Whitehead spoke of the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality” (1920 [1986: 30]) to denote the strategy—originating with Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Locke—of bifurcating nature into the essential reality of primary qualities and the non-essential reality of “psychic additions” or secondary qualities, ultimately to be explained away in terms of primary qualities. — prothero

Culminating in Nagel's What is it like to be Bat. But it also goes back to the ancient skeptics where the honey might taste sweet to you and bitter to me. What are we to do with perceptual relativity? Is sweetness a property of honey?

If bees and birds see the world colored in a different way than we do, then what makes color objective? Is the world different color schemes depending on who's looking? The division into primary and secondary qualities was meant to provide a grounds for scientific investigation independent of perceptual relativity.

The problem for neutral monism would be explaining how the material and mental arise for whatever the neutral substance is. Since we don't know what that could be, we wouldn't be able to say how mind and matter emerge. I guess Chalmers is saying that neutral monism wouldn't preclude consciousness in the way that materialism (arguably) does.

There is a direct chain of causal efficacy involved in the color perception of any species that can perceive that wavelength. — prothero

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers.

So the warmth or the sun and the redness of the sky are as much properties in the world as our descriptions of wavelength and molecular motion. — prothero

Sure, when we take into account perceivers being part of the world. The problem is that warmth and redness are not part of the scientific explanations of the world, except as labels for temperature ranges humans typically find warm, or EM wavelengths humans can detect. If we say the world is physical, but physical does not include warmth or redness, then that is a conceptual problem for physicalism.

Kant claims that transcendental realism entails empirical idealism; which is basically an external world Cartesian skepticism. — darthbarracuda

Can you explain why Kant makes this claim? What is empirical idealism and why would transcendental realism entail it? Is empirical idealism the proposed "God's eye view"?

The common prejudice of transcendental realism is that it confuses representations (appearances) with things-in-themselves. The transcendental realist takes the spatio-temporality of objects' externality to entail the independence of these objects from the subjective conditions of human knowledge; they hold that space and time are aspects of objects as they are in themselves. In other words, they conflate the transcendental sense of actuality with the empirical sense. — darthbarracuda

What is the justification for there being a confusion? I can imagine that naivie/direct realists would deny there was one, and say that of course appearances are how things are, taking into account the necessary details of the environment (lighting conditions or what not), and the limits of our sensory organs.

Thus transcendental idealism holds that objects in space and time have no independent existence from us in this manner (of space and time). It is not the claim that objects have no independent existence from us, but that such an existence cannot be attributed to them in the manner in which they are represented (in space and time, the forms or conditions of human sensibility). — darthbarracuda

I've always wondered why there is a leap to saying the objects cannot have an existence as represented by us, such as extension in space and time. If the objects have an independent existence, and this existence is related somehow to human sensibility, then why can't that be some form of spacetime?

Oh, they've been given far more than their due, I would think. For good or ill, we're part of the world just like everything else--even that little homunculus in our head some people assume exists. — Ciceronianus the White

Sure, but what is the world?

We interact with the rest of the world as we all do and have always done regardless of metaphysical concerns we claim to have. — Ciceronianus the White

We do, and we can wave our hands about, kick rocks and debate with other people. But so can skeptics, idealists and other troublesome folk like Nick Bostrom. You might say that pragmatically the world is whatever it is we're interacting with, which includes other people and various objects.

But I can also do that in a limited sense when I put on my VR headset. You've probably familiar with Star Trek episodes when their holodeck malfunctions and some of the crew is trapped inside a realistic simulation. Or a hologram becomes aware that he's a simulation.

Think on that a bit. I've bolded the problematic word. In what way is the real world outside of language? Tell me about something which cannot be put into words. — Banno

Anything science hasn't learned about yet. For example, an empirically supported theory combining gravity and quantum mechanics. Or the proofs for unknown mathematical theorems. I suppose you will say we can put them into words (or equations) once we know what they are. So you mean potential language. Something that could possibly be expressed. Even if it requires new concepts.

So if we're talking about any possible human language or formalism, then the possibility that we're cognitively closed to some aspects or reality. Maybe we can't express what the exact nature of reality or consciousness is because it's beyond our cognitive abilities. Maybe there are things we don't know to build instruments of and put into words.

At any rate, it seems awful strong to limit reality to human language. Are the aliens saying the same things we are?

