Hello Plaque Flag,

I totally respect going at Heidegger's themes without the baggage

Yeah, his terminology isn’t the most intuitive, to say the least; so I try not to import it into my statements unless absolutely necessary. Also, I am not that well-versed in Heidegger, so I also don’t want to misrepresent his views.

I think you are aiming at something like what I call the entanglement of the object and subject. They cannot be isolated without absurdity.

One could say this of my view iff what they are referring to by ‘object’ is ‘being’. Most people use ‘object’ in the sense of an actual, tangible ‘thing’ in reality that they are experiencing; and, as in idealist myself, I reject the existent of such ‘things’.

There’s has to be something, by my lights, mind-independent even in the case that the world is fundamentally a mind—as, at the very least, that mind exists mind-independently. For me, ‘being’ is the most primitive of all, and it is mind-independent.

Hello Plaque Flag,

I agree. I was going to quote Heidegger's Being & Time where he talks about the act of uncovering, but I couldn't find the quote in any timely manner; but, yes, what I am saying is essentially what heidegger said without diving into dasein (because I don't think it is necessary in order to define truth to use his entire framework).

Hello Banno,

This critique may be applied to any dualism. So here, the dualism is the evolving physical world on the one hand and intentionality through intentionality on the other.

I am not a dualist: juxtaposing two things does not entail, in-itself, ontological dualism; which is the only type of dualism subject to your critique.

You juxtapose quantity and quality in one thread, and then attempt to solve the dilemma by giving primacy to quality

I am not saying, similar to Descartes, that quantities and qualities exist as two separate ontologies whatsoever; I am claiming that a quantity cannot produce a quality (but vice-versa is possible). I am a substance monist.

in another thread you puzzle over the juxtaposition of object and subject.

I am not sure as to what you are referring to here: could you elaborate?

What I would draw attention to is that inevitably, if one commences with a juxtaposition, thereby constructing a dualism, then one should not be surprised to find oneself in a world divided.

This is false: to juxtaposition is just to compare two things. It does not entail any form of ontological dualism whatsoever. A substance monist can compare any two properties they want and still claim that both are reducible to the same substance. The problem with substance dualism is that it is claiming there are two types of existence; which doesn’t work at all.

I can compare quantities and qualities and still claim that there is only one type of existence (i.e., monism).

Of course, the out, for all three of you, is god.

“Out” from what? I am providing, just like mainstream physicalism, a substance monist account of the world.

Also, I would like to note that, although I have mentioned the Universal Mind as God, it is entirely possible to argue cogently for that mind not being God (viz., there are arguments to be made for atheistic idealism).

But then there is the problem of invoking god as the solution to a philosophical problem - he can do anything, and hence explains nothing.

This is just a straw man. Banno, when did I ever say that the Universal Mind is omnipotent? In fact, I think that the universal mind is only the “most powerful” in the sense that it is reality; and there are many (and I mean many) things it cannot do (e.g., violate the laws of logic, manifest a flower on this table right now because it feels like it, rescue people in the form of miracles, etc.).

The upshot is that I find not just the present arguments, but this very way of attempting to explain things, from juxtaposition, quite unconvincing not just at the level of the argument presented, but as a method.

The point, in my case, is to demonstrate the falsity of what most people nowadays implicitly hold as true: that a quantitative world produces qualitative experience. What part of juxtaposition do you not like (in terms of a method)? Again, it doesn’t entail dualism (in itself).

Hello Javi,

I wish I had better grammar skills because I am aware that I am not expressing myself properly and maybe this is why you are confused.

No worries my friend! I may also just be my slow mind understanding what you are saying. This is where I am confused:

I agree with your explanation of the truth. I think here is where we agree definitively.
…
We disagree in the assessment of truth because I interpret this concept objectively, without any interference of mind.

To me, these two claims are incoherent with each other: you say, on the one hand, that you agree with my definition (which entails that it is not objective) but then, on the other hand, say you disagree because it is objective.

However, I think I may be understanding now better what you are trying to say:

We cannot achieve the truth if subjectiveness kicks in. I said "hallucination" in my previous posts, but we can use other kind of flaw subjective interference. For example: what is truth for you, it could be fake for me. Nonetheless, we have to accept the premise that there is something out there which is real. Whether it is true or false doesn't affect the being.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you are noting that truth isn’t ‘subjective’ in the sense that we get to make up what is true; and, that, I totally agree with! However, I would say that truth is absolute to capture that and not objective. Perhaps it is just a difference in terms, but I would say that the assertion → actuality relation holds true for every subject (and is not contingent on any particular subject); however, it is still subjective insofar as there needs to be a subject to assert it (if that makes sense). It can’t be objective, by my lights, if it requires a subject (i.e., is contingent in any way on a subject), but it can still be absolute (viz., if my assertion corresponds to reality, then if you were to assert the same thing then it would also have to be true—we don’t get to change propositional values based off of our ‘feelings’ or the like). Is that what you are trying to convey?

Hello Banno,

Although I cannot speak for what ucarr is saying (as I haven’t read it), I just would like to take this opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about my view.

There are a few arguments on the forum at present that start by assuming that such-and-such is irreducible, and then pretend to discover that it must have some ontological priority

Firstly, I would just like to point out how, with all due respect, how disingenuous this sort of straw man of my position is. I’ve posted two discussion boards (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14524/argument-for-a-mind-dependent-qualitative-world and https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14346/a-case-for-analytic-idealism) outlining arguments for why I think qualities are irreducible to quantities (and, more generally, why mental states are irreducible to brain states).

Now, if you disagree with my assessment, then that is totally fine; but if you genuinely believe that my claim is that of an assumption and mere pretend, then I would like you to provide some proof of this.

Secondly, since you referenced 180 Proof’s post, I would like to note, as well, that I am not anthropomorphizing the universe. I do not hold that it has the ability to cognize nor deliberate nor any other human kind of higher evolved sentiments/capabilities.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello Count,

Strong emergence just means that something is a product of, or somehow ontological dependant on, other things.
…
Strong emergence is the idea that something can exist which depends on other things, but which is not reducible to them

I think the former definition is inadequate (as that is really just the definition of ‘emergence’, not strong emergence), but the latter one I agree with.

I have many problems with strong emergence (as opposed to weak emergence); and perhaps you can help me sort them out. To say that a property (or something) exists as emergent from a system (i.e., parts and the relationship/process between those parts) but cannot be conceptually reduced to such parts and relationships/processes between those parts is to posit an extra component to the emergence of this property (or something) that isn’t from the system; and, thusly, it is either to posit (1) that the system still is wholly responsible for the emergent property whilst being inadequate to explain it, or (2) that warrants the positing of another system to explain it. In the case of #1, one ends up with magic, in my opinion, as an explanation; for there is quite literally a piece to the puzzle that cannot be reduced to the system that allegedly caused the emergence—but then why think it emerged out of it (other than it being pure magic)?

For example:

For example, if consciousness is "strongly emergent," in the popular materialism of our day, it would mean that subjective experience cannot be adequately explained only in terms of biology/chemistry/physics.

To me, irreductive materialism is nonsense (and I say that with all due respect—and, perhaps, you can show me where I am wrong here): if one cannot conceptually explain yet consciousness in terms of the parts and relations/processes of parts that allegedly produced it, then one cannot say they know if that system produces it (although they may still find it plausible). Secondly, if they cannot explain it ever, which is what irreductive approaches are conceding, then they should look elsewhere, or amend that original formulation, for what produced it (and not just posit it still somehow magically emerges from it). Please correct me where I am wrong.

