Here we get to Mach's implicit version of I-am-my-world --- of consciousness as the being of the world itself (a true monism in some sense, but plural in its endless variety of integrated elements.)

If a knowledge of the connexion of the elements (sensations) does not suffice us, and we ask, Who possesses this connexion of sensations, Who experiences it ? then we have succumbed to the old habit of subsuming every element (every sensation) under some unanalysed complex, and we are falling back imperceptibly upon an older, lower, and more limited point of view.

This is the 'worldstreaming' mentioned previously. 'Sensation' is a ladder that must be thrown away, for the subject with sense organs emerges from these neutral elements along with its other, the sensed environment. Given the intense connection of our flesh with this worldstreaming, it's natural enough to want to make subjectivity absolute, but this ignores the interpenetration of our worldstreamings and the crucial sociality and worldliness of language. Note that Mach is content to dissolve the ego because he feels himself in a society where what's worthy in any ego is safely leaping from mortal vessel to mortal vessel. Mach is not alone in a sensation bubble. The world is not reduced to consciousness. Consciousness is 'reduced' or properly understood as exactly the [only] being of the world. [The only being that we know anything about and talk sensibly about ---a world of possible and actual experience. ]

That in this complex of elements, which fundamentally is only one, the boundaries of bodies and of the ego do not admit of being established in a manner definite and sufficient for all cases, has already been remarked. To bring together elements that are most intimately connected with pleasure and pain into one ideal mental-economical unity, the ego; this is a task of the highest importance for the intellect working in the service of the pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking will. The delimitation of the ego, therefore, is instinctively effected, is rendered familiar, and possibly becomes fixed through heredity. Owing to their high practical importance, not only for the individual, but for the entire species, the composites " ego " and " body " instinctively make good their claims, and assert themselves with elementary force. In special cases, however, in which practical ends are not concerned, but where knowledge is an end in itself, the delimitation in question may prove to be insufficient, obstructive, and untenable.

Similarly, class-consciousness, class-prejudice, the feeling of nationality, and even the narrowest-minded local patriotism may have a high importance, for certain purposes. But such attitudes will not be shared by the broad-minded investigator, at least not in moments of research. All such egoistic views are adequate only for practical purposes. Of course, even the investigator may succumb to habit. Trifling pedantries and nonsensical discussions; the cunning appropriation of others' thoughts, with perfidious silence as to the sources; when the word of recognition must be given, the difficulty of swallowing one's defeat, and the too common eagerness at the same time to set the opponent's achievement in a false light: all this abundantly shows that the scientist and scholar have also the battle of existence to fight, that the ways even of science still lead to the mouth, and that the pure impulse towards knowledge is still an ideal in our present social conditions.

The primary fact is not the ego, but the elements (sensations). What was said on p. 21 as to the term " sensation " must be borne in mind. The elements constitute the I. s have the sensation green, signifies that the element green occurs in a given complex of other elements (sensations, memories). When I cease to have the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in the ordinary, familiar association. That is all. Only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist. The ego is not a definite, unalterable, sharply bounded unity. None of these attributes are important; for all vary even within the sphere of individual life; in fact their alteration is even sought after by the individual. Continuity alone is important. .. But continuity is only a means of preparing and conserving what is contained in the ego. This content, and not the ego, is the principal thing. This content, however, is not confined to the individual. With the exception of some insignificant and valueless personal memories, it remains presented in others even after the death of the individual. The elements that make up the consciousness of a given individual are firmly connected with one another, but with those of another individual they are only feebly connected, and the connexion is only casually apparent. Contents of consciousness, however, that are of universal significance, break through these limits of the individual, and, attached of course to individuals again, can enjoy a continued existence of an impersonal, superpersonal kind, independently of the personality by means of which they were developed. To contribute to this is the greatest happiness of the artist, the scientist, the inventor, the social reformer, etc.

The underlined part is more of Mach's spirituality, and I suspect that of many scientific and artistic types. I'm sure many of us here would love to contribute something worthy --- somehow push the conversation forward. Even if such a drive also includes petty-selfish elements, so be it. We are mud that breathes.

Here's a key passage.

