Storm

The idea of 'as it really is' seems to me to be intellectual quicksand, however. It can surely only ever be something in relation to something else? Do you think this is bad thinking?

Yes, that's right.

We cannot at the same time conceive of such a thing as a 'world as it is' and claim such a world is independent of our machinery of conception. I clearly just used such machinery to conceive of it.

The moment we include any creation, any theory, model or idea within our arsenal of concepts, it is of us, not outside of us.

Quoting Fooloso4

Is there an external world? Yes.

Do we experience it as it is [not experienced by us]? No.

Is our knowledge of it an accurate representation of it? We try

:up: :up: :up:

I voted "the question is too unclear to answer". If I were asked "do you experience a world that seems to be external to your body?" I would answer 'yes'.

It is unclear as to whether the question assumes some further substantive reality than that world seeming to be external to the body we all seem to experience.

It is unclear if it is being asked whether the external world in question consists of solid three dimensional objects independently of human experience and understanding.

The question seems like it is generated by "philosophy for dummies".

Quoting Isaac

The moment we include any creation, any theory, model or idea within our arsenal of concepts, it is of us, not outside of us.

So, would you say the world is external to human experience or not?

Quoting schopenhauer1

Yet Kant is an idealist. The structure is in yo head. So there are "real" facts, but their origin is not the external world. So that's why I said the "epistemological" part doesn't necessarily make a difference. It is needs both the epistemological and metaphysical for a complete picture.

Yes, I think we can't separate those two if looking at the poll.

Quoting bert1

I'm not sure why idealism is on there. Idealism is not a position on whether or not there is an external world, but about whether that world (external or not) is independent of any minds.

It is there as an option and I think is important to consider of, nonetheless as I pointed out yesterday, the option of "idealism" receives zero votes. It is true that some users thought on such option but they weren't that sure to choose it and then, they opted for another neutral position.
We have to highlight how the theories and thinkers have changed. Back in the day, Platonism (thus, idealism) was one of the main basic roots and now most of the people go for skepticism or non-skeptical realism.

Quoting bert1

I'm not sure why idealism is on there. Idealism is not a position on whether or not there is an external world, but about whether that world (external or not) is independent of any minds.

I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds". I don't see in what sense you / idealists mean that an "external world" might not be "independent of any minds" – such as the primordial universe before (the physical instantiation / embodiment of) "any minds" was possible – necessarily external of and independent of all minds, no? :chin:

Quoting 180 Proof

I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds".

That is correct. I'm now regretting NOT selecting 'idealism' as that is what I actually believe.

I have repeated a passage in Bryan Magee's 'Schopenhauer's Philosophy' many times here:

'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.

Magee goes on to say:

...in practice it is surprisingly difficult to get transcendental idealism taken seriously, even by many good philosophers. Once, in Karl Popper's living-room, I asked him why he rejected it, whereupon he banged his hand against the radiator by which we were standing and said: 'When I come downstairs in the morning I take it for granted that this radiator has been here all night' ‚ a reaction not above the level of Dr Johnson's to Berkeleianism.

Likewise, G. E. Moore mused that, if idealism were correct, then the wheels of the train would dissappear when all the passengers were boarded, due to their not being perceived.

So what is going on here? My argument is that the ideas of what constitutes existence and non-existence are too simplistic. I don't believe that any mature idealism actually claims that the object (whether it be 'an apple' or the entire world) literally vanishes when not being perceived. What I think idealism is arguing is that any idea we have of existence (and so, non-existence) is in some basic sense a mental construct - vorstellung, in Schopenhauer's terminology, vijnana, in Buddhist philosophy. That is what the massively-elaborated h. sapien forebrain does with all that processing power - it generates worlds. And seeing that, as Schopenhauer says in his very first paragraph, is the basis of philosophical wisdom.

The idea that, outside perception, everything simply ceases, is to try and assume a viewpoint with no viewpoint. We can't imagine anything - not the apple, not 'the world' - outside the framework of concepts, somatic reactions and sensory perceptions within which the statement 'x exists' is meaningful. For the purposes of naturalism we assume a mind-independent domain of objects which has nothing to do with us, but that is a pragmatic judgement, not a metaphysical principle, and as such, one that surely quantum physics has well and truly torpedoed beneath the waterline.

So that's the sense in which I endorse idealism, and I should have checked it.

Reply to Wayfarer
Quoting Schopenhauer and Brian Magee on Schopenhauer, excellent :up:!

Quoting Wayfarer

The idea that, outside perception, everything simply ceases, is to try and assume a viewpoint with no viewpoint. We can't imagine anything - not the apple, not 'the world' - outside the framework of concepts, somatic reactions and sensory perceptions within which the statement 'x exists' is meaningful. For the purposes of naturalism we assume a mind-independent domain of objects which has nothing to do with us, but that is a pragmatic judgement, not a metaphysical principle, and as such, one that surely quantum physics has well and truly torpedoed beneath the waterline.

Nice! I will say though by mentioning quantum physics, you are going to allow other people to smuggle red herrings as they try to prove your “amateur” understanding of QM wrong. Your argument can stand without it though I get why you included it.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Thanks!

Quoting schopenhauer1

by mentioning quantum physics...

Yes, I know. :roll: But I've done the readings, I'll defend my ground.

Reply to Wayfarer I'm not an idealist, but I think I understand the ontology more charitably than G.E. Moore and I also understand its attractions. I still think the most engaging, pellucid accounts of idealism I've encountered are those of Bernardo Kastrup - mainly via the odd paper, his blog and his engaging series of Essentia Foundation lectures on Analytic Idealism on YouTube. I haven't yet attempted the key books.

Quoting Wayfarer

My argument is that the ideas of what constitutes existence and non-existence are too simplistic. I don't believe that any mature idealism actually claims that the object (whether it be 'an apple' or the entire world) literally vanishes when not being perceived. What I think idealism is arguing is that any idea we have of existence (and so, non-existence) is in some basic sense a mental construct - vorstellung, in Schopenhauer's terminology, vijnana, in Buddhist philosophy. That is what the massively-elaborated h. sapien forebrain does with all that processing power - it generates worlds.

I think this is an elegant summary. Is it not the case that for 'object permanence' to hold (your car not vanishing when it is locked up in the garage), it needs some kind of guarantor for its 'ongoingness'. We seem to require some form of cosmic or universal consciousness or mind-at-large which holds the objectivity or scope of reality we inhabit.

I suspect it is this bit that is a big stumbling block for many, it's not just down to the fact that humans don't have access to some Archimedean point and essentially co-create reality.

Do you have thoughts on this mind-at-large? Schopenhauer calls it a striving blind, instinctive will. Berkeley, of course, calls it God. But clearly it doesn't have to be a God surrogate.

Reply to Wayfarer I appreciate the citations and your reflections on (transcendental) idealism. Still, there's that confusion, or conflation, of ontology with epistemology, which plagues even Kant-Schopenhauer-Magee, that yields conceptual incoherences such as (e.g.)

(A) "mind" must be an idea of itself that has an anxiliary idea called "world" (which is, in effect, solipsism (the noumenon?))

or

(B) 'world is an idea' (shadow?) of a mind in a world (cave?) with 'other minds' (which is just an unparsimoniously convoluted route back to ... naturalism).

As I discern it, Wayf, mind is nonmind-dependent insofar as it is embodied, ergo nonmind (aka "world") is not "mind-dependent" and is much more than just "my idea" in the way (e.g.) the territory must exceed in every way (re: dynamics, complexity) mapping of that territory. Kantianism sells that 'the territory is mapmaker-dependent' story (i.e. "world" is mind-dependent) which – like epicycles, etc – I'm still not buying. :smirk:

Quoting Tom Storm

I still think the most engaging, pellucid accounts of idealism I've encountered are those of Bernardo Kastrup - mainly via the odd paper, his blog and his engaging series of Essentia Foundation lectures on Analytic Idealism on YouTube.

I rather like him, I read (actually, listened to via my Audiobook sub) Decoding Schop's Metaphysics and have listened to part of More than Allegory, plus read various of his articles. He's actually building up a pretty substantial body of publications.

Quoting Tom Storm

Do you have thoughts on this mind-at-large? Schopenhauer calls it a striving blind, instinctive will. Berkeley, of course, calls it God. But clearly it doesn't have to be a God surrogate.

Buddhists would say that all attempts to conceptualise the 'real' in terms of mind-at- large is again a form of objectification or 'eternalism'. As you know, Buddhism generally rejects the idea of a creator deity and 'higher self'.

One of the Pali texts has the Buddha saying:

[quote=Kaccayanagotta 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]

But then, in Buddhism, the 'origination of the world' is a psycho-physical process, not the act of divine creation. He goes on

[quote=Kaccayanagotta Sutta]"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications....[/quote]

And from that to the 'chain of dependent origination'. Due to attachment and 'clinging' the ordinary person doesn't see things as they truly are. And so on. Sorry for the excursion into Buddhist philosophy but it does provide an alternative kind of idealism (later fully elaborated in the Yog?c?ra and Vijñ?nav?da schools. I might add, I first encountered Kant through T R V Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism, which is what made these connections for me.)


Reply to 180 Proof :chin:

Quoting 180 Proof

As I discern it, Wayf, mind is nonmind-dependent insofar as it is embodied, ergo nonmind (aka "world") is not "mind-dependent" and is much more than just "my idea" in the way (e.g.) the territory must exceed in every way (re: dynamics, complexity) mapping of that territory. Kantianism sells that 'the territory is mapmaker-dependent' story (i.e. "world" is mind-dependent) which – like epicycles, etc – I'm still not buying

(Sorry about losing your formatting)

I tend to agree with you. Of course, the transcendental idealist has a ready answer for this: your notion of the embodied and of the non-mind is yet another example of uncritical transcendental realism that unjustifiably thinks it can get beyond the “correlation” and beyond the field of possible experience created by the subject in the first place. Thus, they would say, you’re begging the question, assuming the nonmind in order to prove it.

So doesn’t it come down to a meta-philosophical choice? Just as we might refuse to play the game of Cartesian scepticism and make a choice to begin in the world rather than in our heads—and in doing so show how the very idea of beginning in the head is historically conditioned, rather than trans-historically self-evident—we can similarly refuse to play the Kantian game and say yes, ok, we can only experience what we can experience, but I am convinced from experience and science that there is something nonmind to be experienced in the first place.

Reply to Wayfarer :up: Thanks. I imagined that Buddhism and Hinduism have a rich source of potential ideas in this space - Schop certainly thought so...

The hardest part for me is trying to conceptualise what all 'reality' being the product of mentation actually means. Why does it appear as it does - as physicalism? Why do we have the laws of physics we appear to have? What is physical suffering? More banally, why do UV rays cause skin cancer and just how can this phenomenon be understood as consciousness - mind when seen from a particular perspective? It's challenging to fit it, even provisionally.

Reply to Jamal No question is begged because nonmind is entailed by mind; which is more reasonable to conceive of as the dependent variable of the other is the crux of the issue for me, Jamal. So it does come down to a philosophical choice: the conceptual incoherences (sketched above) which result from conflating ontology with – reducing ontology to – epistemology and thereby eliminates 'the "world" as mind-dependent' of transcendental idealism as a rational option and leaving, by default, the pragmatic alternative of 'mind as world-dependent' of naturalism (or "transcendental realism" as you prefer) – incoherent or pragmatic? I choose the latter.

Reply to 180 Proof That’s quite agreeable.

Reply to Jamal :cool:

How about the following consideration: Of course there is an external reality, I notice that at the latest when I drive my car in front of a tree. But what do we do with external reality? We don't image them like a camera obscura does. We transform reality into a neural modal reality. We don't know how 'close' our neuronal reality is to the outside world and will never know, because we can only think with neurons. So we can't make a comparison. In addition, our brain constructs our reality, so it turns stimuli into a holistic spatio-temporal scenario. It creates this theater of consciousness, which we believe is identical to reality and, above all, that we can - transcendently - recognize it.
What an illusion!

Quoting 180 Proof

I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds". I don't see in what sense you / idealists mean that an "external world" might not be "independent of any minds"

You may be right, but to my mind 'external' could just mean 'not me'. On a Berkeleyan system, there is a world external to me, and possibly external to my mind, but not external to God's mind. On a Spriggean idealist panpsychist scheme (which may satisfy realist intuitions better), there is an external world, but the entities in that world exist by virtue of their own minds. There's a lot of possibilities that hold that there is a world out there that is independent of me, and perhaps independent of any one particular mind, but each thing in that external world is itself dependent on one or more minds in one way or another. So idealism, depending on how it is construed, can be consistent with the existence of an external world. I think it important to distinguish these two senses of external (external to me or a particular mind, and external to any/every mind) as I think idealism is sometimes wrongly dismissed because people think it rejects the idea of a world external to me. Not that I'm necessarily an idealist, I'm undecided.

Quoting Fooloso4

If I understand you correctly you are claiming that by denying that we can talk about the way things are independent of us I am talking about the way things are independent of us?

Yes. That it is something we cannot talk about is one of its properties, you are therefore talking about it. I listed a few other properties. That it is external to us is another property about which we can talk.

Then there's the perpetually occult property of its containing objects that are 'as they are'...

Quoting Janus

So, would you say the world is external to human experience or not?

I think it's both. When we use the word 'world' in that context it encompasses both the variable products of human experience and the proposed causes of those experiences.

Trees are in the world. They are obviously to some extent a product of human experience (I doubt a creature at a radically different scale to us would identify such an object), but it is also constrained by factors external to our experience, otherwise we'd have no entropic factor in our models, no uncertainty.

Quoting Isaac

That it is something we cannot talk about is one of its properties

That we cannot talk about something independent of us is not a property of that thing as it is independent of us. That is not a statement about the world, it is a statement about us.

Reply to bert1 :ok: Gotcha.

Reply to Wayfarer

Two cents. Or in this case….. kronenthalers.

We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition….

Because the topic is an objector’s misunderstanding of a “Kantian demonstration”, and without an intrinsic dualism the demonstration wouldn’t be Kantian at all, there are exactly two “impossibly deep levels of presupposition” with respect to empirical conditions, the first being the treatment of space and time concerned with intuitions, and the second being the categories concerned with conceptions.

…..and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

Them being the concepts as we normally use them, as we usually use them is in regard to the whole of the empirical world, the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect being the difficulty with which transcendental idealism always contends.

All that reduces to….the original disposition of the intellect is mere observation, from which arises the assumptions of the inborn, re: non-critical, realism, that the empirical world is in space and time.

Transcendental realism says it is, but, of course, it is not, and by which the untaintedness of transcendental idealism is justified. And THAT, is what Kantian transcendental philosophy, in the form of speculative pure reason, proves, given the validity of those aforementioned presuppositions.

As stated, Magee didn’t say, so I took the liberty. Hope you don’t mind.

Quoting Tom Storm

The hardest part for me is trying to conceptualise what all 'reality' being the product of mentation actually means

I make a tentative distinction between 'being' and 'reality'. The root of 'reality' is 'res', meaning 'thing'. So reality is the totality of things, and in that sense is the object of scientific analysis. But 'being' encompasses oneself, one's 'way of being', so it has a broader set of meanings. Much of Aristotle's metaphysics revolve around the various meanings of 'to be' (and, I learn, one of Heidegger's early influences was Brentano's study of the meaning of being, which remained an over-arching theme.)

Second point - Kant said (although this is not often acknowledged) that one might simultaneously be an empirical realist and transcendental idealist. According to Murti, whose book I mentioned, this has resonances with the 'Doctrine of Two Truths' in early Mah?y?na Buddhism (wiki.

But also notice:Quoting Wolfgang

Of course there is an external reality, I notice that at the latest when I drive my car in front of a tree. But what do we do with external reality? We don't image them like a camera obscura does. We transform reality into a neural modal reality. We don't know how 'close' our neuronal reality is to the outside world and will never know, because we can only think with neurons. So we can't make a comparison.

:100: This is now becoming accepted by much cognitive science, although the implications are open diverging interpretations. But this is why (at risk of repetitiveness) I keep referring to Charles Pinter's book Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics. A sample:

The Eighteenth Century philosopher Immanuel Kant was the first thoroughly modern European thinker. His ideas about the human mind anticipated much of contemporary psychology: Indeed, most of the founding ideas of cognitive science are prefigured in Kant’s writings.

The process of mentally uniting many objects together into one global experience, he called transcendental apperception. Thus, transcendental apperception refers to the act of forming Gestalts. Kant had the original insight to recognize that a Gestalt is not merely a group of objects, but something entirely new and original. For example, the Big Dipper is not just a group of seven points, but is a pattern, in which the points play a supporting role. We can almost imagine the disembodied pattern without the points. He called a mental unity synthetic when it consists of being aware of a number of different things as one. There is one more element in Kant’s conception of Gestalts: In order to tie things together there must be a single common subject, or self, and her or his awareness must be unified. Kant had the insight to recognize that the self, or center, to which we attribute the experience of seeing and knowing, is itself a mental construction—something like distal attribution. (In the present case, proximal attribution.)

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (pp. 45-46). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Quoting Isaac

I think it's both. When we use the word 'world' in that context it encompasses both the variable products of human experience and the proposed causes of those experiences.

Trees are in the world. They are obviously to some extent a product of human experience (I doubt a creature at a radically different scale to us would identify such an object), but it is also constrained by factors external to our experience, otherwise we'd have no entropic factor in our models, no uncertainty.

If I'm reading you right I agree. There is 'something' independent of any and all human experience and understanding which appears to us as the empirical world. For the sake of ordinary parlance we can say that something is the familiar world of naive realism, the @Banno world of cups and chairs, cupboards and cats on mats, or we can be more sophisticated and say that it is a quantum realm of differential energetic intensities, but both of these understandings, and others, are not independent of human experience and judgement, and we have no way of knowing how they might correspond to purportedly human-independent reality.

This would seem to make the notion of human-independent reality useless to us, even incoherent. It's a closed book to us, but the fact that there is this closed book has great significance for human life, because it renders it a profound mystery to which we can respond in any way that seems right to us, only limited by our imaginations. In that sense we really do construct our own realities.

We can also suspend all judgement on that front and see and live the non-dual nature of our experience, and become comfortable with uncertainty and undecidability; find our best lives in the ataraxia of the Pyrrhonian skeptics.

Quoting Isaac

Trees are in the world. They are obviously to some extent a product of human experience (I doubt a creature at a radically different scale to us would identify such an object), but it is also constrained by factors external to our experience, otherwise we'd have no entropic factor in our models, no uncertainty.

:100:

I think one of the typical objections to what I'm describing as 'idealism' is 'if the world is "in the mind" how come you can't bend it to your will?' But again, this is where ascertaining what the idealist attitude is actually saying is quite difficult.

I don't think idealism (at least as I understand it) amounts to the claim that 'the world is in your mind' tout courte. I take idealism to mean that there is an ineluctably subjective basis to what we instinctively assume to be a purely objective reality (that's the aspect that Kant first identifies). And as naturalism has had a tendency to try to arrive at theoretical descriptions only in terms of what is objectively given, it will not be able to see that.

But this understanding is starting to become evident in even in science and philosophy. Overall I think there's a shift away from traditional materialism (in the sense meant by Armstrong and Smart) and that the concept of mind in nature is undergoing a major change (an example being the biosemiotics that Apokrisis has so ably explained, which is inspired in large part by Peirce, who is sometimes categorised as an objective idealist.)

Reply to Wayfarer Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)?

@bert1

Reply to 180 Proof hmmm, deep question. I'll come back to this one.

Twenty four responses. That might be enough to make some observations.

The obvious one is that the number of folk advocating realism is half that of the PhilPapers survey. This corroborates what was claimed elsewhere, that the population here is somewhat different to the norm for those interested in philosophy.

The next obvious thing is that 17% here thought the question too unclear, but only 2% in the PhilPapers survey. Indeed, in the local survey half of respondents chose outside of realism, skepticism or idealism, while in the PhilPapers survey that number was about 12%.

And at 24 votes, one would have expected one or two folk to have chosen idealism. None did, despite their rejection of realism.

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians?

Reply to Banno

Your prejudices are showing.

Reply to Banno The Black and White Minstrel strikes again!

Quoting Mww

Your prejudices are showing.

Doubtless. And it is apparent that my prejudices are not as uncommon as it might seem, were one the think of the folk hereabouts as "normal".

Reply to Janus Very droll.

Quoting Banno

my prejudices are not as uncommon as it might seem

Nope, hardly uncommon. Everybody’s got ‘em, maybe not so overtly….you know…contrarian.

Interesting that folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally, rather than the topic at hand.

Quoting Banno

folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally,

It is, admittedly, a bit unusual to address a potted plant.

As to Quoting Banno

only 2% in the PhilPapers survey

Hard to avoid the ruts. I suspect the survey results differ over time.

Keep the aspidistra flying.

Quoting Fooloso4

I suspect the survey results differ over time.

Why?

The longitudinal results are there, too, for the PhilPapers survey, showing a tiny swing since 2009 away from idealism and skepticism, towards realism. "Undecided" went up slightly, too.

We could do the survey on this forum again later, if you like. Seems overkill.

Quoting Banno

We could do the survey on this forum again later, if you like.

I am referring to larger historical time frame, but we need not go back too far. To Bradley and McTaggart, for example.

Reply to Fooloso4 Ok, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

Again, this thread was simply to reinforce the point that the forums are not representative of present philosophical thought.

Quoting Banno

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians?

There. Happy now?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover :grin: Thank you.

Quoting Wayfarer

I have repeated a passage in Bryan Magee's 'Schopenhauer's Philosophy' many times here:

No disrespect but I'm going to argue against the source. Magee is absentmindedly stupid in some important ways.
That's my impression of the passage you provided.
Get this:

'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.'

The claim that it is impossible that we know that the earth has existed for a long time even before the perceiving subjects is itself a claim about thing-in-itself, about what actually is. But Kant cannot make this claim because he doesn't know what actually is.

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:

If Magee endorses Kant's argument, then Magee cannot make this claim that it is what actually is in the world. The whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding?. Okay. Fine. But Magee is making this statement under the assumption of idealism. So he doesn't know either.


Quoting Banno

Twenty four responses. That might be enough to make some observations.

No it isn't if you're making an important comparison with the PhilPapers results.

Quoting 180 Proof

I appreciate the citations and your reflections on (transcendental) idealism. Still, there's that confusion, or conflation, of ontology with epistemology, which plagues even Kant-Schopenhauer-Magee, that yields conceptual incoherences such as (e.g.)

:100:

Quoting Banno

Ok, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

Perhaps that in philosophy there are fashion trends.

Quoting Banno

Again, this thread was simply to reinforce the point that the forums are not representative of present philosophical thought.

Okay, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

Quoting L'éléphant

No it isn't if you're making an important comparison with the PhilPapers results.

As I agreed, it is not enough for a statistical analysis. There are some differences I find interesting, though. Again, it gives some perspective to the apparent prominence of the rejection of realism.

Quoting Banno

And at 24 votes, one would have expected one or two folk to have chosen idealism. None did, despite their rejection of realism.

Now the survey has 25 votes and appears a vote to idealism. I don't know if it is just coincidence or the fact that an user is trolling us... :chin:

Reply to javi2541997 IT was apparently Reply to Metaphysician Undercover, being the contrarian's contrarian.

Quoting L'éléphant

Magee is absentmindedly stupid in some important ways.

I'll favour his account over yours in this case.

Quoting 180 Proof

Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)?

Are you referring to the distinction between 'ontological' and 'epistemological' idealism. The former is said to hold that 'mind' or 'consciousness' is a literal constituent of the world (in a way analogous to electrical fields or as an attribute of fundamental constituents). This is something like Galen Strawson's and Philip Goff's panpsychism, which I don't subscribe to. It is an attempt to characterise 'mind' as an objective existent which I don't think can be done. (I critiqued one of Philip Goff's essays here and much to my surprise, he responded although I don't think any kind of conclusion was reached.)

'Epistemological' idealism is said to hold that mind (or experiential states) are fundamental in the sense that everything we know is experiential - knowledge of (x) is a state of experiencing x. It is actually close to some forms of empiricism - Berkeley is considered an empiricist.

Does mind correspond to 'Being' - not sure - I thnk 'being' is a more general term - mind indicates self-awareness.

Don't know if this addresses your questions.

Reply to Banno

Oh yes! I didn't see his post:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There. Happy now?

So, we can interpret that the vote comes from him. :eyes:

Quoting Wayfarer

I'll favour his account over yours in this case.

As someone who has 16.9K posts, you can do better than this to respond to my response to Magee's claim.
But you are maybe consistent in your claim if you also subscribe to idealism -- you don't know.

Reply to L'éléphant :up:

Reply to Wayfarer I asked because I'm interested in what you understand your own 'commitment to idealism' to presuppose and imply. I'm familiar enough with many historically prominent idealists. To sum up my previous two questions (please address them Reply to 180 Proof in the following): What exactly do you, Wayfarer, mean when you say "I am an idealist"?

Reply to Janus Reply to Wayfarer

I've often heard the view I subscribe to called model-dependant realism, but I don't know if that's the right term. It's interesting to me that most of what comes out of discussions like this seems to hinge on the significance of the extents to which our understanding (our models, in my terminology) are constrained by external forces. The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit. Each, I'd venture, has their reasons for wanting to highlight their particular favoured aspect, probably the one they feel has been most maligned (or simply sidelined) by the culture they find themselves in.

The realist gets the certainty they're looking for. There's a lot of anti-religion campaigning (Dawkins et al), but also fights between realists over what is real where one side want the bigger stick and the last thing each want is a truce. But the ultra-realists (my made up term here) will be dissatisfied with model-dependant realism because science thereby ends up far more Kuhnian than Popperian. It looks more like each new competing theory might simply be better defining the space of constraints than approaching some ultimate truth.

On the other hand, I think the Idealist is no less dissatisfied. They regain their God, their 'soul' or their charkha healing because their dismissal by science now looks less strict. But they too lose their claim to the ultimate truth. One can hardly invoke the unavoidable subjectivity of interpretation to regain access to the mysterious, yet at the same time claim access to a single ultimate truth via the most subjective means out there. If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.

Both, I think, ultimately (assuming model-dependant realism) find themselves in the same statistical quandary of wanting to associate truth value with popularity. The scientistic wants the 'consensus' theory to have more weight, the religious want the 'serious' religions to be taken...well, more seriously. But neither can have what they want out of this model (and so both are dissatisfied). Despite intuitions which may seem to tell us the opposite, there's no mechanism (in this model) to connect popularity with truthiness. We can show this with a simple thought experiment. [hide="Reveal"]Assume a roulette wheel you don't know if it's fair or rigged. A thousand people are in the room, 999 place their bet on red 2, only one person doesn't. Obviously, the beliefs of the 999 can't affect the wheel. It might also be that the 999 know something about the wheel that the one doesn't, but that could also be true the other way round by designing a survey asking people to pick randomly what colour and number they would bet on, then inviting only those who chose red 2 into the room. Nothing about the numbers makes one version more likely to be true than the other. What matters is the process (the reason for their bet), not the numbers. and nothing about the process is intrinsically more likely to be adopted by the more populous group[/hide]

Probably excessive armchair psychologising (so sue me), but I think that's why these debates go on so, and possibly why nuanced alternatives to hard-realism or hard-idealism are increasingly popular, yet still argued as vehemently.

Reply to L'éléphant OK, I will try again. The point of the 'everyone knows' statement is to depict the apparently-obvious fact that the Universe pre-existed h. sapiens by billions of years, as is common knowledge. So this is a frequent objection to any form of idealism - 'if you say that the world is "created by the mind" then how do you account for the fact that it existed a long time prior to any conscious rational mind?' But your selective quotation of the passage then omits the grounds of Schopenhauer's 'defense of Kant', as he puts it. You then go to a peremptory dismissal: 'Obviously Kant doesn't know either'. But I don't think the 'sage of Konisburg' can be dismissed so easily.

I think the point of the argument is the reference to Kant's view that time and space are fundamental intuitions of the mind - *not* things that exist in themselves. In other words, space and time are not purely objective in nature but are grounded in the observing mind. And this has also dawned upon at least some scientists. (Andrei Linde is a scientific cosmologist.)

[quote=Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271]The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.[/quote]

I don't know if "dead" is the right word, but I think the basic thrust of this paragraph tends to support the Kantian view. The observer has a fundamental role - but s/he is not part of the objective picture. That happens to be a different version of the same overall 'observer problem in physics'.

Reply to 180 Proof What I mean is that our understanding of ‘the external world’ as something completely separate from ourselves is mistaken. That's why I keep referring to the cognitive science perspective - their realisation of the role the mind (or brain) plays in constructing what we instinctively understand to be external to us. One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism. So, forgive the New Age connotations, but the fruit of the idealist quest is 'the unitive vision' - which I believe is something your philosophical inspiration, Baruch Spinoza, also considered:

[quote=Peter Sas]Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” (I would prefer "subject") underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.[/quote]

Quoting Isaac

The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit.

Very good post, really brings out the issue.

Quoting Isaac

If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.... If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined. But they're not within the ambit of 'the objective sciences' in the modern sense. Quite why that is, is not so much a matter of philosophy so much as cultural dynamics. Modern scientific method, and 'Enlightenment Rationalism', embody a kind of stance which is historically conditioned by the emergence of individualism and the dominance of technology. There's nothing from within that milieu which can provide a normative framework for judging what is of greater or lesser value, in the grand scheme. That's why I think there has to be a 'soteriological' element - excuse the jargon, but it means 'concerned with salvation', although in Eastern religions, the term is not 'salvation' but 'liberation'. In any case, it means some ultimate reason or ground, some pole star against which to set your moral compass. But then our secular culture has been innoculated against any such ideas as a consequence, again, of our cultural dynamics. Which is why people such as myself have had to search outside the framework of Western culture for resolution.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined.

Oh, indeed. I wouldn't want to be read as denying that. But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment...

The point I was making is that there's no connection between the methodology, no matter how strict and disciplined, and 'truthiness' because there cannot be (under a model-dependent realism). Any mechanism, be it empirical theory-testing, or some deeply disciplined religious practice can only ever be used to check constraints because it is only constraints that we are able to become aware of (like a blind man can only tell by bumping into a wall that he has come to the edge of the room).

A revelation from some deep meditative practice may find an 'edge' that empirical science cannot find, but what it can't do (as with empirical science) is show, merely by methodology, that the model it's come up with using those edges is more of less likely to be true.

The religious (or otherwise spiritual) have not found any way past the fundamental problem that no matter what method we use to obtain data (sensory inputs or 'revelation') we still cannot verify the accuracy of the information thereby gained by anything other than simply 'more of the same'.

The point I was making is that there's a tendency to try and get around this problem by claiming consensus, or popularity (or I suppose in religious terms, tradition) all get at the truth better. But they don't. There's no intrinsic connection (as my thought experiment was designed to show).

I can't see a way around the problem, myself. Certain methods of dealing with data qualify as being 'connected' to the world and so produce what we might call 'reasonable' theories - as opposed to merely guessing, or making stuff up. But within that canon, there doesn't seem to be any reliable process for choosing between them. If they meet the criteria of not being overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, then then seem to all be equally fair game.