Thank you for sharing that quote: I am not sure I completely followed, but I will respond as adequately as I can:

Adopting a process metaphysics, however, reverses the exclusion of emergence, and opens the possibility that normativity, intentionality, and other phenomena might be modeled as natural emergents in the world. This integrative program is, in fact, being pursued in contemporary work

Where I am confused, is that if there’s just constant change, wouldn’t we still be able to nominally reduce phenomena to the estimated flux of parts that caused it (and thusly still are doing a form of reductionism)? I have no problem with admitting that the world has constant change in it, but how does that help evade the divide of mind and matter (e.g., “reverses the exclusion of emergence”)? To take your example, a tornado may just be a flux of parts relating to each other in just the right way to form a tornado; but that’s still a reductionist account of a tornado, no? There’s not strongly emergent property that cannot be explained here (by my lights).

Human beings for example replace 90+% of the atoms in their body on a regular basis, so in what sense are we defined by supervenience?

I think for people who deny continuance of identity through time, they would just respond that the mind (or body as a whole) is emergent from some parts which can be replaced periodically without damaging the emergent property (just like slowly moving data from one hard drive to another shouldn’t harm the data thereon); and, so, in the example of atoms, it doesn’t really entail, in itself, that we are not the same person even though we are not the same body anymore.

Hello Javi,

We disagree in the assessment of truth because I interpret this concept objectively, without any interference of mind. I didn't say it previously, but I believe that truth doesn't depend on the value of mind or conciousness. Truth is a reality that does exist and "is there", doesn't matter if we are percievers or not. Nonetheless, you consider truth as a "process of uncovering, which requires an uncoverer (mind) and the covered (mind-independent)."
Here is where it lies our discrepancies. I interpret truth objectively but subjectively (If I am not wrong...)

Correct me if I am wrong, but then it sounds like you are simply completely disagreeing with me, no? What are we in agreement about then?

It sounds like, when you say “truth is a reality that does exist and ‘is there’” that you are just using truth as synonymous with being; as if a thing exists, then it does so independently of minds. In this view, I think it doesn’t capture what truth is, as when we say “he is after the truth” or “he is in the truth” we do not merely mean that something exists but, rather, that his assertions correspond to what exists.

I understand. But this is a problem that relies on us, not the truth itself

If by ‘truth’ I was meaning ‘being’, then I would agree with you here. Whatever exists, well, exists! This doesn’t rely on a subject; but whether or not something is true or not does insofar as it presupposes a subject that is asserting something.

But I do not see why that's necessary to uncover the truth, when perception can lead us to artificial illusory "truths"

What ‘truth’ is is different than how well we can obtain it. Truth can be the correspondence of assertion (thought) to reality (being) all the while humans could be, let’s say, always 100% false in their assertions. This would just entail that what is asserted always does not correspond to reality (i.e., it is false). Therefore, the definition of truth stays intact irregardless of human error in obtaining it.

Hello Javi,

Yes, I am partially agree with you.

I see. Unfortunately, I am not entirely following where our disagreement lies: could you please refresh my memory as to what, then, you are disagreeing with in my assessment of truth?

Yet, the big issue is to discern when there is a real object and when there isn't

I don’t think this quite captures truth (for reasons I have already expounded); and, as another reason, it seems perception-dependent, which doesn’t capture many truth statements. For example, if it is just about determining if one is perceiving something illusory or non-illusory, then one could never determine the concept of concepts (or the concept of anything) because it is non-perceptive.

Hello Hypericin,

You positing something very thought provoking! Let me see if I can adequately respond.

Firstly, I would say that propositions are statements that express alleged truth and are not independent of a subject. So, here’s your diagram:

____(1)____ _____(2)_____ ___(3)__
Formulator --> Proposition<----> Reality

I would say something like this:

__________(2)__________
Proposition
____(1)____ ___(3)___
Formulator --> Reality

In other words, a proposition references a ‘formulation’ (i.e., an assertion) which is allegedly corresponding to something in reality; and it is true insofar as it actually does correspond and false if it doesn’t. The proposition, by my lights, cannot exist independently of formulation (i.e., of subjects).

I think for the propositions to exist subject-independently, which is what I am understanding you to be voicing as a concern here (that that may actually be the case), they would have to be abstract objects (like platonic forms); and I don’t really see any justification for claiming that (at this point).

Now, another interesting thing that you brought up is:

You quoted Aristotle, is this quote a subjective emission of a man, or is it an objective artifact that outlived its creator, who is now not even dust?

Does the truth of the propositions in a math book depend on the the fact that a subjective human happened to write them? Or is it independent of their creator?

In summary: does the truthity expressed in those propositions, when true, persist beyond (1) their initial formulator and (2) all subjects? This is a very interesting question.

I would say that propositions do not exist subject-independently, but that the proposition will hold equally so for any possible subject; so if Aristotle asserted something which corresponds to reality at his time period (or what not), then for any other subject (of past, present, or future) that proposition would hold true—but it wouldn’t itself be an abstract object (or something like that). Without any subject, propositions don’t mean anything: without subjects, truth dissolves into mere being.

Of course, now AI can write them and all other propositions as well. Does the fact that AI wrote them somehow affect their truth?

I would say no, but that the proposition itself doesn’t exist subject-independently in the world because of that; for I am claiming that truth is subject-dependent—not dependent on some particular subject or subset of subjects (assuming AIs are classified as true subjects, which, as a side note, I doubt).

So, in short, the relationship between the assertion (i.e., the formulation) and being (i.e., reality) is contained as the referent of the concept (or idea) of a ‘proposition’.

Hopefully that was an adequate response!

Hello 180 Proof,

I appreciate your response: let me try to adequately respond.

Yes, and since you're making a fact-claim that there is "the universal mind" by which "consciousness is best explained", you're argument is pseudo-science, not metaphysics.

How does that make it a form of pseudo-science? I am not claiming that it is a scientific fact that there is a universal mind: do you think facts are only scientific?

If this is so, then this so-called "use of reason" does not consist of sound arguments (i.e. lack of factually true premises ergo lack of factually true conclusion). This sort of "guess" consists of an untestable explanation about matters of fact (e.g. "experience") which is mere pseudo-science unlike, for instance, Kant's transcendental arguments which are epistemological critiques of metaphysical speculations of "pure reason".

I suspect by ‘fact’ you mean a ‘scientific fact’: is that correct? By ‘fact’, I mean a proposition which is true (i.e., an assertion that corresponds to reality) and not merely an ‘observation about reality’.

Metaphysics is speculative (i.e., guesswork), even in Kantianism. Kant does not prove definitively that there are such transcendental aspects to our structure of representations he so adamantly advocates for. Yes, metaphysics, including transcendental philosophy, is fundamentally uncertain claims that attempt to best explain the data of experience (of which I believe you may be referring to as ‘facts’: although I wouldn’t quite define facticity in that way): what’s wrong with that?

In order for something to be pseudo-science, by my lights, it has to be claiming to do some form of science: metaphysics is not pseudo-science—not even bad metaphysics. Or are you saying all metaphysics (or perhaps bad metaphysics) is pseudo-science? If so, then why? What do you mean by “pseudo-science”?