Not only the relation of bodies to the ego, but the ego itself also, gives rise to similar pseudo - problems, the character of which may be briefly indicated as follows:

Let us denote the above-mentioned elements by the letters A B C . . ., X L M . . ., a, b, c . . . Let those complexes of colours, sounds, and so forth, commonly called bodies, be denoted, for the sake of clearness, by A B C . .; the complex, known as our own body, which is a part of the former complexes distinguished by certain peculiarities, may be called K L M . . .; the complex composed of volitions, memory-images, and the rest, we shall represent by a b c . . . Usually, now, the complex a , c . . . K L M. . ., as making up the ego, is opposed to the complex A B C . . ., as making up the world of physical objects; sometimes also, a b c . . . is viewed as ego, and K L M . . . A B C . . . as world of physical objects. Now, at first blush, A B C . . . appears independent of the ego, and opposed to it as a separate existence. But this independence is only relative, and gives way upon closer inspection. Much, it is true, may change in the complex a b c . . . without much perceptible change being induced in A B C . . .; and vice versa. But many changes in a b c . . . do pass, by way of changes in K L M . . ., to A B C . . .; and vice versa. (As, for example, when powerful ideas burst forth into acts, or when our environment induces noticeable changes in our body.) At the same time the group K L M . . . appears to be more intimately connected with a b c . . . and with A B C . . ., than the latter with one another; and their relations find their expression in common thought and speech.

Precisely viewed, however, it appears that the group A B C . . . is always codetermined by K L M. A cube when seen close at hand, looks large; when seen at a distance, small; its appearance to the right eye differs from its appearance to the left; sometimes it appears double; with closed eyes it is invisible. The properties of one and the same body, therefore, appear modified by our own body; they appear conditioned by it. But where, now, is that same body, which appears so different? All that can be said is, that with different K L M different A B C . . . are associated.

A common and popular way of thinking and speaking is to contrast " appearance " with " reality." A pencil held in front of us in the air is seen by us as straight; dip it into the water, and we see it crooked. In the latter case we say that the pencil appears crooked, but is in reality straight. But what justifies us in declaring one fact rather than another to be the reality, and degrading the other to the level of appearance ? In both cases we have to do with facts which present us with different combinations of the elements, combinations which in the two cases are differently conditioned. Precisely because of its environment the pencil dipped in water is optically crooked; but it is tactually and metrically straight. An image in a concave or flat mirror is only visible, whereas under other and ordinary circumstances a tangible body as well corresponds to the visible image. A bright surface is brighter beside a dark surface than beside one brighter than itself. To be sure, our expectation is deceived when, not paying sufficient attention to the conditions, and substituting for one another different cases of the combination, we fall into the natural error of expecting what we are accustomed to, although the case may be an unusual one. The facts are not to blame for that. In these cases, to speak of " appearance " may have a practical meaning, but cannot have a scientific meaning. Similarly, the question which is often asked, whether the world is real or whether we merely dream it, is devoid of all scientific meaning. Even the wildest dream is a fact as much as any other. If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us. In our waking hours the relations of the elements to one another are immensely amplified in comparison with what they were in our dreams. We recognise the dream for what it is. When the process is reversed, the field of psychic vision is narrowed; the contrast is almost entirely lacking. Where there is no contrast, the distinction between dream and waking, between appearance and reality, is quite otiose and worthless. — Mach

Here's a key part:
Let those complexes of colours, sounds, and so forth, commonly called bodies, be denoted, for the sake of clearness, by A B C . .; the complex, known as our own body, which is a part of the former complexes distinguished by certain peculiarities, may be called K L M . . .; the complex composed of volitions, memory-images, and the rest, we shall represent by a b c.

Note that capital letters are used for everything that's typically understood to be physical.

ABC = elements that make up chairs for instance
KLM = elements that make up my arm, for instance
abc = elements that make up my daydream, for instance

The breakthrough move is to simply consider functional relationships between all of these elements, forgetting or ignoring our usual prejudices about mental and physical and appearance and reality.

Precisely viewed, however, it appears that the group A B C . . . is always codetermined by K L M.

