have seen (Kastrup) talk about quantum theory and about how he thinks the alleged falsification of "realism" there is some kind of indication that these physical things are only appearances and whats really going on is something deeper. — Apustimelogist

I don't think he would have been impressed with Kastrup's view which seems to always be alluding to something mysterious under the hood. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps, as "Schrödinger Cat" as well as e.g. Einstein, Popper, Hawking, Penrose, Deutsch et al suggest, "quantum physics" provides an extremely precise yet mathematically incomplete model of "reality" — 180 Proof

(3) Finally, a mechanical world where only numbers, shape, motion ignores the observers entirely. We belong in the world, as tangible, perceptible objects that have a central doing in existence. — L'éléphant

if the 'reality beyond/prior to phenomena' is unknowable, how could our cognitive faculties be able to 'order' appearances in the first place? — boundless

I think if he had been around in the early twentieth century he would have been a logical positivist and then made the natural adjustments in light of post-positivism. — Apustimelogist

The Sapient Cosmos. — Gnomon

physicalism has unwittingly been adopted by most scientifically-minded people who believe it to be a scientific claim. This, however, is a category mistake, as it conflates the descriptive scope of science with a metaphysical claim about the ultimate nature of reality. — James Glattfelder

Do you think the Cosmos is currently Conscious, or is it evolving toward Collective Sentience, or was the First Cause of the evolutionary program Sentient in some sense? — Gnomon

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately. — Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation, (London: Max Parrish, 1959), 236.

Yes, the mind to me is a substance with the ability to experience, freely decide, and cause… The mind is a separate substance. — MoK

Isn't “reality” something that is what it is, ... existing apart from and unaffected by any observer" an important, if not fundamental assumption of science? How is science possible without observation and experiment that do not affect the data? — Ludwig V

The whole issue is whether such a reality—one entirely independent of observation—is anything more than a theoretical construct.

— Wayfarer

Well, there is the awkward fact that reality was there long before we were. I've accepted (perhaps not very clearly) that reality is, let us say, observation-apt and was observation-apt before there were any observers. On the other hand, some would insist that the only reason that reality is observation-apt is that our senses have evolved to take advantage of certain facts about reality in order to provide us with information about it; that idea is the result of our observations and theoretical constructs. I don't think you really reject them. — Ludwig V

‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?

As already stated, I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, withouttaking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.

I think there's a slip somewhere there — Ludwig V

I also thought that your distinction between epistemology and ontology meant that you accepted that reality existed - the problem is about our knowledge of it. — Ludwig V

Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honour, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. …

You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved … Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the outer man and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case if you understand it rightly. — Meister Eckhart, On Detachment

I think these kind of things needs more controlled scientific study — Apustimelogist

I'm willing to believe we are all conscious. — Patterner

So my starting point is that subjective experience is an objective fact. And the explanation is (maybe) that consciousness is a fundamental part of reality. — Patterner

Phenomenology is not concerned by the ‘combination problem’ because it bases its enquiry on the present, global, embodied, human experience of the researcher, and not on any hypothetical "elementary form of consciousness". It bypasses the speculative move of attributing consciousness to microphysical entities by focusing instead on the lived, first-person givenness of the world. From this standpoint, consciousness is not a property in the world, but the condition for there being a world at all. — Michel Bitbol

If you just mean that we can know what things are like, I can see the point. I can even accept that there are distortions in the way that we discover and think about reality. But the question is whether those distortions affect reality. I think that they do not - saving exceptional cases. — Ludwig V

I think that Kant misrepresents knowledge, because he doesn't recognize the process that generates it. — Ludwig V

If knowledge is true, then surely, there is a connection with ontology, isn't there? — Ludwig V

Adopting a predominantly perspectival approach, I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise. — Wayfarer

Is "real" more like a name, or more like a description? — J

I think you're wanting to say that there used to be a correct way of talking about what is real, about what exists, but we no longer remember how to do this. — J

“I believe that the only way to make sense of mathematics is to believe that there are objective mathematical facts, and that they are discovered by mathematicians,” says James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science recently retired from the University of Toronto. “Working mathematicians overwhelmingly are Platonists. They don't always call themselves Platonists, but if you ask them relevant questions, it’s always the Platonistic answer that they give you.” (ref).

Other scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

The Platonist must confront further challenges: If mathematical objects exist outside of space and time, how is it that we can know anything about them? Brown doesn’t have the answer, but he suggests that we grasp the truth of mathematical statements “with the mind’s eye”—in a similar fashion, perhaps, to the way that scientists like Galileo and Einstein intuited physical truths via “thought experiments,” before actual experiments could settle the matter.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture... — Ideas have Consequences, Richard Weaver

But it does seem to me that the metaphor gives us grounds for saying that appearances are an objective reality. If they were not, the camera could not record them. — Ludwig V

"Appearances" and "realities" are not two different (groups of) objects. — Ludwig V

That something -- the distinction itself -- does not depend on our use of "real" and "existent" to describe it. Arguably, two invented technical terms would do even better. — J

Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible.