Agreed. Also, science rules-out bad (i.e. falsifed or untestable) explanations and thereby abductively affirms only provisionally better (i.e. successfully tested) explanations. As the original Aristotlean corpus suggests, metaphysics – First Philosophy – consists in categorical generalizations abstracted from the 'observed' conditions and limits of nature – physus – which first must be learned by 'empirical inquiries' Aristotle calls "Physics" – science; thus, the relation between 'metaphysics and physics' is a form of reflective equilibrium so that First Philosophy only conceptualizes and interprets scientific – successfully tested (or testable-in-principle) – explanations but cannot itself – as metaphysics – "explain" anything.

I agree; but, then, why would you ban us from positing a universal mind to explain the data of experience best? My argument in the OP is not an argument from pure reason (like a ontological or modal logic argument for God): I am using the existence of qualities to inform us about what the best explanation of the reality that produces such (i.e., that those qualities are contingent upon).

Firstly, anecdotes are not scientific evidence

I never said they were scientific evidence: I said they were evidence. Do you think the only form of evidence is scientific? Scientism is self-undermining: it rests on philosophical principles which are not scientifically verifiable (e.g., PSR).

Secondly, the "experience" of "vivid dreams" cannot itself be conclusive "evidence" for anything "beyond experience" which could be a candidate for – "guess" of – an "explanation of experience".

I agree: I was not intending to argue that our vivid dreams conclusive prove that the world is mind-dependent but, rather, that it can be used as evidence of it (by anological equivalence). Vivid dreaming is direct evidence of the mind being able to (1) generate similar experience to what we have when we are awake and (2) to extrinsically represent archetypes (lower ‘m’ ‘minds’) as physical bodies. It can be cross-referenced as an analogy.

The point is that we start out with mind-operations, including our conscious experience of the real world, and so it is more parsimonious, if it can be done, to explain that data of experience in terms of mind: mentality.

And what "best explains" this "mind-dependent world"?

What do you mean? Metaphysics is about maximizing explanatory power (of the data of experience) while minimizing conceptual complexity. Thusly, there’s always, in any good metaphysical theory, something (or somethings) posited as brute facts.

The universal mind, as a brute fact, is meant to serve as a best explanation of the data of experience and is not a direct datum of experience itself.

That quantum physics, such as entanglement, is best explained when thought of as extrinsic representations within a universal mind.
Non sequitur (i.e. quantum woo woo).

This isn’t a conditional statement, nor a colloquial expression of one. There’s no consequent and thusly no false implication: it was a statement, which you can surely disagree with, that claimed that quantum physics makes physicalism, or at least materialism, less plausible than before.

I object to "P1"
P1: A quantitative process cannot produce a quality. [p → !q] — Bob Ross
which is obviously not true in many cases.

I read your articles: the first one I didn’t see how it really contended with P1, so could you please elaborate?

In terms of emergentism, it sounds like an irreductive account of processes and, in that case, I see why one who subscribes thereto would reject P1. To me, claiming that a property emerges out of a system (i.e., out of parts and the relation/processes of those parts) but is yet not reducible to those parts nor the relation/processes of those parts is magic: this would entail that there is something extra that is completely unaccountable when analyzing the system which is responsible for the propert that emerged, but it somehow was produced by it. By my lights, an emgergentist view concedes that it can’t actually account, by analysis, for the property in its entirety via the system that produced it, as that is what being irreductive means. What are your thoughts on it?

So "universal mind" is not fundamental – dependent on – "mind-independent existence". Yes, minds are dependent on non-mind (i.e. physicalism).

Not quite. To say the world is fundamentally mind-dependent, in the sense I am talking about and objective idealists talk about, is to say that all entities in the world can be reduced down to one entity: a universal mind. Existence itself is mind-independent, but existence itself is not an entity (proper). Physicalism is metaphysical theory (or family of theories) that posits that everything is reducible down to some entity or set of entities that are mind-independent (and, again, being is not an entity nor attribute proper). In other words, I don’t think that being itself somehow sprouts or unfolds out of non-being, nor out of a non-being mind (or something like that). There is fundamentally an eternal mind or eternal mind-independent stuff, and being is what they share simply by being—by being generic existence.

I agree. Thus, the physicalist paradigm: the universe is fundamental and minds are (or "the mind is") emergent in, dependent on, derivative from the universe.

But if an eternal mind is being posited as reality (fundamentally), in the sense that I am arguing for, then that mind would not be emergent nor dependent on the universe but, rather, the universe is that mind. In other words, “universe” and “universal mind” would be interchangeable for me in your statement “the universe is fundamental”.

Hello charles,

How can Kastrup argue for "full-blown ontological idealism" without first proving the existence of "God, or Mind at Large"?

Kastrup usually starts by positing a mind-at-large as the best account of reality (to explain consciousness and newer empirical knowledge). My point before was not that Kastrup starts with something other than, well, his idealism but, rather, that his is very different in many ways to Berkeley (but likewise shares different aspects as well).

Does he anywhere attempt an ontological argument, or any other type of argument, for the existence of God, or Mind at Large?

Not that I am aware of; as he is very much an empiricist, like me, at his core. There’s no way to prove, in itself, from pure reason that God exists without the aid of empirical knowledge (of experience). Also, Kastrup is a naturalist; so by ‘God’ he means more a pantheism and definitely not a form of theism.

Also, when you state that Kastrup argues "the universe is mind-dependent and the substance is 'mental,'" to what substance are you referring?

The substance is ‘mental’. In substratum theory, the idea is that properties are bore by a substrate, which serves as the compresence for the properties of a given thing, and there’s typically two kinds of substances people posit: mental and physical. Physical is a mind-independent substance (a substrate that bears the properties) and mental is a mind-dependent substance (ditto). It’s just to help denote the type of existence which one is positing as bearing the properties of things.

Kastrup is arguing that within the ‘mental’ substance, the fundamental thing is a mind.

I thought Berkeley convincingly argued that, upon detailed analysis, material substance and nothingness had identical meanings.

By substance, I was referring to substratum theory (i.e., the substrate that bears properties) and not a ‘material substance’ in the sense of a tangible object that exists. Berkeley is definitely against materialism, which, in its most basic form, is a substance monist view that posits a ‘physical’ substance and, in the case of materialism, that what fundamentally exists therein is fundamental particles (which are tangible). Personally, I don’t think material things, if they existed in that sense, would be identical to nothingness; rather, I think he had a good point that prima facie speaking about a material object is nonsensical, albeit potentially true, because nothing we experience is ever directly that material object.

Hello Pantagruel,

To really appreciate it, a good grasp of systems theory is essential
…
It is assumed that many phenomena can be understood only by taking into account the full set of relations constituting them, without reducing them to casual interactions between analytically isolated parts.

This is interesting, but, unfortunately, I am not familiar with systems theory and that is why I was asking your system theoretic view. Could you elaborate more on reductionism vs. holism?

Personally, I don’t see how one could argue that something is made up of a set of parts but that the emergent properties are not reducible to those parts and the relationship between those parts as they perform their processes; and, thusly, I am a reductionist.

Hello Javi,

I agree with your position. I sound contradictory trying to find out a definition.

I see. I am just a bit confused, as if you agree with my position, then wouldn’t that entail you agree with my definition? Or are you only partially agreeing with me?

I believe that truth is self-evident, and I do not know how extensive mind-dependence is on it.