A cube when seen close at hand, looks large; when seen at a distance, small; its appearance to the right eye differs from its appearance to the left; sometimes it appears double; with closed eyes it is invisible. The properties of one and the same body, therefore, appear modified by our own body; they appear conditioned by it. But where, now, is that same body, which appears so different? All that can be said is, that with different K L M different A B C . . . are associated.

I think Mach's point is that the cube is one and the same body throughout those changes as a matter of convention. We blow open the hermeneutic space by thinking of ABC as a function of KLM, or the reverse.

The other issue is the conventional nature of our taking this or that assembly of elements for 'real' or 'physical.' Mach doesn't stress the fact here, but he seems to echo Wittgenstein's 'I am my world.' The ego, along with everything else, is composed of such elements. Its boundaries (its assembly) is in some sense arbitrary, though I doubt Mach would deny the force of habit and enculturation.

I'm going to quote from Mach and weave those quotes into my larger point.

Colours, sounds, and the odours of bodies are evanescent. But their tangibility, as a sort of constant nucleus, not readily susceptible of annihilation, remains behind; appearing as the vehicle of the more fugitive properties attached to it. Habit, thus, keeps our thought firmly attached to this central nucleus, even when we have begun to recognise that seeing hearing, smelling, and touching are intimately akin in character. A further consideration is, that owing to the singularly extensive development of mechanical physics a kind of higher reality is ascribed to the spatial and to the temporal than to colours, sounds, and odours; agreeably to which, the temporal and spatial links of colours, sounds, and odours appear to be more real than the colours, sounds and odours themselves. The physiology of the senses, however, demonstrates, that spaces and times may just as appropriately be called sensations as colours and sounds. — Mach

This is part of Mach's showing how relatively permanent enties (including the ego) can be decomposed into elements which will turn out to be neither mind nor matter, prior to both, the raw ingredients of both. By dissolving primary qualities (as Kant also did), he goes beyond Hobbes and Locke. But unlike Kant he feels no need to hang these neutral elements on something obscure. This is probably because he wasn't religious in the same way. He also didn't need an afterlife. Digression, but Mach's minimal, understated 'spirituality' (if we still want to call it that) also speaks to me.

Here's a sample:

Further, that complex of memories, moods, and feelings, joined to a particular body (the human body), which is called the "I" or "Ego," manifests itself as relatively permanent. I may be engaged upon this or that subject, I may be quiet and cheerful, excited and ill-humoured. Yet, pathological cases apart, enough durable features remain to identify the ego. Of course, the ego also is only of relative permanency.
...
The ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies. That which we so much dread in death, the annihilation of our permanency, actually occurs in life in abundant measure. That which is most valued by us, remains preserved in countless copies, or, in cases of exceptional excellence, is even preserved of itself. In the best human being, however, there are individual traits, the loss of which neither he himself nor others need regret. Indeed, at times, death, viewed as a liberation from individuality, may even become a pleasant thought. Such reflections of course do not make physiological death any the easier to bear. — Mach

I suspect that many people come to this same realization. The same virtues that die with the old return with the young. The flame leaps from candle to candle. In Feuerbach, we find also that

[ the true belief in immortality is ] a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

This will not please the antinatalist, and there is maybe an optimism in Mach and Feuerbach that's more difficult for us in age that's come to dread technology, to feel ourselves enslaved perhaps to screens, or to others who are so enslaved.

Haven't you said this from your own perspective? — Angelo Cannata

Yes. But, respectfully, so what ? What do you expect ? A voice from the whirlwind ? But even that'd just be God's perspective, no ?

[1] Belief is the conceptual 'dimension' of the-world-from-a-perspective.

[2] This claim is itself a belief : in other words, the structure of our world as I see it.

[3] You may see the world differently, but the right string of words from me might change the way you see this same world.

If I give testimony, then it's indeed me giving testimony. I'll leave it for a certain stripe of mystic to believe in some naked reality, some grasp of Truth that is more than relatively settled belief. We can always change our minds, on some issues more plausibly than others. As I see it, you are maybe floating the usual bubble theory, paradoxically asserting that our world can't be talked about. The true sceptic is a madman or reduced to silence. Those who bring insight or even criticism take the shared world, shared language, and shared rational norms for granted (this equiprimordial pseudo-trinity is really one.)