It seems to me that Byrne and Hilbert in the article are unwittingly defending the popular idea that colors are in the brain, by acknowledging them to be perceptual representations of some physical property in the world (productance or reflectance). So basically they are agreeing with Locke without realizing it. I'm guessing Locke would be fine with there being a material/physical source colors represent. But that source would be a combination of number, shape, mass, chemical composition or whatever that creates types of emission, transmission and reflectance. The colors themselves would remain secondary qualities.

A machine intelligence might consider biologicals to be a waste of material resources and wish to convert everything into something more efficient. Or biological existence to be unnecessarily cruel. The Dark Forest Theory is simply that we can't know what sort of values aliens might have, which is something all aliens come to realize, and therefore everyone becomes a potential threat. That's combined with the idea of a technological explosion once a civilization reaches a certain point, which means you can't count on remaining safe from being more advanced.

On Earth at least, more primitive civilizations have not generally done well when introduced to more advanced ones. And we're all human. In the Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem, nearby aliens need a new world because theirs is about to become inhabitable, and they learn of Earth from a Chinese radio signal.

Like I asked in another thread - what problem does it solve? If the many worlds intepretation is the solution, what is the problem? — Wayfarer

From listening to several of Sean Carol's podcasts, it seems he and other physicists of his persuasion take the wavefunction as being descriptive of reality, and it's simpler to go that route than try and come up with some means for there being a wavefunction collapse. You take the math at face value.

But then you can go really overboard with that and end up with Tegmark's multiverse where all mathematical forms exist.

Sabine Hossenfelder is of the opinion that the popularity of MWI and other multiverse ideas are due to the majority of physicists being Platonists. They think math is real, and not just some system of thought we invented that can work as a shorthand for scientific theories.

If so, why is it difficult for you Albert to grasp that absent an observation, the moon's existence is a question mark, a very big question mark! — TheMadFool

The moon has a gravitational influence on Earth, such as with tides and keeping the Earth from wobbling too much, which keeps seasonal variation from being extreme. We can ask the same thing about the stars and galaxies out there, but inertia is based on all the mass in the universe resisting our change in acceleration.

Point is that there are all sorts of indirect observations being made even when we don't realize it. Nocturnal animals make use of the moon and starlight, even while we're asleep. The moon is part of the world we observe. Asking whether it exists when we're not looking is to ignore the larger context of the world itself the moon is part of. It can't just not exist and the world we observe remain the same. It's like how the ground holds us up even when we're not consciously aware of it.

That's the problem with asking whether things exist when we're not observing them. The things we do observe depend on the things we're not observing at the time.

Indeed. Although doesn’t this disparity in our thresholds of perception hint at elements individuality in our senses more so than materialism? — Michael McMahon

I'm not defending materialism against consciousness. I'm pro-consciousness.

The sense of touch also concerns the movement of pressure. My sense of hearing won’t be too dissimilar to someone else’s. Hence the sound of a singer will the same for both of us. — Michael McMahon

Some people are much more discriminating when it comes to certain sounds that they've spent a lot of time understanding. Take the musical instruments a musician is familiar with. They often can hear things in a song the average person who doesn't play those instruments is unaware of. I heard about a cricket researcher who could discriminate all sorts of cricket sounds which sound the same to most everyone else.

Same idea with things like wine tasting.

Ever been in a room where people couldn't agree on whether the temperature was too cold or too hot?

Does anyone have any absolute, objective understanding of reality?

For example, does anyone continuously hold an absolute truth for how to speak? Does anyone continuously hold an truth for never robbing a bank? Etc. — Cidat

Kant did ... ;)

but I do find it hard to believe that violence is only the result of ideology. But sure that's ultimately just a guess I suppose. — ChatteringMonkey

It's not for animals, anyway. Ideology is more a justification for being violent. I once asked someone who was knowledgeable about Viking culture and history why they pillaged. And they told me because other people had stuff they wanted! How often was that the case for some King or Pope or explorer looking to get rich?

Look at Chimpanzees. They can be both peaceful and aggressive. Less peaceful than Bonobos. Perhaps more peaceful than ants?

I was watching some documentary on Yellowstone, and one group of adult wolves were chased out of their den by another more aggressive group, who proceeded to starve the first group's pups and claim their territory.

And yet we made friends with wolves and domesticated them. House cats did the same to us.