I disagree: facts which we know now were not, in the past, self-evident to anyone (e.g., washing one’s hands helps prevent illnesses) and something that was self-evident to people sometimes turn out to be non-factual (e.g., racist claims towards other groups of people).

I must admit that it is difficult for me to express myself properly, but the paper I shared yesterday explains better what I want to mean

Absolutely no worries! I am just trying to understand your position better, and I am still a bit confused.

But we are still left without clear criteria to distinguish between veridical perception and hallucinatory perception. How do we know when there is and when there is not a real object?

Perhaps this is because I am unfamiliar with Fumerton’s work, but, to me, veridical perception includes hallucinatory perception; so I don’t see this kind of divide fruitful in defining ‘truth’. Again, to claim that one was hallucinating when they were would be true (and in the truth: veridical). Or, perhaps, since he is focusing on perceptions, then there are, indeed, misleading vs. non-misleading perceptions; but, then, truth is allegedly reduced to what is perceived, and I would say truth is not related to the subject in perception but, rather, in thought.

"we are never directly acquainted with the fact that a physical object exists...

This is true: our conscious experience is a representation of the world-in-itself.

I follow Fumerton's argument. In our experience we are, perhaps, directly acquainted with the facts concerning our mental states

I find this questionable; as I can be mislead about my own mental activity (e.g., be deluded about it or downright wrong). For example, I could mistake the feeling of serenity with a feeling of vast pleasure. In this case, my assertion does not correspond to reality and, thusly, is false.

but the possibility that experiences are hallucinations proves that we cannot be directly acquainted with the facts concerning physical objects that, beyond our reckoning, may or may not be causes of our experiences.

We come to know subject and object in the same manner: as representations. I come to know myself as myself unfolds within my representations.

Hello Pantagruel,

I don't think that either monism or dualism do justice to what's going on in the universe. Cassirer talks about reality as both meta-physical and meta-psychical (i.e. transcending both matter and mind) and I think this has merit.

Then how do you account for the hard problem of interaction?

If you view the universe from a systems theoretic perspective, traditional problems are not solved so much as they do not appear as problems. For me, it is the logical and scientific presentation of a process ontology.

Interesting, could you elaborate on “process ontology” a bit more?

Hello 180 Proof,

An "unmanifest mind" – how do we know it "objective exists"?
…
By "it" are you referring to "mind"? If so, then the evidence I'd requested is for a specimen of "a disembodied mind".

I gave an argument here in the OP for a mind-dependent, qualitative world: let’s start there. What premise (or premises) did you disagree with?

Whether or not the universal mind is “unmanifested” is a later discussion after we’ve agreed or disagreed on the argument for the world being mind-dependent. It could be that we should hold the world is mind-dependent without knowing if that mind is eternal or a brute fact.

If by ‘evidence’ you mean just something you can tangibly test, then obviously no one can offer you that in metaphysics; the whole point of metaphysics is to use reason to guess what lies beyond that experience which explains that experience. Science is only a negative criteria for metaphysics (viz., it can weed out the really bad theories) but never a positive criteria (viz., that science confirms a metaphysical theory as true). I can give you philosophical arguments and say that it coheres nicely (I think) with empirical knowledge, but the latter isn’t going to positively affirm the former.

There is not any publicly accessible evidence for such an entity.

There’s plenty of evidence that we can explain the world in terms of mind. For example, have you ever had a vivid dream? That body in the dream was not identical to you (as ‘you’ were the mind producing the dream) and yet you had an extrinsic representation of yourself within it, did you not?

That consciousness is best explained via a mind-dependent world.

That quantum physics, such as entanglement, is best explained when thought of as extrinsic representations within a universal mind.

And if "everything is fundamentally mind-dependent" (including this "fundamental", which I find self-refuting),

Please provide the proof that it is self-refuting. Just to clarify, I am not saying that the universal mind is itself mind-dependent; as existence itself is mind-independent.

then "a universal mind" is only an idea, not a fact or "natural process".

The universal mind, under my view, would be a fact; and I would say it is a “natural process” because I do not hold that it is God (e.g., that it has personhood, can deliberate, cognize, consciously experience in the way we do, etc.). It is a primitive, rudimentary, process of mental activity. That’s why I would say I am still a naturalist. There isn’t some mind outside of the universe that willed it into existence.

Hello Banno,

Thought you might. So consider this proof that the world is quantitative:
P1: A qualitative process cannot produce a quantity. [p → !q]
P2: Quantities exist (e.g., more than one letter in this sentence). [!!q]
C1: The world (which has such quantities) cannot be qualitative processes. — Bob Ross
Same argument you invoked, used to prove the opposite.

Looks to me that you've juxtaposed qualitative and quantitative and then trapped yourself in a word game.

Excellent! I am surprised that no one has offered this parody yet, as I was fully expecting it. As you can already anticipate, I deny P1 in your parody argument because there is a symmetry breaker between quality → quantity and quantity → quality. A qualitative being can focus on and thusly single out an aspect of qualitative reality of which would be a quantity. In other words, our cognitive faculty is quite literally qualitative (in reality) but is the faculty that allows us to ‘cut up’ reality into definite parts. In contradistinction, a quantity and another quantity always produce more quantities; whereas, a quality could be focused on in a particular manner to single out (or cut out) a particular definite part of that quality.

For example, 1 + 1 will produce a quantity, even if I do not know what it will equal, because ‘1’, ‘1’, and the quantitative process of addition is quantitative through-and-through; whereas, a wall that is painted red, starting with lighter red on the left to a gradual darker red on the right, is qualitative but I can single out a definite portion of the redness and call it ‘section A’ and ‘not section A’. The sections are quantitative, but the reality which they are describing is qualitative.

Hello javi,

Unless by “perceived objectively” you mean a “perspectiveless perceiver of reality”? — Bob Ross

Exactly.

But this is a contradiction in terms: you can’t have a perspectiveless perspective, nor a non-perceiver perception.

Apart from those premises, I still defend that one of the "weaknesses" of truth is hallucinations or the abuse of subjectiveness when we are defining. Sometimes, we can all be wrong when we "uncover" what it is.

This is true, but I don’t think it is a weakness of truth—it is a question pertaining to how well we can come to know the truth.

Hello Charles,

Guided by what you stated about him, Kastrup seems to me to be promoting a contemporary version of Spinoza's pantheism

Spinoza, I would say, was arguing that the one substance is God, which doesn’t entail in itself a mind nor something mind-independent. In modern terms, I think he was basically saying ‘being’ is God (i.e., ‘essence involves existence’).

Kastrup is arguing for full blown ontological idealism; that is, the universe is mind-dependent and the substance is ‘mental’.

Hello Banno,

But sucking on one teaspoon of sugar (a quantitative process) will produce the sensation of sweetness (a quality). So P1 is not right.

I deny that “sucking on one teaspoon of sugar” is a quantitative process. The teaspoon, the sugar, and the act of sucking the sugar from teaspoon is qualitative; and our cognitive description of that process is that it was “a teaspoon of sugar getting sucked on”; and we can describe in much detail the entire process happening, but only in terms of quantitative estimations of the qualitative processes.

Hello Count,

Wonderful post! I agreed with a lot of it.

Right, it "unfolds" from the interplay of object and subject. This is a problem if we have a metaphysics of objects (maybe) because this might entail something coming from nothing, right? It seems that way, unless we can justify some sort of "strong emergence." But it doesn't seem to necessarily be a problem for a metaphysics of process

I am not sure how ‘truth’ as an relation between subject and object would entail strong emergence: one can reduce ‘truth’ to a relationship between the two. Why would it be strongly emergent?

