I could just say 'fruit' instead of 'experience of fruit' if I wasn't reacting against what I'd call the metaphysical fantasy of aperspectival reality. — plaque flag

Then perhaps this is the starting point for where we differ, which is probably rather subtle. I don't actually know very much about this view you are reacting against, but I am of course wary of defining objects in terms of perception.

I don't think objects are very well defined, and it would be sub-philosophical to avoid challenging popular understanding. — plaque flag

I think my single sentence about the common opinion has ended up being a distraction.

Note that most of the objects in the world are not currently perceived. I've never seen the Eiffel Tower, but I think I could see it, given certain conditions. — plaque flag

Mill's point holds of every physical object. It is a proper accident. But it's not what objects are. Objects are not defined in terms of perception. From the book you cited in your other thread:

"Things-in-themselves? But they're fine, thank you very much. And how are you? You complain about things that have not been honored by your vision? You feel that these things are lacking the illumination of your consciousness? But if you missed the galloping freedom of the zebras in the savannah this morning, then so much the worse for you; the zebras will not be sorry that you were not there, and in any case you would have tamed, killed, photographed, or studied them. Things in themselves lack nothing, just as Africa did not lack whites before their arrival."
-Bruno Latour — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant

(link to book)

Sure, we start in the world of things, not as philosophers. — plaque flag

I don't think philosophers who try to reverse engineer the natural order of knowing end up being coherent.

But I object to 'non-perceptible properties.' What's that supposed to mean ? This is where 'substance' starts to seem like a magic word. — plaque flag

Yes, I realize that. A power is an easy example. An apple tree has the power to produce fruit. It possesses this power, we can know this through inference, and nevertheless the power is not perceptible.

That's just a rephrasing, it seems to me. — plaque flag

Right, and that's why I said it is subtle. I don't think anyone on the forum has grasped the point Kit Fine is making in that thread, largely because it is foreign to contemporary philosophy.

I would have to think about how to make it more apparent.

Come on though, that's presumption, as you say. Uncharitable. And Mill is dead. So please just try to understand me, and then defeat my position. — plaque flag

I am explaining why I disagree with Mill. I don't know how closely you follow him.

Respectfully, you still haven't met my challenge, unless I haven't got to that part yet.

How do you understand the existence of physical objects ? — plaque flag

The challenge of how to understand the existence of physical objects in a way that differs from Mill?

...So the point for me is not sensation (though sense organs are involved) but perspective. The object is always situated in a field of vision, and we understand it in the first place as something that could be looked at. — plaque flag

This seems pretty close to Mill. I think what we understand in the first place is a thing, and secondarily that the thing has perceptible properties, and then later that the thing likely has non-perceptible properties.

What previous definition ? People most use words like tools with pre-theoretical skill. Concept-mongering practical primates. Making it explicit is hard work. — plaque flag

I think someone like Mill is saying, "Objects are this and not that. Your pre-theoretical view was mistaken." I don't think he is saying that "this" unfolds from "that", such that both are secure.

Explication (unfolding) is not redefinition. — plaque flag

An "unfolding" which contradicts the previous notion is redefinition.

Of course. But most people aren't philosophers. — plaque flag

Also, I have always thought this would be an interesting study in itself. What does it mean for a philosopher to redefine a commonly used term? For instance, what does it mean when Mill comes along and redefines objects as possibilities of sensation? Is this not equivocation?

Presumably what he is trying to do is convince the world that an object is not what they suppose it to be, but this is too seldom explicit. My favorite philosophers are very careful to avoid this sort of redefinition.