Mathematical objects are...unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects. We do not see integers, or hold sets. Even geometric figures are not the kinds of things that we can sense. Consider any point in space; call it P. P is only a point, too small for us to see, or otherwise sense. Now imagine a precise fixed distance away from P, say an inch and a half. The collection of all points that are exactly an inch and a half away from P is a sphere. The points on the sphere are, like P, too small to sense. We have no sense experience of the geometric sphere. If we tried to approximate the sphere with a physical object, say by holding up a ball with a three-inch diameter, some points on the edge of the ball would be slightly further than an inch and a half away from P, and some would be slightly closer. The sphere is a mathematically precise object. The ball is rough around the edges. In order to mark the differences between ordinary objects and mathematical objects, we often call mathematical objects “abstract objects.” ...

... Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. — Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics

I have no complaint about all this. But you have a worrying tendency to slip from "our perception of the world is mind-dependent" to "the world is mind-dependent". — Ludwig V

…there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. — Wayfarer

If consciousness is fundamental, then we can't measure it in the ways we measure everything else.
— Patterner

Sure you can. You can measure its effect on everything else. — noAxioms

It is dynamic and eventful. — Astorre

• Aristotle: existence (to on) is inseparable from form and actuality. Different beings exist in different modes — e.g., material particulars exist as composites of form and matter, perceptible to the senses, while mathematical objects are real as intelligible forms abstracted by the intellect from sensibles (designated “intelligible objects” by Augustine).
• Kant: phenomena exist in space and time; noumena are real in a sense other than the phenomenal.
• Scholastic: existence is the actus essendi (“act of being”) which actualises an essence; God’s being is of a wholly different order (“beyond existence”).
• Phenomenology: existence is disclosed in and through experience — more than mere physical presence.
• Buddhist: bhava (“existence”) is conditioned and provisional. Nibbana is real but not an existent.

• Julius Caesar existed.
• The number 7 is real but not existent
• A possible isotope might be real (as a possibility grounded in nature) even if it never comes into existence.

Additionally, extended mind theory is not generally considered to commit the mereological fallacy as far as i can tell. — punos

It's against my religion to dispute about how to use the term "exist" — J

On agency under stimulation:

“When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand… Invariably his response was: ‘I didn’t do that. You did.’ When I caused him to vocalize, he said: ‘I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out of me.’”

Internet Archive

On why he rejects strict materialism:

“Because it seems to me certain that it will always be quite impossible to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain… I am forced to choose the proposition that our being is to be explained on the basis of two fundamental elements.”

Internet Archive

On the mind acting independently (his programmer/computer analogy):

“…the mind seems to act independently of the brain in the same sense that a programmer acts independently of his computer, however much he may depend upon the action of that computer for certain purposes.”

Internet Archive

The brain recognizes that it did not generate this movement on its own because it notices there was no conscious reason for it. In the context of the situation, the brain can easily deduce what happened. — punos

I do not believe there is a single, literal region of the brain responsible for the conscious unity of experience because it is the unified integration of the entire brain and nervous system that gives rise to this unity. — punos

The noumenal world does exist independently — J

If you were to allow a brain surgeon to open your brain and begin poking at different areas while you were still awake and aware, you would notice that when the surgeon stimulates a specific spot in the brain, you would experience a specific memory, thought, or emotion associated with that area. This demonstrates that the material and the ideal are causally and efficaciously connected. — punos

I think the brain is an infrastructure in which information is exchanged between the conscious and subconscious minds. So, we cannot think when a certain part of our brain is damaged. — MoK

No one confuses the photo with the object, but neither is the photo the object “as it is in itself.”
— Wayfarer

It's not an hallucination or an illusion, but it does not possess the inherent reality that we accord to it.
— Wayfarer

But could you explain to me what you mean, exactly, by the bolded phrases? — Ludwig V

You are going to be accused of not getting the point, — Janus

you have to explain why the world would not appear to us "as is". — Apustimelogist

Physical Monism may be what you are getting at, but this is generally regarded as a kind of Physicalism.

>Generally described under the title 'physicalism'. In slogan form 'mind is what brain does'.

Panpsychism?

>Matter has some latent consciousness, Patterner is an advocate.

Eliminativism? As you strongly deny what you are expressing is physicalism we have to rule this out. This basically describes Mental Terms as misleading (I am sympathetic towards this approach despite its faults).


Neural Monism is a kind of physicalism too, so we have to rule this out.

>Neutral monism is not usually desribed as physicalism - it is the idea that at bottom, being or reality is neither mental nor physical but can appear as either.

Non-Reductive Physicalism would mean you have to face the Supervenience Problem.

>Correct. It's probably the majority view.

Epiphenomenalism would be another option possibly?

Usually associated with physicalism> mind is an epiphenonenon that appears in sophisticated beings.

Your list doesn't mention idealism. Bernardo Kastrup is an advocate.

David Chalmer's paper Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness was one of the origins of 'consciousness studies'. — I like sushi

• Physical facts (e.g. brain states, neurons firing)
• Phenomenal facts (e.g. the what it’s like of seeing red)

How can it be that thinking consciousness is a fundamental property of reality is not challenging the presuppositions of naturalism? — Patterner

I don't see it (consciousness) as "grafted", "inserted", or "added on", any more than properties like mass or electric charge are. — Patterner

The problem is that we are so used to thinking of things in only one way that it's difficult to consider there might be other ways. — Patterner

I don't know why you keep phrasing it as if the object is dependent on your mind when you should be talking about what you see or perceive. — Apustimelogist

This is not interesting though. — Apustimelogist