In the old days, a good idealism debate would run 100 pages minimum, with much discussion of apples and mountain tops. Also chairs at the end of the universe.

Color me disappointed in this paltry showing.

Do boundaries exist in the real world beyond our minds? If boundaries don't exist in the real world, then neither do things, and thus one might be called to question the insight of thinkers who continually refer to them. — Jake

How would we perceive boundaries if there are none, and how would we even exist if there were no boundaries? I'm walking along and there's a huge drop off ahead of me. I keep walking and I die. But if there isn't actually a boundary between the ground I walk on and the air I'm about to step foot on, then why would I die?

80
All we have are the five senses which can easily be fooled. — TWI

Good thing we also have brains and other people to check our ideas with.

Although I don't know whether suck skepticism can be refuted, it's pathological. We don't have any examples of people coming into existence with memories intact. It's just a hypothetical situation we imagine. Could it be possible? I don't know. Maybe as a Boltzmann Brain?

But it's not something we have a reason to actually suspect. It's a mere possibility, like a giant orbiting teapot, or aliens beaming brainwashing thoughts into our heads.

That may be the external world realist’s interpretation of their observations but if idealism is the case then the interpretation is wrong. — Michael

Right, but if idealism is the case, then the world as it appears to us is massively misleading. One has to wonder why the world is experienced as if it's material/physical, and as if it's much more than what we perceive. Why the appearance of billions of years of matter prior to consciousness, if that's not the case? Why the experience of needing a physical body that requires nourishment, air, water, etc in order to stay conscious?

Why is there something rather than nothing? I don’t see why it makes more sense to say that first there was matter and then there was consciousness than to just say that first there was consciousness. — Michael

Because all of our scientific and everyday knowledge tells us otherwise. People are born and they die. Humans evolved. The geological and astronomical records indicate great age. And so on for almost everything we care to investigate.

guess it depends how you define ''faith''. — philosophy

I don't define it as induction. I can make inferences that the tree continues to exist in the quad after nobody is perceiving it, but I can't infer that it's God keeping it there.

The point, however, is that said existence cannot be justified on the basis of reason but on faith. I believe that a world independent of my mind exists but I cannot possibly know this. — philosophy

But why is this faith and not inductive logic? We're not positing elephants trumpeting quarks as the basis for everything, or God (unlike Berkeley and Descartes).

The realist, in positing a mind-independent world, is making a claim beyond experience. — philosophy

Yes they are, but that's because it makes sense. Otherwise, how could you be born or die? How do we account for all these experiences of an external world with things we can't see that effect us?

The idealism that you're arguing for makes all experience brute and mysterious, and it turns the known universe into perception. That means anything external to my experience is only known as an idea. That's a very small world.

"Unperceived object" isn't a contradictory term. "Object" doesn't mean "perceived." — Terrapin Station

I don't agree with it, but the argument is that unperceived objects can't be known, not that they can't exist. Well, Berkeley tried to argue that unperceived objects were incoherent, but Hume is just saying that only what's perceived can be known.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back. The Hume quote is arguing that they are inconceivable. That's kind of shocking.

..Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions...it follows that 'tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. — philosophy

Was Hume channeling a future Berkeley here? Radical empiricism does logically end up at idealism, so it's not terribly surprising. I just wasn't aware that Hume actually made an argument for idealism.

His body would be part of his perception. An idealist wouldn't except that their body is part of a mind-independent world, or at least not that they could know.

The idealist simply asks: How could you possibly know that? — philosophy

It makes the most sense of our experience of being part of a much larger world to which we are born, live and die, as all those questions I posted seek to establish.

But direct realism wouldn't accept the starting premise for idealism, which Terrapin pointed out. Direct perception means perceiving things out there, and not in the mind.

Do you think such a view can be refuted? — philosophy

It can be argued against somewhat convincingly. How does idealism of this sort handle birth? Death? Other minds? Why does science discover a vast universe? Did the dinosaurs not exist? What about evolution?

How do you explain the experience of sickness without talk of germs and cells that you can only experience under a microscope? Why is it that radiation is something to worry about, or poison that you can't taste or smell? How is it that technology makes use of radio waves, which we can't experience? What about atoms?

How come dogs can hear what we can't, and birds and insects can see what we can't? If you crossed the street without paying attention, could you die?

Those sorts of questions, and there are a vast number of them, can be used to construct a convincing argument that there is a whole world that's independent of our perceiving it. This doesn't mean we can't perceive or detect it using tools we make, or infer it indirectly, just that it exists on it's own terms.

These are all objectively true or false. They're all claims about an individuals belief's (their brain states) and can all be determined (in principle) as true or false — ChrisH

Assuming beliefs can be identified with brain states.