I am interested in this “process” style metaphysics, could you tell me more?

In terms of Hegel, I am still reading him so I am not entirely sure what he meant yet; but I followed your references and agreed with them.

Hello Schopenhauer1,

Is this some sort of Analytic Idealism?

The argument itself doesn’t quite get you to Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism, but it does get to objective idealism (or actually I may need to provide another argument to move from subjective to objective idealism). If by ‘analytic idealism’ you just mean objective idealism, then I would say it basically gets one to that view (just with a bit more arguments to eliminate solipsism).

I would build off of this argument to get to a form of objective idealism very similar to Analytic Idealism; so my terminology is very similar thereto.

Hello T Clark,

I think it's a metaphysical statement - a way of thinking about things or a point of view - not a fact

Interesting, I would say metaphysical claims are facts (or at least purported facts). Metaphysics, I would say, is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of all experience but necessary relates to experience; and a ‘fact’ is an assertion that corresponds to reality (in regards to whatever it references).

I like the way @Janus said it in a different discussion - It's a catalyst for new ideas and feelings.

Could you elaborate on this a bit? I didn’t quite follow.

It demonstrates that our fundamental understanding of reality is human, I guess you would say subjective. That tells us not to be too arrogant about how universal our beliefs are.

Oh, I think I may understand. Are you simply noting that our understanding of the world is dependent on our minds? If so, then perhaps you aren’t making any ontological claims, but more epistemic?

Hello Charles,

A very sophisticated form of "proving" the existence of God or of simply postulating a "Deus ex Machina," I think. Yes???

In my opinion, God, as a person that perceives, just doesn’t work as a parsimonious account of reality. Reality seems, empirically speaking, to have existed prior to any perceptions.

By the way, how similar or different are Kastrup's ideas about Objective Idealism compared to those of Hegel's Objective Idealism?

I can’t speak for Hegel, as I don’t know enough about his absolute idealism. But Kastrup’s differences mainly lie in the world being perception-independent and he has a new resolution to the problem of decomposition: dissociative identity disorder. He posits that the way you get derivative minds is via alters, just like people who host genuinely different personalities.

Think of Berkeley as saying God perceived the world, and the world is only real insofar as that.

Think of Kastrup as saying God (or mind-at-large) is the world, and everything in the world is real insofar as it is within it as mental events.

Hello javi,

I don't know if it is a platonic form of definition. But I would define truth as "the reality itself when it is perceived objectively".

With your definition here, I don’t see the actual disagreement with what I said, as the act of perceiving requires a subject. So truth, even under your definition, if I am understanding you correctly, is not objective. Unless by “perceived objectively” you mean a “perspectiveless perceiver of reality”?

What I tried to argue is that truth or reality are independent selves.

I think, in that case, then you are just talking about being; which, to me, isn’t truth. If that’s what ‘truth’ means, then it is just a redundant term and we need another term to denote the correspondence of asserted being with actual being.

Yet, we can end up in a complex situation regarding the interpretation of truth: hallucination.

I think the problem you are going to run into is that it is true (viz., in truth) that you had the hallucination; so I don’t think you can cleanly separate truth from hallucination. Instead, I would argue that it is false to correspond the hallucination as something it is not (namely, whatever one is mistaking the illusion for), but the hallucination itself is true insofar as one recognizes it as one (since the claim would correspond with what actual is: the hallucination).

The latter is part of our "subjectiveness" more than we wish and then, can elaborate biased definitions and interpretations while the reality and truth are just there.

I sort of agree, but the biased definitions and interpretations themselves are in the truth. That’s why I say that truth is the correspondence of what is thought to what is. If there is a biased definition, then when it is claimed in thought that “there is a biased definition” it is true as they correspond.

For example: colors. But there are also other objects that already existed even before our own existence. For example, the universe. I think we apply a lot of "inter-subjectivity" in terms of defining both groups. My conclusion is that the universe is a reality or truth that exists independently. It doesn't need to be linked to our minds to make an "existence".

It sounds like, and correct me if I am wrong, you are using ‘truth’ and ‘being’ interchangeably; which in terms of the latter I do not disagree—but I don’t think that captures what truth is. It is the activity of uncovering what is, which is not what is itself.

I would also like to address the other post you mentioned me in:

Here's a trick to help you remember the difference between subjective and objective. Subjectivity is self-centered and based on speculations, sentiments, and experiences. Objectivity is outward-focused and based on observable facts and data that can be proven true.

I think this kind of definition is a good approximate but does not completely capture what ‘truth’ is. The “outward-focus” of objectivity is just what I mean by truth; that is, the impartial uncovering of what is. The subjectivity that is mentioned here (e.g., speculations, sentiments, and experiences) is pretty much what I mean by “thinking”. It is true that I speculated about X iff that assertion corresponds to reality—viz., I actually speculated about it. That’s truth.

Hello Philosophim,

Reading your work is always a delight! Unique thinkers are what we need and I enjoy mulling over your work.

Same goes to you my friend!

Lets say I have 1 apple. The oneness denotes a quantity, but if I remove the 1 and just say, "apple", is this a quality?

What do you mean by “apple”? To me, that is just ungrammatical and, thusly, does not reference anything (except for being “a word”). Is it “an apple”? If so, then you just have “1 apple” minus “1 apple”, which is nothing. Are you talking about the essence of an apple? The concept?

Just to illuminate my position (perhaps to help here), let’s say there is an actual “apple” on a table in front of me. I would say that “that apple” and “that table” and “this reality” are all inextricably linked: there’s no, ontologically speaking, an exact ending to “that apple” and “that table”; but, I can describe, via quantities, different aspects of reality which I deem useful, such as “an apple” or “that table”. These descriptions are where, for me, quantities emerge: they are nominal. The quantities are not in reality beyond my ability to cognize about reality. Hopefully that helps.

I quantitatively add another apple to a "pile". What is a "pile"?

To me, “a pile” is to cognize, to single out, some piece of reality; and so, for starters, it is one pile, which is quantitative. However, the what constitutes “a pile” (e.g., is it anything greater than 3?) I will leave up to semantics. It could be that “a pile” is just a useful indefinite, and thusly qualitative or perhaps just ambiguous, colloquial term to note a hazy bit of reality; just like how there’s no exact spot where a heap becomes a pile of sand. We could force the terms to start somewhere definite, or just let it be qualitative (indefinite) and let people decide what is the most useful in the context.

I could also call them a "pair" of apples now. Is the word pair quantitative or qualitative now?

So, the word “pair” references nothing (technically speaking) as it is ungrammatical (or at least it must be suspended what one means without further context). “a pair” is one pair, which is one “of two of a type”. The word “pair” is itself, as a mere word, quantitative insofar as it is one “word”. The word “word” singles out a piece of reality, namely words, and in this case “pair” is the word that has been created to single out something.

Perhaps I am confused as to what you are saying, but I think the words that we use to describe reality single out things, which will make it quantitative; but the words themselves do not reference something that is quantitative. For example, yes, one red apple plus one red apple is two red apples; but “redness” and the “actual apple” are qualitative. We use quantities to estimate the qualitative.

I add two red apples together. In my quantitative process did I not also produce the quality of 2 "red"?