Of course. But most people aren't philosophers. — plaque flag

I see it in the way you see Kant, albeit much more subtle and less pronounced:

It may be hard to see because radical indirect realism is so sexy. I watched a Donald Hoffman Ted talk, and it was gripping. I knew it was fallacious and confused, but I still enjoyed it. I felt the pull of the sci-fi. I could be one of the those in on the Secret, while others were lost in the shadow play on the cave wall. — plaque flag

The non-sequitur is that, just because we know objects through sensation, it does not follow that objects just are possibilities of sensation.

derivative on the thing that exists in itself

Can you unfold this ? My bias is that you won't find more than what Mill described, but perhaps you'll surprise me. — plaque flag

I think Mill's whole construal of "possibilities of sensation" is a non-starter:

These various possibilities are the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation.

This is subtly off. A substance is not a possibility of sensation. That is an accidental characteristic of a substance, not its definition. That characteristic is crucial to human epistemology, but that doesn't make it the definition. Further, no one actually thinks about objects in such a way. Objects are things that we encounter through our senses, not possibilities of sensation. This is the same reversal of metaphysics and epistemology that occurs so often in modern philosophy.

The object itself and not some representation of it is known. — plaque flag

Mill is close to talking about a representation (sensation) rather than the object itself. He is defining the object in terms of sensation-representation.

In fact this sort of move is what strikes me as odd about so much of modern and contemporary philosophy. Again and again, a proper accident is mistaken for an essential property, and the error is always grounded in a shift towards the epistemic subject. The forlorn formal cause sneaks in through the back door, unnoticed and not critically attended to. In this case Mill has an epistemological problem before him, and as a consequence he ends up defining objects in terms of epistemology. ...So I suppose I am beginning to understand Kit Fine's modus operandi (link).

@Wayfarer, I think you would enjoy section 1.4 of Joseph Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, entitled, "The boundary of the modern understanding of reality and the place of belief." It represents a somewhat different approach to these questions of Scientism than the ones we have been considering.

Towards the end of his argument, he says:

So the conviction was bound to spread more and more that in the final analysis all that man could really know was what was repeatable, what he could put before his eyes at any time in an experiment. Everything that he can see only at secondhand remains the past and, whatever proofs may be adduced, is not completely knowable. Thus the scientific method, which consists of a combination of mathematics (Descartes!) and devotion to the facts in the form of the repeatable experiment, appears to be the one real vehicle of reliable certainty. The combination of mathematical thinking and factual thinking has produced the science-orientated intellectual standpoint of modern man, which signifies devotion to reality insofar as it is capable of being shaped. The fact has set free the faciendum, the “made” has set free the “makable”, the repeatable, the provable, and only exists for the sake of the latter. It comes to the primacy of the “makable” over the “made”. . . — Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Section 1.4

An easy answer would just be that sometimes humans are vile. That strikes me as a useless condemnation, though. I don't think they're actually any more vile than a flock of birds or a school of fish. The only way to begin understanding human behavior is to start by looking at it through an amoral lens. — frank

It sounds like you want to call good acts moral and bad acts amoral, such that immoral acts do not exist. You've defined immoral acts out of existence.

Relevant here is Elizabeth Anscombe's point:

All human action is moral action. It is all either good or bad. (It may be both.) — Elizabeth Anscombe, Medalist’s Address: Action, Intention and ‘Double Effect’

Yes, it's syncretist, and definitely unorthodox but there is a thread. — Wayfarer

That's fair. There are definitely different ways to go about it, and it sounds like you have some good sources to work from.

- True. For some reason my nephews are never deterred!

- :up:

Aquinas has a quote that goes something like this, "Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult."

It's from somewhere in his Compendium of Theology, and I think it's good advice. Granted, it's also fun to try to eat the whole meal in one bite. :grin:

- My response still holds good:

On further reflection, it occurs to me that an Aquinas would not endorse the notion of a 'mind-independent object'. Why? Because in his philosophical theology, particulars derive their being from God — Wayfarer

In this thread when we have been speaking about "mind-independent objects," 'mind' is taken to refer to the human mind. To speak about God's mind is a rather different thing, and now you seem to be flirting with full-fledged Idealism. I think you are working above your pay-grade at this point. :wink:

But there are sparks of truth in such an idea. For the classical theist human knowledge is a re-cognition of God's own thought, and the fact that we are made in God's image explains why we can know God's creation. This is one of the reasons why science (the study of mind-independent reality) is thought to have grown up so readily in theistic contexts. At the same time, your conclusion about the ontology of creation goes much further than classical theism would admit. It essentially moves towards a pantheism that undermines natural science for want of a determinate object of study.

we are not "jeering from the sidelines" but expressing sane moral arguments that can only be made from the sidelines. — Baden

What does it mean to glory in arguments that can "only be made from the sidelines"? Isn't that the objection? The problem? You've swallowed the critique whole without batting an eye. ...I'm impressed. :grin:

- :up:

Ah, okay. So could I say that you would follow Kant insofar as he favored self-legislation?

I think it could make a difference. We distinguish combatants from civilians, but then there are murky areas such as civilians who are proximate to the war, producing arms or some such. Thus insofar as someone is associated with the war, they are not a mere civilian. So if a compatriot hostage is more closely associated with the war/fighting than a neutral or opposed hostage, then a relevant difference could arise. What is at stake is probably a form of collectivism, and it may be contingent on whether the compatriot hostage is in general agreement with their possessor's tactics (i.e. if they think to themselves, "I am not opposed to using compatriots as human shields, but don't use me!").

Actually I didn't want to raise a tricky ethical question in that thread, because it is in the Politics and Current Affairs section.

Truman was a murderer. — Banno

Banno, allow me to ask a question out of curiosity.

In Anscombe's early work, such as "Modern Moral Philosophy," she more or less claimed that absolute moral prohibitions are unavailable to those who do not believe in divine law. Now I disagree with her and I would not be surprised to find that she changed her view at a later date, but what is your opinion on this matter? Given what I know about you, you presumably disagree with the claim.

I don't mean to derail. Just a quick question. :grin:

---

- That seems right to me as well.

:up: :up:

- Oh, I was just comparing you to the Speculative Realists. See: "Object-Oriented Ontology - Graham Harman Discussion."

I'm guessing the situation in Israel/Gaza is what you and RogueAI were discussing, or the situation spurred you to this question? Another tough one. — Down The Rabbit Hole

A related question with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict is whether it is illicit to indirectly kill those whom the enemy has taken hostage as human shields; along with the secondary question of whether it makes a difference if the human shield is the enemy's compatriot.

- Good to know. I figured as much, even though you both consider yourselves correlationists.

- Oh, that's not a problem. It was just the link that distracted me! I will try to get a response in at some point, but, prima facie, it does remind me of my immanent/transcendent distinction (link).

- Anscombe :up:

What citations do you want? — Gregory

Given that this thread is filled with your claims about Aquinas and your criticisms of Aquinas, one would expect to find that you have quoted or cited Aquinas at least one time. But you haven't. Not once. Therefore I conclude that you have no idea what you are talking about, especially given how incongruous your construals and criticisms are. Carry on, then.

@plaque flag, I was reading your thread, "Rationalism's Flat Ontology," and so far I'm on the third sentence. :smile: It looks like an interesting book, "The Democracy of Objects."

The book begins:

1.1. The Death of Ontology and the Rise of Correlationism

Our historical moment is characterized by a general distrust, even disdain, for the category of objects, ontology, and above all any variant of realism. Moreover, it is characterized by a primacy of epistemology over ontology. While it is indeed true that Heidegger, in Being and Time, attempted to resurrect ontology, this only took place through a profound transformation of the very meaning of ontology. Ontology would no longer be the investigation of being qua being in all its variety and diversity regardless of whether humans exist, but rather would instead become an interrogation of Dasein's or human being's access to being. Ontology would become an investigation of being-for-Dasein, rather than an investigation of being as such. In conjunction with this transformation of ontology from an investigation of being as such into an investigation of being-for-humans, we have also everywhere witnessed a push to dissolve objects or primary substances in the acid of experience, intentionality, power, language, normativity, signs, events, relations, or processes. To defend the existence of objects is, within the framework of this line of thought, the height of naïveté for objects are held to be nothing more than surface-effects of something more fundamental such as the signifier, signs, power or activities of the mind. With Hume, for example, it is argued that objects are really nothing more than bundles of impressions or sensations linked together by associations and habits in the mind. Here there is no deeper fact of objects existing beyond these impressions and habits. Likewise, Lacan will tell us that “the universe is the flower of rhetoric”, treating the beings that populate the world as an effect of the signifier.