Reply to Wanderer The fault of many, if not most, philosophies is that they start with thinking and not with things. The Kantian question, for example, what can I know, places the human being as an abstraction, as it were as a pure spirit that, like a machine, can think about God and the world in a pure form. This idealized, individualized fictional human does not exist.
The starting point of every discussion must be the human being that has become biologically and socially.
Then the Kantian question is posed in a completely different way, and so is the answer to it.
So there is not man per se, but a priori the biological and social man. And this must be used as the starting point of all thinking.
While abstractions are possible a posteriori in science, as a prerequisite of an ontology they are not.
Man's biological dimension means that his relationship to the world is not that of a reader to a book. We transform the world into a neural modality and construct it with it, i.e. not only do we write this book ourselves, we also make the ink for it ourselves.

Reply to Mikie
4% Philosophers voted in favor of Idealism. That is alarming especially when those who don't believe in an external world are the "authors" of a poll result where the main competing thesis has much higher percentage.

Quoting Isaac

But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment...

Well indeed I would agree that if you equate enlightenment and data-harvesting then there is probably no enlightenment to be had.

Quoting Nickolasgaspar

That is alarming

Look out! Idealists under the bed!

Quoting Wolfgang

The Kantian question, for example, what can I know, places the human being as an abstraction, as it were as a pure spirit that, like a machine, can think about God and the world in a pure form. This idealized, individualized fictional human does not exist.

Kant may have shortcomings, but he doesn't reduce mankind to abstractions. (My forum name is not 'wanderer' although it might be a nice alternative should I decide to change it.)

Reply to Wolfgang :fire:

Quoting Wayfarer

One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism.

Again, thanks for the clarifying response. The question remains though: is "reality itself" ideal? Anyway, your conception of idealism, Wayf, seems fairly idiosyncratic to me as nonduality (e.g. Advaita) contrasts profoundly with the transcendental schools of idealism which are dualist. I find nonduality quite congenial with my own conception of naturalism (which has strong affinities with Spinoza as well as Nietzsche, neither of whom I consider 'idealists').

However, nonduality does not imply "the world is the idea of mind" but rather, IMO, that "world" and "mind" are complementary ways (yinyang) of experiencing (e.g. "I-It" / "I-Thou" ways of encountering). Not so unlike Spinoza's post-Cartesian parallelism, or property dualism. "Mind" is just one way of talking – relating – and "world" is another way of talking – relating; and understood as such makes explicit the ontologically inseparable plane of immanence (Deleuze) or Brahman (à la natura naturans (Spinoza)) encompassing (Jaspers) "reality itself". I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world" "object" "thing" as transcendental idealism does, Wayf, so maybe you can explain to me. :chin:

Quoting 180 Proof

I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world" "object" "thing" as transcendental idealism does, Wayf, so maybe you can explain to me.

As mentioned earlier, the point about Buddhist idealism is not that it claims 'the world is mind-created' but that we normally misconstrue the nature of experience and cling to the impermanent as a source of the satisfaction that it cannot provide. It is different to Western metaphysical idealism in that sense, but neither does it support any form of materialism (as you know, materialists were represented by 'carvakas' in the Buddhist texts and always presented as philosophical opponents of the Buddha. See What Is and Isn't Yog?c?ra Dan Lusthaus. )

As regards Advaita, here is an abridged passage from the Upani?ad comprising a dialogue with a Vedantic sage, about the nature of the ?tman:

[quote=Brihadaranyaka Upani?ad; https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/brdup/brhad_III-01.html#part4]"Y?jñavalkya, answer this. There is an eternal Being which is immediately presented into experience and directly observed; which is the Self of all beings and internal to everything. Explain it to me. What is that which is innermost to all beings, which is internal to everything, which is non-immediate experience – not immediately experienced as through the senses when they perceive objects, and which is direct, not indirect experience? Explain that to me." ....

Y?jñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ?tman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ?tman.

"Nobody can know the ?tman inasmuch as the ?tman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ?tman can be put, such as "What is the ?tman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ?tman because the Shower is the ?tman; the Experiencer is the ?tman; the Seer is the ?tman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ?tman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ?tman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ?tman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self.

"Everything other than the ?tman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ?tman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense." Then U?asta C?kr?yana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further.[/quote]

Clearly it articulates the supremacy of ?tman above the phenomenal domain. I don't think it's too long a bow to draw a comparison between this and Kant's 'transcendental apperception' . I've always believed that point about the inability to 'see the seer of seeing' is significant, and has not been made explicit in the Western canon, as far as I know. It is picked up in contemporary philosophy in the idea of 'the blind spot' as an inherent limitation of objective science.

Reply to Wayfarer You've lost me.

Asked and answered as far as I’m concerned

Quoting javi2541997

So, we can interpret that the vote comes from him. :eyes:

Right, judge for yourself. Am I an honest voter, or a troll?

Quoting Isaac

I've often heard the view I subscribe to called model-dependant realism, but I don't know if that's the right term.

Why didn't you vote idealist then? Model-dependent realism, as a manifestation of Platonist mathematics in conjunction with idealist physics, is the epitome of idealism.

I think this site Is full of closet idealist. Even Banno displays idealist tendencies when discussing mathematics and bivalent logic. There's a special form of hypocrisy which Wittgenstein demonstrates well, and it seems to have caught on with many philosophers, and that is to use idealist premises to produce idealist arguments while all the time asserting that idealism is unacceptable. Hmmm.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Right, judge for yourself. Am I an honest voter, or a troll?

You are a metaphysician honest troll.

Quoting Wayfarer

if you equate enlightenment and data-harvesting then there is probably no enlightenment to be had.

Intriguing. So does enlightenment give no information at all? If 'the world' is more than just the sensible objects, then any form of 'revelation' takes to form of data about the way the world is. Religious prophets are saying something about what is the case, so they must, by some means, have gathered that data.

You can't have it both ways, you can't claim that the world (all that is the case) encompasses more than just material sense data, but then say that knowledge obtained by revelation isn't data-harvesting.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Why didn't you vote idealist then?

I don't know, it's a complete mystery. It couldn't possibly be because I disagree with you about the definition, because the notion of anyone disagreeing with you is obviously absurd, so... I'm at a loss I'm afraid.

Good question, I suppose I'd currently say I'm a "skeptical realist". There are many flavors of skepticism, from Pyrrhonian to "mitigated skepticism", found in Gassendi or Hume.

I just am not certain what part is completely external and what isn't. Quite hard to tease apart.

Quoting 180 Proof

Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

I don't think so no.

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)?

Yes, perhaps, depending on exactly what you mean. And yes there is an idea of mind or Being.

I don't really like using a capitalised 'Being' though, it's unclear and a bit wanky.

Quoting Manuel

I just am not certain what part is completely external and what isn't. Quite hard to tease apart.

:up:

It's fun to give the psyche it's own location, like it's in another dimension or something, but that dividing line isn't present in the content of experience.

Quoting Banno

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians?

Aren't you committing a bandwagon fallacy? Your claims must be true because a majority of X believe them? The very idea of empirical is at the root of the question you are asking, and so you can't so easily say, "Well, the 'experts' of philosophy are X, therefore anyone who is not X is a crazy kook". This isn't science or medicine where all they are using is a sort of verification/falsification from experimental evidence built up over time. So what are you trying to say by this survey?

Clearly you think your positions are realist. Clearly you think there are people who disagree with you here and are idealists. But what are you trying to imply here other than the actual survey? Why even post it?

Are you uncomfortable or irritated by the disagreement you are getting here? I mean, I deal with that all the time here being a philosophical pessimist! If I was in a nice cocoon of a fellowship of philosophical pessimists, indeed things might be different, but this forum is not that.

But you will say those are "outliers" and that you represent some respectable position that others do not, and that you are somehow presenting them as the weirdos they are (by not being the popular position of academic philosophers that took part in the linked survey). So again, what are you trying to imply?

Non-skeptical realism, here.

I answered the question from the perspective of what I believe in my heart of hearts, rather than what I argue. Where my thinking at, now, is that the real is absurd. This could be read in a skeptical, idealist, or realist sense, and I'd prefer to emphasize the realist sense: somewhere in the observation that reality is absurd, beyond meaning, yet impinges upon meaning there's a phenomenological argument I've yet to tease out for realism.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Aren't you committing a bandwagon fallacy?

Not at all. The issue here is the difference in frequency of certain esoteric metaphysical views in the population of this forum compared to other communities of philosophers.

As I said elsewhere,
Quoting Banno

The strange constituency of this forum might have you think there is a great philosophical debate between direct realism and idealism. It ain't so. Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%. Yes, we don't do philosophy via polls and it's a survey of English-speaking philosophers and so on, but that's a level of agreement which is for philosophers pretty much unheard of.)

And as I pointed out above, of greater significance is the fifty percent who would not commit to one of skepticism, idealism or realism.

Quoting Isaac

So does enlightenment give no information at all?

I would put it like this: that it's more like a change in perspective.

When you have an insight, have you 'acquired information'? You may have no new information at all, but you might realise the information you already have means something very different to what you previously thought.

A good example are the processes involved in a gestalt shift - you see what you've already seen but something but suddenly it takes on a different significance.

Quoting Banno

And as I pointed out above, of greater significance is the fifty percent who would not commit to one of skepticism, idealism or realism.

In the article the majority voted for "accept or lean toward ". Lack of commitment is perfectly acceptable in a good philosopher.

Reply to frank In the PhilPapers survey, one might choose more than one option. That was not possible with the Forum survey tool.

What the percentages mean: "Accept or lean toward P: 50% (40%)" means that 50% of respondents endorsed this answer inclusively (including multiple-answer endorsements) and 40% endorsed this answer exclusively (excluding multiple-answer endorsements).

Setting the filters to all responses and all regions the percentage of respondents who endorsed realism exclusively was 76.37, hence only 1.5% endorsed realism and some other option.

Lack of commitment is perfectly acceptable in two percent of good philosophers? Sure.

There were still twice as many explicit realists in the PhilPapers survey as in the Forum survey.

Quoting Banno

Setting the filters to all responses and all regions the percentage of respondents who endorsed realism exclusively was 76.37, hence only 1.5% endorsed realism and some other option.

Are you sure you're reading that correctly? Some chose "accept or lean toward" exclusively, some chose it inclusive of something else.

Reply to frank
Damn filters.

76.37% for all regions and all respondents, "endorsed this answer exclusively (excluding multiple-answer endorsements)"

77.92% chose realism or something else, inclusive.

The difference is 1.55%, being those who chose realism and some other option.

Check that for me, see if I have it right.

Reply to Banno
You're right. I was just taking the "lean toward" as being less than committed.

Reply to frank Thanks.

There's very little difference across the filters. Even Continental Europe scores 75% realist, 7% idealist.

Quoting Banno

There's very little difference across the filters. Even Continental Europe scores 75% realist, 7% idealist.

Since the alternative appears to be some sort of solipsism, I think you'd get the same answer if you had a time machine and could go back through the history of the human race.

The survey is amusing. It is like trying on different shoes at a Target store.

The criteria presume all the different possible opinions can be mapped out in relation to each other. But is that the case? The method may be helpful toward generating encyclopedias but runs the risk of turning everything into a Cliff note version of themselves on the way.

Reply to Paine I believe the different positions cannot be mapped to one another.

But I don't think that's lost on the respondents, either.

That is one of the reasons I just decided to choose one of the three main ones on offer.

Reply to Moliere
I understand that and have participated in that practice too. Better an ostensive gesture than complete silence. But maybe only a little better.

Reply to Paine heh. Yeah. I go back and forth :D

Quoting Isaac

the notion of anyone disagreeing with you is obviously absurd,

Sure seems absurd to me, obviously.

Quoting Banno

Not at all. The issue here is the difference in frequency of certain esoteric metaphysical views in the population of this forum compared to other communities of philosophers.

How is that an issue? That is what you are not answering. You are making an observation into a normative claim, but trying to say you aren't.

Quoting Banno

As I said elsewhere,
The strange constituency of this forum might have you think there is a great philosophical debate between direct realism and idealism. It ain't so. Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%. Yes, we don't do philosophy via polls and it's a survey of English-speaking philosophers and so on, but that's a level of agreement which is for philosophers pretty much unheard of.)

Again, this to me, is committing the bandwagon fallacy, and now you are showing more evidence of (or reiterating it rather), not countering that.

Quoting Banno

And as I pointed out above, of greater significance is the fifty percent who would not commit to one of skepticism, idealism or realism.

Sure, why not be open to various interpretations in such a speculative realm? My guess is people haven't really taken a strong position more than defending various posters. This doesn't commit them to a position in any formal way.

But when you are forced to write papers to keep a position at an institution (in other words, it's your "job"), then yeah, you may be forced into defending and sticking to such claims as a matter of course, but the regular person on a philosophy forum has the luxury of exploring various avenues and trying out various hats with no real consequence. So it makes sense why the data is so disparate between here and academia. People change positions in academia too, but it seems like the stakes of doing so are much higher, especially when you are devoting loads of resources into it, and again, it's your livelihood.

However, as I stated earlier, if the implication is something like: "The consensus of the philosophy community is X and that makes it more reputable", I would hesitate to use that as evidence for anything other than the current trend of academia. Remember, idealism (like Kant's) does not deny things like empirical methods or science. It's speculative (metaphysical and/or epistemological). It's interpretations of ways of knowing and how things exist, and defending using various forms of inferencing, logic, arguments, propositions, thought experiments and the like. This is not amenable to the kind of evidence that a science might offer when that particular community coalesces on a theory or model.

I think idealism as any kind of majority view died with the 19th Century. In the 'Golden Age' of American philosophy - C.S. Peirce, Joshua Royce, William James, Borden Parker Bowne - idealism, mainly adapted from European idealism, was assumed. In England with Russell and Moore's overthrow of idealism, and later Gilbert Ryle's long reign at Oxford - idealism was regarded as superseded. But there are always a few brave souls who carry the torch - I've noticed the books of Timothy Sprigge, who published A Vindication of Absolute Idealism in 1984. There's also a current German Professor, Sebastian Rodl, who defends absolute idealism in his book Self Consciousness and Objectivity (impenetrable to the casual reader, alas.) But the popularity of idealism is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, the fact that it's a minority view can just as easily be ascribed to a deficiency of modern culture as to any deficiency of the basic principles. After all we live in an individualist, materially-oriented, technocratic culture, and will naturally adopt philosophies that support this milieu.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think idealism as any kind of majority view died with the 19th Century.

But when did it start and what do we count as idealism - are you talking about various trends of mysticism believed in by certain groups or privileged communities? Or do you start in the West with Berkeley? When was idealism held by the average person in the West?

Quoting Wayfarer

After all we live in an individualist, materially-oriented, technocratic culture, and will naturally adopt philosophies that support this milieu.

I feel like pushing back on this a little. Can you demonstrate that idealists are less individualist or materialistic? I spent a lot of time with Buddhist and Theosophical Society community members, including serious practitioners of meditation and yoga and Hindu mysticism in the 1980's (and still know some of them) and they were as wracked by ambition and materialism as anyone else. And sometimes they just replaced owning useless consumer goods with claiming access to higher truths, which they cherished in the manner of showing off a new sports car.

Quoting Tom Storm

But when did it start and what do we count as idealism - are you talking about various trends of mysticism believed in by certain groups or privileged communities? Or do you start in the West with Berkeley? When was idealism held by the average person in the West?

It technically goes back to Plato in the West.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Again, this to me, is committing the bandwagon fallacy, and now you are showing more evidence of (or reiterating it rather), not countering that.

I think @Banno could make the observation without arguing/committing either way (but probably won't :grin:). Doesn't the observation stand on its own?

Two different directions:

Quoting Sigmund Freud (Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis)

the leap from the mental process to a somatic innervation — hysterical conversion — which can never be fully comprehensible to us

Quoting Sigmund Freud (Introduction to Psychoanalysis)

the puzzling leap from the mental to the physical

Quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, Part I)

412. The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process: how does it come about that this does not come into the consideration of our ordinary life? This idea of a difference in kind is accompanied by slight giddiness — which occurs when we are performing a piece of logical slight-of-hand. (The same giddiness attacks us when we think of certain theorems in set theory.) When does this feeling occur in the present case? It is when I, for example, turn my attention in a particular way on to my own consciousness, and, astonished, say to myself: THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain! — as it were clutching my forehead.

The two were contemporaries for half a century, apparently with fairly different approaches.

Quoting Tom Storm

Can you demonstrate that idealists are less individualist or materialistic?

That idealism is commonly opposed with materialism would be a good indication that idealists are less materialistic. Don't you think?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That idealism is commonly opposed with materialism would be a good indication that idealists are less materialistic. Don't you think?

Not at all. I know rich socialists. It's a thing - we even have the expression Bollinger Socialism.

What matters is what people do, not the theories they claim to believe. Don't you think?

Quoting schopenhauer1

It technically goes back to Plato in the West.

My point is I don't think there was a tradition of uninterrupted idealism that was displaced in the 19th century.

Quoting Tom Storm

But when did it start and what do we count as idealism?

I think a fair case can be made for the ancestor of what was to become known later as 'idealism' in Greek philosophy - specifically Plato, of course, as the Ideas as fundamental constituents of being must be considered Ur-Idealism.

In the history of ideas, I think there are some major philosophers who can count as idealist - one in particular being Duns Scottus Eriugena. A scholar by the name of Dermot Moran has published a book arguing that Eriugena's philosophy, which was a subtle synthesis of neo-Platonism and Christian doctrine, was a formative influence on later German-speaking philosophy and was clearly visible in the German idealists (ref). And I don't think it's controversial to say that the last really influential idealists were the German idealists - Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Fichte. The British idealists, like Bradley, were very much part of the same overall movement. (In my view, Hegelian philosophy kind of collapsed under the weight of its own verbiage - you could gather a room full of so-called experts on Kant and Hegel and none of them would agree. It lacked the experiential dimension that characterises Buddhist culture in the form of a continuous lineage of monastic practitioners.)

Quoting Tom Storm

Can you demonstrate that idealists are less individualist or materialistic?

It's not a matter of individuals, people can profess one thing and do another altogether. But I'm a fan of various historiographic theories, like Oswald Spengler's, or Pitirim Sorokin - that cultures go through cyclical changes and have characteristic kinds of mentality. And I just don't think it can be disputed that secular western culture has a predominantly materialist attitude: not materialist in the sense of coveting material stuff, but as understanding the fundamental stuff of the world to be bodies in motion, governed by physical laws (which have now usurped the role previously assigned to divine commandments.)

Quoting jorndoe

Doesn't the observation stand on its own?

No. He's bringing it up. He is trying to say something with it. There are a lot of facts about the world. This doesn't mean I have to bring them up unless I am trying to say something with this fact. "Hey look at this..." implies "And so?"

Quoting Tom Storm

Not at all. I know many rich socialists. It's a thing - we even have the expression Bollinger Socialism.

What matters is what people do not the theories they claim to believe. Don't you think?

That's what I said early, there's a lot of hypocrisy involved when people classify themselves. It's better to judge by a person's actions rather than what they claim to be. So I said, despite no one confessing to be idealist, I've seen a lot of closet idealism in this forum. That is generally attributable to the fact that idealist premises produce the best arguments but idealism is associated with religion, which is frowned upon. So people tend to argue from idealist world views, and idealist premises, all the while insisting that they are not idealist. I think perhaps we can blame Wittgenstein for setting this example.

Reply to Wayfarer Ok, I'm not really convinced - we've also had 2000 years of Christianity without much commitment to the Gospels or social justice and the creation of extremely materialist cultures within Catholicism and the inevitable schism of Protestantism. What people do is more important than what they say they believe. It's actually something @Banno helped remind me of.

Quoting Wayfarer

And I don't think it's controversial to say that the last really influential idealists were the German idealists - Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Fichte. The British idealists, like Bradley, were very much part of the same overall movement.

I know this and agree. But it's a blip.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, well put. I agree with you. I find idealism fascinating and am not running a campaign against it. I might be an atheist, but I am not committed to scientism or have an obsession with reason. I think truth is elusive to humans and generally avoid people who think they possess it.

Reply to schopenhauer1, observation, as the case may (or may not) be:
The forum has a (noticeably) different distribution than the world of academic philosophers in general.
If so, then how come?
Either way, I'm not going to pretend to speak on @Banno's behalf.

Quoting Tom Storm

I know this and agree. But it's a blip.

A blip could indicate incoming ordinance, so beware.

I was going to add, idealism nowadays has rather counter-cultural implications. Kastrup is still considered by a lot of people a crank. Realism is - you know - hard-headed, real world, scientific, modern. Idealism sounds to closer to mysticism.

Quoting Tom Storm

I think truth is elusive to humans and generally avoid people who think they possess it.

You'd better avoid me then, because I, as the antagonist of Socrates, happen to know everything.

Quoting Tom Storm

I know this and agree. But it's a blip.

I think a form of neutral monism or panpsychism has seen a rise in David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson. Then there are mathematical Platonists like Max Tegmark who argue for mathematical entities have some sort of reality (even though they are not physical).

Quoting jorndoe

observation, as the case may (or may not) be:
The forum has a (noticeably) different distribution than the world of academic philosophers in general.
If so, then how come?
Either way, I'm not going to pretend to speak on Banno's behalf.

I gave a theory.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Reply to Wayfarer Reply to Tom Storm
I think at the end of the day, the mind/body problem becomes the nexus point by which both sides meet. Things like the Cartesian Theater fallacy will always bewilder the inquiring mind. I think of a blue cube in my mind, even if this comes from sense impressions earlier, what does it mean to be "in my mind"? Neurons are firing, etc. Neural networks are connecting and computing. Yep. But this mental imagery is taking place. What is "that"?

We constantly say stuff like "two ways of looking at it", as if rephrasing gets at it.

We constantly kick the proverbial can down the road when we say, "Well it's information integrating", but "whence" is this integration? Where and what is this? Then we make analogies to some computer and we realize the interpreter is already in the equation. So not that either. Then we are back to where we began.

Idealists have a problem that it is corresponding to physical events and cannot pose the problem of whence mental events. So, they say everything must be mind.

Realists have a problem that it is corresponding to the mental events and cannot pose the problem of whence mental events,. So, they downplay mental some sort of "illusion" or cultural artifact. However, illusions are still a phenomenon to be explained in themselves. And on and on it goes.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I sort of, kind of, agree. But I've become acutely aware of how 'post-Cartesian' our worldview instinctively is. Descartes is where the modern 'mind-body' problem comes from - along with a constellation of early moderns, notably Galileo, Locke, Newton, and so on, the division of mind and matter, 'primary' and 'secondary' attributes, religion and science. I see being modern as itself a state of being, a station of consciousness, shaped by these influences. Learning how to be aware of that is a big part of philosophy IMO. This is not to say that modernity, or Enlightenment rationalism, or what have you, is 'bad' or 'wrong' - sure prefer it to many alternatives - but the problems it has are like it's shadow, in the Jungian sense.

Also don't agree with the equivalence of materialism and idealism. Kastrup has a lot to say on that - materialism relies much more on abstractions than does idealism. Why? Because the concept of matter is itself an abstraction whereas the reality of first-person experience is apodictic. I don't have to copy in again that paragraph from Schopenhauer0 about how time and space only enter into reality through the brain.

So - not just on and on, around and around. There's light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm seeing it ;-)

Quoting schopenhauer1

I think of a blue cube in my mind, even if this comes from sense impressions earlier, what does it mean to be "in my mind"?

Right, what does it mean for something to be in the mind? It makes sense to say it, and everyone understands when it is said, but no one really seems to know what it means.

Quoting Wayfarer

I sort of, kind of, agree. But I've become acutely aware of how 'post-Cartesian' our worldview instinctively is. Descartes is where the modern 'mind-body' problem comes from - along with a constellation of early moderns, notably Galileo, Locke, Newton, and so on, the division of mind and matter, 'primary' and 'secondary' attributes, religion and science. I see being modern as itself a state of being, a station of consciousness, shaped by these influences. Learning how to be aware of that is a big part of philosophy IMO. This is not to say that modernity, or Enlightenment rationalism, or what have you, is 'bad' or 'wrong' - sure prefer it to many alternatives - but the problems it has are like it's shadow, in the Jungian sense.

Also don't agree with the equivalence of materialism and idealism. Kastrup has a lot to say on that - materialism relies much more on abstractions than does idealism. Why? Because the concept of matter is itself an abstraction whereas the reality of first-person experience is apodictic. I don't have to copy in again that paragraph from Schopenhauer0 about how time and space only enter into reality through the brain.

Yes, I know the rejection of the Cartesian thing. I get it. Essentially he just re-introduced the Platonic skepticism of what we deem as "real", and made it more solipsistic (mind) rather than outward-facing (Forms, matter, etc.). However, the problem was there, whether he introduced it more blatantly or not (in my opinion). We must get through the Cartesian problem. I don't think there was a pre-Cartesian "better". But it may be just a stage to deal with.

A way through (not necessarily endorsing but just providing an example), could be an extreme object-oriented realism whereby objects have ways of connecting whereby realization takes place (actualization from potentiality). And lo and behold, this philosophy starts looking like Whitehead's process philosophy. So maybe there is a framework there (not necessarily everything he posited, but the basic idea).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Right, what does it mean for something to be in the mind? It makes sense to say it, and everyone understands when it is said, but no one really seems to know what it means.

Yep.

Quoting Banno

Very droll.

Why thank you...?

Quoting Banno

Interesting that folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally, rather than the topic at hand.

Just another one of life's illusions...

Quoting Isaac

It's interesting to me that most of what comes out of discussions like this seems to hinge on the significance of the extents to which our understanding (our models, in my terminology) are constrained by external forces.

Right, anything we understand must be a part of the model and not of the purported "external forces". We know we are constrained by external forces, we just cannot say just what they are.

Quoting Isaac

The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit.

I don't know that it's so neat as that. The Berkeleyan idealist could be as determined by God as the realist is by brain chemistry (for example).

I have sometimes thought that Kant has his characterization of his philosophy as empirical realist and transcendental idealist backwards. We know the empirical world only via ideas; as I like to say the empirical world is a collective representation and in that sense it is ideal. About the transcendental we have no idea, except that if it is at all it must be real.

Quoting Isaac

I can't see a way around the problem, myself. Certain methods of dealing with data qualify as being 'connected' to the world and so produce what we might call 'reasonable' theories - as opposed to merely guessing, or making stuff up. But within that canon, there doesn't seem to be any reliable process for choosing between them. If they meet the criteria of not being overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, then then seem to all be equally fair game.

I think your post hits the nail on the head. There can be no justification of any discursive dualistic kind (as all our knowledge is) that comes out of meditation or revelation. I've been labouring this point on these forums for years, but the idea that such spiritual methodologies can yield discursive knowledge seems to be very hard to let go of for some. (That said, I think we each believe (or should) what serves us best (and I don't mean what's most comforting, although I suppose for those whose primary need is for comforting, what is comforting may indeed serve them best)).

On the other hand I can know something non-dually, but it is more of a sense of profound satisfaction in knowing that which cannot be communicated. It is, admittedly, merely an affective state, but it can profoundly transform one's life, leaving one in a state of no-doubt, but since this is impossible to translate into discursive terms such experiences can never be evidence for anything, or convincing
to those who don't have like experience.

Quoting Isaac

Both, I think, ultimately (assuming model-dependant realism) find themselves in the same statistical quandary of wanting to associate truth value with popularity. The scientistic wants the 'consensus' theory to have more weight, the religious want the 'serious' religions to be taken...well, more seriously. But neither can have what they want out of this model (and so both are dissatisfied). Despite intuitions which may seem to tell us the opposite, there's no mechanism (in this model) to connect popularity with truthiness.

Schopenhauer claims that we can know the reality of the "in-itself" introspectively as Will. But this is purely speculative; for all we know it might be true, but since we could have no way of knowing it to be true, it would seem to be of little use.

What is really important, in my view, is what convinces you (or me or her). We are all convinced by different things, all driven by different presumptions, but what is important is that our ideas enable us to live more fully, a life as rich as possible. Everything else is a waste of time.

Quoting Wayfarer

But your selective quotation of the passage then omits the grounds of Schopenhauer's 'defense of Kant', as he puts it. You then go to a peremptory dismissal: 'Obviously Kant doesn't know either'. But I don't think the 'sage of Konisburg' can be dismissed so easily.

I did not omit on purpose the part where Schopenhauer's name appeared. There's nothing in that paragraph that would make it any stronger. Here it is:

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.

I'm not denying that time is a human construct -- at least I'm not arguing here against that notion. I don't care about that issue.

What I'm pointing out is that the claims of the idealists, such as Magee and Kant, are themselves delivered as "what actually is" about humans. So then my question is, why are Magee and Kant so privileged as to occupy a position wherein they could be both idealist and make claims like that. They're contradictory.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think the point of the argument is the reference to Kant's view that time and space are fundamental intuitions of the mind - *not* things that exist in themselves. In other words, space and time are not purely objective in nature but are grounded in the observing mind. And this has also dawned upon at least some scientists.

We've passed this. The point of our argument now is the fact that idealists can make claims as to the condition of our perception (we don't know the world out there, only the construct created by our mind), as to the anthropocentric nature of time and space, etc.

My question to you is, what do you make of the claims of the idealists? Are those knowledge? Are they truth? Why should we believe them when the realists could say, well, we may be only perceiving, but the causal relation of the world out there with our senses makes it clear that we know the world. There is this mechanism, that escapes our direct observation, but whose functioning makes it possible for us to see the sun and the stars in space. If this is not true knowledge, then what is? Why are we even talking about truth, knowledge, theories, the sage of Konisburg?

And oh, btw, gravity is not a mental construct.

Reply to schopenhauer1 IIRC, the 'idealism' of Parmenides (or Pythagoras) preceeded Plato by a century or so.

Reply to Wayfarer "As far as I'm concerned" ... i.e. a cop-out. :roll:

Quoting Wayfarer

Idealism sounds to closer to mysticism.

Such as your references to "Buddhist idealism" and Upanishads ... :sparkle:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You'd better avoid me then, because I, as the antagonist of Socrates, happen to know everything.

I enjoy reading your perspective. We may disagree about some things, but I'm no philosopher and I'm here primarily to understand more about world views different to my own and the reasons/arguments people provide in defence of them.

Quoting Wayfarer

A blip could indicate incoming ordinance, so beware.

I was going to add, idealism nowadays has rather counter-cultural implications.

Sure, by blip I wasn't talking about potential future dominant world views.

Quoting 180 Proof

As far as I'm concerned" ... i.e. a cop-out.

You asked a question:

Quoting 180 Proof

I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world"

I answered with a passage from a canonical text of Advaita non-dualism, saying that 'outside the atman, nothing has any sense'.

What about that exchange is not clear?

Quoting schopenhauer1

I think a form of neutral monism or panpsychism has seen a rise in David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson. Then there are mathematical Platonists like Max Tegmark who argue for mathematical entities have some sort of reality (even though they are not physical).

