There must be a good reason why there is no consensus among those who might actually know what they are talking about when it comes to the question about ontological status of the collapse of the wave function. — Janus

That's right! As it stands, it is still an open question, something many here seem not to notice. The three main popular books I have read on it the last 5 years or so are: Manjit Kumar, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality(best of them in my view); David Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science; and Adam Becker, What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. Notice all of them are about the 'debate over the nature of reality' and 'struggles for the soul of science'. It suggests that there's something important and real at stake.

Einstein represents the realist view - that what is real must be real independently of any act of measurement on our part. But it seems from those readings that in this philosophical respect, Einstein was mistaken (which probably has no bearing on his scientific discoveries).

The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect quantum correlations seem to demand something like the "genetic" hypothesis. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work. — John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), author of 'Bell's Theorem' (or 'Bell's Inequality'), quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein 1991, p. 84

We don't know whether there are "material ultimates" or not. — Janus

If a material ultimate can be conceived of in the classical sense of an atom, an indivisible point-particle, I think it's pretty definitively disproved. It is now said that sub-atomic particles are 'excitations in fields' - but what 'fields' are is an open question, as is whether there may be fields other than electromagnetic (which you would never detect with electromagnetic instruments, for example morphic fields.)

I read one of Paul Davies' books years back, around 1990, called: The Matter Myth, about just this this topic.

I do notice that you’re working through all these ideas here. Which is just what this forum is for. :ok:

the religious person holds onto their faith, try to keep it solid and unchanging, consistent and unbroken but keep feeling doubt due to the world around them, from other perspectives giving them other answers, other stories that they cannot prove are more or less true than their own convictions, and their confusion rising into anger, horror and depression. — Christoffer

As I said in the post you're responding to

I think a genuine religious path charts a way altogether beyond dread, not that that is necessarily an easy path to tread — Wayfarer

But plainly we're not going to agree on that.

Thanks for your considered and thoughtful responses.

If a weather-forecaster states that tomorrows weather is possibly heavy showers — sime

It doesn’t seem an apt analogy to me. At issue is the nature of the object in question and what it is that transforms it from a possibility to an actuality.

Possibility is an empirical notion. — sime

That is true, but the nature of the object who's existence is only possible is not. And that is the point at issue in this context, as the putative object, a component of the atom, is supposed to be amongst the building blocks of material existence.

I'm 90% through the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft. — Pantagruel

Read one book, ages and ages ago, but really stayed with me. I loved the idea that you go into alternate realities through dreams. Although otherwise he's a bit too dark for me, never went back for a second helping.

By the way, for those reading this thread, an interesting article by Ray Monk (known as Wittgenstein's biographer) on Gilbert Ryle, R G Collingwood, and the analytic-continental divide. (It's partially paywalled but free if you haven't visited the site already.)

'No ear for tunes'.

'Like myself' :wink:

So I asked.

Q: Hey I’m a participant in a philosophy forum, where there’s some discussion about chatbot abilities. The question came up, how well do Large Language Models handle calculations? Because there’s been some chatter in the media about the fact they don’t seem to do well with them. But then I thought, couldn’t you just call on a ‘calculator function’ to perform tasks like that which are out-of-scope for LLMs as such? What do you say?

ChatGPT: You're absolutely right in your thinking. As a Large Language Model, I'm primarily designed for language understanding and generation. Direct mathematical calculations, particularly complex ones, are not within my core capabilities. However, I can indeed call on a specialized 'calculator function' or, more accurately, a Python environment, to perform such tasks.

This means that for straightforward calculations, I can handle them internally, but for anything more complex or requiring precision, I use this Python tool. It allows me to perform a wide range of computations, from basic arithmetic to more advanced mathematical operations. This approach ensures accuracy and expands the range of mathematical tasks I can assist with.

So, in your philosophy forum discussion, you can mention that while Large Language Models like myself are not inherently calculators, we have the capability to perform accurate calculations by leveraging external tools.

So there you go. ChatGPT uses a calculator, just like the rest of us.