We can thus discern a shift in how ontology is understood and accompanying this shift the deployment of a universal acid that has come to dissolve the being of objects. The new ontology argues that we can only ever speak of being as it is for us. Depending on the philosophy in question, this “us” can be minds, lived bodies, language, signs, power, social structures, and so on. There are dozens of variations... — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant

(link to chapter)

(Tagging @schopenhauer1 on account of the reference to Graham Harman)

Yes, there are many different schools of Thomism. My teachers tended to be in the Laval/River Forest school, or else the analytic Thomism school. Transcendental Thomism is more conciliatory towards modern thought:

4. Transcendental Thomism: Unlike the first three schools mentioned, this approach, associated with Joseph Marechal (1878-1944), Karl Rahner (1904-84), and Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), does not oppose modern philosophy wholesale, but seeks to reconcile Thomism with a Cartesian subjectivist approach to knowledge in general, and Kantian epistemology in particular. It seems fair to say that most Thomists otherwise tolerant of diverse approaches to Aquinas’s thought tend to regard transcendental Thomism as having conceded too much to modern philosophy genuinely to count as a variety of Thomism, strictly speaking, and this school of thought has in any event been far more influential among theologians than among philosophers. — Edward Feser, The Thomistic Tradition, Part I

- Okay, this seems to me like a good place to leave our discussion, which I think has been productive.

---

- I think we disagree on what anti-Scientism requires, but I will look forward to your thread on this topic.

This is still the way I would put it:

So the crux is apparently that scientism is realist, and can be resisted by the anti-realism of your OP, but I would prefer resisting scientism by way of an alternative realism. — Leontiskos

The object itself (better phrase for my money than the object-in-itself) and not some representation of it is known. Others may see the object itself from the other side of the room, and they will therefore see it differently, but they also see the object itself, not a representation.

I think we agree on:

Mediation is unnecessary here. Perspective is the better way to approach the varying of the object's givenness. The complicated machinery of vision is a often-mentioned red herring, in my view. The intended object is always out there in the world. 'I see the object' exists in Sellars' 'space of reasons.' — plaque flag

Yes, quite right. :up: And that it occurs is known most surely—more surely than any epistemological theory that might undercut it (hence my post <on the topic>). Of course you have also raised the additional point that indirect realism tends to presuppose direct realism.

- Thank you for that. I agree very much, and it is nice to find common ground. But I won't elaborate so as to avoid raining on Wayfarer's parade. :halo:

---

- Okay, thanks, that helps some. The "inferential role" idea adds a great deal. Sorry for the short responses. I am trying not to get trapped in this thread again. :sweat:

When we find any object, we will generally find that it has qualities and attributes such as shape, which pre-date our discovery of it. But at the same time, shape is an attribute of our sensory apprehension of the object. Whether it has shape outside that, or whether it has inherent attributes outside our sensory apprehension of it, is unknowable as a matter of principle... — Wayfarer

Then you are simply remiss in claiming that the object has a quality of shape that "pre-dates our discovery of it." The same contradiction is present.

You mean this : Objects 'are' possible and actual experiences ? — plaque flag

This is the quote I can't agree with:

Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are. — Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, Bryan Magee

---

Once this criticism occurred to me (I was inspired by Nietzsche*), the absurdity of Kant's system (as a whole, but not in all its details) became obvious. — plaque flag

Right.