I don't pretend to infallibility, and I hold to my right to change my mind in the future. As I see it, we tend to discuss our shared world from our differing perspectives. By doing so, we synthesize what we tend to call more adequate or 'objective' perspectives. I'm a big fan of Popper and his talk of letting our theories do our dying for us. His 'basic statements 'are also useful here. The tower of science rises from a swamp. No statement is beyond falsification or revision, but we take some as sure enough for now.

The newbie calculus student sees the same real numbers as the Fields Medal analyst, but not at all with the same depth or adequacy. They intend the same worldly object, the real number system (a cultural object), just as the child and the neurosurgeon can intend the same brain. Note that if inquiry is the settling of belief, which involves the resolution of a tension, it's no surprise that we understand our newly settled state as an improvement (as us moving closer to the 'truth.') But there's nothing magical in this word 'truth.' I call beliefs I share 'true.' In other words, I call descriptions of the world as I see it 'true.'

Of course you can compare a photograph or a painting with the actual subject that it's supposed to represent, but that is not at issue. — Wayfarer

This is why I insist that the lifeworld is always already 'significant' or linguistically-structured. Sort of what Wittgenstein was about in the TLP. How do propositions mean ? The world is all that is case. What does it mean to call P true ? I say that belief is simply the structure of the world given perspectively. But we can have 'signitive intentions,' guesses that a box contains X rather than Y. So our counterfactuals picture the meaningful lifeworld, not some hidden ur-stuff. And 'seeing is believing' means that a 'fulfilled intention' is an extremely strong pressure on our belief (on the articulable meaningform of 'our-world-for-me.') Though we can always retrospectively decide that we hallucinated, or must have been dreaming.

Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. — plaque flag

I think I should stress that I don't deny the necessity of an individual working brain for though. The point is that we are cultural beings, and that the hardware of the brain is necessary but not sufficient for us to be fully human. The hardware (wetware) is a thin client, a sine qua non.

To think rationally is to think according to norms. Following Brandom's inferentialism, I'd say that meaning is essentially normative/social. I do not at all deny the importance and possibility of acts of individual creativity. Such innovations sometimes spread throughout the culture, and there is no culture at all without actual living bodies. Spirit (culture) is a modification of 'nature.' It's all built on/from living flesh and its environment.

I agree, but we should be careful not to turn perspectives into objective realities. This mistake can be avoided by considering that, by talking about perspectives, we, as a consequence, need to apply the relativity of everything to the idea of perspectives as well, so that, at the end, we need to admit that, ultimately, we don't know what we are talking about. — Angelo Cannata

I think you are making a good point about the fragility of relativism.

But one can say (with me) that we only ever have belief without also saying that all beliefs are equally worthy. We can accept our fallibility without being helplessly lost in doubt. In fact, we always do take all sorts of 'truths' for granted. Peirce is great on the 'settling' of belief. Inquiry is activated by the wobble of this or that piece of our 'belief machinery' --- which mostly runs quietly in the darkness. It's because we don't question the meaning of most of our words than we can question (in those words) the meaning of this or that one. And so on.

The brain doesn't appear at all. Not unless you're someone who is studying brains. — Wayfarer

?

This doesn't seem relevant. Of course our brains are protected by our skulls and our flesh.

There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones. — Angelo Cannata

Moreover, critical rational discussion presupposes a shared language and a shared world. Rational norms are implicitly self-transcending.

So one can be mad, of course, truly fretting that one is trapped in a bubble, but one cannot argue seriously for the impossibility of the conditions of an argument being meaningful.

There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones. — Angelo Cannata

My own take is that language is fundamentally social, more social than individual. 'Language speaks the subject.'

Basically like this :

The form of experience is temporality, which is to say that whatever is directly experienced occurs “now”, or at the moment in time to which we refer as “the present”. Experience, in other words, is essentially transitory, and its contents are incommunicable. What we experience are the perceivable features of individual objects. It is through the act of thinking that we are able to identify those features through the possession of which different individuals belong to the same species, with the other members of which they share these essential features in common.

Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

No. If the world as it is in itself is unknown to us, then it's not a thing. It neither exists nor does not exist. — Wayfarer

Perhaps your view is changing as the discussion proceeds. But here you said :

By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brainreceives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. — Wayfarer

So you have a brain which presumably 'really' exists (a brain-in-itself, made of ur-stuff) taking more of this ur-stuff and creating ordinary experience. If the brain is itself mere appearance, then of course the brain-created world no longer makes sense.

Kant wrote that the hidden reality is nothing like appearance, not even spatially or temporally. But by abandoning primary qualities in this way, he abandons the brain and the sense organs. So he pushes Hobbes and Locke to a point of mystic and glorious absurdity.

It's only because of our ordinary experience with sense organs that we came up with the idea of appearance and perspective.

Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

Yes, commonsense tends to forget or not notice the transparent subject, which I equate with the very being of the world. So people tend to think that the world exists in an aperspectival way somehow. But I don't think we can really make sense of that. We understand 'matter' or its surrogate in terms of possible perception, possible experience. Experience is always a fusion of subject and object, to put it roughly, though it's more like a nondual stream that divides only upon reflection. I agree with Husserl that a certain kind of scientific realism is absurd, despite its popularity.

What do you make of this? — Wayfarer

I'm a correlationist (or something like that), so I think you aren't being radical enough.

I don't agree with 'indirect realism' because it posits two separate things - the reality and its representation. As if we could compare them — Wayfarer

But aren't you explicitly positing two things ? The representing and the represented ?

Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations. — wonderer1

I think Husserl also handles this nicely. We can always get a better and more complete look at something. We have the 'transcendent' (inexhaustible) object which we are never done learning about. We never see even a desk lamp from every possible angle in every possible lighting.

That 'truth' of the object is how it is for an ideal looking-at-it, roughly speaking. But this include accumulating concepts, relating objects to one another, the whole of science even.

It's not my term. It's just standard philosophical terminology. You can of course stick to Kant's terminology. But that's beside the point, is it not ?

Which 'primary source' describes Kant as an 'indirect realist'? Is it something Kant says about himself? — Wayfarer

I don't think the phrase 'indirect realism' was invented yet. But let's just look.

The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. Ordinarily I see myself via an image in a mirror, or a football match via an image on the TV screen. The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary. This intermediary has been given various names, depending on the particular version of indirect realism in question, including “sense datum, ” “sensum,” “idea,” “sensibilium,” “percept” and “appearance.

https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2

Here's Kant:

All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.

The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
...
I leave to things as we obtain them by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time, anything more than mere appearance of those things, but never their constitution in themselves.

Kant is truly more radical than Hobbes or Locke. For even matter in motion is mere appearance. The deep Stuff of the world is (in the quotes I've presented so far) completely hidden and mysterious.

For Kant, we only have $f(X)$, never $X$, where $f$ is our cognitive 'filter.' But $X$ serves no purpose here. I think Kant is misled by an analogy, thinking he can talk sensibly not only beyond individual human perspectives but beyond the human perspective altogether.

But Kant described himself as transcendental idealist, and differentiated that from what he described as 'problematical idealism'. — Wayfarer

You can of course link me to secondary sources, but I was quoting primary sources to begin with. From the book he wrote after receiving that criticism, when he tried to force himself to be clearer.

Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,

All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.

The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
...
I leave to things as we obtain them by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time, anything more than mere appearance of those things, but never their constitution in themselves



https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm

Kant took pains to distinguish himself from Berkeley, because critics accused him of being like Berkeley, whom Kant described as a 'problematic idealist' on account of Berkeley saying that a world outside himself is dubious or impossible to know. — Wayfarer

I've read Kant's outraged responses to his early critics. He was truly pissed. I've quoted them here even, years ago. But I don't think Berkeley's point is that we can't know things outside of our individual selves. I think his point is that a-perspectival, a-sensual, a-experiential reality does not compute. Like talk of triangles with 17 sides.