So the addition of the apples (if by that you mean combining them physically) is not a quantitative process (or at least that’s what I am arguing); and the physical combination of colors produces more qualities. However, the cognitive process of singling out “one red apple” and “another red apple” and mathematically, in one’s head, adding them together is a quantitative process and will result in “two red apples”.

Hopefully that helps.

Hello Pantagruel,

Very interesting, let me try to pick your brain a bit.

Minimally, to be a subject is to be a subject "of" something. I am a subject of perceptions, of ideas, of feelings. So while the "ordering principle" of objectivity is subjective (Kant) knowledge of objectivity arises with experience. Hence, the "synthetic a priori" which yokes the two.

Given your invocation of Kant, would you say that there is a mind-independent world but that many elements of our experience is due to the structure of our minds? Is the mind reducible to the brain to you? Are you a substance dualist?

For me, any attempt to conceptualize a pure subjectivity falls into the black hole of idealistic-solipsism. Everything that I "am" is in "relation to...." and anything that I stand in relation to must be other than what I am.

To your second sentence, I don’t think that everything that I am is in relation to something else but, rather, my knowledge of myself requires an other; so, I would say that I could (potentially) exist without an other but I need the other to know that ‘I’ exist. I would say it is not the case that I only exist (i.e., solipsism) but that the universal mind other minds to know itself.

To your first sentence, I would say that objective idealism is not solipsism, since the latter is the idea that only one’s mind exists.

Ontologically, I am speculating that perhaps the most fundamental characterization of reality is that of subjective and objective. We literally cannot think what a universe minus subjectivity would be because that would be a universe minus thought, which cannot be thought. Even if we tried to imagine it, that would still be an imagined universe. It is a variety of panpsychism for sure.

Interesting, so, for you, there’s two types of fundamental things: object and subject; and so you are not a monist then, correct?

Hello javi,

If I didn't understand you mistakenly, your point here is that, despite the fact that truth is not objective or subjective, it cannot really exist without our minds.

Correct.

Well, I personally think that truth can be objective.

I have another definition of truth from Plato:

Interesting! I didn’t really follow plato’s definition: how exactly are you defining truth then? Is it a platonic form for you?

A year ago, I read an interesting paper by Richard A. Fumerton

Thank you for sharing!

Conclusion of what I try to argue: reality does exist objectively but we manipulate it through our mind and that’s why we never really know if something is “real”

I think our disagreement is going to lie in the fact that I don’t think truth is synonymous with being; it is, rather, a process of uncovering, which requires an uncoverer (mind) and the covered (mind-independent). For you, it sounds like, perhaps, truth is just being, which is the light, so to speak, of reality (as plato thought?)?

Hello chiknsld,

I have been waiting my entire life for a simple tool like chatgpt...my entire life.

(:

I believe that is what I was trying to tell you, but I know that you will probably understand it better if it comes from another source right? ...hehe

I appreciate you sharing this with me, and I will address it as adequately as I can in a moment; but I wanted to disclaim that appeals to authority do not matter to me (in this context at least): if you demonstrate your point and I find it correct then I will gladly concede. I trust your points just as much as ChatGPT (;

Firstly, your quote from ChatGPT clearly concedes that it is not invalid but, rather, adds confusion (which I agree with):

It first says this:

Applying double negation in the way described does not align with the standard form of modus tollens and, in fact, changes the logical rule being used. Modus tollens is a valid form of inference, but it should not involve double negation in the manner shown in the argument.

But…:

In conclusion, the original argument you presented without double negation was valid modus tollens, but the modified version with double negation deviates from the standard form and may cause confusion or misunderstandings.

The point that I got from ChatGPT, and correct me if I am wrong, is that one cannot say they are merely using modus tollens if they also used double negation; for some logicians accept one but not the other. If one accepts double negation, then my argument clearly results in modus tollens. If they don’t accept it, then it won’t be modus tollens they are disagreeing with but, rather, my use of double negation to get to modus tollens. If that is what you are noting, then you are absolutely right.

I am going to modify my OP -> P2 to simply not use double negation, and it is now in its traditional form.

Hello Pantagruel,

I think mind-dependence is misleading. Neither pure subjectivity nor pure objectivity can be conceived in isolation

Interesting: I am not quite following, but let me try to respond. What we know of immediatelly is subjectivity, and an ‘object’ in the sense of something tangible or mind-independent is only found from abstract reasoning about the subjectivity. So I would say, prima facie to your point here, that we can actually conceive of a world which is pure subjectivity in the sense that there are no mind-independent objects other than the universal mind itself.

"the unity of the I does not come before that of the object, but rather is constituted only through it."

I am not sure if I understood this correctly, but I would say that the ‘objects’ in the sense of something ‘without me’ is definitely necessary for conceiving of oneself as an ‘I’; but that is to use ‘object’ differently than previously mentioned.

The universe is dynamic, dynamism requires energy, and energy is the result of a tension between opposites.

Are you saying that the universe is fundamentally energy? Is universe synonymous, to you, with reality?

The quality of quantity; quantities of qualities.

What is a ‘quality of a quantity’? That doesn’t seem possible to me. The latter makes sense, as we could give a quantitative estimate of something fundamentally non-quantitative.

Hello Inyenzi,

I'm somewhat of an amateur fossil hunter.

That is awesome!

It would seem odd to me, that when I find fossils I am not holding the remnants of the bodies of animals that existed a long time ago, but am instead holding... ?

That, indeed, would be odd; thankfully, objective idealism makes no such postulation: when you examine dead organisms, under objective idealism, you are examining a representation of them, of a real ‘dead organism’. The question becomes: what is the thing-in-itself of which I am representing? Is it a tangible, organic organism like I perceive? Objective idealism postulates that your representation of the organism is of fundamentally mental process; just like how the word document on your monitor is a representation of 0s and 1s. The physical world within our conscious experience is just a survival-based dashboard of representations.

I suppose under the 'all is quality' view, I am holding nothing more than mind-dependent qualities - the way the fossil looks, feels, it's texture. It only signifies the past to the degree that I build an explanatory narrative around my perceptions (i.e. there is nothing more to the past than this narrative).

So, in objective idealism, they are mind-dependent but NOT dependent on your mind. Of course, your representations of them are dependent on you, but they actually exist—just as ideas in a universal mind. You are in a fundamental, universal mind (in this view) and so is the dead organism you are inspecting. Ideas, I would argue, are also ontologically qualitative: there’s no definite beginning or ending to them, nor are they completely separable from one another within our minds. This universal mind doesn’t have a definite amount of ideas: it is a stream of ideas: an ‘idea’ is just a unit of measure we use to estimate it for descriptive purposes.

But I think what's missing from this account that reduces our existence to 'quality only' is our pre-theoretical lived experience as being human bodies.

If by ‘pre-theoretical lived experience’ you are referring to before we were ‘conscious’, then I would say that species are all conscious (to some degree) and human beings, throughout evolution, have been conscious. By conscious, I mean qualitatively experiencing; and not some higher-order emergent property of a brain. The brain, under my view, is an extrinsic representation of a higher order organ that has evolved slowly over time with more and more higher order capabilities (i.e., deliberation, cognition, introspection, etc.).

When we speak of "quality" what we are really referring to is our bodies sensory perceptions - our visual field is predicated upon our eyes.

I would partially be meaning that; but more broadly anything which has no definite amount.