Agree. And Roger Penrose. My point was idealism has not been constantly mainstream in the West since the Greeks - it had fashions, especially the Germans. Whether it becomes dominant again in the near future is not for me to say.

Reply to schopenhauer1 The lady doth protest too much, methinks. But prey, continue.

Quoting Tom Storm

My point was idealism has not been constantly mainstream

Idealism IS the mainstream. All else is degeneration. ('Footnotes to Plato' - remember?)

So the poll is simply a reflection of the fact that we live in a degenerate age - something Plato would no doubt vigourously agree with. But then, Popper did call him an enemy of the open society.

Reply to Wayfarer :lol:

Quoting Banno

But prey, continue.

Now there's a freudian slip for the ages.

Quoting Wayfarer

freudian

:wink: Maybe.

Quoting Wayfarer

What about that exchange is not clear?

We're talking past each other again. I've been taking issue with 'transcendental idealism' Reply to 180 Proof and you're advocating various Eastern mystical traditions without making a case for how 'transcendental idealism' follows from or is consistent with them. Citing topical literatures do not explicate your thinking on idealism, Wayfarer, only distracts (deliberately?) from directly addressing or refuting the issues with idealism I've raised. If we've gone as far in this discussion as you care to go, then just say so. I'm only interested in what you think, sir, and not with your sources or you interpreting them for me.

Quoting 180 Proof

you're advocating various Eastern mystical traditions without making a case for how 'transcendental idealism' follows from or is consistent with them

The similarities between Kant's and Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism and the philosophies of the Upani?ads and Buddhists texts is well known. As I already said, it is not too long a bow to draw between the 'unknown knower' of the Upani?ad and Kant's 'transcendental apperception'. Both of them recognise the sense in which 'life is the creation of mind' - not the theistic sense of divine creation, but moment by moment, mind by mind.

Reply to Wayfarer No thoughts of your own. Got it. I'm out, Wayf. :shade:

Quoting L'éléphant

What I'm pointing out is that the claims of the idealists, such as Magee and Kant, are themselves delivered as "what actually is" about humans.

“…. In order to prevent any misunderstanding, it will be requisite, in the first place, to recapitulate, as clearly as possible, what our opinion is with respect to the fundamental nature of our sensuous cognition in general….”

“… This completeness of the analysis of these radical conceptions, as well as of the deduction from the conceptions à priori which may be given by the analysis, we can, however, easily attain, provided only that we are in possession of all these radical conceptions, which are to serve as principles of the synthesis…”

“… Transcendental philosophy is the idea of a science, for which the Critique of Pure Reason must sketch the whole plan architectonically, that is, from principles, with a full guarantee for the validity and stability of all the parts which enter into the building.…”

Nothing in Kantian tripartite critical philosophy asserts “what actually is” about humans, but is merely a domain-specific series of if-then logical syllogisms writ large, which at most, says what actually is about a speculative theory.
———

On the other hand, there are “….claims (….) delivered as “what actually is”.…”, serving as premises for the logical method following from them….

“…. That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience….”

….and this, with respect to his theory of knowledge alone, is not idealism in its strictest sense, insofar as external material reality is tacitly granted as a necessary condition.

Quoting Mww

but this is not idealism in its strictest sense, insofar as external material reality is tacitly granted as a necessary condition.

Idealism, even in its strict sense grants external reality, or else it would be reducible to solipsism. What a strict idealist (like Berkeley) would deny is that external reality is properly characterized as "material", insisting that it would be better characterized as "formal", or "ideal". This is why Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason proposes an idealism, by assigning to the proposed independent noumena the classification of "intelligible objects" rather than matter.

What happens to the various idealisms, how people get lost within, and cannot find their way because idealisms begin to look incoherent, is that it is necessary to posit something as a medium which separates the ideas of one mind from the ideas of another, or the intelligible objects of my mind from the intelligible objects of the external world. The simple solution is to posit something like matter as the medium of separation. But this results in dualism. It is this complexity of dualism, which idealism necessitates as a result of the separation between my ideas and other ideas, which deters people from idealism. Reality is just too difficult, complex, so they do not go down that road where idealism leads to dualism.

Quoting Banno

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. But prey, continue.

I'll wear all the hats I want, thank you very much. Baseball cap, sombrero, derby....I don't mind indulging in various metaphysical standpoints, some rooted heavily in Western canon, and by no means "not philosophy", especially on an online philosophy forum. How boring would it be to have just one view, and only the Banno view at that! :wink: Wittgenstein all over with a side of rote symbolic logic statements. I mine as well count numbers to infinity and call it a day.

You get no answers by ignoring the problem at hand. Most philosophers ignore the problem. Many probably don't even deal with it in their academic work, and thus default to it because that isn't their specialty. But honestly, I wouldn't care if they knew every theory out there regarding metaphysics/epistemology, and answered realism. It's just a person's opinion. Informed by other opinions. Arguments in philosophy are too open to measure "better" or worse. You can really only say "well-constructed" or not and then weigh the argument against other arguments. But guess who is doing the weighing? Not an objective god, but a person.

And yes, I protesteth so because you are trying to pull and tease an objective argument, by sneaking in the notion of "majority means right" which is the textbook definition of bandwagon fallacy.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Me: idealism not in its strictest sense….external material reality granted;
You: strict idealism….external reality is material, denied.

What’s the difference? Not strict idealism grants; strict idealism denies. We’re saying the same fargin’ thing!!
———

Why Kant proposes an idealism, and that of a particular kind…..is in dispute to the empiricists of the day.

In the idealism Kant proposes…..noumena are proposed, superficially, in that they represent what not to do; or technically, in that they represent what understanding is capable of if left unchecked by itself. They are, after the paint has dried, metaphysically insignificant.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Keep going. Say some more about me.

Quoting schopenhauer1

It's just a person's opinion.

If eight out of ten aeronautics engineers say the plane is unsafe, I won't fly in it. But perhaps schopenhauer1 would, after all, the engineers are just giving a personal opinion.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Most philosophers ignore the problem.

Restrict the philpapers results to metaphysicians in the target group of academic philosophers - 372 respondents - and the number who advocate idealism goes up to almost 7%! The number advocating realism rises to 84%.

Make of this what you will.

This is a scrapbook entry about how discoveries in cognitive science lend support to transcendental idealism.

As understood by evolutionary biology, Homo Sapiens is the result of millions years of evolution. For all these thousands of millions of years, our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate and so on - in such a way as to eventually give rise to the capabilities that we have today.

Scientific disciplines such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of thousand, or millions, of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of rational thought (and realms beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science.)

Consciousness plays a central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ and the apparent coherence and unity of the external world. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness many of which are below the threshhold of conscious awareness.

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is considerable work involved in creating the object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the sensory stimuli, your mind cognises the image in relation to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will (hopefully) recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc).

In other words, the mind is *not* simply the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them (this is 'the myth of the given'). Rather consciousness is an active agent which constructs what we understand as reality on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, intuitions, prejudices, prior knowledge, and so on.

Furthermore, and this is the philosophically interesting aspect of it, the neural systems by which the mind creates the consciousness of a unified whole remain unknown. As computer scientist Jerome Feldman shows in The Neural Binding Problem, Chalmer's 'hard problem' is recognised in scientific accounts of consciousness, insofar as there has been no neural mechanism identified which accounts for the unity of conscious experience. There are detailed accounts of all of the aspects of the brain which assimilate different aspects of perception (color, shape, movement and so on) 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. 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 Neural Binding Problem really is a scientific mystery at this time.'

And that holistic, gestalt-generating ability of the mind to forge the 'subjective unity of experience' maps very well against Kant's 'transcendental apperception' - the process by which we become aware of the unity and coherence of our experiences and their integration into a single, integrated whole.

It's not too difficult to give a minimalist account of what realism about the world might involve. It holds first off that there are things in the world, and secondly that these things have at least some properties that are not dependent on us.

So there being leaves on the trees involves there being leaves and trees, and the one being on the other, but need not involve someone interacting with the trees.

Of course, that we divide the world up into trees and leaves and use those particular words to talk about them, and that we believe or suspect or are certain that the leaves are on the trees, all involve someone. These are observations about us, not about the leaves on the trees. We might have never different leaves from trees, never investigated the ends of the branches to find the flattened green outgrowth from the stem of such vascular plants. But the trees would still have leaves, unobserved and unaccounted.

So realism is holding that there are things such as trees and that these have leaves and that their doing so is independent of anyone's beliefs, conceptual schemes, language or other such artefacts.

Now I do happen to think that this is pretty much right, as far as the stuff of our everyday acquaintance goes.

And it seems most folk concur. And showing that most folk concur is the point of this thread.

And of course, the popularity of this view does not in itself make us right. But it also does not make us wrong.

And I reckon this thread, now at six, will go to ten pages, easily.

Reply to Wayfarer Do you think there is any thing in the account you quote at length that is at odds with the account of realism I just gave?

Reply to Banno Only that you never seem to see the point of that passage whenever it's quoted.

Quoting Wayfarer

Only that you never seem to see the point of that passage whenever it's quoted.

So it would seem. Care to try again?

What is it, if anything, in that quote that counts specifically agains realism? Because you are right, I'm not seeing it. Indeed, the quote as a whole seems to me to presuppose that we are part of a world that is independent of our accounts, and within which our accounts might evolve.

Quoting Banno

us

Idealism isn't necessarily about our (human) minds. It's about any minds. Minds other than human minds are invoked to account for object permanence.

Quoting Banno

Indeed, the quote as a whole seems to me to presuppose that we are part of a world that is independent of our accounts, and within which our accounts might evolve.

Again, that's not idealism. No idealist I'm aware of talks only about human minds. Not that I'm well read on it. Who are you thinking of?

Quoting bert1

Who are you thinking of?

Anyone you wish to include. I've given an account of what realism is, and it seems there is a supposition that realism is opposed to idealism, so if someone wants to give an account of what idealism is, I'm all ears.

Quoting bert1

that's not idealism

Telling us what idealism isn't doesn't seem a good away to proceed. The core of idealism seems to be something like that the ultimate foundation of the world is somehow mental. How's that pan out?

Working out what idealism might be seems to be a large part of the problem.

Quoting Banno

The core of idealism seems to be something like that the ultimate foundation of the world is somehow mental. How's that pan out?

Sure, that's fine. There's nothing about 'us' in that characterisation you just gave. Yet your criticisms of idealism, if I recall, usually do centre around objects not depending on humans for their existence.

[quote="bert1;783626"...]your criticisms of idealism, if I recall, usually do centre around objects not depending on humans for their existence.[/quote]

Yep.

Reply to Banno OK, so even on your own conception of idealism, this criticism fails because idealists don't just believe in human minds.

Are you now going to say that the same skepticism about the external world from a human point of view must also apply to non-human minds as well, on pain of contradiction or special pleading or something?

EDIT: that's a perfectly good point to make, but you have to be explicit about it if you want to actually succeed in making an argument against idealism rather than an argument against, say solipsism, or human-mind-only idealism. Most Idealisms are not solipsism or humanocentric.

Quoting Banno

What is it, if anything, in that quote that counts specifically agains realism?

Realism holds that the activities of the agent's mind have no bearing on the existence of the world, that these can be regarded as separable.

Quoting bert1

Minds other than human minds are invoked to account for object permanence.

Cite evidence of "minds other than human minds" that does not beg the question of 'what is "mind"?' whether human or not. :chin:

Reply to bert1 A silly argument. Let "Humans" include aliens if you want. Or dogs. Whatever. As I said,
Quoting Banno

Anyone you wish to include.

But if you push the argument that the stuff around us does not exist unless a mind is involved, you are headed towards solipsism. Because other minds are a part of that stuff in the world.

Quoting Wayfarer

Realism holds that the activities of the agent's mind have no bearing on the existence of the world, that these can be regarded as separable.

Well, that's not quite right. See above.

Nor does it tell me what the quote has against realism.

Quoting Banno

A silly argument. Let "Humans" include aliens if you want. Or dogs. Whatever. As I said,
Anyone you wish to include.

We are talking at cross purposes, it may have been my fault. When I asked you who you were thinking of, I meant which idealist philosophers.

Also, when you said 'us' I assumed you meant human beings. You meant anything with a mind.

Is that all cleared up now?

The difference, at the extreme, used to be that realists thought that all there was, was physical, idealists, that all there was, was mental. Realism, over the course of the last century, pretty much overwhelmed idealism, to the point where even those who claim the name will often not disagree with the sort of definition of realism I gave above.

Quoting Paul Guyer, Idealism, SEP

Originally conceived in the middle of the eighteenth century as a real alternative to materialistic and naturalistic perspectives, it may now become sublated and integrated into views about the nature of reality that ignore metaphysical oppositions or epistemological questions connected with the assumption of the priority of mind over matter or the other way round. Instead the focus may be shifting to establishing a “neutral” view according to which “anything goes” (Feyerabend) as long as it does not contradict or at least is not incompatible with our favored metaphysical, epistemological and scientific (both natural and social) methods and practices.

So the difference between idealism and realism fades, and we move on.

Or not.

Reply to bert1 Whatever. I don't see a point to this conversation.

Quoting 180 Proof

Cite evidence of "minds other than human minds" that does not beg the question of 'what is "mind"?' whether human or not.

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking for, but I'll offer this. As other minds are not directly perceptible (I suggest) they have to be inferred, if we are to rationally think they exist (or maybe there are other methods to know, but I'm offering one here). We can make an analogy based on similarities with my behaviour, perhaps. So the behaviour of other creatures might count as evidence. Consider:

1) I yelp when stuck with a pin and run away from the pin-sticker (one half of the analogy)
2) I do this because I have a mind and find the pain unpleasant and want to get away from it (assumption - I know you think this is false)
3) The dog yelps when stuck with a pin and runs away from the pin-sticker (the other half or the analogy, this constitutes the evidence)
4) (Optionally list a whole load of other ways dogs and humans are similar, to support the similarity)
5) therefore, the dog yelps and runs away because it has a mind and it wants to get away from the pain

Within the context of that inference, does the dog's behaviour count as evidence? As evidence that does not beg the question of what is mind? (I haven't actually done this experiment, but I hope the dog's behaviour is sufficiently plausible. Maybe I should pick an example that actually happened instead of making one up.)

Quoting Banno

Whatever. I don't see a point to this conversation.

Righto. I haven't offended you have I? Just unsure of tone.

Reply to bert1 "By analogy?" Okay, no evidence. Got it.

Quoting Banno

But if you push the argument that the stuff around us does not exist unless a mind is involved, you are headed towards solipsism. Because other minds are a part of that stuff in the world.

That seems right. Although are there not forms of idealism that hold that everything you see is real, it just isn't what you think - it isn't material, it is made from the one stuff of the universe - consciousness/Will. That's the Schopenhauer, Kastrup, Hoffman formulation. Here people are all like dissociated alters of the vast pool of consciousness (or great mind) which constitutes all which exists. In other words idelaism does not deal in illusion, we've just come to the wrong conclusions about what we experience as a physical world.

Now the pertinent question would be how the hell does anyone know all this? It's fine to debunk old school materialism, but it's another thing to use this as to support a speculative ontology. It's at best built from some debatable inferences, right? Cue quantum speculations, quotes from Hinduism, Plato's cave, past lives accounts and critiques of scientism....

Reply to 180 Proof Always happy to help!

Quoting Tom Storm

[A]re there not forms of idealism that hold that everything you see is real, it just isn't what you think - it isn't material, it is made from the one stuff of the universe - consciousness / Will. That's the Schopenhauer, Kastrup, Hoffman formulation [ ... ] Cue quantum speculations, quotes from Hinduism, Plato's cave, past lives accounts and critiques of scientism....

:100: :clap: :smirk:

@bert1 @Wayfarer @Gnomon

Reply to Tom Storm, yes, those doctrines that tell us all about the stuff about which we can say nothing.

Moore made the point well:

Quoting Quoted in the SEP article

if we never experience anything but what is not an inseparable aspect of that experience, how can we infer that anything whatever, let alone everything is an inseparable aspect of any experience? (1903: 451)

So if we have no access to anything not a perception, how could we ever differentiate between what we experience and what we don't....?

If what is, is what we will, then whence will?

Quoting Tom Storm

Now the pertinent question would be how the hell does anyone know all this? It's fine to debunk old school materialism, but it's another thing to use this as to support a speculative ontology. It's at best built from some debatable inferences, right? Cue quantum speculations, quotes from Hinduism, Plato's cave, past lives accounts and critiques of scientism....

Of course the same problem exists with materialism; how could you know that everything, independently of anything human, is material or even what that could mean?

All ontology and metaphysics is based on debatable inferences. So, as I see it, the only pertinent question is what ideas best fire your interest, inspire your passion or help you live most fully. For myself I can say that I feel no need to decide between these mutually exclusive polemics. I find uncertainty most satisfying.

That said, I find some interest in ideas for their own sake, looking at what each of the different views on the menu would entail, and thinking about what possible difference it could make to human life if they were true (whatever their being true independent of human understanding could even mean).

One advantage of the "great mind" ontology is that that truth could, independently of the human, be related to, known by, that universal mind. If there were nothing but the material, then that truth would be nothing without the human, which seems to beg the question as to how it could even be coherent to consider it a human-independent truth.

Still, I am not convinced by that; so my choice is to refuse to settle on one or other side of the dichotomy, and settle for the idea that the non-dual reality can only be known experientially, and not discursively, which would mean that there is no truth of the matter. The idea that there must be a discursive truth of the matter is a human, dualistic-thinking based illusion; that's my take.

Quoting Banno

If what is, is what we will, then whence will?

:fire:

Yes, or put another way: if everything is an idea of mind, then mind is an idea of mind ... ad infinitum. Insert arbitrary terminus here (X-of-the-gaps).

Quoting Banno

So if we have no access to anything not a perception, how could we ever differentiate between what we experience and what we don't....?

That's dead easy: we know what we experience, and we know what we don't experience. We don't experience the human-independent nature of reality, we experience the human-dependent nature of reality (the empirical). This is true by definition, because if we did experience the human-independent nature of reality it would not be human-independent, so we can rule that out as a contradiction.

Reply to 180 Proof That's it.


Quoting Janus

We don't experience the human-independent nature of reality

- the part of reality seperate from humans? Idealism says, one way or another, that to be is to be related in some way to some mind. If you hold there to be a "human-independent nature of reality" a part of your metaphysics, you are not an idealist.

See how confusing it gets? Hence the chat above about if Kant counts as a realist.

Quoting Banno

Do you think there is any thing in the account you quote at length that is at odds with the account of realism I just gave?

Try this:

Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness many of which are below the threshhold of conscious awareness.

as opposed to this:

Quoting Banno

It holds first off that there are things in the world, and secondly that these things have at least some properties that are not dependent on us.

Notice in Wayfarer's passage "dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness", and your quote "not dependent on us". That is an ontological difference in how we understand "things".

Reply to Tom Storm Don’t like the ‘made from’. More later.

Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness many of which are below the threshhold of conscious awareness.

Well, "naive" is somewhat pejorative, but apart from that I do not see anything in that quote that is at odds with realism.

Quoting Banno

- the part of reality seperate from humans? Idealism says, one way or another, that to be is to be related in some way to some mind. If you hold there to be a "human-independent nature of reality" a part of your metaphysics, you are not an idealist.

See how confusing it gets? Hence the chat above about if Kant counts as a realist.

If I held that the human-independent nature of reality was ideas in a universal mind would I not count as an idealist? In other words the Universe existed in God's mind (if you like) or some universal mind prior to the existence of humans just as materialist might think it did. I believe Berkeley asserted just this and he is considered to be an idealist.

I agree that Kant is not really an idealist, and as I said in a post above"

I have sometimes thought that Kant has his characterization of his philosophy as empirical realist and transcendental idealist backwards. We know the empirical world only via ideas; as I like to say the empirical world is a collective representation and in that sense it is ideal. About the transcendental we have no idea, except that if it is at all it must be real.

There is a fair degree of conceptual confusion in all of these metaphysical positions, and as I've also said recently on these forums, I think they all end up, one way or another, in aporia.

Here's an example:

Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness many of which are below the threshhold of conscious awareness.

If the "constructive activities" are "below the threshold of conscious awareness" how could we tell what is doing the constructing?

Quoting Janus

If I held that the human-independent nature of reality was ideas in a universal mind would I not count as an idealist?

Looks to be a performative contradiction. If it's human-independent then it's not somethign with which we need be concerned.

My impression was that the Good Bishop held everything to be ideas in god's mind; except presumably god isn't an idea in god's mind... In which case not everything is an idea ain god;'s mind... and we've gotten nowhere. Or god is just an idea in god's mind... can't see how that works.

Makes no sense to me.

Quoting Banno

If eight out of ten aeronautics engineers say the plane is unsafe,

Yeah, engineering is NOT philosophy. And that was my point when I said sciences are not like philosophy (I include engineering in that), so yeah keep making my points... or ignoring them. Whatever tactic you wish to do.

Quoting Banno

Restrict the philpapers results to metaphysicians in the target group of academic philosophers - 372 respondents - and the number who advocate idealism goes up to almost 7%! The number advocating realism rises to 84%.

Make of this what you will.

Doesn't change anything to me. My points still stand. The survey doesn't matter to me. Rather, the implication of using the survey does. It literally means nothing other than bandwagon fallacy. Also, making comparisons with engineering is more than a stretch. I would say, art, history or (maybe) social science at best, and even that is a stretch. Even history has less interpretive elements to it than philosophy which is quite literally the most open you can get in terms of what is debatable.

Quoting schopenhauer1

engineering is NOT philosophy

You'd think it was, the number of retired engineers who casually drop past to explain how the poor benighted philosophers went wrong.

Shame they don't agree with each other.

Quoting schopenhauer1

The survey doesn't matter to me.

Your repeated posts here suggest otherwise.

Quoting Mww

On the other hand, there are “….claims (….) delivered as “what actually is”.…”, serving as premises for the logical method following from them….

“…. That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience….”

….and this, with respect to his theory of knowledge alone, is not idealism in its strictest sense, insofar as external material reality is tacitly granted as a necessary condition.

:up: Thanks.

Quoting Banno

Looks to be a performative contradiction. If it's human-independent then it's not somethign whc whcih we need be concerned.

We don't need to be concerned with something in order to be concerned with it. The interminability of these kinds of arguments on this forum attest to that. I'm asking you to look at the logic of the claim that the Universe is a single mind, and that all the things in it, including human minds, are ideas. There is nothing in that admittedly entirely speculative idea of a universal mind that entails that it must be human-dependent. So not a "performative contradiction" it seems.

Quoting Banno

My impression was that the Good Bishop held everything to be ideas in god's mind; except presumably god isn't an idea in god's mind... In which case not everything is an idea ain god;'s mind... and we've gotten nowhere. Or god is just an idea in god's mind... can't see how that works.

Makes no sense to me.

The idea is logically no different than the idea that all things are in the Universe...in which case not everything is in the Universe...or the Universe is just a thing in the Universe...can't see how that works either.

"Makes no sense to me" sounds like an argument from incredulity.

Quoting Wayfarer

Don’t like the ‘made from’. More later.

Sure. I'm not wedded to it, it's just a figure of speech, Didn't mean 'made' to be literal.

Quoting Janus

That said, I find some interest in ideas for their own sake, looking at what each of the different views on the menu would entail, and thinking about what possible difference it could make to human life if they were true (whatever their being true independent of human understanding could even mean).

Agree. That's kind of my perspective too. I suspect it makes almost no difference to how I would choose live, whether I am an outmoded retro physicalist or an a la mode idealist. I do find idealism hard to imagine and comprehend. This is partly a cultural construct and that was my earlier point - not dissimilar to points made by @Wayfarer about dominant paradigms.

Quoting Janus

One advantage of the "great mind" ontology is that that truth could, independently of the human, be related to, known by, that universal mind.

Perhaps, although the versions of great mind of Schop or Kastrup posit a universal mind which is instinctive and not metacognitive. It's not, as I understand it, a personality with preferences and knowledge. Perhaps it can only reach truths through brief expressions of consciousness instantiated through human life. But how would we know?

Quoting Tom Storm

Agree. That's kind of my perspective too. I suspect it makes almost no difference to how I would choose live, whether I am an outmoded retro physicalist or an a la mode idealist.

:up:

Quoting Tom Storm

Perhaps, although the versions of great mind of Schop or Kastrup posit a universal mind which is instinctive and not metacognitive.

I guess things could be ideas (or impulses?) in an instinctive universal mind equally as they could be in a meta-cognitive one. Spinoza's God is not meta-cognitive as I understand it. Of course we could never know either way, it's just one of the speculative possibilities.

Life, existence are mysteries and we are mired in ignorance when it comes to anything purportedly outside of the human empirical and logic-based understanding.

Quoting Janus

Of course the same problem exists with materialism; how could you know that everything, independently of anything human, is material or even what that could mean?

I have to disagree. At the very least, "materialism" is a far more useful epistemological paradigm than any version of "immaterialism" for learning about – adapting to – nature.

Quoting Janus

I'm asking you to look at the logic of the claim that the Universe is a single mind, and that all the things in it, including human minds, are ideas. There is nothing in that admittedly entirely speculative idea of a universal mind ...

Insofar as this "universe is a single mind" is a "speculative idea", it follows that it's an "idea" of either (A) the human mind or (B) some other mind not located witnin "the universe" – which seems to me (B) amounts to "mind"-of-the-gaps and (A) amounts to a compositional fallacy – or (C) there are minds within the universe which are not themselves mere "ideas" (i.e. reals) rendering this "speculative idea" itself conceptually incoherent.

Whatever its limitations, Janus, I don't think 'realism' has these self-refuting problems.

Quoting Janus

Life is a mystery and we are mired in ignorance when it comes to anything purportedly outside of the human empirical and logic-based understanding.

No doubt. :up:

Quoting Banno

So if we have no access to anything not a perception, how could we ever differentiate between what we experience and what we don't....?

Berkeley knocks that out of the park in his Dialogues

Quoting Banno

Restrict the philpapers results to metaphysicians in the target group of academic philosophers - 372 respondents - and the number who advocate idealism goes up to almost 7%! The number advocating realism rises to 84%.

Make of this what you will

I love it when philosophers dabble in statistics. It's fun to visualize a group of academics sitting around a coffee table in the philosophy faculty lounge tossing numbers at each other. One says, "Hey, that's wrong - but in an interesting way". :cool:

Reply to Banno If one philosopher takes a year to solve the problem of why is there something rather than nothing, twelve can do it on a month... no?

Quoting jgill

Hey, that's wrong - but in an interesting way

Reply to Tom Storm I don’t know if you noticed this post but I’m trying to make the point that what has been previously designated (and disparaged) as ‘philosophical idealism’ is nowadays well known to cognitive science.

Reply to jgill University Vice Chancellor to Treasurer: ‘Hey the physics department is totally out of hand. Did you see how much they want for equipment this semester? Why can’t they be like the maths department? They only want paper, pencils and waste paper bins. Or philosophy. They don’t even want the bins.’

Reply to Wayfarer I did. I'm not in a position to assess any of this but as you know, the changing nature of science is how science is meant to work, even if it ends up unexpected places. :wink:

Quoting Janus

The idea is logically no different than the idea that all things are in the Universe...in which case not everything is in the Universe...or the Universe is just a thing in the Universe...can't see how that works either.

Thank god you got there before me. I was dreading having to make this very simple point.

Quoting Banno

Idealism says, one way or another, that to be is to be related in some way to some mind. If you hold there to be a "human-independent nature of reality" a part of your metaphysics, you are not an idealist.

That's wrong Banno, as I thought you'd already agreed. There can be non-human minds that underwrite the existence of human-independent bits of the world. Have I missed your point?

Quoting Banno

You'd think it was, the number of retired engineers who casually drop past to explain how the poor benighted philosophers went wrong.

Shame they don't agree with each other.

Quoting Banno

The survey doesn't matter to me.
— schopenhauer1

Your repeated posts here suggest otherwise.

Well, a software engineer might say thus in response:

while True:
response = input("Enter your response: ")

if response.lower() == "i don't care about the survey":
print("Your repeated posts here suggest otherwise")
continue

elif response.lower() == "your repeated posts here suggest otherwise":
print("The survey doesn't matter to me. Rather, the implication of using the survey does.")
continue

else:
print("Your response is:", response)
break

Reply to Banno The OP fails to spell out each of the options and the technical terms that they include, and idealism vs. realism is a false dichotomy. For the sake of clarity, I suggest the following definitions as employed by Charles Sanders Peirce, already mentioned (Reply to javra) as an example of a philosopher who was both a (scholastic) realist and an (objective) idealist:

• The real is whatever is as it is regardless of what any individual mind or finite community of minds thinks about it.
• The external is whatever is as it is regardless of what any individual mind or finite community of minds thinks about anything.
• The existent is whatever reacts with other like things in the environment.

Accordingly, a metaphysical idealist like Peirce (matter is a peculiar sort of mind) can still affirm that the external world is real (including everything that exists), as well as logical realism (some generals are real even though they do not exist).

Reply to aletheist I'll make the point again, that the questions are not mine, but those proposed by the PhilPapers survey.

I assume that the lack of specifics is intentional, so as to avoid prejudicing the results in the way your reference to Peirce obviously would.

Quoting 180 Proof

Insofar as this "universe is a single mind" is a "speculative idea", it follows that it's an "idea" of either (A) the human mind or (B) some other mind not located witnin "the universe" – which seems to me (B) amounts to "mind"-of-the-gaps and (A) amounts to a compositional fallacy – or (C) there are minds within the universe which are not themselves mere "ideas" (i.e. reals) rendering this "speculative idea" itself conceptually incoherent.

It's astonishing. Idealism begins by looking for certainty in one's individual perceptions - "esse est percipi" - and almost immediately finds itself supposing some universal spirit, god or some such.

As if such a fable were more acceptable than the independent existence of trees, tables and cups of our everyday experience.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Well, a software engineer might say thus in response:

That saves your software engineer from having to think.

The SEP entry on Idealism:

1. something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and

2. although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.

The notion of idealism that I am defending is not quite the same as either of those. It is based on the constructive activities of the brain/mind - that the external world (which really is an external world) is a product of consciousness, insofar as it you were dead, or a rock, or a log of wood, there would be no such world. Here is where most will say ‘but the world will continue exist, even if the dead or rocks or logs are not aware of it.’ But I claim that the world that you will claim ‘continues to exist’ is just the world that is constructed by and in your mind that is the only world you’ll ever know. The incredulity you feel at this point is due to the idea that this seems to imply that the world ceases to exist outside your mind, whereas I’m claiming that this idea of the non-existence of the world is also a mental construction. Both existence and non-existence are conceptual constructions.

Quoting Banno

It's astonishing. Idealism begins by looking for certainty in one's individual perceptions - "esse est percipi" - and almost immediately finds itself supposing some universal spirit, god or some such.

As if such a fable were more acceptable than the independent existence of trees, tables and cups of our everyday experience

:up: "Looking for certainty" —> illusion of control (e.g. conspiracy / magical thinking).

Reply to Wayfarer Solipsism, then.

Reply to Banno So you’re the only human being in existence - do I have that right?

Reply to Wayfarer Oh, I thought you thought that was you...