Indirect realism is, without realizing it, dependent upon direct realism. — plaque flag

Exactly! And thus if indirect realism's critique of direct realism is thoroughgoing (as Kant's tends to be), then it saws off the branch on which it sits (as you already noted). That's the part that is always hard to see for the first time.

But it doesn't. It simply states that empiricism is not the sole arbiter of what it true. There's no contradiction. — Wayfarer

The microcosm here is the idea that boulders possess a mind-independent quality of shape (link), and you specifically called this an "empirical matter" (link). Presumably such is an empirical fact.

But then—and this occurs at the more general level as well—this empirical fact gets redefined to be a sensory phenomenon (link), and that is how we continually fall away from the point at issue, which is "whether we can know external reality as it is in itself." Thus you seem to simultaneously admit and deny the empirical fact that the boulder has shape in itself. In fact we fall away from the point at issue so consistently, that my task becomes merely designating the thesis at issue.

- Thanks :up:

Your first paragraph contradicts your second, and this is what I anticipated when I said, "They may be irreconcilable." You say that you are not questioning empirical facts, and then you immediately go on to question empirical facts. Or you redefine them. You have been doing the same thing at a more concrete level with regard to shape.

The question would be better put 'do the eyes distort?' - to which the response is, in their absence there is no capacity to see. — Wayfarer

<Right>, but the question, again, is what it means to see; what is the nature of the glass. The disagreement has always been over "whether we can know external reality as it is in itself."

Anyhoo, I think Hamas is multi-faceted. It has a terrorist wing, at the same time it's the "authority" we have to deal with in Gaza. There comes a point, if you want peace, that you're going to have to treat with the assholes across the table, irrespective of what they've done. — Benkei

But doesn't it all come down to whether the "assholes across the table" also want peace?

Kant's final claim is recklessly wrong. If space and time are only on the side of appearance, we no longer have a reason trust the naive vision of a world mediated by sense organs in the first place. — plaque flag

Yes, good point. I agree.

, - Interesting, thank you.

I understand the temptation to say there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects, but I'm asking what kind of meaning can be given to such a claim. It's not only unfalsifiable, it's impossible to parse at all. In my view, any attempt to give such a claim meaning will involve connecting it to possible experience. — plaque flag

Right.

- Good quotes. I wish you had given the sources.

- This is what I don't really agree with.

Thanks too for the various quotes on page 18.

(an older post, from page 16)

That makes a great deal of sense to me. Formal and final causes provide the raison d'etre of things, in their absence, there is a broad streak of irrationality in modern culture. — Wayfarer

True, I agree with that.

I've backtracked through the dialogue to better respond to your criticism, as you're a serious thinker and I would like to believe I've responded adequately. — Wayfarer

Okay, thanks. 'Wish I had more time at the moment. :blush:

You're saying it's pre-existent, and its discovered by us, which is an empirical fact. I'm not denying the empirical fact. When you say this, you have, on the one hand, the object, and on the other, ideas and sensations which are different to the object, as they occur within the mind. You're differentiating them - there is a pre-existent shape, and here, the ideas and sensations are in your mind. — Wayfarer

Yes, right.

I agreed a matter of empirical fact, boulders do have shapes, but the substance of the OP is the role of the observing mind in providing the framework within which empirical facts exist and are meaningful. — Wayfarer

It seems that you have a stark premise that empirical facts exist. But the question is whether the thrust of the OP and of Pinter's thought is compatible with that premise. They may be irreconcilable. For example, it may be that shape is an "empirical fact" and Pinter's theory does not allow for shape (as a fact), in which case Pinter's theory would be at odds with that sort of "empirical fact."

The disagreement is over whether we can know external reality as it is in itself. — Leontiskos

It is indeed. I'm arguing that there is a subjective element in all knowledge, without which knowledge is impossible, but which is not in itself apparent in experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, but we all agree to that. The question, to put it bluntly, is whether the glass distorts. Or conditions, if you prefer.