I don't think it does. Equations are forms; Classificatory systems are forms. They use another language is all. — unenlightened

:up:

I'd say it's bad scientistic metaphysicians [ who may sometimes also be physicists ] who tend to imagine these 'forms' as something somehow 'extra-mental' that is hidden 'behind' appearance/experience.

My argument is simpy that the mind or brain assimilates sensory and rational information and from this constructs what we understand as 'the world'. I'm not denying that there is a world apart from the mind, but saying that whatever we think or say about that purported world absent any mind is meaningless. I'm struggling to understand what about this is controversial or confusing, it seems very straightforward to me. — Wayfarer

This is maybe the grand issue of German Idealism, so maybe it's not so surprising that it's controversial. Kant's own followers questioned the pointlessness of this X that nothing could be said about. But I think the confusion can be partially laid at your door.

You open with: The aim of this essay is to make the case for a type of philosophical idealism, which posits mind as foundational to the nature of existence.

But you offer some kind of Kantian indirect realism, which if fine, of course --- it's a respectable position. And maybe the point was to ease the non-philosophical causal reader into Kantianism in an unintimidating way. Again, no complaint. But maybe saying mind is 'foundational' to existence is a little misleading ? As many philosophers have noted, that X is ambiguous and questionable.

I confess. In my own research I have never cared, being more concerned with the difficult trivia that goes on outside the hallowed halls of Foundations. For instance, I rarely came into contact with transfinite theory — jgill

:up:

It's fascinating how different personalities prefer this or that aspect of mathematics. I got into it later than most (~30). I was suddenly grabbed by the beauty of it. It is like granite or marble, in which one could sculpt. So for me it 'has' to have meaning and shine for the intuition, because it's obvious that there's a teeming infinity of possible random formal systems that no one cares about. I

've studied a bit of theoretical computer science, and it affected me like studying Darwin affected me. It matters whether I can enumerate a set or not, matters to my intuition. I'm assuming you also are 'speaking a language' in your work. You have the feeling (I hypothesize) that patterns are being revealed that aren't just computer-checkable patterns in dead symbols.

To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

We end up with a boy in the bubble, who can't be sure there's a world out there.

Perhaps, as per Bourdieu, 'my habitus' (or Merleau-Ponty 'my flesh' ... Nietzsche 'my body'). — 180 Proof

This may be a wild misreading, but, following Mach, are you [also] hinting at the fusion of my flesh and the world ? In a certain sense, I 'am' [also] my coffee cup. The boundaries of the ego are practically-conventionally determined.

But I can't deny that the flesh in another sense is both seeing and seen, and it's 'me' in the sense of its intimate relationship with my 'will.' [ Merleau-Ponty is a great mention. Only in the last year did I finally pay attention to such a great philosopher. ]

Saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it. This is equivalent to say that it is meaningless, because its meaning is entirely limited inside itself, entirely determined by itself. — Angelo Cannata

If you spy on your neighbor by peeping in through one window, and I peep in through another, are we not both peeping in on the same neighbor ?

If I believe that the Jones is guilty, while you believe he is innocent, aren't we both believing about the same Jones ?

I think (?) you are assuming some kind of dualism, as each of us is stuck in a solipsistic bubble of world-dream. I'm saying there 'is' not 'ontological' subject, or rather that such a subject is the being of the world, which is given like a cubist painting.

Respectfully, I don't think you have responded really to my point. Indirect realism, which seems to be your position, is (I think) even the dominant view.

You wrote:

By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. ... By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it.

I think you are also half-suggesting that the brain creates itself, if you really understand it to create the world. On the whole, I think you are more likely presenting indirect realism. Some kind of elusive urstuff is Really Out There --- as in Kant, who does not want to be mistaken for an idealist.

Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses...Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary. — Kant

Here's indirect realism, which sounds very close to Kant.

Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception that subjects do not experience the external world as it really is, but perceive it through the lens of a conceptual framework.[3] Furthermore, indirect realism is a core tenet of the cognitivism paradigm in psychology and cognitive science. While there is superficial overlap, the indirect model is unlike the standpoint of idealism, which holds that only ideas are real, but there are no mind-independent objects.[4]

My own perspectivism (not really mine) is closer to idealism in a certain sense, but it reduces the subject to world rather than the other way around. (Like James or Mach, etc.)