Literally as written. For most of our existence we haven't had racial conflict. Race hate is largely a white man thing. — Kenosha Kid

Because racial categories as such didn't exist until the Atlantic slave trade. And it wasn't Eastern Europeans or the Irish doing it. It was several Western European countries, and their colonies.

But there were ethnic conflicts prior to racism. Like between the Scotts, Irish and English. Mainly because of the English. But before them was the Norse and Saxons and Romans.

. Also, the fact that the Neanderthals and Denisovans aren't here along side us today. They went extinct for some reason, and it can't have all been from interbreeding.

Denying someone's identity is tantamount to genocide. — K Turner

Abusing language doesn't help make your case.

Now that really is straw-man--building. My patience for patently BS arguments runs about as far as the benefit of doubt dictates. You're out of yard. — Kenosha Kid

Then what was all this about?

No, it's not natural. Our ancestors got on peaceably enough. More traditional societies living today don't seem to suffer from it. Our younger generations today, raised in a more multicultural society, seem to have much less if it.

As far as I can tell, it's pretty much entirely a white person thing, and pretty much entirely directed toward ethnicities who originally hadn't heard of Jesus and couldn't defend themselves against the massive armies of people who had. — Kenosha Kid

Looks to me like you're saying our ancestors were mostly peaceful until the white people with their Christianity went colonizing. Which skips over all the history of known civilization (at least) until the crusades.

You're still talking about recent humans, a few thousand years at most. You know we've been around a lot longer than that, right? I mean, a _lot_! — Kenosha Kid

I do, and I'm aware that tribes had warriors and conflicts as well, although I'm sure it all depends on the tribe, time and region. I've also heard there's evidence civilization likely goes back thousands of years further than has been generally recognized.

Not a lot of Samaritan-on-Assyrian hate these days, you notice. — Kenosha Kid

No, but the Middle East still has its issues, you may have noticed.

Also, I know you're straw-man--building, and really badly, so this is largely pointless but I'm pretty sure Jesus and Paul didn't try to colonise Africa. — Kenosha Kid

And here I was talking about _now_ wherein most racism one encounters is by white people, targeted against black people, middle eastern people, Jews, etc — Kenosha Kid

In white predominant countries, notably America and other former British colonies, and historically, Western Europe. I'm guessing things are a little different in other parts of the world.

I'm pretty sure Jesus and Paul didn't try to colonise Africa. — Kenosha Kid

So where do you want to draw the line on Christianity, Constantine?

lso, I know you're straw-man--building, and really badly — Kenosha Kid

No, I just don't agree with your post summarizing historical conflict as largely Western European. That's very recent history.

No, it's not natural. Our ancestors got on peaceably enough. — Kenosha Kid

I guess things were peaceful enough under Egyptian, Roman, Aztek, Chinese, Assyrian, Persian and Mongul rule. It's true, slavery was based on being conquered rather than skin color, but as long as you paid your taxes to the Emperor/Pharaoh/King, and your religious practices were accepted in the empire, it was all good.

As far as I can tell, it's pretty much entirely a white person thing, and pretty much entirely directed toward ethnicities who originally hadn't heard of Jesus and couldn't defend themselves against the massive armies of people who had. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, because prior to Christianity, everyone in the Middle East got along swell. Jews, Samaritans, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians never had any cause to fight each other. Those damn white Christians, like Jesus and Paul, messed everything up /s.

Direct translation of words gives you garbage. — frank

Except for machines, which only have access to words, but do a fairly good job of translating these days.

Well there's really no alternative I can see -- so you're either wrong or we're dead. — Xtrix

There's lots of possibilities in between we all take drastic action right now or the human race is doomed in a few decades. Maybe civilization manages to adapt. Maybe new technology helps mitigate the worst of the changes. Maybe the doomsday scenarios are worst-case, lower probability outcomes. Maybe all we need is moderate changes to cleaner energy and slightly less consumption with tax incentives in place over the next couple decades, plus some tree planting campaigns and what not.

Maybe trying to push for drastic changes right now is counter productive. For one thing, it's likely to face political backlash and the politicians supporting those changes getting voted out of office in the next election cycle. Even if governments and corporations embraced more radical changes that the public were willing to endure, maybe that would retard technological progress into finding better solutions.

We are talking about predicting how humanity reacts to the climate warming up, not the climate models themselves. That's a whole different ball of wax.