But okay, how about this one?

Sally: "Casablanca is the best movie ever made".
Fred, "Nope, it's clearly the Godfather."
Peter: "I did not like the Godfather. It insists upon itself."
Millenial: "Second and third Matrix movies were better than the first."

Could you examine their brain states to determine the relative merits of the movies mentioned?

"Physical facts" there isn't a reference to the science of physics, especially not as the contingent set of theories, laws, etc. as presented in physics textbooks, classrooms, etc. It's rather a reference to the type of ontological stuff we're talking about. — Terrapin Station

So this ontological stuff is the world, or reality. And you wish to call it "physical". But it could have things not described or predicted by physics in it. Panpsychism, neutral monism, strong emergentism, non-supernatural dualism and epiphenomenalism are all consistent with this ontological stuff.

It's like Thales saying everything is water, someone pointing out that space isn't entailed by water, and Thales saying that he doesn't mean the study of water, but the actual ontological stuff, therefore it's not a problem to say space is made up of water.

Which is just word play. We could say the world is ontologically watery instead of physical, and it accomplishes the same thing.

The physics logically entails the properties of water, unless you think physics is either:

A. Not logical
B. Incomplete

What does that have to do with logical entailment? — Terrapin Station

There's no way for H20 not to have the properties of water when you take into account all of the physics and chemistry. Of course you can imagine a world where it's different by ignoring the physics and chemistry, just like we can imagine super heroes.

But that's not what Chalmers meant by conceivability.

The zombie argument only makes sense if you believe epiphenomenalism is possible. — JupiterJess

That's not the only possibility. Dualism, panpsychism, occasionalism are other possibilities.

Of course, you could attempt to explain how you believe it's actually a logical implication. — Terrapin Station

If you know all the physical and chemical properties of water, then there's no way for ice not to be slippery under the right environmental conditions. Therefore, conceiving of ice lacking slipperiness is to fail to fully take into account it's makeup.

We can't say the same thing for consciousness.

I think that trying to think about it any other way is rather incoherent, simply because the entire notion of nonphysical existents is incoherent, — Terrapin Station

Nevertheless, we have all sorts of concepts which aren't part of physics, so figuring out how they can be understood as physical is the challenge.

You're making an assertion, but you have to be able to back it up.

If we're talking about convincing the elite to move, can we start with Trump?

Mars will initially be comprized of the elite of the World. — Posty McPostface

Earth must be a pretty awful place for the Elite to want to move to Mars. I'd move to Antartica first before Mars. It's still breathable, has lots of water, there is life, protection from cosmic rays, and the rest of civilization is not far by boat or plane. Also, the gravitational difference. We evolved for Earth's 1g. Not sure how well suited we are for significantly less over a life time.

I think Detroit would be my first choice also. Then Antartica. Then Mars, assuming Siberia isn't an option.

SEP agrees with you, but then goes on to say that ancient philosophers do discus matters relevant to our modern notions of subjective and objective.

Sextus describes the skeptic’s states of ‘being-appeared-to’ as affections of the mind. A skeptic can report these states in their utterances. Illustrating this point, Sextus uses expressions associated with the Cyrenaics, a Socratic school of thought. These expressions literally mean something like ‘I am being heated’ or ‘I am being whitened.’ They aim to record affections without claiming anything about the world.

You asked what motivates warding off epistemological concerns, and my response is that these sorts of concerns arose a long time ago, have evolved but have never gone away, so it's natural for those discussing philosophy to want to address them. My understanding is this is what is motivating Sam and what motivated Wittgenstein.

The subjective/objective distinction didn't even exist until the 18th century or so, — StreetlightX

I could have sworn the Cyrenaics made that distinction. There's also the modes of the Pyrrhonian skeptics.

Agrippa's Third Mode:

5-3 Pros ti:
Arguments from relativity. X only ever appears such-and-such in relation to the subject judging and to the things observed together with it. Suspension on how X really is follows. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/#SkeIdeEarClaGre

Skepticism and idealism of various sorts predates the 18th century. Hinduism has the concept of Maya where the world is an illusion from the mind of God. Then there's the Butterfly Dream from China.

Early Christianity had the gnostics, with their beliefs in personal gnosis. Some of them believed the material world was an illusion.

What concerns? And why are you concerned to begin with? — StreetlightX

To answer this more specifically, the difference between appearance and reality. Thinks aren't always as they seem. The naive view of things is often misleading.

What concerns? And why are you concerned to begin with? — StreetlightX

Same concerns humanity has had since the ancient schools of philosophy in India, China and Greece, if not earlier.

and an archetype of a subjective statement:
Fred believes that common salt is composed of chlorine and sodium. — Banno

Or, Fred feels like it's hot in the car, Jill thinks it's cold, but Raymond feels just right.