It would seem incoherent to think both my hand and its touch are 'in my mind' - my body would be 'in my mind' yet my sensory perceptions are dependent upon my body?

You hand, a physical object within your conscious experience, is a dashboard representation of the hand-in-itself, which is an idea in the universal mind. The hand-as-a-physical-object doesn’t fundamentally exist, no differently than the word document application doesn’t fundamentally exist in the computer in that manner: it is a bunch of 0s and 1s.

It appears nonsensical, especially considering my body will remain when I die, much like these creatures whose fossils I find. You have direct evidence of this every time you eat a chicken - a plate full of bones.

Under objective idealism, the world is independent of our minds, but not of every mind. The eternal, metaphysically mind is where all of the world exists in (as ideas therein). So, your body will indeed still exist after you stop experiencing, and if I were to see your corpse it would be a dashboard representation of a perished mind.

Surely this leads to solipsism - why posit minds beyond your own? But I think applying Occam's Razor to ontology is a misapplication. There is no requirement for the ontology of the world itself to be as parsimonious as possible.

Good question: I would say that solipsism is not parsimonious. Yes, it says “this all here is just in my mind”, but upon close inspection the justification for it explodes into completely unfalsifiable nonense. For example, if your mind is the only thing that exists, then your mind must be eternal; but what about the fact that everyone seems to die? Oh, you are the exception to that rule? (:

Hello Philosophim!

As you are using specific vocabulary, it would help to make your point clearer by also defining exactly what each piece of the vocabulary means to you.

That is fair.

What is a quantity by your view? What is quantitative vs qualitative to your view?

A quantity is ‘an definite amount’ (e.g., 3 m/s^2, 1 meter, 4 newtons, 80 volts, etc.); and a quality is ‘a non-quantity’ (i.e., an indefinite amount)(e.g., the bitterness of an apple, feeling of pain, the redness of an apple, etc.).

Logic only works when you have immutable properties that do not change or are open to interpretation. Definitions often times are immutable based on the internal definitions of the reader, as well as the context in which they can be placed accidentally by the user.

Without very explicit terminology, I do not think the proposal can be evaluated.

True, please let me know if there are any other terms that need defining. I will also put those definitions in the OP. Thank you Philosophim!

Hello 180 Proof,

I don't grok your statement. Clarify what you mean by "objective reality" and/or "mind-at-large".

By ‘objective’, I mean ‘that which is mind-independent’ and by ‘mind-at-large’ I mean that reality is fundamentally a mind. That mind, however, objectively exists; that is, it’s existence is mind-independent—i.e., it doesn’t manifest itself nor uphold its own existence.

Also, if "the world is mind-dependent", then "mind" is world-independent (i.e. separate from the world, or disembodied), no? Evidence?

The “world” is in that mind (under my view). It is disembodied in the sense that it doesn’t have an organic body if that is what you are asking; and, as for evidence, I would like to focus on the argument I gave in the OP for a mind-dependent, qualitative world.

Hello Charles Ferraro,

I would suggest reading his ‘A Treatise Concerning The Principles of Human Knowledge’, which is a relatively short work outlining his idealism, to determine for yourself an answer. However, with that being said, I will attempt to give you my interpretation of him.

Firstly, to answer you directly:

Bottom Line: Did George Berkeley mean that the existence of the entire world was dependent upon human perception, or divine perception?

He clearly meant dependent on all perception (viz., on perceivers) (and, as a side note, the divine perception is what keeps things continually existing), and this is not disputed by anyone in the literature (as far as I am aware). In fact, he states it quite explicitly and adamently in the previously mentioned work:

Wherever bodies are said to have no existence without the mind, I would not be understood to mean this or that particular mind, but ALL MINDS WHATSOEVER

(A Treatise…, p. 24).

I didn’t add in those all-caps: that’s how emphatically he wants us to understand that point.

It is disputed how much of a subjective idealist he really was and to what degree of difference he has with the newer objective idealists (like Bernardo Kastrup); and, to me, after reading him, I think he was a hybrid premordial formulation of idealism which both subjective and objective idealists owe respect. He was the first to carve out idealism in the west, and you will find even ideas that Kant uses in his views—like, for example, you see space being argued as ‘a priori and synthetic’ in a more rudimentary way in his work:

first, it is supposed that extension, for example, may be abstracted from all other sensible qualities; and secondly, that the entity of extension may be abstracted from its being perceived. But, whoever shall reflect, and take care to understand what he says, will, if I mistake not, acknowledge that all sensible qualities are alike sensations and alike real; that where the extension is, there is the colour, too, i.e., in his mind, and that their archetypes can exist only in some other mind; and that the objects of sense are nothing but those sensations combined, blended, or (if one may so speak) concreted together; none of all which can be supposed to exist unperceived

(A Treatise..., p. 48)

His main point is to refute materialism, which was the predominant and newly fashionable view at the time, and so he really focuses on the mind-dependence of one’s experience; but he uses a term ‘perception’ for it, which is what causes a lot of trouble in his view (for modern day objective idealists): it entails that that the objects only exist so long as something is perceiving them, and not merely so long as they are ideas in a universal mind, and thusly, for Berkeley, he gets around this by postulating that God, very similarly to ourselves, is constantly perceiving the world. This is an entirely different view from modern objective idealists, like Bernardo Kastrup, who posit that the universal mind cannot perceive and is much more fundamental and primitive then ourselves, as we are evolved minds. The objects exist mind-dependently for objective idealists, no doubt, but not on a mind consciously experiencing them like we do.

Now, I would like to include a response from @Tom Storm:

George Berkeley … is important in philosophy through his denial of the existence of matter—a denial which he supported by a number of ingenious arguments. He maintained that material objects only exist through being perceived. To the objection that, in that case, a tree, for instance, would cease to exist if no one was looking at it, he replied that God always perceives everything; if there were no God, what we take to be material objects would have a jerky life, suddenly leaping into being when we look at them; but as it is, owing to God’s perceptions, trees and rocks and stones have an existence as continuous as common sense supposes. This is, in his opinion, a weighty argument for the existence of God.

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), III, I., Ch. XVI: "Berkeley", p. 647

This is the exact issue objective idealists tend to have with Berkeley, and tends to make them claim he was a subjective idealist for it; but it is important to remember that he was the first to sketch out the entire family of views under idealism (as he is quite literally the father of idealism) and, upon a close examination of his works, he isn’t entirely consistent nor coherent—but that’s true of pretty much every main philosopher that started a movement.

Hopefully that helps.

Hello Alkis Piskas,

Emerging from what exactly? What could be something on which both an objective and a subjective process can be applied?

I am not sure if I fully understood the question, but I would say that it is possible for a thing to exist as emergent from the relationship between subject and object; that is, between a thinking mind and the world of which it thinks about.

1) Can anything at all emerge from truth? What could be that?

I don’t think anything emerges from truth per se in the same manner as truth is emergent from the relationship between object and subject; as only ‘emergent’ things from truth are really just aspects of the truth: there’s nothing extra emerging. However, with both subject and object, there really is a new thing which we call ‘truth’, which is a correspondence of thought with the referent thereof.

Can truth ever be objective? Who is out there who can speak about it? And if he can speak about it, wouldn't that have a subjective tint?

I would say that truth is neither objective nor subjective but, rather, a relationship between the two. It is still absolute (i.e., we do not get to make up the truth), but it isn’t objective.