Quoting Banno

As if such a fable were more acceptable than the independent existence of trees, tables and cups of our everyday experience.

Way more acceptable!

Quoting Wayfarer

the external world (which really is an external world) is a product of consciousness,

What is it external to?

Reply to Banno The skin, the boundary of the organism.

What I’m arguing against is metaphysical naturalism,

At first there is methodological naturalism - the attitude that science ought to investigate the world as if it were strictly independent of the observer. The picture is that of the behaviours of objects that are defined solely in terms of their primary attributes, those attributes being amenable to quantisation and being measurable in terms common to all observers. Secondary attributes are assigned to the mind of the observer, so are not part of the objective domain. This attitude generally corresponds with the rise of modern scientific method. Methodological naturalism has been responsible for considerable advances in technology and science.

But when it morphs into metaphysical naturalism, is when this is taken to prove, or disprove, any ultimate facts about the world. For instance, that the world is ‘the outcome of the accidental collocations of atoms’ (Bertrand Russell) or that intentional activity is the consequence of the interaction of organic molecules (Daniel Dennett) or that God doesn’t exist (Richard Dawkins) or does (Intelligent Design). Within this picture (well except the last) the human is seen as a kind of a fluke outcome of a random process. This is where I point out that the human mind is what creates the world which it surveys. I’m not using that to argue for any kind of ‘mind at large’ or even any metaphysical counter-argument, simply the recognition of foundational nature of the mind.

world (n.)
Old English woruld, worold "human existence, the affairs of life," also "a long period of time," also "the human race, mankind, humanity," a word peculiar to Germanic languages (cognates: Old Saxon werold, Old Frisian warld, Dutch wereld, Old Norse verold, Old High German weralt, German Welt), with a literal sense of "age of man," from Proto-Germanic *weraldi-, a compound of *wer "man" (Old English wer, still in werewolf; see virile) + *ald "age" (from PIE root *al- (2) "to grow, nourish").

Quoting 180 Proof

I have to disagree. At the very least, "materialism" is a far more useful epistemological paradigm than any version of "immaterialism" for learning about – adapting to – nature.

I agree 180; methodological naturalism or materialism is most useful for understanding the physical. Should we be surprised about that?

Quoting 180 Proof

Insofar as this "universe is a single mind" is a "speculative idea", it follows that it's an "idea" of either (A) the human mind or (B) some other mind not located witnin "the universe" – which seems to me (B) amounts to "mind"-of-the-gaps and (A) amounts to a compositional fallacy – or (C) there are minds within the universe which are not themselves mere "ideas" (i.e. reals) rendering this "speculative idea" itself conceptually incoherent.

Granted, for us this is a speculative idea, just as the idea that the universe is nothing but physical complexes and their processes is. But in either case the idea is not the actuality, but the idea of the actuality. Can such ideas even correspond to the actuality (whatever it is)?

If such ideas can correspond to actuality, and if the idea that the universe is a single mind is true then individual minds might just be facets of that universal mind, locked in the illusion of their own separateness,

Personally, I'm not convinced by any metaphysical speculations; I see them as being just imaginative possibilities that may or may not possibly correspond to what is, or the very idea of what in an absolute sense may be incoherent because we don't really know what we mean when we say the world is fundamentally mental or fundamentally physical. I think here we find ourselves in the territory of the undecidable.

So, I do see realism if it is posited in an absolute sense as potentially incoherent, or at least hopelessly inadeqaute, just as other metaphysical positions are, but I also think none of this matters because we have a world of human experience to understood both empirically and phenomenologically, that is in third person and first person terms respectively. We can speculate beyond that, but we cannot know whether our speculations are of any use, apart from whatever creative interest they may have.

Quoting bert1

Thank god you got there before me. I was dreading having to make this very simple point.

:cool:

Quoting aletheist

Accordingly, a metaphysical idealist like Peirce (matter is a peculiar sort of mind) can still affirm that the external world is real (including everything that exists), as well as logical realism (some generals are real even though they do not exist).

This point will be dodged or perhaps deliberately misunderstood as evidenced by this:

Quoting Banno

It's astonishing. Idealism begins by looking for certainty in one's individual perceptions - "esse est percipi" - and almost immediately finds itself supposing some universal spirit, god or some such.

As if such a fable were more acceptable than the independent existence of trees, tables and cups of our everyday experience.

As if what you said logically entails a denial of the independent existence of trees, tables and cups, when it explicitly does not..

Quoting Janus

Personally, I'm not convinced by any metaphysical speculations; I see them as being just imaginative possibilities

Same here, except I see metaphysical speculations as criteria for eliminating – filtering-out – impossible objects / worlds (i.e. necessary fictions) from reasoning.

Quoting Wayfarer

... metaphysical naturalism [ ... ] taken to prove, or disprove, any ultimate facts about the world.

I don't know about "ultimate facts" but naturalism, as I understand the concept, certainly entails negation of unconditional (i.e. supernatural, non-immanent, non-contingent) facts.

Quoting 180 Proof

Same here, except I see metaphysical speculations as criteria for eliminating – filtering-out – impossible objects / worlds (i.e. necessary fictions) from reasoning.

:up: Yes, anything that involves actual logical contradiction can certainly be ruled out.

Quoting 180 Proof

don't know about "ultimate facts" but naturalism, as I understand the concept, certainly entails negation of unconditional (i.e. supernatural, non-immanent, non-contingent) facts.

It certainly does not. They’re simply put to one side for the purpose of the hypothesis.

Reply to Wayfarer :roll: What "hypothesis"? Metaphysical naturalism consists of categorica, not hypthetical, statements. Clearly, you still don't understand metaphysics (or naturalism), Wayf.

Please explain what is wrong with this description then

Quoting Wayfarer

methodological naturalism is the attitude that science ought to investigate the world as if it were strictly independent of the observer. The picture is that of the behaviours of objects that are defined in terms of their primary attributes, those attributes being amenable to quantisation and measurable in terms common to all observers. Secondary attributes are assigned to the mind of the observer, so are not part of the objective domain. This attitude generally corresponds with the rise of modern scientific method. Methodological naturalism has been responsible for considerable advances in technology and science.

Quoting Wayfarer

methodological naturalism is the attitude that science ought to investigate the world as if it were strictly independent of the observer.

I think this is misleading in that it suggests the deliberate adoption of one attitude over another. On the contrary it seems much more plausible to think that it was discovered that investigating the world without concern for metaphysics or about questions regarding the subject of experience yielded the most fruitful methodology for investigating empirical phenomena.

The fact that we modify our worldviews in accordance with scientific findings is inevitable since we have nothing else discursively substantive to rely on. That doesn't entail that the worldviews deduced from or inspired by science are true, they are just working hypotheses. Metaphysics is the undecidable "science"; the paradigmatic knowing of uncertainty. Creative and imaginative value, but discursive truth will not be found there, since the latter belongs to the empirical realm.

Quoting Wayfarer

I’m not using that to argue for any kind of ‘mind at large’ or even any metaphysical counter-argument, simply the recognition of foundational nature of the mind.

Fair enough. Do you have sympathy for a mind-at-large/universal mind model?

Quoting Wayfarer

But I claim that the world that you will claim ‘continues to exist’ is just the world that is constructed by and in your mind that is the only world you’ll ever know. The incredulity you feel at this point is due to the idea that this seems to imply that the world ceases to exist outside your mind, whereas I’m claiming that this idea of the non-existence of the world is also a mental construction. Both existence and non-existence are conceptual constructions.

I understand what you are saying but I con't quite conceptualise this in a way which makes it entirely comprehensible. Can you say some more in simple terms or maybe even an analogy? I'm trying to avoid the solipsism thing...

Quoting Wayfarer

At first there is methodological naturalism - the attitude that science ought to investigate the world as if it were strictly independent of the observer.

The people I know who defend methodological naturalism may sometimes assume this but they don't generally argue or defend this point should it be identified. They generally hold that the human perspective and naturalism are all we can use to build reliable models of our reality based on the best available evidence at a given time. I think they are generally open to the notion that approaches can evolve and new information can be encountered.

Reply to Janus :fire: :100:

Reply to Tom Storm :up: :up:

Quoting Janus

I think this is misleading in that it suggests the deliberate adoption of one attitude over another.

It's the way empiricism and naturalism developed. History of ideas 101.

I question whether there is or should be 'a scientific worldview'. Science is first and foremost a methodology. It has philosophical entailments, but often its practitioners are not aware of those entailments - which is part of what I'm saying. I'm saying that science deals mainly with contingencies and discoverable principles ('laws'), so as such doesn't really extend to Aristotle's 'unprovable first principles', but it is often taken as a metaphysic by 'scientism' (which you yourself have criticized on many an occasion.) In other words, I'm criticizing metaphysical arguments which appeal to empirical arguments, such as those employed by many atheist polemics, that science 'shows' or 'proves' that God does not exist, or something of the kind. It does nothing of the kind, either for or against. So I'm arguing that methodological naturalism, which is a perfectly sound in principle, doesn't support metaphysical naturalism, which is the attempt to extend empirical evidence to metaphysical propositions. It's often confused because our culture is on the whole not educated in metaphysics and has abandoned the conceptual space for metaphysics due to its rejection of religion. (The David Albert review of Lawrence Krauss' 'A Universe from Nothing' is exactly about this point. And Krauss is one of the serial offenders on this score.)

Quoting Tom Storm

But I claim that the world that you will claim ‘continues to exist’ is just the world that is constructed by and in your mind that is the only world you’ll ever know. The incredulity you feel at this point is due to the idea that this seems to imply that the world ceases to exist outside your mind, whereas I’m claiming that this idea of the non-existence of the world is also a mental construction. Both existence and non-existence are conceptual constructions.
— Wayfarer

I understand what you are saying but I con't quite conceptualise this in a way which makes it entirely comprehensible.

Many (including @Banno) say something along the lines that 'idealism can't differentiate the [x] from the idea of [x] so that in the event of an [x] not being perceived, it ceases to exist'. As I said already in this thread, even Karl Popper made a remark along those lines to Bryan Magee. Then of course there's the 'argumentum ad lapidem', Samuel Johnson's famous 'I refute [Berkeley] thus!' while striking his boot against a rock. So the popular depiction of idealism is something like 'idealists say the world is all in your mind', meaning that, absent the mind, it goes out of existence - perhaps until its perceived again, by another mind. Furthermore that real tables and chairs have a definite, concrete existence, where the ideas of objects seem flimsy and fleeting. All of these are understandable errors but errors nonetheless.

So if that's the wrong view, what's the right view. Rewind to what I've said a number of times already - 'the world' is, for us, you and me, Tom Storm and Wayfarer, generated or constructed by our fantastically elaborated hominid forebrain, which evolved at a breakneck pace over the last few million years. Now go back to the abstract of the first chapter of Pinter's Mind and the Cosmic Order again:

[quote=Charles Pinter]Let’s begin with a thought-experiment: 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.[/quote]

So - he's not saying the universe doesn't exist absent observers, but that conscious observers create it as a meaningful whole by recognising objects and relations between them. He develops the argument that even very simple cognition proceeds in terms of 'gestalts' - meaningful wholes. And take us out of the equation - that meaningful whole, that 'cosmos', no longer exists. Sure all the same stuff remains, but it can't be said to meaningfully exist - whenever we make a statement about 'what exists', we do so from an implicit perspective within which the term 'it exists' is meaningful.

So what I'm arguing is that methodological naturalism - the idea that we see the world as it is completely separately from us, as if we're not part of it - is mistaken, if we believe that the world really is that way, that it can be real with no perspective. Perspective is essential to reality and it can only be provided by a point of view, by an observer. And again this validates Kant's contention that time and space have no intrinsic objective reality, but are furnished by the mind, and again by a passage from a cosmologist I've already quoted before in this thread. So I'm arguing that human being is intrinsic to reality, we're not an 'epiphenomenon' or a 'product'. So does that mean, in the absence of h. sapiens, the universes ceases to exist? Have to be very careful answering, but I'm arguing, it's not as if it literally goes out of existence, but that any kind of existence it might have is completely meaningless and unintelligible. The kind of existence it might have is very close, again, to what Kant describes as the unknowable thing-in-itself.

The idea that I've been contemplating is that through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being - which is why we're designated 'beings'.

I know it's a very hard thing to grasp, I've been contemplating it most of my life, including having done two degrees about it, still only scratching the surface.

Quoting Wayfarer

I know it's a very hard thing to grasp,

This is where you keep equivocating which perpetuates the confusion...

It's not 'hard' to grasp. It's just an option. Unargued for, no evidence, no reasoning... Just a choice.

You're saying we could look at things one way, or the other. A or B. But then when people choose B you want to also say they've 'missed' something, haven't 'grasped' the difficult argument. But there is no argument. Just a declaration that things might be viewed that way.

All the while it's just an option, there's very little of philosophical interest in the mere fact that you chose it.

Reply to Wayfarer Thanks. This is a very lucid and clear account of your position. Not what I thought you were going to say.

Quoting Wayfarer

'the world' is, for us, you and me, Tom Storm and Wayfarer, generated or constructed by our fantastically elaborated hominid forebrain, which evolved at a breakneck pace over the last few million years.

Yes, this I get and I guess phenomenology parses things similarly.

Quoting Wayfarer

So - he's not saying the universe doesn't exist absent observers, but that conscious observers create it as a meaningful whole by recognising objects and relations between them. He develops the argument that even very simple cognition proceeds in terms of 'gestalts' - meaningful wholes. And take us out of the equation - that meaningful whole, that 'cosmos', no longer exists. Sure all the same stuff remains, but it can't be said to meaningfully exist - whenever we make a statement about 'what exists', we do so from an implicit perspective within which the term 'it exists' is meaningful.

Yep. This I get too and I have sometimes entertained similar, less developed views.

Quoting Wayfarer

So I'm arguing that human being is intrinsic to reality, we're not an 'epiphenomenon' or a 'product'. So does that mean, in the absence of h. sapiens, the universes ceases to exist? Have to be very careful answering, but I'm arguing, it's not as if it literally goes out of existence, but that any kind of existence it might have is completely meaningless and unintelligible.

Ok, now I've got you. I've only understood some snippets before. No doubt I could do a lot of reading to enlarge this brief account to give it nuance and texture.

Quoting Wayfarer

The idea that I've been contemplating is that through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being - which is why we're designated 'beings'.

I can see why you would contemplate this. There's an element of the poetic in this account, but it has the merit of being grounded, coherent and justifiable.

Would you say this way of understanding the constructivist nature of reality is similar to phenomenology?

The empirical science folks would perhaps find the chief challenge here the constructivist nature of your approach - problems inherent for them in the perspectival nature of reality you describe. I'd need to think more about this.

My question is what flows from this understanding? What then can we meaningfully say about anything if our reality, our quotidian awareness is essentially a hybrid formulation of memory, anticipatory imagination, our senses and the conceptual apparatus of our brains? Would it be your position that if there is foundational grounding underlying human experience it is accessible only through techniques of higher awareness (meditation, mysticism)?

Quoting Isaac

It's not 'hard' to grasp. It's just an option. Unargued for, no evidence, no reasoning... Just a choice.

:up:

Quoting Wayfarer

The idea that I've been contemplating is that through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being - which is why we're designated 'beings'.

This statement is quite incoherent, because the phrase "rational sentient creatures" presupposes – makes sense IFF there is – the universe that brings them "into being" so that they can conceive of "the universe". Mind – "comes into being" because of nonmind (processes) – is embodied. Thus, your disembodied (i.e. transcendental) speculation, Wayfarer, doesn't fit (or explain away) the facts.

Reply to Tom Storm Maybe seeing it is a start. Thanks for your feedback, and the questions.

Quoting Wayfarer

….the idea that we see the world as it is completely separately from us, as if we're not part of it - is mistaken….

It must be mistaken; it is self-contradictory. Twice.

If it was completely separate from us, we wouldn’t see anything at all;
Insofar as we do see, it is necessary that we be part of that something which is seen.
———-

Quoting Wayfarer

…..through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being….

This seems dangerously close to sentience as sufficient existential causality. Might be more the philosophical case, that the universe assumes a form in accordance with the rationality of sentient creatures.

Quoting Wayfarer

…..which is why we're designated 'beings'.

I fail to grasp how that explanatory qualifier justifies the original assertion. Maybe just needs an elucidation of “being”…..

Reply to Wayfarer

Charles Pinter:Let’s begin with a thought-experiment: Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed

A better formulation of this thought experiment is to imagine that there never was any life in the universe, ever. It is better because imagining that all life vanishes is already providing a spatial-temporal perspective, the moment when, and place where, all life vanishes. So then we have an image, of the universe now, as we perceive it from our spatial-temporal perspective, and then the universe from that same perspective, with no life anymore.

If, instead, we assume a universe without any life ever, we assume absolutely no temporal or spatial perspective from which that universe is being observed. Therefore we have the entirety of time and space, with nothing to differentiate one billion years from another billon years, nothing to distinguish here from there, no individuation of anything at all, and it becomes very easy to grasp that it's completely nonsensical to talk about any sort of existence without implying a perspective from which that existence is observed.

Incidentally, this point can be derived very easily from relativity theory. Regardless of the supposed fact that observations from one frame of reference will always be compatible with observations from another, and that the same laws will be applicable from every frame of reference, relativity theory implies that a frame of reference is required in order for the idea of any activity in the world to make any sense at all. So first there is a frame of reference (a perspective), then there is a world according to this frame. Further, we might add worlds according to other frames. Notice "a world" is just a product of the perspective. So the perspective is logically prior to "a world". That the different "worlds" produced from the different perspectives, can be resolved into "one world" through the presupposition that they all obey the same laws is unverifiable, and highly doubtful, even though it is commonly assumed as "a law" itself. This is the law which states that the laws are universally applicable, even though we haven't the capacity to test that law. It really just a metaphysical presupposition.

@Tom Storm @Wayfarer @180 Proof @Metaphysician Undercover @Mww @Banno

Quoting 180 Proof

This statement is quite incoherent, because the phrase "rational sentient creatures" presupposes – makes sense IFF there is – the universe that brings them "into being" so that they can conceive of "the universe". Mind – "comes into being" because of nonmind (processes) – is embodied. Thus, your disembodied (i.e. transcendental) speculation, Wayfarer, doesn't fit (or explain away) the facts.

I have a sneaking suspicion that often "realists" and "idealists" of a certain variety, start to converge on some form of panpsychism. That is to say, some idea that experience is not confined to neural activity but to "events" or "processes" in general (sometimes objects for those more substance oriented).

Both sides are going to run into crazy errors they don't want to cop-to if they are not "mystical" oriented.

That is to say panpsychists have to bite the bullet and say that non-living things have some sort of experientialness, however minute.

Those who think that the brain/neural activity has to be where mental activities lie, then they have the burden of NOT making an unintentional Homunculus Fallacy whereby the consequent is ALREADY in the equation. In other words, "These neurons firing = MIND" (whoops, that's the very thing we are trying to understand how it is that it is mind and not just neurons firing). "These neural networks and INTEGRATION", same thing.

Quoting schopenhauer1

idealists" of a certain variety (…) have to bite the bullet and say that non-living things have some sort of experientialness….

I hate the taste of bullets.

Quoting Mww

If it was completely separate from us, we wouldn’t see anything at all;
Insofar as we do see, it is necessary that we be part of that something which is see

There's an expression that captures what I was getting at:

Cartesian anxiety - 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".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

Quoting Mww

…..through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being….
— Wayfarer

This seems dangerously close to sentience as sufficient existential causality. Might be more the philosophical case, that the universe assumes a form in accordance with the rationality of sentient creatures.

I'm not saying that our designation as 'beings' means that we are beings in the causative sense that God is said to be through the act of creation, but because the cognitive order of rational sentient beings makes manifest an order that is previously latent; that through the evolution of rational sentient beings, the universe realises a dimension of being that it would otherwise not. That has many precedents in philosophy. Consider for example:

[quote=Julian Huxley]Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.[/quote]

Although I'll add that Julian's vision of how this was to be achieved was more scientifically, and less mystically, oriented than his brother Alduous'.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I've no idea what you're talking about.

Quoting schopenhauer1

That is to say panpsychists have to bite the bullet and say that non-living things have some sort of experientialness, however minute.

Bernardo Kastrup on why panpsychism is baloney (IaI TV, paywalled but allows one free article.)

[quote=Kastrup]The appeal of panpsychism is that, while preserving the physicalist notions that (a) matter has standalone existence and (b) material arrangements are responsible for human-level consciousness, it avoids the famous ‘hard problem’ by making lower-level consciousness fundamental. Notice, however, that instead of enhancing the explanatory power of physicalism, this merely avoids the need for an explanation by throwing one more element—namely, low-level consciousness—into the reduction base, while removing nothing from it. It can thus be argued that panpsychism is as arbitrary as it is unhelpful, for it would be trivial to ‘solve’ every metaphysical problem simply by declaring every aspect of nature to be fundamental.[/quote]

Quoting Wayfarer

It's the way empiricism and naturalism developed. History of ideas 101.

This does not constitute not an argument; it is mere hand-waving.

Quoting Wayfarer

I question whether there is or should be 'a scientific worldview'. Science is first and foremost a methodology. It has philosophical entailments, but often its practitioners are not aware of those entailments - which is part of what I'm saying. I'm saying that science deals mainly with contingencies and discoverable principles ('laws'), so as such doesn't really extend to Aristotle's 'unprovable first principles', but it is often taken as a metaphysic by 'scientism' (which you yourself have criticized on many an occasion.)

Firstly, I said that it is to be expected that we see that our worlviews are in fact informed by science and you respond by saying there should not be a scientific worldview, and yet you also contradict yourself by saying this:

Quoting Wayfarer

So if that's the wrong view, what's the right view. Rewind to what I've said a number of times already - 'the world' is, for us, you and me, Tom Storm and Wayfarer, generated or constructed by our fantastically elaborated hominid forebrain, which evolved at a breakneck pace over the last few million years.

If that evolutionary view of the world is not scientifically informed then what is it informed by?

So I'm arguing that methodological naturalism, which is a perfectly sound in principle, doesn't support metaphysical naturalism, which is the attempt to extend empirical evidence to metaphysical propositions. It's often confused because our culture is on the whole not educated in metaphysics and has abandoned the conceptual space for metaphysics due to its rejection of religion.

As Kant has shown us, no metaphysical views are supported, because they are the erroneous attempt to extrapolate to an "ultimate" "god's eye" view of reality from what are merely empirical models. Religion cannot yield a true metaphysical view, a fact which is proven by the various mutually contradictory models it has produced in various cultures. Since you are a Buddhist, you should listen to your greatest philosopher Nagarjuna, who argues for the rejection of all metaphysical "views".

The whole idea of being educated in metaphysics is absurd, because there is no settled metaphysics and never has been. Metaphysics is just an exercise in the human imagination, and as I often say, it has creative value and can even help to lead to workable scientific discoveries and theories.

I objected to your way of framing the historical emergence of methodological naturalism and you respond with your "101" comment. You keep arguing that science has a "blind spot", as though at some point in history there had been a clear choice between two equally viable methodlogies and methodological naturalism was mistakenly or blindly adopted.

I said it is much more plausible to think that it was realized that if you want to investigate things then you must focus on the things themselves, as they present themselves to us, leave aside purely imaginative notions about how things might work, and attempt to discover how they actually do work This proved itself to be an unprecedentedly successful strategy as evidence by the dramatic rise of science.

Science is not in the business of investigating first person experience, instead it focuses on the third person observable nature of the world as it presents itself to us. Whether the scientist believes that we somehow construct the world or not is not at issue, and makes no difference to the actual practice. That question is bracketed just as the question of the independent existence of the external world is bracketed in the practice of phenomenology, and for similar reasons; what is needed in such investigations is focus not distraction with irrelevant issues.

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.

If objects had no shape then they would have no surface from which light could be reflected and they could not appear to us at all. In fact they could not be objects at all if they had no shape. If objects had no features then they could not appear to us as rough or smooth, as this colour or that colour, could not reverberate or fail to when you strike them, or smell or taste like this or that when you taste them. Pinter presumptuously purports to know what cannot be known: what things are or are not in themselves.

There are two main imaginable scenarios that could explain our human experience of the world. Either the Universe is a great energy field of diverse intensities that determine how it appears to us (who are indeed part of that great field) or the objects we experience are ideas in a universal mind. The irony is that if the latter were true then objects would have just the qualities that they appear to have, since those qualities would be part of the idea that is the object. This would be naive realism par excellence. Think Berkeley for this.

But we don't, and cannot, know whether either of these imaginable scenarios is true, or whether they are both nothing more than figments that correspond not all to what is independent of human experience. If we insist on holding a metaphysical worldview, then we have nothing better than science to inform us, as inadequate as science might be.

Spiritual practices are, in my view, about exploring the possibilities of altering consciousness. Experiences of altered states of consciousness cannot tell us anything discursive about the nature of what is, but we can certainly feel the world in different ways when we explore the limits of human experience. hence the great importance of the arts, and of phenomenology.

Quoting schopenhauer1

I have a sneaking suspicion that often "realists" and "idealists" of a certain variety, start to converge on some form of panpsychism.

No.

Quoting Banno

No

Way!!!

Quoting Wayfarer

So what I'm arguing is that methodological naturalism - the idea that we see the world as it is completely separately from us, as if we're not part of it - is mistaken, if we believe that the world really is that way, that it can be real with no perspective. Perspective is essential to reality and it can only be provided by a point of view, by an observer. And again this validates Kant's contention that time and space have no intrinsic objective reality, but are furnished by the mind, and again by a passage from a cosmologist I've already quoted before in this thread. So I'm arguing that human being is intrinsic to reality, we're not an 'epiphenomenon' or a 'product'. So does that mean, in the absence of h. sapiens, the universes ceases to exist? Have to be very careful answering, but I'm arguing, it's not as if it literally goes out of existence, but that any kind of existence it might have is completely meaningless and unintelligible. The kind of existence it might have is very close, again, to what Kant describes as the unknowable thing-in-itself.

Methodological naturalism is not the idea that we see the world as it is completely separately from us, it is simply the bracketing out of such questions and concerns in order to focus on investigating the world as it is presented to us.

The question as to whether the world can be "real with no perspective" is undecidable. It cannot be real for us with no perspective, because we cannot view the world non-perspectivally; that is just a truism. We think we know what the question could even mean, but do we really?

We don't know whether time and space are real absent human experience; all we can do is conjecture. How could we possibly know anything about anything outside the context of human experience and judgement?

You say that absent us it is not as though the world "goes literally out of existence, but that any kind of existence it might have is completely meaningless and unintelligible". Yes meaningless and unintelligible to us, but that goes without saying. What if it were meaningful and intelligible to God, for example? Can you rule that out?

If the world is just a realm of physical existents and nothing more, then what it was prior to the advent of humans would have been neither meaningless nor meaningful, but would have been, at least potentially, intelligible, as is proven by the fact that it is intelligible to us now. Analogously, the moon is not invisible when it is not being seen, it is just unseen. To be unseen is not the same as to be invisible.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Panpsychism is a terrible idea.

You need more? I tend to get stuck at the Incredulous Stare. But moving past that there is the problem of how little minds come together to make bigger minds, and of how seperate small minds come together to make the unified mind had by you and I.

and see Tallis's last line.

Reply to Janus Much more elegantly expressed than my attempt at pretty much the same point.

Quoting Janus

The whole idea of being educated in metaphysics is absurd, because there is no settled metaphysics and never has been.

This statement is what is absurd. If there is a multitude of distinct attitudes toward metaphysics, then education in metaphysics is even more important in order that we get exposed to all the different possibilities.

Quoting Janus

This does not constitute not an argument.

The claim didn't warrant one.

Quoting Janus

Since you are a Buddhist, you should listen to your greatest philosopher Nagarjuna, who argues for the rejection of all metaphysical "views".

The principle of dependent origination and the Buddhist ??nyat? is a metaphysic. (I don't claim to be a Buddhist, although I did undertake an MA in the subject in order to understand it better.)

Quoting Janus

How could we possibly know anything about anything outside the context of human experience and judgement?

One of the principle subjects of philosophy.

Quoting Janus

You keep arguing that science has a "blind spot", as though at some point in history there had been a clear choice between two equally viable methodlogies and methodological naturalism was mistakenly or blindly adopted.

It's not only my argument. Methodological naturalism was in no way blindly adopted. It was the result of two thousand years of intellectual history. But it has it's blind spots, as many (not just myself, flattering though that might be) have begun to notice. That Aeon article on the Blind Spot of Science which I've often quoted, by Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser and Evan Thompson (and for which I was subjected to an intense pile-on when I linked to it in 2019) is being published in book form next year, you'll no doubt be pleased to know ;-)

Quoting Janus

What if it were meaningful and intelligible to God, for example? Can you rule that out?

On the one hand, you assert that all metaphysical speculation is a contrivance, then you turn around and ask me to engage in it.

Quoting Wayfarer

The claim didn't warrant one.

That's nothing more than arrogant copout.

Quoting Wayfarer

The principle of dependent origination and the Buddhist ??nyat? is a metaphysic. (I don't claim to be a Buddhist, although I did undertake an MA in the subject in order to understand it better.)

Nagarjuna, if I recall correctly, rejects the principle of dependent origination and the ??nyat? is an apophatic rejection of any metaphysic, as I understand it. Are you wishing to reify emptiness now?

Also, I recall you saying on the old site that you had taken Buddhist vows, have you now renounced them?

Quoting Wayfarer

One of the principle subjects of philosophy.

It had been one of the principle subjects of philosophy up until Kant let the air out of all the tyres, showing it to be impossible. Are you claiming that it is possible to know anything outside of human experience and understanding? If so, then you contradict yourself by constantly reminding us that science is not outside of human experience and understanding.Can you point to any item of knowledge that is outside of human experience and understanding?

Quoting Wayfarer

Methodological naturalism was in no way blindly adopted.

Then why did you disagree with me without providing a counter-argument when I said just that, and then go on to say that it didn't warrant a counter-argument. Perhaps I misunderstood and you were agreeing all along. Or perhaps you mean to say that it was mistakenly, if not blindly, adopted. If so, I'm not sure I see the distinction, because if something is mistakenly believed is that not a kind of blindness?

Quoting Wayfarer

On the one hand, you assert that all metaphysical speculation is a contrivance, then you turn around and ask me to engage in it.

I have said we can imagine metaphysical possibilities, but we have no way of knowing whether any of them are, or even could be, true. You claim that the "in itself" is meaningless and unintelligible, and I agree that it is to us (apart from the fact that we can imagine it as a possibility).

"To us" is all we know, but if you don't want to rule out the possibility that God or some universal mind might exist, then surely you must acknowledge that in such an imagined scenario the in itself could have meaning and be intelligible to God or the universal mind.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This statement is what is absurd. If there is a multitude of distinct attitudes toward metaphysics, then education in metaphysics is even more important in order that we get exposed to all the different possibilities.

If you are interested in metaphysics then learning about the history of metaphysical ideas would be a good idea. However it's arguable that most people don't give a flying fuck about metaphysics, so it's not likely to be on the school curriculum any time soon. I think metaphysics is a valuable study, for its imaginative and creative interest, I am only rejecting the idea that truth may be found there.