Or, Fred believes the salt is poison from his partner, who is an alien doppleganger.

Or, Fred dreams the salt is a bunch of tiny elves cranking his taste buds.

Or, Fred is convinced that salt is no more than how it appears to him.

Why? Without some conceptual motivation to which the distinction responds to, it's just an arbitrary excercise. — StreetlightX

Warding off epistemological concerns would be one motivation. Wasn't Wittgenstein trying to dissolve issues like solipsism by arguing for the necessary public nature of language?

Rather than the mind receiving the truths of the outer world into its inner world, minding is about forming embodied and adaptive points of view. Mindfulness is the larger thing of that relation in action. — apokrisis

This still doesn't dissolve the distinction. It just redifines objective and subjective into adaptive points of view versus the world itself. Unless you want to espouse some form of anti-realism where there is no world independent of adaptive points of view.

Which would be hard to believe, given what science tells us about the universe.

We could say, "It's conceivable that everything is identical re the ice, temperature, etc. yet the ice wouldn't be slippery." P-zombies are "conceivable" in the same way as that. — Terrapin Station

Problem here is that the slipperiness of ice is logically entailed by knowing the physics and chemistry. to imagine a physically identical world without the slipperiness is to fail to imagine an identical world. Nobody has succeeded so far in showing how this is the case for consciousness.

Identity theorists say that consciousness is identical to certain mental states. But for sake of argument, I can image a physically identical world lacking that identity. It's called all the other theories of consciousness.

I'm not sure exactly what an identity is supposed to be. Is it the neurons firing a certain way? Is it their function? Is it the information they compute? Chalmers himself proposes a theory based on informationally rich processes, but it's a property dualism, not an identity.

If physicists and computer scientists developed a consciousness chip that computed conscious states, would we say the electrons moving through the silicon are identical to having a conscious experience? I don't know how to make sense of that.

However, I think that "phenomenal consciousness" or "qualia" is a harder nut to crack than vitalism. Again, I am not agreeing with Chalmers et al., I just don't think that it is as obvious, as you say. There is something odd about consciousness that calls for a careful conceptual analysis. — SophistiCat

That's for sure. And Chalmers does discuss the difference between vitalism and consciousness. Vitalism was tenable before biology could fully explain the behavior of life. But there is something odd about consciousness in a different way that requires us to think carefully about it. Knowing the science of how our bodies or the world works doesn't resolve the riddle.

50 times later being drunk isn't quite so amusing. — Bitter Crank

Getting drunk is still fun. It's the hangovers that become less amusing over time. Particularly when you're supposed be doing things other than lying in bed wondering why you still find it amusing to wake up feeling terrible.

If you're an identity theorist as I am, those two are not contradictory. Not that I share the view. I think that only some physical "stuff" is mental stuff, I'm not a property dualist, etc. — Terrapin Station

I'm curious, would an identity theorist have to reject Chalmers p-zombie world as being conceivable?

Not really. Again, facts aren't mind independent. Which, gives me the suspicion that Wittgenstein still held onto Kantian transcendentalism in some sense of the Tractatus. — Posty McPostface

In that case, the totality of the world is the categories of my mind coming into contact with the various sense impressions.

As far as I'm aware, Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was a nominalist. — Posty McPostface

Problem being that nominalism is a bit hard to square with saying the world is a totality of relations and properties, since you're going to have a lot of the same properties and relations repeated all over the place.

Atomic facts are those things and relations you talk about. Contrast this with sachlage and sachverhalten. — Posty McPostface

And what's the difference between atomic facts and hylomorphism? Was he unwittingly committed to a form of universals?

That's a really good idea. I agree. — unenlightened

But is it true?

It means that facts have a greater ontological significance than things. Atom facts that is. States of affairs are important too. — Posty McPostface

That sounds really difficult to square with a world made up of particles and forces. We can talk about atomic facts of .a table, such as it's color, solidity, constitution, etc, but it's the physical stuff which makes it what it is.

Thus affirmation of truth is an expression of agreement, but truth is somfin' else. — unenlightened

Maybe we should use different terms. One is truth, the other is agreement. Or one is truth, the other is states of affairs, or whatever.

But, after all the world is the totality of facts, not things. Facts are not mind-independent though. On a hard reading, you can designate facts as having ontological significance superior to things. — Posty McPostface

I don't understand what that means, at least not as a materialist.

I'm not saying that agreeing that something is true makes it true. I'm saying that when we say something is 'true' we are merely an expressing an agreement. There's a subtle difference. — Purple Pond

That seems to setup a double meaning for truth. One being how things are, the other being whether we agree with a statement on how things are.