I guess I'm asking you to clarify whether you are basically an indirect realist. Hence my quotes of Hobbes and Locke who are themselves close to Kant.

Sorry, I don't see the connection. Spinoza is talking about reflective reasoning from (parallax-like) both the perspective of eternity and the perspective of time. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is talking about constitutive the meta/cognitive constraints of logic-grammar. I suppose for both thinkers the "I" is impersonal (ergo universal? ontological?) ... — 180 Proof

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Thanks, I am trying to follow a thread, including its running through Leibniz's The Monadology, and I was curious if it runs through Spinoza's work too. We all 'face' and 'intend' the [ same ] world, but this world is given to or through individual 'faces ' ('subjects.') I take the TLP to identify the 'pure subject' with exactly the being of the world --a triumph over dualism and the reification of awareness as some other kind of elusive material.

Maybe this is what you meant by 'ontological' [subject.] The limits of my language are the limits of my world because my 'belief' is the meaningstructure of the world, not something 'in' me.

the very concept of perspective is completely unreliable, because, after all, it remains a hidden way of saying that there is an objective reality, from which perspective tries to be different. — Angelo Cannata

I think maybe you are conflating perspectivism (at least as I defend it) with indirect realism. Perspectivism is not the view that we each get our own TV-screen which merely represents some differing and otherwise obscure Reality. Instead we are ourselves (as 'pure witness' behind the psychological subject) 'are' perspectives, which is to say the very being of the world itself, with the world understood to have no other kind of being. As we look down on that city in the valley, it exists only as the-valley-for, never from no perspective at all.

"Blessed is he whose beginning is before he came into being!"

Jesus - Gospel of Thomas - V 20

"The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be." Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death."

Gospel of Thomas - V18

This refers to what in Taoism is 'our face before we were born'. If we can dive this deep we can overcome life and death, and this would be the Grail experience of total 'holiness'. In its proper meaning yoga is the 'art of union with reality',and this definition reveals what meditation is all about. It's about going back to the beginning, before we began to identify as a subject with a perspective.

. . . . — FrancisRay

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Nice. Sort of like 'the face of a baby at a parade before it has learned to smile.'

In its proper meaning yoga is the 'art of union with reality',and this definition reveals what meditation is all about. It's about going back to the beginning, before we began to identify as a subject with a perspective. — FrancisRay

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I like to think that there's also a discursive path to some discursive analogue of that. I do think that analysis gets us far. But of course I value ineffable experiences that I also won't try to talk much about.

For the mystics reality and consciousness are the same phenomenon, and perhaps this is the idea you need to overcome the idea of pure subjectivity. They say the subject-object distinction is functional or conventional, and not ontological. — FrancisRay

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Nice ! That's what I'm basically try to say in this thread. Of course we need account for the fact that there are many of us, each of us the being of the 'same' world from a different 'point of view.'

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I'd be glad to hear more about your take on the perennial philosophy.

Of course, how is simply recognizing the nature of being "mystical?" It's a loaded term for sure. But I'd say it fits in that we obviously have such a strong tendency NOT to see the world this way, making the turn a sort of "revaluation." — Count Timothy von Icarus

A good question. Maybe 'mystical' isn't the ideal word. Is philosophical wonder better ? The world loses it familiarity, but as a whole. Husserl writes of the sense of a whole world being opened up by his bracketing, as if an entire dimension of reality/experience is usually ignored.

Sounds right; I agree. :up: It seems like we are pretty close, but I'm sure we'll manage to find something to argue about one day. :razz: — Leontiskos

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Nice to hear ! It's not as easy as one might like it to be to feel understand on an internet forum.