I think it would be more fruitful to see ethics being taught in school than metaphysics.

Quoting Tom Storm

Much more elegantly expressed than my attempt at pretty much the same point.

I don't know about that, but cheers Tom.

Quoting Banno

You need more? I tend to get stuck at the Incredulous Stare.

First off, I didn't say I myself am panpsychist, though I can sympathize with it.

Secondly, I said in my post about panpsychism that it is a "bullet" you would have to bite. So you see, it is something I am deeming as pretty out there.

Yes I notice you make arguments from fiat based on incredulity, but I'd like to remind you that incredulity is simply an emotional response and not an argument.

Quoting Banno

But moving past that there is the problem of how little minds come together to make bigger minds, and of how seperate small minds come together to make the unified mind had by you and I.

Quoting The Philosophy of Organism

Most importantly here, to Whitehead, actual entities have a degree of sentience – of awareness, feeling and purpose – as do systems, or ‘societies’ as he names them, that are organically constructed from actual entities. Consciousness as we humans have it is therefore a complex nested system of subordinate sentiences: the redefined ‘organisms’ we traced in the path from Homo sapiens to subatomic particles, each of them being self-organising systems, are also sentient to degrees, according to the integrated complexity involved. Each cell in our body is such an instrument of sentience – instruments which focus their effects in the hall of the skull. Such consciousness requires a human brain because the brain channels together the awarenesses of the subordinate entities. Where actual entities have formed into non-self-organising aggregates – such as doors and windows – there is no unified sentience associated with the aggregate itself – only the myriad lesser sentiences of which the aggregate is composed: the sentiences of the molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. Note the implication that although a brain is required for high-level animal-type consciousness, a brain is not required for mere sentience. Analogously, although an orchestra is required for a symphony, an orchestra is not required for a violin solo. Sentience, or experience, already exists as part of reality.

Reply to schopenhauer1
To reply would be to give the notion more credence than it deserve.

Reply to Banno
Now you know how it feels every time I hit reply to you :wink:

Humble and helpful is not your MO. How you can posture as looking "more superior than thou" is though.

It's everything wrong with philosophy (academically) done out of bad faith and philosophy forums done generally. Just egos clashing and trying to posture themselves :roll:

Quoting Janus

As Kant has shown us, no metaphysical views are supported, because they are the erroneous attempt to extrapolate to an "ultimate" "god's eye" view of reality

Dogmatic metaphysical views, and metaphysical views as an empirical science, are not supported. And the metaphysical view regarding pure speculative reason’s attempts to obtain the unconditioned in any form, is not supported.

Some metaphysical views must be supported, otherwise transcendental philosophy as a doctrine grounded in synthetic a priori principles, is invalid. And even if the validity is subjected to dispute, it can only be from different initial conditions, which are themselves metaphysical views.
———-

Quoting Wayfarer

There's an expression that captures what I was getting at: Cartesian anxiety…..

I hadn’t considered Cartesian anxiety; just lending credence to….“the idea that we see the world as it is completely separately from us, as if we're not part of it - is mistaken”.

Quoting Wayfarer

I'm not saying that our designation as 'beings' means that we are beings in the causative sense….

Cool. Just me, personalized conceptual analysis.

Quoting Janus

I think metaphysics is a valuable study, for its imaginative and creative interest, I am only rejecting the idea that truth may be found there.

I find things to be more complicated then this sentence presumes.

The empirical sciences would be nonexistent without the philosophy of science upon which they are founded, which in turn could not obtain without a philosophy of causation, and causation is in turn a metaphysical study. Hence, all modern science is founded upon metaphysical understandings, causation as one such. Hence, by logical derivation, if there can be no metaphysical truths, such as that pertaining to the reality and nature of causation, there could then be no scientific truths (the fallibility to the latter notwithstanding).

Are you indirectly advocating for general Pyrrhonism in regard to all existential truths?

In a sense I get what you might mean: metaphysical speculation can be a curse far more often that a cure. But then, what else but an awareness of metaphysical issues (such as that of causation), and the existential truths we thereby accept, sharply distinguishes the intellect of the human species at large from those of lesser lifeforms? Tool use, medicine, basic math skills, communication, comprehension of symbols, normative behavior in relation to what is given and taken (morality in this sense), all these can be found among lesser animals. But not metaphysical understandings.

Hey, for the record, I, as with most people, uphold the reality of causation. This then being one example of a metaphysical truth I subscribe to.

"Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics ... and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and uncriticized metaphysics with which they are packed. ... Every man of us has a metaphysics, and has to have one; and it will influence his life greatly. Far better, then, that that metaphysics should be criticized and not be allowed to run loose."
- Charles Sanders Peirce

Quoting Janus

Nagarjuna, if I recall correctly, rejects the principle of dependent origination and the ??nyat? is an apophatic rejection of any metaphysic, as I understand it.

Doesn't make him a positivist. See the passage I quoted previously with the Buddha saying that both the views 'the world exists' and 'the world doesn't exist' are due to 'not seeing how the world really arises.' The 'ten undecided questions' of Buddhism are similar in many regards to Kant's 'antinomies of reason' (Murti, 1955.) But the 'chain of dependent origination' is most definitely what most would regard as a metaphysic.

Quoting Janus

Then why did you disagree with me without providing a counter-argument when I said just that, and then go on to say that it didn't warrant a counter-argument.

Because your objection to what I said then went on to basically re-affirm what I said:

Quoting Janus

methodological naturalism is the attitude that science ought to investigate the world as if it were strictly independent of the observer.
— Wayfarer

I think this is misleading in that it suggests the deliberate adoption of one attitude over another. On the contrary it seems much more plausible to think that it was discovered that investigating the world without concern for metaphysics or about questions regarding the subject of experience yielded the most fruitful methodology for investigating empirical phenomena.

So let's agree that 'it was discovered that....' It actually makes no difference to my argument.

Quoting Mww

Some metaphysical views must be supported, otherwise transcendental philosophy as a doctrine grounded in synthetic a priori principles, is invalid. And even if the validity is subjected to dispute, it can only be from different initial conditions, which are themselves metaphysical views.

Reply to aletheist

I see a priori reasoning to principles as phenomenological and pragmatic, not metaphysical. But here we come up against the fact that exactly what is defined as metaphysics is unclear. My definition of what qualifies as a metaphysical claim would be that it purports to be a universal and absolute truth, independent of human experience and understanding. Is it the case that I can dispute a metaphysical claim only from the perspective of some other metaphysical counter-claim? I don't see that, I think all metaphysical claims can be disputed from the fact of their undecidability.

Quoting javra

The empirical sciences would be nonexistent without the philosophy of science upon which they are founded, which in turn could not obtain without a philosophy of causation, and causation is in turn a metaphysical study.

I would agree that it is true that science evolved out of a context of metaphysical dogma, but I don't see any reason to believe that the continuing practice of science relies on any metaphysical beliefs.

We cannot help understanding the world in causal terms, even animals do. So, I don't count that as metaphysics, but as a phenomenological fact about humans and other higher organisms.

You say that without metaphysics there can be no scientific truths, but I've already acknowledged that I don't see scientific conclusions and theories, apart from the most basic empirical observations, as true or false, but rather as workable guidelines.

You say you "uphold the reality of causation"; if you mean that it is real for us, then I agree; it cannot but be. If you want to claim it is real independently of us, I would say that I don't know about that because I can't see how we could determine that to be true.

Reply to Janus :clap: :up:

Quoting Mww

Some metaphysical views must be supported, otherwise transcendental philosophy as a doctrine grounded in synthetic a priori principles, is invalid. And even if the validity is subjected to dispute, it can only be from different initial conditions, which are themselves metaphysical views.

:100:

Reply to aletheist :fire: Excellent.

Quoting Wayfarer

Doesn't make him a positivist. See the passage I quoted previously with the Buddha saying that both the views 'the world exists' and 'the world doesn't exist' are due to 'not seeing how the world really arises.' The 'ten undecided questions' of Buddhism are similar in many regards to Kant's 'antinomies of reason' (Murti, 1955.)

I haven't mentioned positivism, I am not remotely a positivist, so I don't know why you have brought it up. I think that metaphysics is undecidable, so I agree with the Buddha and the "ten undecided questions" of Buddhism, and as I have said that all metaphysical positions end in aporia, it should be obvious that I agree with Kant regarding the antinomies of pure reason.

Quoting Wayfarer

Because your objection to what I said then went on to basically re-affirm what I said:

It didn't, because as I originally said the way you framed it made it look as though the adoption of scientific method to understand how things as they appear to us work, was a mistake, and that we could have chosen some other unspecified methodology, or that the choice of methodological naturalism was driven by an attitude that that is what we ought to do rather than the choice happening gradually through finding out that it yielded more systematic and testable results.

Reply to 180 Proof Cheers 180. :cool:

Reply to schopenhauer1 I think it should be noted that Whitehead did not identify as a panpsychist, but as a panexperientialist.

Quoting The Philosophy of Organism

Note the implication that although a brain is required for high-level animal-type consciousness, a brain is not required for mere sentience.

From what I remember reading in Whitehead (many years ago) his notion of experience does not equate to sentience. He saw relationality and process as fundamental; things only are what they are in relation to other things and the processes that evolve out of their relations. So, an example would be that a rock experiences erosion on account of the wind, temperature differentials and the rain.

The rock has no identity apart from its dynamic ever-changing relationship with its environment. We are infinitely more complex and of course both sentient and sapient, but are we really any different, since we are really nothing apart from relations and processes within our bodies, and interacting with the environment, with culture and language?

Things are real for Whitehead insofar as they can experience being affected by other things, but this idea of experience does not entail consciousness or awareness of any kind. Even Whitehead's God is constantly evolving in response to the dynamic actuality of existence. If I am wrong about that, I am happy to be corrected by anyone more familiar with Whitehead's philosophy.

Quoting Janus

My definition of what qualifies a metaphysical claim would be that it purports to be a universal and absolute truth, independent of human experience and understanding.

Quoting Janus

I would agree that it is true that science evolved out of a context of metaphysical dogma, but I don't see any reason to believe that the continuing practice of science relies on any metaphysical beliefs.

It then seems that we hold different understandings of what constitutes the metaphysical. No biggie.

To me, generally speaking, the metaphysical signifies that which is but is not tangibly physical - the notions of space and time thereby being metaphysical subjects, for another example. At any rate, metaphysics as study is not to me defined by dogma but by the best inferences upon enquiry, and is always fallible. In my understanding, since science assumes the truth of causality, of identity and change, of time and space, etc., with certain understandings of what these signify, science then always relies upon metaphysical beliefs.

Quoting Janus

We cannot help understanding the world in causal terms, even animals do.

In a certain way, sure. One could argue that at least some lesser animals can discern things via the use of what we term other metaphysical subjects as well: being and nonbeing, identity and change, space and time. I'd even go so far as to offer that in some rudimentary way even unicellular organisms, such as ameba, discern the world via at least some metaphysical givens - else they could not survive. Still, only we humans can consciously comprehend these as abstracted concepts which we can then ponder and investigate for cogency and explanatory value. It is the latter which I intended by "metaphysical understanding".

As one example, only we can grasp the extrapolated notion of a cosmos/universe of which we are a part of; resulting issues such as whether the cosmos is infinite or finite are not an aspect of lesser animals' cognition.

----

BTW, in regard to:

Quoting Janus

My definition of what qualifies a metaphysical claim would be that it purports to be a universal and absolute truth, independent of human experience and understanding.

Since idealism claims all things to be either directly or indirectly dependent upon psyche, wouldn't that then make idealism a non-metaphysical construct? :razz: (kidding)

Reply to aletheist Nice quote, btw.

Quoting Janus

If you are interested in metaphysics then learning about the history of metaphysical ideas would be a good idea.

Learning the history of ideals is a lot different than actually learning the ideas. The former is like memorizing a list of named ideas, in chronological order, the latter requires actually understanding the ideas.


Quoting Janus

However it's arguable that most people don't give a flying fuck about metaphysics, so it's not likely to be on the school curriculum any time soon.

This all depends on what school you go to. If you have an honest interest in the ideas of metaphysics, you will choose a school with a curriculum suited to your desire, as is the case in any field of study. That there is a smaller percentage of the population who are interested in metaphysics than in some other studies, and so there are less schools offering a good curriculum, is really not relevant. The trends as to what the majority of people are interested in, change with the shifting sands. But there is never a time when a good metaphysical curriculum is not available to those who want it.

Quoting Janus

I think it should be noted that Whitehead did not identify as a panpsychist, but as a panexperientialist.

Yeah that's fine.

Quoting Janus

From what I remember reading in Whitehead (many years ago) his notion of experience does not equate to sentience. He saw relationality and process as fundamental; things only are what they are in relation to other things and the processes that evolve out of their relations. So, an example would be that a rock experiences erosion on account of the wind, temperature differentials and the rain.

Yeah his writing is dense so definitely room for interpretation, however the basic atoms of his ontology were called "actual occasions" which I've seen described as "drops of experience", but as you are implying, nothing like the human kind. I don't know what an "actual occasion" "feels like", but there is I guess something of a point of view I guess of that "actual occasion" as it prehends.

Quoting Janus

The rock has no identity apart from its dynamic ever-changing relationship with its environment. We are infinitely more complex and of course both sentient and sapient, but are we really any different, since we are really nothing apart from relations and processes within our bodies, and interacting with the environment, with culture and language?

Yes and no. While I agree with your relational framing of Whitehead, I do indeed think he thought there was a "there" there for the rock. There is a sort of experiential quality going on in the event of the rock. If there wasn't, then why even have a metaphysics? That would simply be describing the physics and chemistry of the rock. But that's not quite what Whitehead is saying. The event has a sort of experiential aspect to it in some sense I guess. The rock is experiencing as a rock, and not as the rock is measured by a human. The localized event is "event-ing" if you will. It's like if all physical processes had a first person point of view. At least that's how I'm interpreting it.

Quoting Janus

Things are real for Whitehead insofar as they can experience being affected by other things, but this idea of experience does not entail consciousness or awareness of any kind. Even Whitehead's God is constantly evolving in response to the dynamic actuality of existence. If I am wrong about that, I am happy to be corrected by anyone more familiar with Whitehead's philosophy.

I think I agree with this interpretation, based on your first sentence.

Reply to schopenhauer1 You don't have to be here. Nor are you obliged to read, let alone reply to my posts.

Quoting Banno

You don't have to be here. Nor are you obliged to read, let alone reply to my posts.

It is frustrating to give an answer and then instead of engaging with it, you simply cry "incredulity". It's not just that it is smug and condescending, but it's a bit unfair. Someone (and it's not just me) puts in time to answer you in earnestness, and you give a snarky quip as a response. I'd go as far to say it's a kind of trolling.

Quoting javra

In my understanding, since science assumes the truth of causality, of identity and change, of time and space, etc., with certain understandings of what these signify, science then always relies upon metaphysical beliefs.

I wouldn't count causality as metaphysical because I see causality as intimately tied with, indispensable to, the understanding of the physical, and I don't think we have any idea of causes which are not physical. I mean we can think the possibility of non-physical causes, but we have no grasp on what they would "look" like. Same thing with time and space; what could time be without physical existents, can we imagine a non-physical space? What changes if not physical things? As to identity I think that is a logical, not a metaphysical, notion.

So, again I think these notions are all intimately connected with experience of the physical or with logic.

Quoting javra

Since idealism claims all things to be either directly or indirectly dependent upon psyche, wouldn't that then make idealism a non-metaphysical construct? :razz: (kidding)

I know you said you are kidding, but I think this still warrants a response. If we say that all things, as experienced, depend on the psyche (or body/mind) then it is really just a matter of definition; a logical truth, if you like.

If you say all things, tout court, are dependent on the psyche then that would be a metaphysical claim.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Learning the history of ideals is a lot different than actually learning the ideas. The former is like memorizing a list of named ideas, in chronological order, the latter requires actually understanding the ideas.

I would not count someone as having learned the history of ideas unless they understood the ideas.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I think we are in agreement basically. Perhaps the ""there' there" for the rock, in Whitehead's philosophy is God's experience of the rock.

Quoting The Philosophy of Organism

Where actual entities have formed into non-self-organising aggregates – such as doors and windows – there is no unified sentience associated with the aggregate itself – only the myriad lesser sentiences of which the aggregate is composed: the sentiences of the molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles.

Taking the interpretation expressed in this passage it would seem that the author believes that for Whithead there would be no ""there there" for the rock, but only for the "molecules, atoms and subatomic particles".

I don't know, though, it's a long while since I read Process and Reality, and the necessary secondary texts needed to understand it; Whitehead is difficult.

Reply to schopenhauer1

At least I offered an interpretation of the stuff I linked to. Your copy-and-paste from someone else simply repeating the error. :smile:

This bitching is far from edifying. Again, you do not have to reply.

But keep going. Write some more about me, not about the topic.

:roll:

Anyway, we are now at 29 votes in the poll - remember the poll? This is a thread about a poll.

And still my comments on the results stand, and although the percent of folk who think the question unclear has dropped, still only half have chosen from amongst the main contenders, as opposed to just over ninety percent (78+7+7) in the PhilPapers poll.

Previously I put this down to contrariness. I now wonder if it might be vacillation or trepidation. Or simple failure to commit?

Quoting Wayfarer

Methodological naturalism has been responsible for considerable advances in technology and science.

Indeed, it is difficult to move past this, given the extraordinary success, evident even at your fingertips in the device you are using to read this.

So here's the problem: which part of what is before us is baby, and which is bathwater. Since far and away the most useable definition of the world is "all that is the case", it remains that what cannot be said - the spiritual or transcendent or mystical part of our conversations - is not about the way things are.

But it can be about what we do.

Reply to jgill Just came across this:

An angel came down for a meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Greeting the assembled philosophers, the angel offered to answer a single question for them. Immediately the philosophers set to arguing about what they should ask. So the angel said, “Alright, you figure out what you want to ask. I’ll come back tomorrow.” And he left the philosophers to deliberate.
Some of the philosophers favored asking conjunctive questions, but others argued persuasively that the angel probably wouldn’t count this as a single question. One philosopher wanted to ask “What is the best question to ask?”, in the hope that some day another angel might make a similar offer, at which point they could then ask the best question. But this suggestion was rejected by those who feared that no such opportunity would arise and did not want to waste their only question.

Finally, the philosophers agreed on the following question: “What is the ordered pair whose first member is the best question to ask, and whose second member is the answer to that question?” Satisfied with their decision, the philosophers awaited the angel’s return the next day, whereupon they posed their question. And the angel replied: “It is the ordered pair whose first member is the question you just asked, and whose second member is the answer I am now giving.” And then he disappeared.

Reply to Banno

:up: :lol:

Quoting Banno

Methodological naturalism has been responsible for considerable advances in technology and science.
— Wayfarer

Indeed, it is difficult to move past this

Impossible, for many.

Quoting Banno

remember the poll? This is a thread about a poll.

Any pretext will do, as you can see. I shall try and remain more on topic in future.

Quoting Janus

I wouldn't count causality as metaphysical because I see causality as intimately tied with, indispensable to, the understanding of the physical, and I don't think we have any idea of causes which are not physical. I mean we can think the possibility of non-physical causes, but we have no grasp on what they would "look" like. Same thing with time and space; what could time be without physical existents, can we imagine a non-physical space? What changes if not physical things? As to identity I think that is a logical, not a metaphysical, notion.

So, again I think these notions are all intimately connected with experience of the physical or with logic.

The questions you ask seem to presuppose physicalism. To answer your questions via counterexamples: Final causes (teloi) are not deemed to be physical causes; e.g. the goal/telos of replying to you caused me to write this post as written (or, Q: “what on earth caused you to do X” A: “I wanted Z”). Are teloi real or illusory? Not a question answerable via the physical - regardless of how one answers. Nor do teloi/intents have a certain “look”. Not that I in any way endorse either, but, since they’re easy pickings, the alternative worlds of heaven and hell are temporal, comprised of befores and afters, devoid of physical existents though they are - so the occurrence of time does not logically entail physical existents. As to nonphysical spatial relations, for one example, a paradigm which is composed of ideas is larger (which can only be a spatial attribute) than a single idea it is composed of - in this case presenting spatial relations between whole and part that are nonphysical. Consciousness constantly changes despite remaining the same consciousness (maintaining the same identity) over time - and it is not tangibly physical. As to the last affirmation, metaphysical study is logical - the bad logic that sometimes results notwithstanding, just just as bad logic can permeate the empirical sciences at times.

Of course all of these examples are debatable, some more than others, but they intend to illustrate that the metaphysical subjects of causation, time and space, change and identity, etc., are not strictly contingent on the physical (nor, for that matter, on a physicalist worldview: physicalism simply affirms everything real to be physical based on underlying metaphysical presumptions … I say this though I understand you don’t label yourself a physicalist).

I doubt this will in any way resolve the matter, and presume it will raise certain eyebrows. But your asking of questions motivated me to answer them.

As I previously said, we differ in our understandings of what metaphysics entails.

Quoting Janus

I wouldn't count causality as metaphysical because I see causality as intimately tied with, indispensable to, the understanding of the physical, and I don't think we have any idea of causes which are not physical. I mean we can think the possibility of non-physical causes, but we have no grasp on what they would "look" like.

What a non-physical cause "looks" like is a freely willed act of intention (final cause as javra explains). We have lots of experience with such non-physical acts of causation, and all you have to do is look into yourself, in introspection, to "see" them. The problem is that the attitude of scientism has induced some people to enter into a condition of self-denial, refusing to recognize the basis of one's own existence as a self-moving being.

Quoting Janus

I would not count someone as having learned the history of ideas unless they understood the ideas.

Well I guess no one has learned the history of metaphysical ideas then, because no one truly understand them all yet. That's even more reason why metaphysics ought to remain in the curriculum. We need more people working on those problems.

Quoting Banno

Previously I put this down to contrariness. I now wonder if it might be vacillation or trepidation. Or simple failure to commit?

It's neither contrariness nor trepidation, it simply demonstrates the pervasiveness of the attitude of Janus, displayed above. There's no need to teach metaphysics, we ought to just let people grope in the dark when it comes to metaphysical issues. And if you add in the fact that "non-skeptical realism" is essential equivalent to "no metaphysics" you can see that the attitude of 'no need to teach metaphysics' is extremely pervasive.

Quoting Janus

I see a priori reasoning to principles as phenomenological and pragmatic, not metaphysical.

That’s fine, but with respect to Kant, from whence this exchange originated, metaphysics is a priori reasoning from principles, and the latter would always and necessarily consider the former as merely the tail wagging the dog. Unfairly perhaps, but from the meager top-down predisposition, there it is.

Quoting Janus

My definition of what qualifies as a metaphysical claim would be that it purports to be a universal and absolute truth, independent of human experience and understanding.

That definition would certainly turn any metaphysical doctrine endorsing it into irredeemable junk. Thankfully there are definitions without those conceptual relations, which do not.

Quoting Mww

That definition would certainly turn any metaphysical doctrine endorsing it into irredeemable junk. Thankfully there are definitions without those conceptual relations, which do not.

If Kant thinks that the metaphysical a priori reasoning from principles is apodeictic, would that not be to posit that such reasoning yields universal truth, at least as regards the human?

Quoting javra

The questions you ask seem to presuppose physicalism. To answer your questions via counterexamples: Final causes (teloi) are not deemed to be physical causes; e.g. the goal/telos of replying to you caused me to write this post as written (or, Q: “what on earth caused you to do X” A: “I wanted Z”). Are teloi real or illusory?

I acknowledge that in regard to thinking about human behavior we encounter the domain of reasons, whereas we think about events in terms of causes. Causes are understood to be physical drivers and conditions and reasons to be emotional or rational drivers and conditions.

I'm not sure what you mean by asking whether our reasons for acting are real.or illusory. If I say I did something for some reason or think something for some reason, if I am right then the reasons are real, and if I am mistaken then the reasons are illusory.

The same thing applies to thinking about what causes events; if I am right in positing some causes to explain an event then the causes are real, if not they are illusory,

Think about Chinese medicine; it explains illnesses in terms of chi; a subtle energy flowing in channels through the body called meridians. There is no empirical evidence for the existence of chi, so it might be illusory, or maybe we just haven't discovered the evidence for it yet.

Quoting javra

Not that I in any way endorse either, but, since they’re easy pickings, the alternative worlds of heaven and hell are temporal, comprised of befores and afters, devoid of physical existents though they are - so the occurrence of time does not logically entail physical existents.

In heaven and hell there are spiritual existents: souls, no? Where do we get the notion of a soul? Is it not a notion of a body? The soul is understood to be discrete in the sense that my soul is not your soul, right? I would say it is arguable that the notion of a soul is the notion of body composed of finer material than the gross physical body, otherwise what else could it be?

I think all our notions derive from experience of the everyday material world. But I'm not saying that the real is, in any ultimate sense, material, just that our experience is of what we class as material things and events. All we mean by ascribing the concept of "material" is that what it is ascribed to interacts with our bodies, which are also experienced as tangible, material. We can only experience consciousness in terms of bodily feelings and images.

Quoting Banno

Previously I put this down to contrariness. I now wonder if it might be vacillation or trepidation. Or simple failure to commit?

I might put it as not understanding what idealism and non-skeptical realism are. The PhilPapers voters overwhelmingly voted for non-skeptical realism in both epistemology and metaphysics (drop-down menu). I entered PhD, then all respondents. Similar results, over 80% leaning towards non-skeptical realism.

So, my guess with the results in this forum is that not enough voters who understand the philosophies in the poll, and not enough voters.

Grumph. Too much emphasis on causation for my taste. A better epitome of a metaphysical principle would be the conservation laws. The causal relations between billiard balls, or instance, are an expression of conservation of momentum.

Quoting L'éléphant

not enough voters who understand the philosophies in the poll, and not enough voters.

Francis Urquhart:You might say that., I couldn't possible comment.

Reply to Banno :up:

Quoting Janus

I'm not sure what you mean by asking whether our reasons for acting are real.or illusory.

Here, I didn't mean via particular examples but as a form of determinacy that either can or cannot occur in the world. If final causes can and do occur in the world, then they are real determinacy types. If final causes cannot and thereby do not occur in the world ... then the awkward conclusion that all our teleological reasons (e.g., goals/intents) for our actions are illusory/nonexsitent.

Yes, in terms of particulars, goals can be both real and illusory; same can be said, in short, for any perception of some object: it can be real or illusory (e.g. mirage or hallucination). But few, if any, would doubt that perceptions occur within the world - i.e., would sustain that perceptions per se could be all be illusory and thereby nonexistent.

Thing is final causes, such as our goals/aims/intents, cannot be accommodated for within physicalism, and the empirical sciences cannot empirically observe them (this as physical existents can be observed) ... or at least so I last gathered.

Beside which, even efficient causes (what we today commonly simple express as causes), though easily understood from a distance, become problematic logically in numerous ways when investigate up close. As one easily expressed example, some have proposed backward causation - wherein the effect occurs before the cause - in attempts to explain some aspects of quantum phenomena. This, though, is not scientific reasoning but metaphysical reasoning about what science has discovered - whether its good or bad metaphysical reasoning being another matter all together.

Quoting Banno

A better epitome of a metaphysical principle would be the conservation laws. The causal relations between billiard balls, or instance, are an expression of conservation of momentum.

Surely you must hate optics?

Reply to L'éléphant How so?

Quoting Janus

….would that not be to posit that such reasoning yields universal truth, at least as regards the human?

That’s not what kills the definition. Independent of human understanding, in the original post’s wording, does. But I see you’ve added the qualifier later.

There may be things that are true universally, re: pure mathematical and logical propositions, in accordance with our intelligence, but I’m not sure about universal truth as such. What could be true under any possible condition, including whatever kind of possible intelligence, when the totality of possible conditions is itself inconceivable?

Reply to Mww If I understand you aright I think we agree. Let's see if you agree with the following: there can be no justifiable universal claims that purport to obtain independently of the context of human experience and judgement.

There could be justifiable universal claims about human experience, but I understand such claims to be phenomenological, not metaphysical.

That said if I understand correctly, Heidegger equates phenomenology with metaphysics, but then that would not be the kind of traditional metaphysics that does make claims that purport to obtain independently of the human context.

Quoting Janus

….there can be no justifiable universal claims that purport to obtain independently of the context of human experience and judgement.

Ok, close enough. There certainly are justified universal claims, but there are no justified universal claims independent of human intelligence. I mean…where else but from human intelligence can any claim come from, justified or not?

Quoting Janus

There could be justifiable universal claims about human experience, but I understand such claims to be phenomenological, not metaphysical.

Sure, I guess. There is no such thing as universal human experience is itself a justified universal claim about human experience. Still, being tautological, the claim tells us nothing we didn’t already know, given the infinite conditions of space and time, which are the necessary conditions for experience in the first place, both of which are implied by universality, and is certainly contained in a metaphysical doctrine.

If phenomenology justifies universal claims about human experience other than the one I just stated…..so be it. I wouldn’t dare say there aren’t any, but I would dare you to offer one that isn’t every bit as metaphysical as it is phenomenological.
———-

Quoting Janus

Heidegger equates phenomenology with metaphysics, but then that would not be the kind of traditional metaphysics that does make claims that purport to obtain independently of the human context.

Hmmm. That presupposes there is such a traditional metaphysics, which may be true whether or not I’m even the least familiar with it. Which puts me in a tough spot, insofar as if you offer such a justified universal claim that purports to obtain independently of human context, in a non-traditional metaphysical way, in accordance with the phenomenological doctrine, I’m pretty sure I won’t understand it. But others seems to well enough, so…there ya go.

Reply to Wayfarer The neyballs werenot for you, but for a now-deleted comment.

Reply to Banno water under the bridge.....

Quoting Mww

There may be things that are true universally, re: pure mathematical and logical propositions, in accordance with our intelligence, but I’m not sure about universal truth as such. What could be true under any possible condition, including whatever kind of possible intelligence, when the totality of possible conditions is itself inconceivable?

I think this is an important point. I'm assuming from this that you don't think there are moral or aesthetic truths?

Quoting Mww

I mean…where else but from human intelligence can any claim come from, justified or not?

Well, leaving aside the possibility of intelligent alien species, nowhere of course. But that wasn't what I've been driving at. Maybe an example will help. If I claim that the Universe existed prior to humans that is a claim about existence outside of the context of human experience and judgement. It is also a pretty standard realist claim, so this is not off-topic.

Our notion of existence is derived from our experience and the concept is fine in that context. But are we justified in projecting that concept beyond that context, by saying things like 'the world existed prior to humans' or the 'the world didn't exist prior to humans'?

Quoting Mww

There is no such thing as universal human experience is itself a justified universal claim about human experience. Still, being tautological, the claim tells us nothing we didn’t already know, given the infinite conditions of space and time, which are the necessary conditions for experience in the first place, both of which are implied by universality, and is certainly contained in a metaphysical doctrine.