One thing that bothers me here is: am I not busy here trying to make out a case for metaphysics being dependent on epistemology? — Daniel C

That sounds antirealist!

the world is/must be such as to accommodate the existence of humanity. — SophistiCat

As opposed to jelly fish or neutron stars? Humans aren't special in that. Anything in the universe exists because things are a certain way and not some other. Dependence in the realism debate means dependence on human perception, language, cognition, culture. Take a historical event. History is a reconstruction of what historians think happened based on their interpretation of available evidence.

One might be tempted to suppose that reconstruction is all there is, as opposed to there having been a real event in the past the evidence is based on. If historians had a time machine, they could travel there. But if it's merely a reconstruction, then there was no real event in the past. It's just human activity creating accounts of the world as it appears to us (the evidence is an appearance of the empirical world). We're telling ourselves stories. There used to be several posters on here who defended that sort of subjective idealist view.

I guess in the case of history, constructionism is a necessary aspect, but most historians are realists about the past. So constructionism need not be anti-realist.

A world that was isn't the world that is though. Or if it be the same world, then it is the world with humanity in it. — SophistiCat

Yeah, but the realist argument is that the world goes on existing without humanity in it. As opposed to the world merely being a kind of appearance to human minds. All those stars and planets out there, the course of most of evolution on this planet (prior to and after us), and everything that goes on beyond our perceptual abilities on the small or large scale does not depend on us knowing about it. Only the things we humans influence, like cultural artifacts or domestication.

Human languages like English clearly depend on humans for existence, whereas Pluto does not, on a realist account, even if we change our minds on its status as a planet. When we ask whether mathematical objects exist (or at least some branches of math), we're asking whether it's more like English or like Pluto. If the universe has a mathematical structure, then that structure exists independent of human minds, unless it's just an appearance.

But yes, the details of realism/anti-realism debate depends on the domain. Moral values wouldn't be real in the same way that matter/energy is, whatever they would be. But they would have to exist as something more than a human construction, unlike money or Harry Potter.

https://iep.utm.edu/dummett/#H3

In the general, I take realist to mean the domain in question exists independent of humanity. Man is not the measure for things that are real, because they don't depend on us to exist. I think you would agree that the universe qualifies for being real, and that only solipsists seriously doubt that, although other positions would argue over what the world is, whether science provides us a somewhat accurate account, and to what extent we can know.

According to Michael Dummett, realism about any topic is a commitment to bivalence logic, where the truth value of any statement in that domain transcends the evidence, whereas antirealism is verificationist. The realist believes statements are determinant (either true or false), whereas the antirealist does not absent some means of verifying those statements.

Constructivists argue our knowledge of a domain is constructed by the community responsible for that domain, as opposed to our knowledge coming from the world itself. Therefore, constructivism tends to fall on the antirealism side of things, since the truth of a statement has to be constructed, otherwise it can't be determinant.

Dummett points out that a philosopher can be a realist on one topic, and an antirealist about another. Most philosophers are not one or the other across the board. They pick and choose what to be realist about based on the logic they use for that domain. Which probably means they endorse constructivist views for some forms of knowledge, but not others.

For example, it's perfectly reasonable to be a metaphysical and scientific realist, but think that math and morality are socially constructed. I'd guess quite a few analytic philosophers would qualify.

1. Human morality is partly objective because humans share biological traits that underlie their sense of moral necessity. It is not objective in the sense of being independent of humans, but is in the sense of being common to all humans (barring edge cases) and humanity being objectively distinguishable from non-humanity. — Kenosha Kid

Your points for morality being all three options make a lot of sense, but the question about the objective part is if it's not independent of humans, then what argument is there that we should accept our sense of moral necessity, other than most of us just do. Say if you're arguing with a sociopath who doesn't feel that necessity, being one of the edge cases, what argument is going to convince them that they should? A utilitarian one?

What argument is going to counter the antinatilist? That most want to have children and feel that it's morally right to do so? Because biology wired us that way? Or how about an extreme environmentalist who sees humanity as plague that needs to be eradicated? Or for that matter, the opposite view that we should do whatever we want to nature, as long as humans prosper? Or to take it beyond biology, the view that Mars should be kept pristine instead of colonized, because pristine Mars has some inherent value.