I have more questions, but I don't want either to overwhelm you or become too critical (because I already seem to be! :smile:)

Feel free to ask away my friend! I can assure you that I will not think you are being too critical nor that you are overwhelming me. Depending on what you say, I may need to take some time to think it over, but that is the nature of these kinds of substantive conversations!

Hello T Clark,

That being said, what would a mind-independent world be? Is that just objective reality? Is it what was there before there were minds? Did nothing exist before there were minds? I don't think that is a ridiculous idea to propose.

I would say that objective reality is a mind-at-large, and our conscious experience is a survival-based dashboard of experience of mental events. Since you said you agree that the world is mind-dependent, what do you think that entails or implies?

Also, yes, I think that there was a world before our minds but, under my view, not of all minds.

Hello chiknsld,

Modus tollens:

1. If P, then Q.
2. Not Q.

Therefore, not P.

Correct. In my case, it also uses double negation and modus tollens—which I forgot to mention in the argument form:

1. If P, then Q.
2. Not Q.
C: Not P.

In my case, Q = ‘!T’, so it becomes:

1. If P, then !T (If P, then Q).
2. !!T (!Q).
C: Not P.

It’s the same form of inference: modus tollens. Granted it also assumes the law of double negation.

If a proposition is objective when its truth value is mind-independent, and there are no truths or truth values which are mind-independent, then there are no objective propositions. The same holds of subjective propositions given your assertion that truth is not subjective.

This is a very good point that I am honestly slapping myself for it! I definitely need to refurbish my definitions, as they are clearly insufficient. For 'objectivity', then, I think I am trying to express "that which is not contingent on minds" and by 'subjectivity' 'that which is contingent on minds'. Defining them in terms of propositions, as you noted, cannot work since propositions are an expression of truth-values.

Within these new definitions, it would be said that propositionalizing things, as well as all Truth in general, is contingent on both object (being) and subject (mind).

I am going to refurbish the OP to reflect this definitional change: thank you Leontiskos!

I must concur with , as you are describing Schopenhauer's the 'Will-to-Live' (as he put it) and, I would say, not really the 'Will-to-Power' nor definitely not Nietzsche's affirmation of life. Although, granted, I do think Nietzsche's 'Will-to-Power' is a rip off of Schopenhauer's Will-to-Live.

Nietzsche actually "revolts" against his cherished schopenhauer insofar as he thought he was too pessimistic. His affirmation of life, best described with his analogy of the demon that offers one the eternal recurrence of their life and amor fati, is to say that one has not rid himself completely of that disease, that 'decadence', until they are ready to live their life over-and-over again for all eternity; until then, for Nietzsche, there's a bit of nihilism in them still.

Intuitions, in the philosophical sense, are what one intellectual immediately grasps of the situation (whereas, in colloquial speech, it can also mean 'going with your gut'): this is why it is sometimes called 'an intellectual seeming'.

Intuitions, like reason, are fundamental to the way by which we come to know the world and, as such, are presupposed as reliable as opposed to determining how reliable they actually are. For example, if I start noticing that my intuitions are causing me to stray incredibly far from the truth (to the point, perhaps, that I am endangering myself constantly), then that is itself an intuition. Likewise, to say that intuitions are reliable or unreliable is to intuit that--thusly, the very affirmation or denial of it presupposes it in the first (and that's why I like to think of intuitions are simply inevitable).

Because you can never know a single thing without intuiting, I find epistemic conservatism to be quite appealing; that is, that one should use their intuitions until they can be countered with evidence that demonstrates their unreliability (which would itself use other intuitions).

Perhaps why we inevitably use intuitions is because there is much more processing occurring when we view reality than what we have introspective access to and, thusly, we can't retrospectively cognize 100% accurately at why we intuited what we did (at a deeper level).

we now know that both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries can be used successfully to try to explain the occurrence of certain physical phenomena.
…
This, I think, disproves the validity of Kant's explicit (testable) epistemic hypothesis that only Euclidean geometry must apply to the physical world because it is a transcendental (necessary and strictly universal) form of human sensible intuition.

I agree. Kant, however, was more interested in our representative faculties and assumed, like a lot of people in his time, that newtonian physics would never be superseded. Obviously, many of his newtonian-based claims are stale; but his idea of there being transcendental truths seems still rather convincing.

However, can Kant's theory of sensible intuition be modified to better fit contemporary facts, or must it be completely discarded as a once very interesting, but now debunked, theory

I think the core of his theory is fine: we are representative beings who do have necessary a priori knowledge and synthetic a priori judgments. Just think of how your brain fills in the gaps constantly as it guesses what it is experiencing: it is adding something which is not there beyond phenomenal experience. Likewise, it seems rather convincing that the objects (or whatever the things-in-themselves are or thing-in-itself is) conform to our representative faculties: we don’t get any direct knowledge of the world-as-it-is. Now, can be philosophically decipher what a priori synthetic conceptions we have? I don’t think so: I will that up to neuroscience and the like.

Might there not be, instead, objective multiverses, each functioning according to different kinds of mathematics and geometries, some already known others not, which have nothing at all to do with any transcendental forms of human sensible intuition?

Kant adamantly claims that we cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves; so his theory does not negate nor affirm the existence of a multiverse. He calls things-in-themselves “purely negative conceptions”, which are placeholders for whatever we are representing.

Personally, I don’t a need to posit extra universes doing their own things in parallel with ours. All I see needing explanation is the reality in which we live, and it seems unparsimonious to posit extraneous realities.

I also think that Kant's notions of space and time are not the same as the space and time that I experience on a daily basis.

Einstein's notions of space and time are the dynamic ones that can be empirically verified through a wide range of experiments.

I sort of agree. Space and time are not experienced, they are the necessary forms of your experience: our minds don’t produce space and time but, rather, are conditioned by it; however, I think you are correct that they are not purely a priori (in the sense Kant wanted it to be), as we can gain more understanding of them via a posteriori investigations but they are still a priori insofar as they are the necessary preconditions of our experience (as the necessary forms thereof). In other words, their behaviors can be empirically investigated, but they are still only the form of your minds representations. I think Kant made the mistake of thinking that because something is synthetic a priori that it must be impossible to understand empirically—but that simply isn’t true.

I think the degree of use of Kantianism in one’s view is just relative to the metaphysical theory one holds. A physicalist could hold that there is a phenomenal and noumenal space and time, such that the former is attempting to represent the latter; and many ideas from Kant will follow therefrom. However, they will deny that they synthetic.

As an analytic idealist, I salvage many of Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s metaphysical views; and, thusly, I hold time and space are synthetic a priori.

For example, empirical space bends in the presence of large masses and their strong gravitational fields; Kant's transcendental space is a static, rigid, container. Empirical time passes slower or faster depending on how near or far one is from a strong gravitational field, Kant's transcendental time flows uniformly everywhere for every person.

This is true; but I think it only demonstrates that:

1. Even the form of our experience can be empirically investigated;
2. It can behave differently than we would initially intuit (upon empirically studying it);
3. Newtonian physics doesn’t work anymore; and
4. They are governed by objective laws (and are not purely subjective productions of our minds).

However, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t synthetic (i.e., add something to the world that isn’t already there) nor that they are not a priori (i.e., that they are the necessary preconditions for the possibility of our phenomenal experience). For me, without a perceptive being, there is not extension (space) nor temporality (time) other than the ideas pertaining thereof in the mind of God.

Bob