If phenomenology justifies universal claims about human experience other than the one I just stated…..so be it. I wouldn’t dare say there aren’t any, but I would dare you to offer one that isn’t every bit as metaphysical as it is phenomenological.

I don't know what you mean by "There is no such thing as universal human experience", so I don't know whether that is a justified claim or not. An example of a universal claim about human experience would be "all human experiences are temporal", that is they take time. But I don't understand that as being a metaphysical claim, but rather a phenomenological, or even tautological. claim.

Not all experiences are spacial, but the body and all other objects are experienced as existing in spacetime. Does it follow that we and all other objects can only exist or be in spacetime? If it does follow, then it must be a logical truth, not a metaphysical one. But if we imagine that there might be a greater existence, that we derive our little concept of existence from unknowingly, then it might be possible to say, with for example Spinoza, that we exist in eternity. The concept of existence will not be the same in this imagined greater context, though. So, then it is not clear whether it is coherent or not to even speak of such a possibility.

Quoting Mww

That presupposes there is such a traditional metaphysics, which may be true whether or not I’m even the least familiar with it. Which puts me in a tough spot, insofar as if you offer such a justified universal claim that purports to obtain independently of human context, in a non-traditional metaphysical way, in accordance with the phenomenological doctrine, I’m pretty sure I won’t understand it. But others seems to well enough, so…there ya go.

Think about the metaphysical claims of the presocratics for example. All is water, all is apeiron, all is air, all is fire. Or Democrites' atoms and void. Or God exists or doesn't exist. I'm not saying that such claims could ever be justified phenomenologically. As I understand it such claims are justified only if you believe that the very fact that we can imagine certain things reflects some higher, human-independent truth.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What a non-physical cause "looks" like is a freely willed act of intention (final cause as javra explains).

Can you present an actual example of such a cause?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Well I guess no one has learned the history of metaphysical ideas then, because no one truly understand them all yet.

Learning and understanding are not all or nothing.

Quoting javra

If final causes cannot and thereby do not occur in the world ... then the awkward conclusion that all our teleological reasons (e.g., goals/intents) for our actions are illusory/nonexsitent.

I don't see that. If the final cause of something is the purpose for which it is created, then we know that there have been final causes for countless human artefacts. This is a very human way of understanding human motivation and creativity, but do we have any warrant for projecting that onto the cosmos?

Quoting javra

But few, if any, would doubt that perceptions occur within the world - i.e., would sustain that perceptions per se could be all be illusory and thereby nonexistent.

I agree, there can be no doubt that perceptions occur within the world. Would an illusory perception be non-existent, though, or rather would it be a perception of something non-existent? Think of an after-image or a dream; do we say there is a perception, but nothing is being perceived or do we say that there is no perception? I think this comes down to different usages or playing with words.

Quoting javra

Thing is final causes, such as our goals/aims/intents, cannot be accommodated for within physicalism, and the empirical sciences cannot empirically observe them (this as physical existents can be observed) ... or at least so I last gathered.

They cannot be accommodated within eliminative physicalism perhaps, but I don't see why they cannot be accommodated within physicalism tout court. They are not observable empirical objects. @Apokrisis sees entropy as final cause, since it seems to be the most universal "top-down' constraint in and on existence. How do we know that entropy is real beyond our experience, though?

Quoting javra

As one easily expressed example, some have proposed backward causation - wherein the effect occurs before the cause - in attempts to explain some aspects of quantum phenomena. This, though, is not scientific reasoning but metaphysical reasoning about what science has discovered - whether its good or bad metaphysical reasoning being another matter all together.

Are you referring to collapse of the wave function? Otherwise I'm not familiar with the idea. Doesn't sound like it could be testable in any case, so yes it would be metaphysics.

Quoting Janus

This is a very human way of understanding human motivation and creativity, but do we have any warrant for projecting that onto the cosmos?

My own idiosyncratic inclinations aside, the issue as I see it is whether the metaphysical model of the world we endorse (e.g., physicalism) can allow for the existence of final causes within the cosmos. Humans are undeniably within the cosmos. So whether or not final causes can apply to things such as rocks, the question still is can the metaphysical model acknowledge that they apply to, at the very least, humans?

Quoting Janus

Would an illusory perception be non-existent, though, or rather would it be a perception of something non-existent?

I was aiming to affirm that we cannot in good faith in any way doubt that perceptions, illusory or not, occur (in the world). I'm hoping that makes better sense. But to answer your question, the second.

Quoting Janus

They cannot be accommodated within eliminative physicalism perhaps, but I don't see why they cannot be accommodated within physicalism tout court.

All I know is that the reality of final causes were rejected along with rejection of Aristotelian thinking in the history of ideas (not tout court, but by in large), leading to the metaphysical doctrines of materialism and, later on, physicalism. For my part, I will only affirm that physicalism would drastically change as belief system where it to uphold the reality of final causes operating in the cosmos. As one maybe blatant example, if final causes do occur, this then opens up the realm of possibilities toward an ultimate final cause as unmoved mover (not a psyche as unmoved mover, but an ultimate telos ... in the way you've presented Apo's views, entropy would then be just this ultimate telos of all things in his philosophical views). The physicalism of today does not allow for the possibility of such ultimate telos as unmoved mover (of everything that is).

Quoting Janus

Are you referring to collapse of the wave function? Otherwise I'm not familiar with the idea.

I tend to associate it with events such as the delayed-choice quantum eraser, but there is an SEP article on it if you're interested.

Quoting javra

So whether or not final causes can apply to things such as rocks, the question still is can the metaphysical model acknowledge that they apply to, at the very least, humans?

I don't see why not if we acknowledge that what we think of as a "purpose" could be a constraint on possibility due to the nature of things. Something like this is how we think of the evolution of apparently designed biological forms due not to any "transcendent designer" but to natural selection.

That said, there would not seem to be any way to conceptually incorporate the notion of a transcendent designer into a physicalist model, so if that is what you mean then I think we agree.

Apo seems to think of entropy as more than merely a constraint inherent in the nature of physical existence, but as a driver that explains even human behavior. So, a kind of unconscious final cause of everything taking the quickest path to entropy.

So, I guess in that view the genesis and evolution of apparently negentropic phenomena, like biological life, is driven and explained by the "race to the bottom", so to speak. I don't share that view, as I tend to think that entropy is illegitimately projected outside the context of human experience.

So, for me the same goes for all worldviews, including physicalism, as I explained in my responses to Mww. I do think that, phenomenologically speaking, physicalism is kind of irrelevant, because our understanding of physicality cannot deal with intentionality, yet that doesn't lead me to posit anything non-physical or transcendent.

I don't expect humans to be able to understand and explain everything, because I see inherent limitations in the nature of dualistic thinking. Naturally we can't help trying to make it to overstep its limits. I see the failure to acknowledge our limitations as hubris, but many people on all sides of this debate think the idea of such limitations is anathema. In any case we will be constrained by our limitations, however limited they turn out to be in the long run, no matter what we believe or hope for.

Quoting javra

I tend to associate it with events such as the delayed-choice quantum eraser, but there is an SEP article on it if you're interested.

Cheers, I'll have a look.

Quoting Janus

Something like this is how we think of the evolution of apparently designed biological forms due not to any "transcendent designer" but to natural selection.

That said, there would not seem to be any way to conceptually incorporate the notion of a transcendent designer into a physicalist model, so if that is what you mean then I think we agree.

:smile: Want to clarify this: "Transcendent designer" entails there being a transcendent psyche ... that designs. Yes, physicalism can't incorporate this. I was however addressing an ultimate telos as unmoved mover of everything that is not a psyche and, hence, not a "designer". So far don't think physicalism can incorporate the latter either ... even if it does not in any way address the presence of a deity. Wouldn't mind someday being proven wrong about physicalism's aversion to teleology, though.

As to the rest, I respect your views.

Quoting Banno

Previously I put this down to contrariness. I now wonder if it might be vacillation or trepidation. Or simple failure to commit?

I'd put another spin on the difference.

Our community is less homogenous than the professional community, and so it's harder to say the three views put on offer are of the sort where one can actually go ahead and make a choice, even knowing all the difficulties.

Or perhaps this is just a way of coming down firm on "trepidation" as an explanation for the difference.

It makes sense to feel trepidation on an online poll, I think.

Quoting javra

Want to clarify this: "Transcendent designer" entails there being a transcendent psyche ... that designs. Yes, physicalism can't incorporate this. I was however addressing an ultimate telos as unmoved mover of everything that is not a psyche and, hence, not a "designer". So far don't think physicalism can incorporate the latter either ... even if it does not in any way address the presence of a deity. Wouldn't mind someday being proven wrong about physicalism's aversion to teleology, though.

As to the rest, I respect your views.

Cheers javra.

I think this is relevant:

Quoting Janus

I do think that, phenomenologically speaking, physicalism is kind of irrelevant, because our understanding of physicality cannot deal with intentionality, yet that doesn't lead me to posit anything non-physical or transcendent.

Our understanding of the nature of physicality cannot deal with intentionality, either in its phenomenological meaning as "aboutness" or its ordinary meaning as "purposefulness". Our own intentionality is understood to be inherently bound up with consciousness or "psyche".

So, I'm wondering how we can conceive of an "ultimate telos" without thinking of it as being purposeful. If it is just an apparent general natural tendency like entropy, I don't see why that could not be incorporated into a physicalist model.

Quoting Moliere

Or perhaps this is just a way of coming down firm on "trepidation" as an explanation for the difference.

For amusement I’ll say this again in fuller terms. Speaking for myself at least, since choosing one of the three alternatives implies a rejection of those not chosen, I, for one, would be false to my own beliefs in choosing just one. Consider:

- I am a skeptic in the sense of ancient skepticism to which Marcus Cicero et al. pertained (in modern parlance, I am a diehard fallibilist … which has absolutely nothing to do with (Cartesian) doubts).
- I uphold there being a real external world for which there can be no rational doubt.
- And, when not in a neutral-monism set of mind, I likewise consider myself an idealist, with many affinities to the idealism of C.S. Peirce.

My own not partaking of the poll is not “trepidation”. It’s critical thought. :nerd: :wink:

Reply to javra Surely the professional group also engaged in critical thought, though. I'd say, sure, everyone who answered was engaged in critical thought. It's the differences between the communities I was looking for an explanation for.

Or are you making the stronger contention that those who did choose should engage in more critical thought?

Quoting Janus

So, I'm wondering how we can conceive of an "ultimate telos" without thinking of it as being purposeful. If it is just an apparent general natural tendency like entropy, I don't see why that could not be incorporated into a physicalist model.

As to entropy being the ultimate telos of all things, if we're both interpreting him right, that's more Apo's neck of the woods. While not wanting to push my own agenda, I don't look at it as being purposeful. More like that ultimate end of all spatiotemproal being which, as ultimate end, occurs as existentially fixed potential, and which either directly or indirectly teleologically drives all existents, be they animate or inanimate. (Again, though, don't here want to get into the details of my own views out of concern that they might bring about more confusion then clarity when expressed via the soundbites of a forum). Point being, imo, even if the ultimate telos were to be intimately associated with psyches, it still would not need to be envisioned as being purposeful (and definitely not a psyche itself ... just as with Nirvana not being a psyche nor a realm of psyche/"I-ness" while still being the end result of psychological being in Buddhist thought).

... on second thought, don't know if this much helps, but I'll leave it in all the same.

Quoting Moliere

Or are you making the stronger contention that those who did choose should engage in more critical thought?

No. We all have our own mindsets and beliefs and critical justifications for these. Mine just don't fit the cookie cutter alternatives presented when one is taken to exclude the others, that's all. I wanted to emphasize that the "trepidation" interpenetration for not choosing "idealism" is a wrong conclusion for at the very least some of the forum members.

Reply to javra Introducing Buddhism is an interesting line, The ultimate telos in Buddhism (if there is one) would be karma I think. Karma is understood to be driven by craving and attachment, which are inseparable from the ideas of intentionality and purpose, but if karma determines the nature of the cosmos and explains how we all perceive the same things, then this would be seem to be unexplainable in physical terms, unless we invoked entanglement. Does entanglement inherently involve consciousness or mind?

Anyway I'm still stuck in the inability to parse the notion of telos, without incorporating purposefulness.

Quoting Janus

The ultimate telos in Buddhism (if there is one) would be karma I think.

I've always thought of it being Nirvana: the point of the eight-fold path. Karma, from this vantage, would then only be a manifestation of either getting closer to Nirvana or further away from it based on actions of all kinds (mental as well as physical).

Quoting Janus

Does entanglement inherently involve consciousness or mind?

Not to my current thinking.

Quoting Janus

Anyway I'm still stuck in the inability to parse the notion of telos, without incorporating purposefulness.

I can see why. All teloi we are consciously aware of and motivated by in our day to day lives provide us with purpose, this by definition, I think.

But again, as concerns our discussion of metaphysics, more importantly for me is the issue of whether a metaphysical system can incorporate just such day to day intents into its structure of understanding.

Quoting javra

Mine just don't fit the cookie cutter alternatives presented when one is taken to exclude the others, that's all

This would account for the difference, too, then. Perhaps many of our fellows here on TPF feel the same? The thought being that each thought should be treated individually, and feeling that our beliefs cannot fit the cookie cutters?

Quoting Moliere

Perhaps many of our fellows here on TPF feel the same?

From what I recall reading in the thread, there are a few other forum members that do (that feel the principle choices between realism and idealism offer a false dichotomy).

Quoting Moliere

The thought being that each thought should be treated individually, and feeling that our beliefs cannot fit the cookie cutters?

:up: If I'm understanding you right, I for one endorse that. My own impression is that @Banno is a bit peeved that those who lean toward idealism haven't voted for idealism ... but, again, the dichotomy between realism and idealism can well be viewed as false. A kind of entrapment into mislabeling oneself.

Quoting javra

I've always thought of it being Nirvana: the point of the eight-fold path. Karma, from this vantage, would then only be a manifestation of either getting closer to Nirvana or further away from it based on actions of all kinds (mental as well as physical).

Yes, but you have the idea in Buddhism that nirvana is samsara, and the notion of interdependent origination which begins with avidya or ignorance. Anyway probably best not to try to get into that.

Quoting javra

Not to my current thinking.

But it involves observation; so it's a matter of whether you think the observation must be carried out by a conscious agent or whether any physical interaction will count. Probably better not to try to get into that, either.

Quoting javra

But again, as concerns our discussion of metaphysics, more importantly for me is the issue of whether a metaphysical system can incorporate just such day to day intents into its structure of understanding.

Only if it posits a non-physical basis for reality if such intents are posited as non-physical, I would think. If non-physical then what? Mental or neutral? That said, the irreducibility of the idea of natural selection, of biology in general and human psychology in particular, to physics is not at issue, but I think that is a separate matter to the question as to whether reality is fundamentally physical or mental. I don't hold to either, and I'm not a neutral monist either. Call me a neutral non-dualist if you like, but I think the "neutral" there is kind of redundant. Perhaps you could say I'm an ignorantist.

Reply to javra I'm starting to think - actually I made this point at the outset - that a better term than idealism might be constructivism (grabs bit of random text from internet):

Originally proposed by sociologists of science, constructivism or social constructivism is a view about the nature of scientific knowledge held by many philosophers of science. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is made by scientists and not determined by the world. This makes constructivists antirealists. Constructivism here should not be confused with constructivism in mathematics or logic, although there are some similarities. Constructivism is more aptly compared with Berkeley’s idealism.

Most constructivist research involves empirical study of a historical or a contemporary episode in science, with the aim of learning how scientists experiment and theorize. Constructivists try not to bias their case studies with presuppositions about how scientific research is directed. Thus their approach contrasts with approaches in philosophy of science that assume scientists are guided by a particular method. From their case studies, constructivists have concluded that scientific practice is not guided by any one set of methods. Thus constructivism is relativist or antirationalist.

Many of the cognitive scientists who emphasise the role of the brain in 'constructing' reality are like this in many respects - not that they all draw the same philosophical conclusions, but many are anti-realist in this sense. You can also see how it maps against Kuhn, Feyerabend etc.

Quoting Janus

you have the idea in Buddhism that nirvana is samsara

That is specific to Nagarjuna's philosophy. No Theravadin would ever agree with that. Furthermore even Nagarjuna adds that grasping the precise meaning of this teaching is of basic importance, comparing it to picking up a poisonous snake - don't grasp it correctly, and it will kill you!

Reply to Wayfarer Fair enough: I don't have much time for Theravada Buddhism. but I agree with the poisonous snake analogy: if you just think you don't have to make any effort because you are already in nirvana, then you won't get anywhere (or even have the illusion of getting anywhere).

As to the passage you quoted, I don't see how Constructivism can be remotely equated with Berkeley's idealism. The idea that science is entirely constructed and not in any way determined by the world seems patently absurd. For a start the scientists do not construct themselves, and are not separate from the world.

Of course there is a sense in which the world is a model, a collective representation, as I like to say, but by the same token we ourselves are equally models. We model the world and ourselves. We have, or rather are models, of ourselves in a world, but the idea that the modeling is not constrained by anything outside the model is absurd.

From the fact that we cannot say what the constraints are because anything we can say will be part of the model it does not follow that there are no constraints outside of the model.

Quoting Janus

. The idea that science is entirely constructed and not in any way determined by the world seems patently absurd.

I think your addition of 'entirely' and 'not in any way' completely changes the meaning of what was quoted. One may perfectly accept that there is an enormous domain of objectively-verifiable fact to which we all must conform. They are indeed physical constraints - but don't forget that Berkeley himself frequently stated, he did not for one minute deny the reality of the objects of perception, only that they don't have the attributes that we normally credit them with, of being real independently of perception.

I remember when I first encountered Peter Berger's book The Social Construction of Reality. I too thought it absurd and declaimed angrily about it in a tutorial. 'Do we put the stars in the sky', quoth myself, banging fist on table. But I gradually came to see that I was misunderstanding his point. It's more that our world, the 'lebenswelt' of humans, is constructed from meanings, because we interpret experience according to our cultural constructs and so on. (One of David Loy's books, that I haven't looked at, is called The World is Made of Stories.)

Quoting Wayfarer

I think your addition of 'entirely' and 'not in any way' completely changes the meaning of what was quoted. One may perfectly accept that there is an enormous domain of objectively-verifiable fact to which we all must conform.

Yes, but all that "objectively verifiable fact" and its verifiability on a strong reading of constructivism is itself constructed.

Quoting Wayfarer

Berkeley himself frequently stated, he did not for one minute deny the reality of the objects of perception, only that they don't have the attributes that we normally credit them with.

Right, for Berkeley objects of perception are not ultimately physical existents but ideas in God's mind, which means that the main attribute we credit them with, that of self-existence, would be mistaken.

Quoting Wayfarer

But I gradually came to see that I was misunderstanding his point. It's more that our world, the 'lebenswelt' of humans, is constructed from meanings, because we interpret experience according to our cultural constructs and so on.

I haven't read the book, but I think it is pretty much common sense that we experience, and understand our experience, in accordance with the various ways our constitutions and enculturations allow us to.

Quoting javra

... again, the dichotomy between realism and idealism can we'll be viewed as false.

Isn't antirealism a form of idealism? Are there other forms of idealism which are not antirealist?

Quoting Janus

If I claim that the Universe existed prior to humans that is a claim about existence outside of the context of human experience and judgement.

That’s technically a logical inference, hence certainly not independent of human experience and judgement. Nevertheless, with this, you’re attributing a justified universal claim to existence, when we’ve been relating justified universal claims to human experience and judgement. Which reduces to….the specified existence is outside human experience and judgement, but the claim is not.
————

Quoting Janus

Our notion of existence is derived from our experience and the concept is fine in that context. But are we justified in projecting that concept beyond that context, by saying things like 'the world existed prior to humans' or the 'the world didn't exist prior to humans'?

Good point. It is a different kind of logical inference, however, that our existence….not the notion of it, but the fact of it….derives from experience on the one hand, which is deductive, and existences outside our experience, which is inductive. So, yes, I think we can project the concept, but not in that context; we invoke the category of necessity in the former, but possibility in the latter.
————

Quoting Janus

Not all experiences are spacial, but the body and all other objects are experienced as existing in spacetime. Does it follow that we and all other objects can only exist or be in spacetime?

Another good point. Yes, and no. Yes according to certain theories, no if other theories falsify the one that says yes. But there haven’t been any falsifying theories, at least no paradigm shifting, everybody’s on the new bandwagon kinda theory, so it seems we’re pretty much stuck with the paradigm-shifting theory we’ve already been given.

If I were to go all nit-picky, on ya, quibble-y even, I’d bring to your attention that no experience is spatial. They are temporal, as you said. Experience is of representations of objects in space, but not of space itself, which can never be represented in us.
————-

Quoting Janus

such claims are justified only if you believe that the very fact that we can imagine certain things reflects some higher, human-independent truth.

Ehhhh…maybe. I’m in the nature-of-the-human-beast camp myself; maybe we can imagine just about anything we want, just because we can. Even if there is a higher, human independent truth, it would only be comprehensible if our intelligence permits it, and if it did, it wouldn’t be either higher or human independent. And if it didn’t, then we’d never know about it anyway. You know…the ol’ transcendental illusion trick: reason thinks this stuff up, which is quite obviously within its purview, because we actually do it, but then can’t do anything with it.

Anyway….good talk.

Quoting Janus

Can you present an actual example of such a cause?

Sure, when I pick up my tea cup to have a drink, that's an actual example. You might say it was my brain that caused this action, but what caused my brain to do this? That such acts do not have a physical cause is understood by the concept of free will, elementary philosophy.

Quoting Banno

Grumph. Too much emphasis on causation for my taste. A better epitome of a metaphysical principle would be the conservation laws. The causal relations between billiard balls, or instance, are an expression of conservation of momentum.

I said previously you must hate optics, to which you responded "How so?".

So, here it is. Billiard balls is a favorite example of causation -- after all, it is easy to see the force of the balls bumping against each other and putting them in motion. But this is not the only example of causation. The optic nerves, responsible for transmitting electrical pulses to create an image is another. You know... light passes through the pupil, etc. In other words, there is energy there, too.

Quoting 180 Proof

Are there other forms of idealism which are not antirealist?

As I've mentioned, C.S. Peirce's objective idealism comes to mind. (the Wikipedia page isn't in-depth, but it does evidence the point)

Quoting L'éléphant

ou know... light passes through the pupil, etc.

Wow, light passes through the pupil. Where does it go, into the brain? It's very black in there.

[quote=Wikipedia: Pupil]The pupil is a black hole....[/quote]

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Sorry I can't educate you. That post is for Banno.

Quoting L'éléphant

The optic nerves, responsible for transmitting electrical pulses to create an image is another. You know... light passes through the pupil, etc. In other words, there is energy there, too.

What if I write something that makes you so annoyed your hands begin to shake. What kind of causation would that be?

Quoting L'éléphant

light passes through the pupil, etc. In other words, there is energy there, too.

I don't understand your point. Are you saying that energy is not conserved when light induces an impulse in one's optic nerve?

I'm thinking of Russell's criticism of treating causation as the basis for physics. It's by no means uncontroversial that causation is a useful notion. For example,
Quoting SEP: Conserved Quantity Accounts of Causation

since, according to Noether’s First Theorem, there is a conservation law associated with each continuous symmetry property of a system, there seems to be a clear formal route for locating causal claims within physics.

I'm just pointing to the elephant in the corner: that the ubiquitous assumption of causation is not uncontroversial.

Quoting Banno

Are you saying that energy is not conserved when light induces an impulse in one's optic nerve?

There is energy, but light is massless. Conservation of energy involves mass. Look up phototransduction. I believe this is one reason why causation is not limited to the billiard balls example.

Quoting Wayfarer

What if I write something that makes you so annoyed your hands begin to shake. What kind of causation would that be?

I give up. What is it?

Reply to L'éléphantYou have been affected by an idea, not by anything physical, so it is quite a different matter to physical causation.

Reply to Wayfarer Okay, I thought you were joking. Unfortunately, this is not what causation is in metaphysics. Maybe Ethics? The harm principle? Offense?

Quoting L'éléphant

There is energy, but light is massless. Conservation of energy involves mass.

I don't understand, again. The conservation of energy requires that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant -whether it be in the form of mass or otherwise.

Quoting L'éléphant

Look up phototransduction.

Why - what am I looking for? Do you claim that photransduction voids conservation of energy, or that it is not causal, or what?

Quoting L'éléphant

I believe this is one reason why causation is not limited to the billiard balls example.

I agree that there are other examples of causation. Are you attempting to show that some of them cannot be reduced to conservation principles?

So I'm still at a loss as to what this post of yours was about:
Quoting L'éléphant

Surely you must hate optics?

Quoting javra

As I've mentioned, C.S. Peirce's objective idealism comes to mind.

"Naive realism", however, isn't philosophical realism, which is what I read into the OP poll's "non-skeptical realism". Nonetheless, javra, I take your point.

Quoting Banno

I agree that there are other examples of causation. Are you attempting to show that some of them cannot be reduced to conservation principles?

Yes.

Quoting Banno

So I'm still at a loss as to what this post of yours was about:

Surely you must hate optics? — L'éléphant

I said that because in your previous post, you clearly limited causation with the conservation principles. And then followed it with causation is not uncontroversial. What does being controversial mean?

Quoting Banno

I don't understand, again. The conservation of energy requires that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant -whether it be in the form of mass or otherwise.

There is no otherwise in conservation principle -- it involves mass. If not, there's no conservation of something.

Conservation of energy is not a fungible principle.

Quoting L'éléphant

you clearly limited causation with the conservation principles.

I did? Here?
Quoting Banno

Too much emphasis on causation for my taste. A better epitome of a metaphysical principle would be the conservation laws. The causal relations between billiard balls, or instance, are an expression of conservation of momentum.

Not sure how that limits causation.
There are alternatives to causation, the conservation laws being a case in point. But hereabouts causation is treated as sacred. I didn't place limits on the conservation laws so much as postulate getting rid of them in our discussion here. See the SEP article previously cited for other arguments contra the hegemony of causation.

Quoting L'éléphant

There is no otherwise in conservation principle -- it involves mass. If not, there's no conservation of something.

All conservation is conservation of mass? That doesn't seem right. Do you have an argument for this? How does conservation of charge involve mass? Symmetry in any physical system produces conservation laws; but symmetry need not always involve mass. Tell us more.

Quoting Tom Storm

….I’m not sure about universal truth as such.
— Mww

I'm assuming from this that you don't think there are moral or aesthetic truths?

Deontological moral philosophy mandates compliance to a moral law, which is the same as there being a universal moral truth, that if one adheres to this mandate without regard for circumstance and therefore without exception, then he is a truly moral agent. It is in this case a universal truth but under entirely subjective conditions.

Needless to say, it follows that there may be as many universal moral truths as there are truly moral agents. And even if one guy recognizes another as adhering to his moral truth, is nonetheless disgusted by it, hence would never adhere to it, which is sufficient to render objective universal moral truths to vanishingly small possibility.

Aesthetic truths are very different in occasion even if similar in form, insofar as they merely reflect some condition of a perceiving subject prescribed by the feeling instilled in him through observation of something with which he had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do. A guy’s aesthetic truth may very well be that the Mona Lisa is the ugliest broad he’s ever seen, and enlightenment of him by established authorities regarding the artist’s technique, the physics of paint and application of it, physics of light and shadow, sway him not the least.

The mitigating factor is causality. In the former, even though the subjective condition is an aesthetic feeling, it is a feeing of satisfaction as an effect for being a moral agent, which he caused himself to be and for which no representation is possible; in the latter the subjective condition is still an aesthetic feeling, but of a relative pain/pleasure affect caused only by the object, but for which representation is necessary.

So…universal truths in Nature the causality for which has nothing to do with us? No, I don’t think there are any, insofar as the logic of pure speculative reason is against us, but if there were we couldn’t ignore them. Universal truths for which we ourselves are causality? Yes there are, insofar as the logic of pure practical reason demands it to be so, but those we can, and often do, ignore.
———-

“…. many a book would have been much clearer, if it had not been intended to be so very clear….”

Or….sometimes you just want a simple yes or no, but you end up with a miniature dissertation.

Reply to Mww I quite like miniature dissertations. Thanks.

Quoting Mww

Which reduces to….the specified existence is outside human experience and judgement, but the claim is not.

Exactly! The question is, though, do we merely imagine that we know what we are talking about with such projections?

Quoting Mww

So, yes, I think we can project the concept, but not in that context; we invoke the category of necessity in the former, but possibility in the latter.

So it seems that Kant could have said that the empirical world, time and space and all, possibly exist outside of human experience and judgement, whereas they necessarily exist within that context?

Quoting Mww

If I were to go all nit-picky, on ya, quibble-y even, I’d bring to your attention that no experience is spatial. They are temporal, as you said. Experience is of representations of objects in space, but not of space itself, which can never be represented in us.

I think we do perceive dimension, or degrees of separation, which just is space, so it seems I disagree here.

It's good when someone actually engages with their interlocutors, and so I've enjoyed our conversation too, as usual.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover That such acts do have a physical cause is understood by neuroscience. I don't subscribe to the "spooky" libertarian, absolutist notion of free will, because it entails dualism, and I see insoluble problems with that model.

Reply to Janus :up:

Quoting Banno

Too much emphasis on causation for my taste. A better epitome of a metaphysical principle would be the conservation laws. The causal relations between billiard balls, or instance, are an expression of conservation of momentum. — Banno

Not sure how that limits causation.
There are alternatives to causation, the conservation laws being a case in point.

This argument is getting more convoluted. You seem to think that causation involves only conservation of energy. If this is not the case, then I stand corrected. But my impression of your post previously is that you think only the conservation law is the proper example of causation.

Quoting Banno

All conservation is conservation of mass? That doesn't seem right.

Yes it is right, or conservation of energy, if you will. But optics is not one of those because it involves light -- and light is massless. So optics does not belong in conservation of energy, yet it is used as example of causation. In other words, it's not just conservation law, but other processes, too, support causation. That's it. That is our point of contention.

Reply to L'éléphant Might leave this. I can't make sense of whatever it is you are trying to get at.

For anyone else, I am simply pointing to the many problems with causation. See Causation in Physics (SEP) for further problems.

Reply to Banno interesting article, thank you

Reply to Banno Reply to bert1 You could see it as another milestone in the gradual erosion of faith in reason. After all reason and causation are you would think intimately linked. I think I’ll start a thread on it.

Quoting Janus

do we merely imagine that we know what we are talking about with such projections?

Ha!!! Saturn isn’t even thought about absent its rings, but there was a time when it didn’t have any. And I seriously doubt quarks are actually colored. One can possibly experience that which he imagines, but he can never simply imagine that which he has experienced.

If imagination as a faculty has the power attributed to it in theory, it occurs that one always imagines that which eventually he comes to know. But with respect to the projection of existence you’re asking about, though, there are serious contradictions if we deny the existence of the world before human experience, which at least allows us to project that it did, but the fact remains, we cannot possibly know the fact of it in the same fashion by which we know apodeitically that stupid-ass tree has three branches.
————

Quoting Janus

Kant could have said that the empirical world, time and space and all, possibly exist outside of human experience and judgement, whereas they necessarily exist within that context?