The concern here is that the objectivity of a biological underpinning for morality won't settle certain moral questions, because there's no moral evolutionary reason for human morality. It's just a survival strategy. But so is parasitism, which is something humans find morally repugnant, except of course for the edge cases.

Morality is objective because all suffering persons depend on one another to keep the implicit (eusocial) promise both to not harm each other and to help reduce each other's suffering whenever possible (Spinoza). — 180 Proof

But then the question here is why not antinatalism, or why don't we all embrace a suicide pact so as to end the suffering? If not either of those, then it sounds like the implicit assumption is that it's a moral good that humans continue to exist, even though that will guarantee a certain amount of suffering, even if we do our best to limit it.

In short, I don't see what the objective morality is here, other than most humans wish to continue to live. But that's just a biological imperative. We wish to continue living because evolution wired us that way, because otherwise our ancestors wouldn't have survived. Which is the problem when we tie morality to biology. What makes any evolutionary strategy moral?

The problem of induction goes even further actually: although in the past the laws of physics have not changed, that doesn't justifiy the expectation that they won't change in the future. — Amalac

True, so perpetual motion machines and FTL acceleration drives could become possible in the future if there's no reason for the constant conjunction to continue.

Let me turn that around for you: Why should we not hold people accountable? Why should we not blame them for the bad things they do? — Amalac

Because there's no reason for them doing bad things. Same for good things as well. Blame and praise, punishment and reward are pointless. Of course we'll continue to do those because of habit, or will we???

Hume's world of coincidences, and the world viewed as a series of causations, are both valid, but mutually exclusive. — god must be atheist

Yes, but there are some difficulties for Humean causation. For one, it can't differentiate between a state of affairs which is said to be impossible, and one that just never happens. Take the examples of a perpetual motion machine or accelerating up to the speed of light. Both are ruled out as impossible by physics. Now take a river of soda. There's nothing impossible about it, but probably it will never happen because who is going to bother to make such a thing?

A second difficulty is that it renders all human behavior as coincidental. There's no reason for any of our actions. So why hold people accountable? Why blame them for anything they do?

A third issue is that it collapses the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. We can't say that the wave function evolves deterministically because prior states are conjoined for no reason.

This sounds like Hume's reason has gone awry. The way out is just to admit there must be some causal factor at play in the world, even if we can't observe it. And science does assume this when it includes unobservables in it's theories. If there was no reason for any conjunction, then there's no need to posit unobservables.

That is to say: if Hume is right, then not only is our expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow not justified, but neither is the expectation that we will continue to expect the sun to rise tomorrow justified. — Amalac

So what you're saying is that we have no reason to think we'll have a habit of expecting things in the future. If there is no reason for constant conjunction, that includes our habits in the future.

Science laws are rephrased as descriptive rather than predictive, and then good old habit just carries on as before. The only casualty is the idea of 'man, the rational being'. — unenlightened

I disagree, since theories need to also be predictive. That and every scientist talks in terms of explanation and cause when they're not waxing philosophical.

And there is no justification for it. That is what the man says. We do it, and reason cannot justify it. — unenlightened

No wonder Kant was worried about science after Hume. If we take Hume seriously, there is no reason for anything that happens. Therefore, there are no explanations. Just descriptions of constant conjunction, up to this point. Science is a fancy kind of book keeping.

My constantly conjoined habit results in me wondering why there is such a vast constant conjunction of events throughout the observable universe. It being radically contingent like that beggars belief. So does the thought that it could change at any moment, for no reason.

My habit means I can't buy Humean skepticism.

Habit is not a law at all. It is my habit to drink coffee for breakfast. But habit is not the cause of my drinking coffee, it is the mere fact that I do. Sometimes I might I have tea instead, and no law is broken, only my habit. — unenlightened

However in the case of expecting causation and the world to go on being predictable in the future, the habit is always there. So it's not like usually drinking coffee in the morning. It's expecting that there will be such a thing as coffee to drink, which will have a certain flavor and caffein content that has some stimulating effect on your nervous system.

I'm familiar with the first, and happy to grant their existence. "Information generators" and "information experiencers" I've not heard of, but am intrigued, and ready to learn. — bongo fury

What comes in from the environment is noise. The nervous system turns this into information in terms of perception and cognition. Perceptions and cognitions can also be experienced. You see a red coffee cop, taste its smooth, mild bitterness, and think of how you need to go to the store and buy some more.