(I am also willing to toy with the idea that intellect is able to obtain a universal or rather quasi-universal point of view, which is I think what much of philosophy and science is interested in.) — Leontiskos

I think we agree on this. I see intellectual progress as movement in perspective space, which is also [largely ] character space. We become the universal person, but perhaps Jungian individuation is helpful here too, and we also develop unique gifts, complementing the gifts of others. I think maybe both processes run side by side. As we find ourselves a fitting role in the world, including the mirror, we are less afraid or resentful of the gifts of others. We learn to open up to others' perspectives, to identity with the process of learning rather than the result, with a way of being rather than a claim on ideological turf. So yeah I agree. The goal is toward that point at infinity, the impossibly adequate grasp. Horizon again. And Husserl and Merleau-Ponty also talked about being perpetual beginners, always going back to the fundamental experiences and questions, in love with philosophy.

I want to say that the soul ultimately transcends and encompasses the world, and is not metaphysically co-extensive with it. So the subject is the world from a point of view, but it is at the same time more than that. It is not only world-from-a-point-of-view. Do we even disagree on that? — Leontiskos

For me the world includes promises and daydreams and prime numbers, as well as protons and pumpkins. The lifeworld with all of its cultural structure is fundamental. It's only within this world (famously sketched by Heidegger) that physics or biology can make sense in the first place, though people (absurdly in my view) think they can put the cart before the horse. To me a map is some little piece of reality that 'mirrors' some structure or aspect of a larger piece. There is no 'deep' appearence-reality distinction but only various practical discriminations -- the kind of thing Mach talks about, such as the boundaries of the ego being merely practical. I mention this in case you thought I reduced the subject to a limited kind of worldly being.

For me the possibility of perception is derivative on the thing that exists in itself. The thing is more than a possibility of perception, even though we always know by means of perception. ...But then given what you say <here> I think we might be on the same page, and I may just be splitting hairs. — Leontiskos

Husserl's notion of the transcendence of the object is helpful here. Sartre opens B&N with it (does a great job). The spatial object is never finally or completely given. I'm quite happy to understand the object as some kind of ideal unity of its possible 'adumbrations.'

Reality is 'horizonal.' I speak too easily of the being of the world when it's better perhaps to stress its fluid endless becoming. I'd say I have a kind of continuous blanket ontology, with all things inferentially linked. Brandom's inferentialism was a recent, powerful influence on me, which allowed me to see how all objects are glued together in one nexus of rationality -- a single network of entities that appear interdependently for their very sense in our reason-giving sociality.

I think perhaps you underestimate just how deep it is possible to go. — FrancisRay

It could be. And I could end up revising my beliefs. All I can do is sincerely think and be open and be critical, and so on.

Okay. But in this case how do you explain the odd fact that the mystics have the only metaphysical theory that works? — FrancisRay

I'm not sure what metaphysical theory you have in mind. To me, perennial philosophy is not so exact or definite.

The perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis),[note 1] also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown.

Now I lean more toward than away from this idea. I've studied thinkers for different eras and cultures and I do think that there's a blurry consensus that's worth something. I find my own favored perspectivism appearing in different flavors in Western philosophy. But, FWIW, I am fascinating by Buddhism, Taoism, etc.

All others are rejected by analysis. Also, meditation is said to be shallow if it does not go beyond mind. — FrancisRay

I do think 'rejection by analysis' is, roughly, the correct method. I also think it's analytically shallow to take the subject as something final and absolute. The subject is a kind of fiction. And in heightened states it's maybe an acceptance of death that allows for an ecstatic breakthrough. (Happened to me once.) And just conceptually, I'm sharing my own ideas in this thread because I feel like there's genuine progress in understanding consciousness as the being of the world. Like a knot has been untied, even if it's hard to communicate to others (I'm not saying you don't get what I'm trying to say, just that it's tricky to talk about with most people.)

Absolutely we agree on this. This is why I endorse the perennial philosophy, for which reality is not a perspective but a phenomenon, Reality would be our identity, not a perspective on something else. Kant shows that the ultimate is inconceivable and unsayable, as the OT story of the golden calf suggests. It would be knowable, however, as it is who we are. , — FrancisRay

Well maybe our views are pretty close. It's always interesting to navigate others' idiolects. We all have our own way of saying things. But I think we should differentiate between perspectivism and indirect realism. Because I view perspectivism as the subjectivity finally done right, finally grasped properly, in a way that doesn't hide reality from the subject, put us all in a solipsistic box of mere appearance.