He does say that. Then demonstrates how it is impossible, iff a certain set of conditions are in fact the case. If they aren’t, well…..time for another demonstration of a different kind, and we find ourselves faced with stuff like logical positivism, OLP and quantum mechanics, in which case…..errr, you know…..we imagine we know what we’re talking about.
———-

Quoting Janus

Experience is of representations of objects in space, but not of space itself, which can never be represented in us.
— Mww

I think we do perceive dimension, or degrees of separation, which just is space, so it seems I disagree here.

Maybe, but you’re talking perception and I’m talking experience. Yours is on the one end of the cognitive spectrum, as means, mine is on the other, as ends. Nevertheless, I’d say we think dimension and degrees of separation, which are just representations for the appearance of one object’s relation to an observer, or objects in relation to each other, and for which we couldn’t represent at all if those objects weren’t to be found somewhere other than in the very system which is thinking about them.

Yes, we do perceive degrees of separation…this is closer than that, this is adjacent to that. This is of the same time as that. This is this now but was that before. But, what, in the most basic, primal way possible, makes all that, make sense to us? Gotta start somewhere, right?

Quoting Mww

But with respect to the projection of existence you’re asking about, though, there are serious contradictions if we deny the existence of the world before human experience, which at least allows us to project that it did, but the fact remains, we cannot possibly know the fact of it in the same fashion by which we know apodeitically that stupid-ass tree has three branches.

For me the way around such contradictions would be to say that if we had been around a hundred and fifty million years ago we would have seen the dinosaurs. The question about what the world would be like without any percipients in it seems unanswerable, even incoherent,

As to the tree, if you ask me how I know it has three branches, I can just point to the tree and say "How many branches do you see?". (By the way, that's a pretty pathetic example of a tree. and maybe that's what you were referring to with your "stupid-ass". But if you asked me to demonstrate that the tree has a stupid ass, I am completely at a loss).

Quoting Mww

He does say that. Then demonstrates how it is impossible, iff a certain set of conditions are in fact the case. If they aren’t, well…..time for another demonstration of a different kind, and we find ourselves faced with stuff like logical positivism, OLP and quantum mechanics, in which case…..errr, you know…..we imagine we know what we’re talking about.

I don't know about QM but LP and OLP certainly imagine that they know what they're talking about; but then they don't talk about anything much out of the ordinary, so they are liable to put you to sleep. I'm not convinced anyone knows what QM is talking about, or even whether it is talking at all.

With the "degrees of separation" thing I actually had in mind the simple fact that objects appear extended to us, and saying that to my way of thinking extension just is spatiality. Of course the negative spaces between objects is just as important as the objects themselves, and is often, or even mostly, filled with other objects.

Again I submit a passage from Paul Davie's book about the sense in which time itself is a projection of the observing mind, to wit:

[quote=Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271]The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. [/quote]

I submit that this supports the Kantian assertion that 'time is one of the forms of our sensibility', rather than something that exists objectively and independently of any observer. Which is not to deny the empirical fact that there was a time before human beings existed, as Kant was also an empirical realist.

Quoting Wayfarer

I submit that this supports the Kantian assertion that 'time is one of the forms of our sensibility', rather than something that exists objectively and independently of any observer. Which is not to deny the empirical fact that there was a time before human beings existed, as Kant was also an empirical realist.

It depends on what you mean by 'time'. If it is taken to mean the subjective sense of duration, or the conception of past present and future, then of course it cannot exist independently of subjects by definition. Beyond that, how would we know?

What could it then mean to say that there was a time before human beings existed? Are you able to say?

Reply to Janus :fire:

Reply to Wayfarer Well, sir, what non-trivial (non-epiphenomenal) difference does Kantian 'subjective time' (and/or 'subjective space') make against the background of the "empirical realism" of spatiotemporality (e.g. Einsteinian relativity of simultaneity)?

Quoting Janus

It depends on what you mean by 'time'. If it is taken to mean the subjective sense of duration, or the conception of past present and future, then of course it cannot exist independently of subjects by definition. Beyond that, how would we know?

It's not a trivial matter. There was a time before humans existed, as is well attested by empirical science. But the entire framework within which empirical science depends is first and foremost noetic or intellectual. '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, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

that is the constant theme of this debate. What is called 'the natural attitude' is the default and anything that questions it is fiercely resisted, as can be seen.

Quoting Wayfarer

It's not a trivial matter. There was a time before humans existed, as is well attested by empirical science. But the entire framework within which empirical science depends is first and foremost noetic or intellectual. '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.

Are they not facts of human experience? I mean, what else could they be? On the other hand I'm finding it difficult to see how "a time before humans existed? could be a fact of human experience. It is an inference to the best explanation for the discoveries of the paleontologists. You haven't answered the critical question as to what you mean by time, that I posed for you earlier.

You seem to be unaware or to have forgotten that I have read Husserl (and Heidegger) (although quite a few years ago now) and am reasonably familiar with their ideas, so I don't understand what purpose you think there could be in going over old ground as though I am a novice and as though we haven't covered it countless times.

The "natural attitude", the naive belief that there is an external world which we look out onto through our eyes, as though they are windows, is the attitude which he thought must be bracketed in order to go "to the things themselves" meaning to investigate just how they are as experienced.

We've been over this so many times, and yet you don't seem to realize I am well aware of the central arguments of phenomenology. I keep acknowledging that I think the empirical world, as conceived, and to some extent as experienced, is a collective representation, so I fail to see what purpose you think there might be in lecturing me about ideas which I am probably more familiar with than you are.

The essence of it is simply that the world, as we experience and understand it, cannot justifiably be said to exist independently of us. Right, we already have that down (and have for a very long time) so... what's next? What further conclusions are you going to justifiably derive from that epistemological/ phenomenological fact about the human condition?

You respond directly and on its own terms to so little that I write in these conversations that I am left wondering whether you even read what I say to you.

Reply to Janus I tried to give as direct an answer as possible to this question:

Quoting Janus

What could it then mean to say that there was a time before human beings existed? Are you able to say?

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact. But in a philosophical sense, taking the empirical facts as the last word constitutes the 'naivete' that the passage about Husserl refers to.

Of course I am not going to pretend to be able to explain time. Many minds much greater than mine have attempted that. I am simply pointing out that it has an inextricably subjective element, and not in a trivial sense.

Quoting Janus

I keep acknowledging that I think the empirical world, as conceived, and to some extent as experienced, is a collective representation, so I fail to see what purpose you think there might be in lecturing me about ideas which I am probably more familiar with than you are.

That is at odds with many of the objections you raise, but then, maybe it's just for the sake of argument.

I said earlier in this thread, my main aim is to argue that humans are intrinsic to the universe, not an accidental byproduct.. That remains the case. In earlier times that would be an assumed implication of religious mythology, now it has to be established on the basis of philosophy.

Quoting Wayfarer

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact.

But it's not an empirical fact. Emprical facts are observables. So, what is it?

I'm not asking you to explain time, I'm asking you what you mean by time if you are positing it as something different than the subjective experience of duration, and the subjective understanding of time as 'past, present, future'.

It is obvious that there was not such a time prior to human life. So, I am asking you what you mean by saying that there was a time prior to humans.

Quoting Wayfarer

That is at odds with many of the objections you raise, but then, maybe it's just for the sake of argument.

If you think I have contradicted myself then quote some examples. I mean what I say and I do not say anything "just for the sake of argument". Of course you can disagree with what I say, but you need to present actual arguments for your disagreement, that directly address whatever arguments or claims I am making. Have you considered the possibility that you have misunderstood?

And yet again this response of yours is not a response to anything I've actually said, but is just another expression of your own attitudes, kind of an aside. You seem to be incapable of imagining that someone might be aware of all the "facts' you are and yet disagree with you; you always seem to jump to the conclusion that they must have misunderstood.

Quoting Wayfarer

I said earlier in this thread, my main aim is to argue that humans are intrinsic to the universe, not an accidental byproduct.. That remains the case. In earlier times that would be an assumed implication of religious mythology, now it has to be established on the basis of philosophy.

Philosophy cannot definitively establish anything. You should know that. Humans are intrinsic to the universe as it is experienced and understood by humans, we know that because it is tautologically true. It is not a religious question either since religions cannot establish objective facts, and "humans are intrinsic to the universe", if taken to mean something beyond that above-mentioned tautology, is a purportedly objective fact. How could such a thing ever be definitively established if not by science? (And scientific theories are not facts in any case, no matter how little reason we might think we have to doubt them).

That said you also need to explain clearly what you mean by saying that humans are intrinsic to the universe, and then provide a cogent argument for why we should believe that.

Quoting Janus

That said you [@Wayfarer] also need to explain clearly what you mean by saying that humans are intrinsic to the universe, and then provide a cogent argument for why we should believe that.

:yikes:

Reply to 180 Proof :lol:

Quoting Banno

I am simply pointing to the many problems with causation.

Then what are they?

Quoting L'éléphant

I am simply pointing to the many problems with causation. — Banno

Then what are they?

It's hard to imagine, since all our explanations are given either in terms of causes or reasons. Might be problems just regarding some parts of physics.

Reply to Janus I don't have a problem with causation as used in perception and other physical phenomena we observe. But one of the most famous rational/empirical skepticism came from Hume, or unfortunately, it came from Hume. And then it just cemented the idea that there's a problem with causation.

Logical empiricism tries to argue against the necessary connection we humans make, as ordinary observers, about things in the world. I say this is the wrong way to argue against the validity of causation. Ordinary observation never claims a necessary connection, only ordinary hypothesis. It's not like the sunrise or sunset is a type of probabilistic event. lol. Ten things must come unhinge first before the sunrise and the sunset is no longer the case.

Quoting Janus

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact.
— Wayfarer

But it's not an empirical fact. Emprical facts are observables. So, what is it?

I am saying that the fact there was a time before humans existed is an empirical fact supported by the fossil record and an abundance of geological and paleontological data which can be observed. Iis that not so?

[quote=Janus] I'm not asking you to explain time, I'm asking you what you mean by time if you are positing it as something different than the subjective experience of duration, and the subjective understanding of time as 'past, present, future'.

It is obvious that there was not such a time prior to human life. So, I am asking you what you mean by saying that there was a time prior to humans.[/quote]

There was a time prior to humans, but time itself is not completely objective - it is in some fundamental sense dependent on the observer. That is what I had hoped to convey with the quotation from Paul Davies, who says that the passage of time is reliant on there being an observer, and that if the state of the universe is described in the equations of quantum cosmology, then time simply 'drops out'. This 'observer dependency' is what ultimately underminees physicalism, as physicalism presumes that the objects of physics are real independently of any mind. It is also at the basis of the overall 'observer problem' in physics generally.

And the reason I said that this can be related to Kant is because of this passage:

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. (CPR, A369)

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. (A370)

I would have hoped that, given the challenging nature of the issue that this is about as clear as it can be made. If that will not suffice, then I won't press it any further. (I'm also intrigued that Kant appears to concede dualism in that passage.)

Reply to Janus I don't kid you. Check out Wayfarer's non-response to this Reply to 180 Proof. :smirk:

Reply to 180 Proof The relativity of simultaneity is not at issue in this discussion.

Reply to Wayfarer Another non sequitur. :clap:

Quoting Janus

The question about what the world would be like without any percipients in it seems unanswerable, even incoherent,

Agreed. Who what ask? Inferences as to what it might have been like without them, abound, now that there are percipients that do ask.

Quoting Janus

…..to my way of thinking extension just is spatiality.

That’s fine. Spatiality is merely another form of the conception of space, which we already have. Extension is spatiality and extended in space say the same thing. But do either of them tell us anything about space?
——-

Quoting Janus

With the "degrees of separation" thing I actually had in mind the simple fact that objects appear extended to us…..

As long as appears in “objects appear extended” means objects are presented to us as being extended. Or, objects make their appearance to our senses by being extended. And not…objects look to us like they are extended. Only in this distinction does Reply to Wayfarer’s A369 quote make sense, and indeed the conception of spatial extension itself, re: “… outer appearances (if their reality is conceded)…”.

Reply to Wayfarer

Not to take sides, but the question in this…..

Quoting Wayfarer

What could it then mean to say that there was a time before human beings existed?
— Janus

I said that it is a matter of empirical fact.

….is not supported by the answer, unless time is to be considered an empirical matter, a contradiction. A time before humans existed certainly has meaning, but the meaning is logical, in the form of inference to a self-sustaining series of regressive successions, which are not themselves matters of empirical fact, and that only possible insofar as there happen to be humans with the ability to think in terms of mere relations.
———-

Quoting Wayfarer

given the challenging nature of the issue

Yeah, about that. Humans: invent stuff to explain other stuff, but can’t explain the stuff they invent to explain that other stuff. They say that stuff is only possible for us if this stuff comes first, but can’t say how this stuff came first.

And that’s only the half of it, fercryin’outloud!!! On top of all that, they demand certain knowledge of that stuff, but predicate that very certainty on stuff the certainty of which is completely different in kind and measure than belongs to that which they want to know about!!!!

It’s what makes philosophy so much fun: finding out who’s got the most reasonable explanation for, and means for preventing, the nonsense we inevitably bring upon ourselves.
———

Quoting Wayfarer

I'm also intrigued that Kant appears to concede dualism in that passage

I’m intrigued as to why he said for the record he is a dualist in A, but sorta misplaced it in B. Maybe he figured he didn’t need to say it twice….dunno. But it is conspicuous in its absence.

Quoting Wayfarer

I am saying that the fact there was a time before humans existed is an empirical fact supported by the fossil record and an abundance of geological and paleontological data which can be observed. Iis that not so?

I would agree that it is generally considered to be a fact, but I think that, strictly speaking, it is an inference to the best explanation for fossils.

I wanted you to address the meaning of the claim. To repeat my question, we cannot mean that there was time, in the human subjective sense, prior to humans, so what do we mean when we say there was time prior to humans?

Quoting Wayfarer

There was a time prior to humans, but time itself is not completely objective - it is in some fundamental sense dependent on the observer. That is what I had hoped to convey with the quotation from Paul Davies, who says that the passage of time is reliant on there being an observer, and that if the state of the universe is described in the equations of quantum cosmology, then time simply 'drops out'. This 'observer dependency' is what ultimately undermines physicalism, as physicalism presumes that the objects of physics are real independently of any mind. It is also at the basis of the overall 'observer problem' in physics generally.

So, the above doesn't answer the question as to how there could be time prior to humans if time is observer-dependent and there were no suitable observers back then? We can't even say there was a "back then" because that presupposes time.

I understand the idea that time is irrelevant to QM, but how can you consistently argue that QM tells us anything about the observer-independent universe if QM itself is observer-dependent? I don't see how you can justify claiming that there is no observer-independent universe from the fact (if it is a fact) that QM is observer dependent either. As far as I know it is not by any means uncontroversial that it must be a conscious subject that collapses the wave function.

Quoting Wayfarer

I would have hoped that, given the challenging nature of the issue that this is about as clear as it can be made. If that will not suffice, then I won't press it any further. (I'm also intrigued that Kant appears to concede dualism in that passage.)

I don't read that as Kant conceding dualism, but as saying that we only know that matter is "valid for appearance" meaning that we don't know if it has any existence beyond that (or what it could even mean to say it does). There is of course the basic dualistic character of Kant's philosophy in the sense of phenomena/ noumena or for us/ in itself, but that just reflects the ineliminably dualistic nature of all our thinking, and in no way entails substance dualism.

Quoting Mww

But do either of them tell us anything about space?

No more than our experience of matter tells us anything "ultimate" about matter I guess.

Quoting Mww

As long as appears in “objects appear extended” means objects are presented to us as being extended. Or, objects make their appearance to our senses by being extended. And not…objects look to us like they are extended. Only in this distinction does ?Wayfarer
’s A369 quote make sense, and indeed the conception of spatial extension itself, re: “… outer appearances (if their reality is conceded)…”.

I'm not clear what the distinction would be between "objects are presented to us as being extended" and "objects appear extended". "Objects make their appearance to our sense by being extended" seems ambiguous and could be interpreted to mean that they really are extended and that on account of that they can make their appearance to our senses.

I would say that our senses are not pre-cognitively affected by objects, but that we interpret whatever it is that affects our senses pre-cognitively as objects. But alas, sometimes it all just seems like a word-game.

Quoting Janus

So, the above doesn't answer the question as to how there could be time prior to humans if time is observer-dependent and there were no suitable observers back then? We can't even say there was a "back then" because that presupposes time.

I know! That's the point! The objection to idealism will frequently be raised 'how can you claim that "mind creates world" when we know the world is far more ancient than the emergence of h. sapiens?' Which from a realist point of view is a slam dunk.

So I'm appealing to the Kantian distinction which enables him to say that he is an empirical realist - yes, this is empirically the case - but also a transcendental idealist - nevertheless, it is still in some sense mind-dependent - but not in a simplistic or obvious way. As Bryan Magee notes in his Schopenhauer's Philosophy:

[quote=Bryan Magee] 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 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. [/quote]

And the reason I mention Andrei Linde is because I think he articulates a version of 'the observer problem'. The observer problem raises questions about the role of the observer in determining the reality of the quantum world. And I think the 'Kantian' resolution to the problem is the most elegant.

So now we need Kant and Quantum and relativistics and Husserl to explain dinosaurs.

Reply to Wayfarer I agree that we don't know the transcendental, in the sense of the independent-of-our-experience-and-understanding, conditions for the existence of that experience and understanding. I just think the attempt to frame that mystery in terms of mind or matter, or any of our categories of understanding, or their absence, is a fool's errand. I think it's better to acknowledge the limits of our understanding, and leave the great mystery wide open, not primarily to make way for faith, but simply for the sake of honest assessment.

As to faith, I think any of us is free to believe whatever we want, or need, to, provided we don't force our ideas on others. I'm no fan of philosophical correctness in any of its guises.

Quoting Banno

So now we need Kant and Quantum and relativistics and Husserl to explain dinosaurs.

:lol: No we need them to make it appear difficult to explain dinosaurs. Maybe dinosaurs were conscious subjects and so there was time in their time. :wink:

Quoting Janus

I just think the attempt to frame that mystery in terms of mind or matter, or any of our categories of understanding, or their absence, is a fool's errand

Whereas I see it in terms of the quest. (Take a look at the poem currently pinned to my profile page.)

Quoting Banno

So now we need Kant and Quantum and relativistics and Husserl to explain dinosaurs.

Might be easier to explain them to dinosaurs, although I’m finding it tough going. ;-)

Quoting Wayfarer

Whereas I see it in terms of the quest.

That's very romantic. Good luck trying to explain something that is beyond human experience and understanding in terms of human experience and understanding.

Quoting Janus

….could be interpreted to mean that they really are extended and that on account of that they can make their appearance to our senses.

That is what is meant by the term appearance, yes.

Reply to Mww That makes sense to me.

Quoting Janus

Good luck trying to explain something that is beyond human experience and understanding [Non-manifest Image] in terms of human experience and understanding [Manifest Image].

:up:

Maybe you can succinctly explain to me, Janus – what @Wayfarer obviously can't (re: Reply to 180 Proof) – the function of "transcendental idealism" in contrast to "empirical realism".

Reply to Wayfarer, Reply to Janus a noice juxtaposition of views.

Can either of you posit a way in which you might both be right?

A quest without an outcome?

Quoting Janus

(I'm also intrigued that Kant appears to concede dualism in that passage.) — @Wayfarer

I don't read that as Kant conceding dualism,

No, Kant is part of the egocentric movement. So, yes, Wayfarer's comment makes sense.

Quoting Janus

There is of course the basic dualistic character of Kant's philosophy in the sense of phenomena/ noumena or for us/ in itself, but that just reflects the ineliminably dualistic nature of all our thinking, and in no way entails substance dualism.

I read Kant's "dualistic thinking" as (an attempt at) 'ontologizing epistemology' (i.e. reify knowing) by designating "for us" the tip "phenomena" of the iceberg "in itself" above the water line "noumena". So on what grounds does Kant posit the "in itself" from which he then conjures-up the "for us" to 'retro-construct' with various "transcendental" sleights-of-mind?

Quoting Janus

I don't read that as Kant conceding dualism…..

“…..The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, may be an empirical realist, or as he is called, a dualist. (…) A370a

The transcendental idealist is, therefore an empirical realist, and allows matter, as appearance, a reality which does not permit of being inferred, but immediately perceived.(…) A371

From the start we have declared ourselves in favor of this transcendental idealism, and our doctrine thus removes all difficulty in the way of accepting the reality of matter…” A370b

A is B, B is C, therefore A is C? That’s one way to read Kant as conceding the dualism with which the present general dialectic is concerned.

But that’s not even the most important part. Notice no mention of particular things, no mention of determined objects, but only of matter. If one then concedes Kant to mean the appearance of matter is not, and cannot be, the perception of named things, it becomes clear in relation to your….

Quoting Janus

I would say that our senses are not pre-cognitively affected by objects

….that in a Kantian sense, our senses are indeed pre-cognitively affected by objects. Senses are affected pre-cognition. Affected antecedent to their phenomenal representation, hence, antecedent to being thought, which is antecedent to be cognized as a particular form of matter, or, which is the same thing, as a particular object.

You’re probably thinking along the lines that as soon as we know what a thing is, our senses are not pre-cognitively affected. Which is fine, as long as you don’t consider what happens within the cognitive system itself, that tells it it has nothing to do when it receives an input to the senses from something already determined.

All sorts of inconsistencies arise if one considers the system stops doing its job, no matter the reason. On the one hand we have a system that works one way for knowing a thing, and on the other hand we have a system that works some other way for remembering the thing it knows. So far, so good. But what tells the system the known thing and the remembered thing relate to each other, sufficiently enough to be identical, and furthermore, what happened in the case where they do not so relate?

What’s the difference between saying we know the thing as a tree and remember it as such, or, we cognize some matter as being, e.g. a tree, every single instance of that matter being an affect on our senses? If there is no difference, it then suffices to say the latter very well could be the case, the immediate advantage being the removal of any operational inconsistencies, insofar as the cognitive system works in its procedural entirety each and every instance of the appearance of matter to it.

And what entails that matter affects the senses in such a way as to be consistently represented? Why…its being given to us as extended and shaped in a certain way in space, of course. As such, as far as concerns the senses, there never is a tree, a branch, a leaf. Or even the dirt all that came out of. There isn’t even any “coming out of”. There is only matter of certain extension and shape that were once not given, then were.

In general, then, as long as the matter’s extension and shape don’t change, the representations of them won’t change, and they all will end up being known as a single consistent thing to all observers with congruent cognitive systems, so everybody experiences the same thing. So when you asked that guy how many branches he sees, by all accounts he should see just as many as you, insofar as his senses are affected in exactly the same way, by exactly the same matter, as yours. All else being given….language, rationality and so on.

TA-DAAAA!!!! I mean….how much simpler can it be!!!!

Do others here feel a certain disquiet in the framing of these arguments in terms that date from the 1700's?

Anyway, up to 31 votes and the discrepancy remains. If anything, the realist vote is dropping.

Quoting Wayfarer

(Take a look at the poem currently pinned to my profile page.)

You added the reference to the Emily Dickinson poem after my initial response and your reference to it reminds me of a point I've made many times in conversations with you: that poems do not explain, they evoke. (By the way I very much like that poem, and Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets).

Quoting 180 Proof

Maybe you can succinctly explain to me, Janus – what Wayfarer obviously can't (re: ?180 Proof
) – the function of "transcendental idealism" in contrast to "empirical realism".

Probably @Mww would be a better candidate for that task. I will come back to respond to this as greater length and to all the responses I've received. but I have little time for the next few days. I'll be interested to see what unfolds in this discussion in the meantime.

I voted "The question is too unclear to answer".

If I believe that there is an external world but that it is properly described by something like quantum field theory and not by our everyday talk of cups and chairs, am I a realist or an idealist? I would say that I'm neither. Not all anti-realisms are idealisms.

Quoting Michael

If I believe that there is an external world but that it is properly described by quantum field theory and not by our everyday talk of cups and chairs, am I a realist or an idealist?

Why, or how, would a quantum field theory qualify as idealism?

Quoting Banno

Why, or how, would a quantum field theory qualify as idealism?

I don't think it would.

Reply to Michael Then I don't understand why you did not vote for realism.

Quoting Banno

Then i don't understand why you did not vote for realism.

Because I don't believe that something like "the cup is in the cupboard" is a proper description of the external world.

Quoting Michael

I don't believe that something like "the cup is in the cupboard" is a proper description of the external world.

How very odd. In several ways.

"Proper" implies the use of some sort of norm, presumably a scientific one. I'd have taken "the cup is in the cupboard" as pretty "normal", to cross my metaphors.

One simply cannot produce a sentence that sets out that the cup is in the cupboard in terms of quantum field theory. Yet that the cup is in the cupboard is presumably the sort of thing that can be true or false.

There's also the curious use of "external" - external to what? That's found also in the PhilPapers question I used in the OP, so I guess it might be grounds for saying the question is ambiguous.

I don't think an anti-realist who voted for non-skeptical realism in this question would be alone.

Quoting Banno

I'd have taken "the cup is in the cupboard" as pretty "normal", to cross my metaphors.

It is, but I don't think we normally talk about the external world.

Quoting Banno

Yet that the cup is in the cupboard is presumably the sort of thing that can be true or false.

That doesn't entail realism. Things are still true or false even if idealism or some other anti-realism is correct.

Quoting Michael

It is, but I don't think we normally talk about the external world.

Really? What is it we talk about , then?

Quoting Michael

That doesn't entail realism.

It seems we need to differentiate realism as opposed to anti-realism from realism as opposed to idealism, in order to proceed. But that would require setting out clearly a distinction between anti-realism and idealism. A good topic.

I'll posit that an anti-realist might hold that certain statements are neither true nor false when they do not stand in a suitable relation to an observer. Presumably Schrödinger's cat is such an instance, and perhaps you would add the properties of the cup while it is unobserved in the cupboard.

So does the cup in the cupboard, unobserved, have a handle?

A realist would say it does, an anti-realist might say that there is no truth or falsity to the issue.

Quoting Banno

Really? What is it we talk about , then?

Cups and cupboards and other everyday stuff, as opposed to quantum fields.

Quoting Banno

It seems we need to differentiate realism as opposed to anti-realism from realism as opposed to idealism, in order to proceed.

Yes, which is why I answered "The question is too unclear to answer".

Quoting Banno

I'll posit that an anti-realist might hold that certain statements are neither true nor false when they do not stand in a suitable relation to an observer. Presumably Schrödinger's cat is such an instance, and perhaps you would add the properties of the cup while it is unobserved in the cupboard.

So does the cup in the cupboard, unobserved, have a handle?

A realist would say it does, an anti-realist might say that there is no truth or falsity to the issue.

I think there's a distinction between truth bivalence and external world realism. There's no prima facie reason that the former requires the latter. If it is possible that "it will rain tomorrow" is true, and if eternalism is false, then a statement can be true even if it is about something that doesn't exist. So a statement like "it will rain tomorrow" can be true whether external world realism is the case or idealism is the case.

Quoting Michael

Yes, which is why I answered "The question is too unclear to answer".

Ok, that's a different reason. Seems to me that the juxtaposition against idealism is clear from the question. There were indeed seperate questions about metaontology, with 12% opting for antirealism, and another on scientific anti-realism, with 15% leaning towards anti-realism.

Quoting Michael

I think there's a distinction between truth bivalence and external world realism.

Isn't that exactly the same as the distinction between realism/antirealism and realism/idealism? That is, we seem to agree that someone who rejects bivalence towards the stuff around us may also reject idealism. And someone who accepts idealism might accept bivalence.

But how each of these might be filled out remains an issue.

Hence the example as a way of cutting through the finesse. I say the cup in the cupboard is better thought of as having a handle than as being in some odd state similar to a quantum superposition. I don't think that we can usefully claim things such as that the world is "properly described by something like quantum field theory and not by our everyday talk of cups and chairs".

I'd be keen to see other answers: Does the cup in the cupboard, unobserved, have a handle?

Quoting Banno

I say the cup in the cupboard is better thought of as having a handle than as being in some odd state similar to a quantum superposition.

So do I.

Objects in the external world are correctly described by quantum fields. Cups aren't correctly described by quantum fields. Therefore, cups aren't objects in the external world. Unobserved cups aren't objects in the external world either, and for the same reason.

Quoting Banno

I don't think that we can usefully claim things such as that the world is "properly described by something like quantum field theory and not by our everyday talk of cups and chairs".

Neither do I. But I do think that it is correct to claim that the external world is properly described by something like quantum field theory.

The familiar world of cups and cupboards is of course properly described by our everyday talk of cups and cupboards (and not by quantum field theory).

And so the familiar world of cups and cupboards isn't the external world.

Quoting Michael

Therefore, cups aren't objects in the external world

Then I don't understand what your "external world" is. I take a cup to be paradigmatic of an object in the world.

Notice that I dropped the word "external". What is achieved by using it?

There's a line of thought that takes quantum stuff to be somehow more fundamental than cups. I am thinking that this is what you have in mind with talk of "proper" descriptions. That is, there's a valuation going on here were quantum talk is considered better than talk of cups; and this despite our apparent agreement that one cannot in quantum terms ask someone to get a cup from the cupboard.

Seems to me fairly plain that we have here two very different activities - making tea and building super colliders - with differing languages. It follows that nether way of talking has some innate superiority.

Quoting Banno

Then I don't understand what your "external world" is.

It's the world that quantum field theory describes. Do you agree that there is such a world? If so then either a) cups can be described by quantum field theory, or b) cups aren't objects in that external world.

Quoting Banno

Notice that I dropped the word "external". What is achieved by using it?

Presumably something, hence why the question you (or rather PhilPapers) asked was "External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism?"

Again, this is why I answered "The question is too unclear to answer". You haven't defined "external world" or "realism" in your question.

Quoting Banno

Seems to me fairly plain that we have here two very different activities - making tea and building super colliders - with differing languages. It follows that nether way of talking has some innate superiority.

I'm not saying that either has some innate superiority. I'm saying that they each describe different things. Quantum field theory describes the external world, everyday languages describes a non-external world.

Quoting Michael

It's the world that quantum field theory describes.

Ok. I don't understand what it is "external" to, but let it pass.

Quoting Michael

If so then either a) cups can be described by quantum field theory, or b) cups aren't objects in that external world.

So it seems you now have two worlds, one described by quantum, the other by everyday language: Quoting Michael

Quantum field theory describes the external world, everyday languages describes a non-external world.

I don't think we should be happy with that. Seems to me better to say that we have two ways of talking about the exact same world. Multiple ways of using language, to talk in different ways about the same thing.

Quoting Michael

You haven't defined "external world" or "realism" in your question.

I hope I made it clear that given that the terms are undefined in the PhilPapers survey, continuity mitigated against my offering a definition. I presumed folk would use whatever definition suited their purposes.

But cheers - thanks for your response.

Quoting Banno

Multiple ways of using language, to talk in different ways about the same thing.

That’s where I disagree. Quantum field theory doesn’t talk about cups or cupboards or King Charles III, but our everyday language does. Therefore it’s not a case of multiple languages being used to talk about the same thing but multiple languages being used to talk about different things.

Quoting Banno

Ok. I don't understand what it is "external" to, but let it pass.

Then how do you distinguish realism from idealism? Surely “external material world” means something to you for you to make sense of being one or the other?

Quoting Michael

Then how do you distinguish realism from idealism?

Roughly, realism holds that some things are as they are, without regard to their relation to us, while idealism holds that things are otherwise; that they are as they are only in relation to us, or some mind of some sort - the details are sketchy.

I don't see that phrasing this in terms of "internal" and "external" helps much. It's got something to do with the world being internal to the mind, I suppose, but what and how...

Quoting Michael

multiple languages being used to talk about different things

I took you to be claiming that the cup was actually quantum in some way, from this:Quoting Michael

...there is an external world but that it is properly described by something like quantum field theory and not by our everyday talk of cups and chairs

...it seemed that you thought we had a choice between describing the cup in everyday terms and describing it in quantum terms, but that quantum terms were "proper". Presumably the quantum stuff is not irrelevant nor incommensurate with the everyday stuff - as evidenced by the device on which you are reading this.

Quoting Banno

Roughly, realism holds that some things are as they are, without regard to their relation to us, while idealism holds that things are otherwise; that they are as they are only in relation to us, or some mind of some sort - the details are sketchy.

I don't see that phrasing this in terms of "internal" and "external" helps much. It's got something to do with the world being internal to the mind, I suppose, but what and how...

I think of idealism as simply being a substance monism, contrasted primarily with materialism and substance/property dualism. I don't think that "things being as they are", or truth-bivalence, depends on either materialism or substance/property dualism being true, and so isn't excluded by idealism being true.

As an example, consider the square root of 2. I don't think the answer is mind-dependent. The square root of 2 does not depend on what I think or you think or anyone else thinks. But it also isn't matter-dependent. The square root of 2 does not depend on the existence of stars or planets or electrons or gravity or even space itself. Mathematical truths are bivalent, but do not depend on materialism or substance/property dualism, and so are not excluded by idealism. Even if everything that exists is fundamentally mental in nature, there is a truth to the square root of 2 and this truth is independent of all the minds that exist. Just as if everything that exists is fundamentally physical in nature, there is a truth to the square root of 2 and this truth is independent of all the matter that exists.

As I mentioned before, there's a distinction between truth and ontology. Counterfactuals and predictions can be true even though their truth has nothing to do with anything that actually exists.

In terms of "internal" and "external", there are a few ways of considering it. If substance/property dualism is true then the "external" world is the material stuff, and the "internal" world is the immaterial stuff. If idealism is true then everything is "internal" and nothing is "external". If materialism is true then the "internal" world is the matter that constitutes our minds and the "external" world is everything else.

Quoting Banno

I took you to be claiming that the cup was actually quantum in some way, from this:

...it seemed that you thought we had a choice between describing the cup in everyday terms and describing it in quantum terms, but that quantum terms were "proper".

No, I’m just making this argument:

Objects in the external world are correctly described by quantum fields.
Cups aren't correctly described by quantum fields.
Therefore, cups aren't objects in the external world.

As an analogy, countries are not reducible to landmass. A realist might argue that landmass would continue to exist even if all humans were to die, but they might accept that countries wouldn't continue to exist if all humans were to die. And this isn't simply the trivial fact that nothing would be called a country (as nothing would be called landmass either). It is the more meaningful understanding that being a country is something that only obtains within the context of human perspective and social practices. In the absence of such a context, countries do not exist.

I think that the same logic applies to being landmass, and being a cup, and being red. These predicates only obtain within the context of human perspective and social practices. In the absence of such a context, landmass, cups, and the colour red do not exist. But the things described by something like quantum field theory do continue to exist even if all humans were to die.

So I would say that I'm a (property) dualist who believes in an external material world, and perhaps also a scientific realist, but not a metaphysical realist.

Quoting Michael

…….there is a truth to the square root of 2 and this truth is independent of all the minds that exist.

Quoting Michael

……there is a truth to the square root of 2 and this truth is independent of all the matter that exists.

What else is there?

Quoting Mww

What else is there?

Probably nothing. The mistake is in thinking that a statement's truth depends on the existence of something.

Imagine that just two things exist; a red ball and a blue ball. The statement "a red ball exists" is made true by the existence of a red ball, and the statement "a blue ball exists" is made true by the existence of a blue ball. But there are many other true statements, e.g. "a yellow ball does not exist". This statement isn't made true by the existence of the red ball or by the existence of the blue ball; rather it's made true by the non-existence of a yellow ball.

Similar situations occur with predictions (if we reject eternalism) and counterfactuals. Statements like "it will rain tomorrow" and "I would have been a father by now had I married at 18" are not made true by anything that exists. The future doesn't exist, but statements about the future can be true. Counterfactual scenarios don't exist, but counterfactual statements can be true.

And, again, the same should be evident with mathematics. The square root of 2 does not depend on the existence of space or gravity or atoms, and nor does it depend on the existence of living, thinking people. But there is a square root of 2. Its truth just has nothing to do with anything that exists.

This also explains why the claim that solipsism entails omniscience is also mistaken. Imagine that just two things exist: John's mind and Jane's mind. These minds do not interact. John is not aware of Jane and Jane is not aware of John. John and Jane each consider two statements: "only my mind exists" and "something or someone other than my mind exists". Neither John nor Jane know which of these two statements is true. Some time later, John dies. Now, only Jane's mind exists. Jane doesn't suddenly find herself knowing that only her mind exists. She still considers it possible that something or someone other than her mind exists. In fact, she might be a non-solipsist and believes that something or someone other her mind does exist. But she's wrong. Even though her mind is the only thing that exists, the truth of "only my mind exists" is independent of her beliefs.

(And as a related point, the above example shows why idealism doesn't entail solipsism. It is entirely possible that everything that exists is fundamentally mental in substance and that there are multiple minds, e.g. John and Jane. The existence of space and gravity and atoms and other material objects is not prima facie necessary for more than one thinking thing to exist.)

Quoting Michael

What else is there?
— Mww

Probably nothing. The mistake is in thinking that a statement's truth depends on the existence of something.

On the existence of something, agreed. But it does seem as though truth must depend on something, and absent mind and matter there is probably nothing, that leaves truth to be dependent on probably something. Which probably causes the critical thinker to raise one incredulous eyebrow and the average thinker to raise ‘em both.
————

Quoting Michael

….there is a square root of 2. Its truth just has nothing to do with anything that exists.

Truth, here, just indicates there is no inherent self-contradiction in the proposition, which, again, requires a mind, does it not? Whether mind or reason, even if not attributed with existence, must be something. Or maybe it’s better to say must be not nothing.
————

Quoting Michael

And as a related point, (…) idealism doesn't entail solipsism.

No, it doesn’t and shouldn’t, but typically it happens. Definition-specific apparently.

Good stuff from @Michael. I agree with the characterisation of idealism.

Quoting Mww

But it does seem as though truth must depend on something

The truth of “the square root of 4 is 2” depends on the square root of 4 being 2. But the square root of 4 being true doesn’t depend on the existence of gravity or electricity or other material object, and nor does it depend on the existence of some immaterial consciousness.

That the truth depends on something isn’t that it depends on the existence of something. Again as an example, the truth of “a yellow ball doesn’t exist” quite obviously depends on the non-existence of something.

Quoting Mww

Truth, here, just indicates there is no inherent self-contradiction in the proposition, which, again, requires a mind, does it not?

I don’t think so. There are plenty of unsolved problems in mathematics. The Reimann hypothesis is either true or false, even though it hasn’t been (dis)proven. Its truth doesn’t depend on what we believe. It doesn’t depend on what inanimate matter believes either. I suppose you could argue for mathematical realism and claim that mathematical entities exist as abstract objects, but that seems both unnecessary and fantastical.

Quoting Michael

That the truth depends on something isn’t that it depends on the existence of something.

Be that as it may, isn’t the prerogative of intelligence, insofar as it deems truth to be a valid idea, to determine what it does depends on, from whence does truth receive its justification?

Quoting Michael

I suppose you could argue for mathematical realism and claim that mathematical entities exist as abstract objects, but that seems both unnecessary and fantastical.

I’d go with fantastical, but I’d be reluctant to deny necessity. Just as for truth, there must be something by which the comprehending the appearance of natural relations, becomes possible.

Quoting Mww

Be that as it may, isn’t the prerogative of intelligence, insofar as it deems truth to be a valid idea, to determine what it does depends on, from whence does truth receive its justification?

I gave examples: "the square root of 4 is 2" being true depends on the square root of 4 being 2; "a yellow ball does not exist" being true depends on a yellow ball not existing.

Quoting Mww

Just as for truth, there must be something by which the comprehending the appearance of natural relations, becomes possible.

You seem to be suggesting that all facts are reducible to something which exists? The square root of 4 is 2 only if something exists which makes it so? A yellow ball does not exist only if something exists which makes it so? I don't see why. And in the case of the latter example, it seems even nonsensical. And why end the questioning there? Why not ask what the existence of something depends on? What does the existence of gravity depend on? What does the existence of an external material world depend on? Or does (material?) existence count as a brute fact, and the only possible brute fact?

I don't see any reason to accept that. Perhaps the existence of an external material world is a brute fact. But perhaps the non-existence of a yellow ball is also a brute fact, and doesn't in turn depend on the existence of something else. And perhaps the square root of 4 being 2 is a brute fact, and doesn't in turn depend on the existence of either physical matter or immaterial minds (or on the existence of mind- and matter-independent abstract entities).

Reply to Michael

Everything I said here seven hours ago, doesn’t relate to the content of the post it was in response to. You did some serious editing, I must say.

Anyway…..I’m not up for a do-over, so, thanks for the talk.

Quoting 180 Proof

Maybe you can succinctly explain to me, Janus – what Wayfarer obviously can't (re: ?180 Proof
) – the function of "transcendental idealism" in contrast to "empirical realism".

Reply to Mww

I'm no Kant scholar,180, but I've got a little time this morning, so I'll give it a go. As far as I know the idea that we have access only to appearances goes back to Locke, and prior to Kant was developed by Hume and Berkeley in quite different ways. Berkeley posited that what we experience as the external world is a reality implanted in our minds by God, and Hume responded by saying that all we can know is the play of sensory phenomena and ideas, a position which leads to a particular kind of skepticism about causation and the nature of the external world. It is that skepticism which Kant sought to overcome

This observation that we have access only to appearances is open to different ways of framing it, but the basic idea is that we only have access to our personal and collective experiences and judgements. But if our experience were unconstrained by anything "outside" it, then it would be impossible to explain how we and even animals share a common world wherein it can be observed that we all (or most of us at least) respond in ways that suggest that there is a real world full of real things that is revealed to our senses. It is on account of that that Kant posits empirical realism.

However, we are able to imagine that how the world is for us is not necessarily how it is "in itself". and it might even plausibly follow, since our experience consists of "representations" that are mediated by concepts and judgements, that the world in itself cannot be the same as it is for us. We can even wonder if the world in itself could possibly be anything determinate at all.

For Kant this claim that the transcendental nature of the world in itself is inaccessible entails that it cannot be anything but an idea for us (since we cannot rationally believe after the advent of this critical realization of the role the mind plays in structuring empirical reality, that our senses reveal the mind-independent nature of the world in itself). For Kant this opens to way to faith, to the deliverances of practical reason, to belief in "freedom, immortality and God".

In answer to @Mww regarding the idea that Kant claims the objects of the empirical world must affect our senses pre-cognitively as shapes, I would ask why it could not be, in line with modern physics, that pre-cognitively the "in itself' is a field of differing energetic intensities that gives rise to the perception of entities and objects of diverse shapes and forms; that the in-itself has no "shape" as we conceive of shape.

It seems to me that we don't, and cannot, know for sure. For all we know Berkeley might have been right after all. Not to say I think he was.I like to think about different views and what they entail and imply, but I prefer to resist any tendency to adopt any of them.

Reply to L'éléphant

As I said before, Kant's thinking, like everyone else's, is dualistic, but I see no reason to believe that he was a committed substance dualist.

Quoting Michael

I think of idealism as simply being a substance monism

Well, that's not the common view. Where did you get this from, or is it just yours?

Quoting Michael

Objects in the external world are correctly described by quantum fields.
Cups aren't correctly described by quantum fields.
Therefore, cups aren't objects in the external world.

Objects in the fribble are correctly described by quantum fields.
Cups aren't correctly described by quantum fields.
Therefore, cups aren't objects in the fribble.

But what's fribble?

But sure, this landmass counts as England in the game of politics. So what counts as internal, what counts as external? The British Isles are external, but England internal?
Quoting Michael

If substance/property dualism is true then the "external" world is the material stuff, and the "internal" world is the immaterial stuff.

So if the external is just material stuff, why use the word "external"? It adds nothing.

Quoting Michael

If idealism is true then everything is "internal" and nothing is "external".

But then if nothing is external, the difference between internal and external dissipates.

Quoting Michael

If materialism is true then the "internal" world is the matter that constitutes our minds and the "external" world is everything else.

And there being no difference between the mater of mind and the other stuff, there would again be no difference between internal and external.

So in the end I suppose we agree that the notion of internal and external is at least fraught with issues.

Quoting Michael

In terms of "internal" and "external", there are a few ways of considering it. If substance/property dualism is true then the "external" world is the material stuff, and the "internal" world is the immaterial stuff. If idealism is true then everything is "internal" and nothing is "external". If materialism is true then the "internal" world is the matter that constitutes our minds and the "external" world is everything else.

It seems that the notion of external and internal derives form the idea of things being internal or external to the body. Our bodies are experienced and understood as being in the world, but the world is not experienced as being in our bodies. Both substances and properties (apart from the substance and properties of our bodies themselves) are experienced and understood as being external to our bodies also.

If idealism were true that would not change; the experience would remain exactly the same even if the understanding changed. Unless you are speaking of solipsism, If the world were thought to be fundamentally mind our minds would still be understood to be in that universal mind, and yet that whole mind (which would include, but would not be limited to, the minds of others) would not be understood to be in my mind,

Any way, it's probably better to think in terms of dependence than in terms of internal/external if you want to arrive at coherent models of different metaphysical speculations.

Quoting Banno

But then if nothing is external, the difference between internal and external dissipates.

Maybe, they will come up with some fancy existential word like “Other” rather than “external.” At this point, just plug the fly bottle and throw it away.

Quoting Janus

It seems that the notion of external and internal derives form the idea of things being internal or external to the body.

So your liver is internal?

That just doesn't seem to be how it is being used.

Reply to Richard B
Perhaps, in the end all this talk of internal and external is a poor rendering of the difference between factual and the language of our intentional attitudes towards those facts; of "The cup has a handle" against "I believe the cup has a handle".

Then materialism says there are only facts, idealism says there are only attitudes, neither is right, but at least the confusion can be set out clearly.

Quoting Banno

So your liver is internal?

That just doesn't seem to be how it is being used.

Yes the liver is internal to the body. How else do you think the notions of internal and exteranl originated, and continue to be analogously used, if not as referring to inside and outside of bodies or containers?

Reply to Janus So idealism holds that everything is inside one's body, while realism holds that everything is outside one's body.

How odd.

Quoting Banno

So idealism holds that everything is inside one's body, while realism holds that everything is outside one's body.

How odd.

How odd that you should think I was saying that. Perhaps if you read more closely you would have noticed the " analogously used", which I have now underlined for your benefit.

Also note that I have specifically said that I don't think idealism ( apart from solipsism) holds that everything is inside anything:

Quoting Janus

If idealism were true that would not change; the experience would remain exactly the same even if the understanding changed. Unless you are speaking of solipsism, If the world were thought to be fundamentally mind our minds would still be understood to be in that universal mind, and yet that whole mind (which would include, but would not be limited to, the minds of others) would not be understood to be in my mind,

Reply to Janus I can't see that the analogue works. "Internal", in so far as it makes any sense, is in the mind, not in the body.

Reply to Banno The "analogy" was not meant to indicate that internal always refers to things as being inside bodies, but as being inside some "container" or other, however that might be conceived. The liver is inside the body, the brain is inside the body: is the mind inside the body? If you are one of those who hold that the mind just is the brain, or even that the mind is a function of the brain, then you would have to, out of consistency, say "yes", no?

Reply to Janus Ok.

That does not look right, but I'll leave you to it.

Reply to Banno What does not look right?

Reply to Janus

Quoting Janus

It seems that the notion of external and internal derives form the idea of things being internal or external to the body.

Again, if you had said " the notion of external and internal derives from the idea of things being internal or external to the mind", it might have some traction.

Reply to Banno That seems overly esoteric and philosophically sophisticated to me. I think the notions of external and internal would have likely had a much more pedestrian origin. Like inside or outside the cave, house, or body, or bucket, or the woods, or the village and so on. But we'll likely never know exactly where the idea originated, since it was probably of pre-literate origin.

Reply to Janus Oh, you are just after an etymology. It's just "in", from PIE "en", I think. Seems the "turn" is just comparative.

Hence my puzzling as to what is "in", when used in the context of idealism and realism.

Quoting Banno

Oh, you are just after an etymology. It's just "in", from PIE "en", I think.

Hence my puzzling as to what is "in", when used in the context of idealism and realism.

Not so much an etymology as the origin of the concepts of being inside or outside. If the idea was first expressed in Proto-Indo-European that still would leave open the question of the origin of the concepts.

I think we can make sense of inside and outside in various philosophic contexts, whether realist or idealist. That wouldn't mean that there is only one way to make sense of them, even in the context of a specific metaphysical ideology.

Reply to Janus Well done, and more or less my take on Kant's project as well. My question, apparently, wasn't clearly stated or precisely focused, but your precis gives me an opportunity to nail it down more concretely. Consider ...

My thinking:

IF Kant is an "empirical realist",

and if "empirical" denotes how something is experienced or appears to us

and if Kant's ding-an-sich, or "in itself", denotes reality,

THEN, for the "empirical realist", appearances (i.e. "phenomena") are reality – or only aspects of reality;

THEREFORE, "for us"-"in itself" is a distinction without a difference either epistemically or onticly.

My re-question:

Where does my thinking about (the implications of) Kant's "empirical realism" go wrong? :chin:

Reply to 180 Proof Have a look at these blog posts

https://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-naturalism-part-ii-kants.html

https://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-naturalism-part-iii-quest-for.html

[Quoting 180 Proof

and if "empirical" denotes how something is experienced or appears to us

I'd argue that this definition of empirical realism is actually of indirect realism in particular and not of empirical realism generally (as direct realism wouldn't allow for a distinction between the real and perceived).

I take Kant's position to deal heavily with how the mind organizes perceptions and what is required for the perception. As to the thing in itself, I take that as beyond the limit of perception and not knowable.

Because of the emphasis upon the mind's peculiar way of knowing things, his position is referred to as transcendental, and because of the mind's inability to know the thing in itself, it's idealistic, thus transcendental idealism and not empirical realism better describes Kant.

The unknowablity of the thing in itself is a major problem with Kant, as it cannot even be said it's causative of the perception.

Quoting Hanover

transcendental idealism and not empirical realism better describes Kant.

Your summary of Kant is fine, but here you miss the fact that transcendental idealism and empirical realism are complementary. Kant says it explicitly: he's arguing for both, because they go together. And on the other side, he's against transcendental realism and empirical idealism. This is the structure of his system.

Quoting Banno

Well, that's not the common view. Where did you get this from, or is it just yours?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Idealism in sense (1) has been called “metaphysical” or “ontological idealism”, while idealism in sense (2) has been called “formal” or “epistemological idealism”. The modern paradigm of idealism in sense (1) might be considered to be George Berkeley’s “immaterialism”, according to which all that exists are ideas and the minds, less than divine or divine, that have them.

...

We thus agree with A.C. Ewing, who wrote in 1934 that all forms of idealism

"have in common the view that there can be no physical objects existing apart from some experience, and this might perhaps be taken as the definition of idealism..."

...

We also agree with Jeremy Dunham, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Sean Watson when they write that

"the idealist, rather than being anti-realist, is in fact … a realist concerning elements more usually dismissed from reality. (Dunham, Grant, & Watson 2011: 4)"

namely mind of some kind or other: the idealist denies the mind-independent reality of matter, but hardly denies the reality of mind....

Metaphysical arguments proceed by identifying some general constraints on existence and arguing that only minds of some sort or other satisfy such conditions...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical states.

…

Idealist views say that physical states are really mental.

…

Dualist views (the subject of this entry) say that the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other.

Idealism is concerned with what does and doesn't exist. This has no prima facie relevance to truth, except insofar as it then follows that "X exists" is only true if X is reducible to mental phenomena.

Quoting Banno

But then if nothing is external, the difference between internal and external dissipates.

Words and concepts can have a meaning even if nothing exists which satisfies the conditions of that meaning. Nothing is "supernatural", but the difference between the natural and the supernatural doesn't dissipate.

Michael:
Words can have a meaning even if nothing exists which satisfies the conditions of that meaning. Nothing is "supernatural", but the difference between the natural and the supernatural doesn't dissipate

That should be pinned somewhere

Quoting Wayfarer

I will admit I am interested in Bernardo Kastrup's 'analytical idealism'.

Kastrup seems to be swimming in the same esoteric waters that my own thesis merely dabbles in.
The main difference is that he claims to have personally experienced "The Other" (Universal Mind?), while I lack such adventures into the non-physical. For me, "Other" and "G*D" are rationally inferred & hypothetical , not directly known & experiential. Anyway, his "analytical idealism" seems to be generally amenable to the fundamental role of abstract information as described in Enformationism.

However, since my mundane experience seems to fit the ordinary sensations of the majority of people, for all practical purposes (science) I accept the existence of an "external reality", as a communal mental model (paradigm). But for impractical philosophical purposes, I entertain the possibility that Rational Information (including Mathematics) is more fundamental that Physical Matter. For hardline Atheists, that puts me into their broad sh*t-can category of religious believers in invisible gods & ghosts & spooks & spirits. And those scathing skeptics won't accept my protestations to the contrary.

Instead, I believe that the purpose of Philosophy is to explore the metaphysical realm of "Ideas", beyond the physical limits of empirical science, while avoiding the slippery slope into blind faith. Does that openness to possibilities make me an un-skeptical believer in Idealism, as an irrational religious faith? I hope not. :smile:

Information Realism :
Artificial Intelligence researcher, Kastrup, seems to be finding evidence to support the ancient philosophy of Idealism, which further weakens the equally venerable Atomic & Materialistic paradigms of modern science. He is the author of a book, The Idea of The World, which argues for the “mental nature of reality”, also known as “metaphysical realism” . In this article he discusses “information realism”, and begins by quoting physicist Max Tegmark, author of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. “For Tegmark, the universe is a ‘set of abstract entities with relations between them,’ . . . Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real.” Kastrup then describes how reductive methods failed to find the definitive atom, and instead discovered only amorphous fields. “At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.” This is the conceptual conundrum that launched by own investigation into “the mental nature of reality”, which I call Enformationism.
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page18.html

Contra Idealism :
[i]I develop this unresolved paradox into a rigorous argument against Analytic Idealism. . . . . Some of the omissions of this model given its theorising are that it fails to adequately account for:
1. The apparent fine-tuning of the universe: it proposes that mind at large is unreflective and non-self-aware, and it is hard to see how it could then be intelligent - which would seem to be required to design our universe.
2. The existence and extent of evil in our reality. A monistic theory (single subject of consciousness; single ontological substance) somehow has to reconcile the bad and the good, whereas a dualistic theory (distinct subjects of consciousness with differing essential natures, both good and evil) assumes no need for reconciliation. ][/i]
https://creativeandcritical.net/ontology/analysing-the-analytic-idealism-of-bernardo-kastrup
Note -- My own thesis does attempt to account for those apparent deficiencies of Reality, primarily by denying the Genesis account of the intention behind Creation.

Reply to Michael Sure. The question remains, what is external doing in the phrase "external reality"?

Also not following how you got "idealism as simply being a substance monism" from "all that exists are ideas and the minds, less than divine or divine, that have them" or "there can be no physical objects existing apart from some experience, and this might perhaps be taken as the definition of idealism..", " the idealist denies the mind-independent reality of matter", or "Metaphysical arguments proceed by identifying some general constraints on existence and arguing that only minds of some sort or other satisfy such conditions"... even on bold.

Some Aristotelian notion of substance, I suppose.

Quoting Banno

Sure. The question remains, what is external doing in the phrase "external reality"?

"External reality" refers to the notion of a domain of objects existing independently ("outside") of any subjective mental phenomena.

Quoting Banno

Also not following how you got "idealism as simply being a substance monism" from "all that exists are ideas and the minds, less than divine or divine, that have them" or "there can be no physical objects existing apart from some experience, and this might perhaps be taken as the definition of idealism..", " the idealist denies the mind-independent reality of matter", or "Metaphysical arguments proceed by identifying some general constraints on existence and arguing that only minds of some sort or other satisfy such conditions"... even on bold.

Some Aristotelian notion of substance, I suppose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance. Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind.

@Michael

Back to basics!

I guess non-emergent monistic property dualism would be one unbroken circle with a P and an M in it. Is that right?

Emergent property dualism would be the same as the pysicalism diagram I suppose. So I guess physicalist emergentism divides into two, weak emergentism (no property dualism) and strong emergentism (property dualism). We should do another more complex diagram to include more positions. I think it's useful. Might head off a lot of pointless exchanges if we could all see the map of the various positions. @Nickolasgaspar Where are you in this scheme? Outside it throwing rotten eggs?

Quoting 180 Proof

IF Kant is an "empirical realist",

and if "empirical" denotes how something is experienced or appears to us

and if Kant's ding-an-sich, or "in itself", denotes reality,

THEN, for the "empirical realist", appearances (i.e. "phenomena") are reality – or only aspects of reality;

THEREFORE, "for us"-"in itself" is a distinction without a difference either epistemically or onticly.

My re-question:

Where does my thinking about (the implications of) Kant's "empirical realism" go wrong? :chin:

I am getting to this a tad tardily, but anyhow...

It's an interesting question whether Kant's "in itself" denotes a reality. I think it must since it is thought as being what is in itself independently of the appearances it, whatever it is, gives rise to.

As I wrote in an earlier post:

I have sometimes thought that Kant has his characterization of his philosophy as empirical realist and transcendental idealist backwards. We know the empirical world only via ideas; as I like to say the empirical world is a collective representation and in that sense it is ideal. About the transcendental we have no idea, except that if it is at all it must be real.

When Kant says the in-itself is transcendentally ideal, he seems to mean that it is so for us, since we have no sensory access to its inherent nature, but only to the appearances it gives rise to. So, as you said earlier it is an epistemological perspective, not an ontological perspective. Thinking from our perspective we can say that the world of the senses is real, and the world of ideas, which the in itself can only inhabit for us, is ideal.

If we take an ontological standpoint it seems to me that is reversed, the empirical world, being a collective representation is ideal, although founded in the transcendentally real. We could say that the world of the senses is just an aspect of the real, which seems to be what you are saying, and I think that makes sense too, although we must also admit that it is mediated by ideas.

In Kant's own words (as translated): "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.".

Quoting 180 Proof

There is of course the basic dualistic character of Kant's philosophy in the sense of phenomena/ noumena or for us/ in itself, but that just reflects the ineliminably dualistic nature of all our thinking, and in no way entails substance dualism. — Janus

I read Kant's "dualistic thinking" as (an attempt at) 'ontologizing epistemology' (i.e. reify knowing) by designating "for us" the tip "phenomena" of the iceberg "in itself" above the water line "noumena". So on what grounds does Kant posit the "in itself" from which he then conjures-up the "for us" to 'retro-construct' with various "transcendental" sleights-of-mind?

It certainly seems Kant can be read that way: as "ontologizing epistemology"; the question would be whether that was his intention or whether it is an unconscious or unacknowledged entailment of his ideas. It's a good question, and I have to say I'm not sure. If I recall correctly there is in the world of Kant scholarship a controversy as to whether Kant's emprical/ transcendental dichotomy should be interpreted as a "dual aspect" or a "dual world" proposition.

Hopefully @Mww (and informed others) might comment.

Reply to Michael Neutral monism seems to have something in common with Spinoza's metaphysics. For Spinoza extensa and cogitans were just two of the infinite attributes of the one substance.

Quoting bert1

Emergent property dualism

meaningless made up concepts

Quoting Janus

It's an interesting question whether Kant's "in itself" denotes a reality

“…. The schema of reality is existence in a determined time….”
“…. For I can say only of a thing in itself that it exists without relation to the senses and experience….”
“…. we can have no cognition of an object, as a thing in itself, but only as an object of sensible intuition, that is, as phenomenon…”

Put them together, you get an affirmation that the thing in itself denotes an existence in a determined time.

Quoting Janus

controversy as to whether Kant's emprical/ transcendental dichotomy should be interpreted as a "dual aspect" or a "dual world" proposition.

If there is no direct knowledge of the world, but only of its representations, there is no need for a dual world. There is one world affecting the senses, half of a dual aspect, and the system by which it is understood, the other half.

Lots between the lines in all that, if you’re inclined to dig it out.

I'll try to "dig it out":

Quoting Mww

“…. The schema of reality is existence in a determined time….”
“…. For I can say only of a thing in itself that it exists without relation to the senses and experience….”
“…. we can have no cognition of an object, as a thing in itself, but only as an object of sensible intuition, that is, as phenomenon…”

Put them together, you get an affirmation that the thing in itself denotes an existence in a determined time.

If "the schema of reality is existence in a determined time" then that is referring to a reality for us; a collective representation, no?

If " a thing in itself [...] exists without relation to the senses and experience" then does it not follow that it is real and yet undetermined, or better, indeterminable?

If " we can have no cognition of an object, as a thing in itself, but only as an object of sensible intuition, that is, as phenomenon" then does it not follow that the object, or whatever it is that appears as an object, insofar as it exists "in itself" is real, even though unknown/ unknowable?

Quoting Mww

If there is no direct knowledge of the world, but only of its representations, there is no need for a dual world. There is one world affecting the senses, half of a dual aspect, and the system by which it is understood, the other half.

If there is just one world affecting the senses and the understanding, which are also part of that world, and yet "there is no direct knowledge of that world" where does that leave us?

Reply to Janus

If #1…..not so sure a reality is a collective representation.
If #2…..real, and indeterminable.
If #3….that object which appears to us is determinable/knowable. The object in itself is the object as it doesn’t appear, hence is not determinable/knowable.
————-

Quoting Janus

where does that leave us?

With the hard problem of consciousness?

Reply to Mww I'm not an adherent, so not what I had in mind.

Quoting Mww

If #1…..not so sure a reality is a collective representation.
If #2…..real, and indeterminable.
If #3….that object which appears to us is determinable/knowable. The object in itself is the object as it doesn’t appear, hence is not determinable/knowable.
————-

#1: "The world (reality) is the totality of facts..." what is a fact if not a collective representation?

#2&3: You agree the object in itself is transcendental (to experience) and real...so why not Transcendental Realism...?