Well, sure, I wasn’t thinking about pure maths or advanced maths research. The comment was that as a large language model, ChatGPT isn’t helpful when it comes to calculations. I was thinking more along those lines.

Anecdote: I have a situation where I was asked for a loan at a 15% interest rate (unsecured but with a proper loan agreement, in a business I know and respect) over six years. At the same time, I found I could borrow at 7.94% over longer term. So I asked ChatGPT to help work out if I borrowed the amount I wanted to lend, with an extra amount of money, whether the repayments coming back off the first loan were sufficient to pay out the amount I borrowed including the extra amount, taking advantage of the interest differential. Took a few tries but in the end it came back with a correct answer (which was yes I could. Bing was absolutely, laughably out on the equation, but that was a month ago, so who knows…..)

(For that matter, the calculator function on a desktop computer is adequate for most everyday uses, I wonder why ChatGPT doesn’t just use a calculator, like anyone else. I might ask it.)

The interesting {but unfortunately unanswerable) question is as to whether there are real possibilities that never become actual or whether all real possibilities are determined to become actual. Of course, it certainly seems that no possibility exists as anything more than a possibility until (and unless?) it becomes actual. — Janus

But the wave equation specifies a range of possibilities. The philosophical question is 'does the electron described by those possibilities exist' to which the answer is, it is kind of real, up until the time it is registered on plate. at which point it becomes definite. This is the much ballyhoed 'collapse of the wave function' that the Everett interpretation seeks to avoid having to acknowledge.

What prompted Einstein to ask that question is a matter of psychological speculation. He was probably a realist so it would likely have seemed most plausible to him that the moon does continue to exist when we're not looking. — Janus

He was indeed a realist, and his debate with Bohr over quantum physics and realism occupied him for decades. That book Quantum by Manjit Kumar is basically about all of that. It's still an open question.

do you want idealism to be true because you think it would allow for an afterlife? — Janus

No, simply because there is no material ultimate, materialism is like a kind of popular myth.

Fair enough, but I think still goes to the point that how things are seen relates to much more than any notion of their inherent existence.

+1

sciences are useful because as the world interacts with us, patterns are produced in this interaction. — Joshs

:up: And numbers are exceedingly effective habits.

There's an anecdote I sometimes tell. Three blokes are looking at a green field. One is a cattle farmer - he's looking for type of feed, if there is water, what trees are on it. One is a real estate developer looking at geographical situation, nearby infrastructure, zoning laws. Another is a geologist, he's looking at the rock formations on the surface to determine whether there is anything useable in the ground.

Which is the real field?

It's probably too busy, and besides, it costs money.

You haven't answered the question as to whether you think the claim that possibilities are realities means something beyond what I believe is commonly accepted: namely that there are real possibilities and merely logical possibilities. — Janus

I think it's an intriguing ontological issue - what kind of existence possibilities have. ' Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.' (From the article.) Whereas, I noticed, for example, in another article, debating the possible reality of mathematical objects, that it is said that ' 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.'

If that idea has not "fallen out of favour" then what exactly is the idea that you think has fallen out of favour? — Janus

I think it harks back to the idea of there being degrees of reality. As I said, the answer to the question 'does the particle exist' just is the probability equation. You may brush it off but I'm suggesting, this is just what caused Einstein to ask the question 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?'

I think there might be connection between that idea of there being degrees of reality in sub-atomic physics, with the general idea that reality comes in degrees.

In the context of the kind of idealism I'm advocating, it simply serves to point to the constructive role of perception in experience. That what we take to be simply existent, is also constituted in some sense by our perception of it. Not that it doesn't exist when not perceived, but that 'existence' itself is a manifold, for which perception is foundational.

Notice the convergence with Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy:

By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. — The Buddha

One thing that I've found hints at such solution is the question; why cannot nature and the universe, as it is, be enough? — Christoffer

That's the philosophical question, and a deep question. I think the intuition is that at bottom, everything in nature is transient and perishable. I think at bottom there's a deep intuition that there is a flaw or fault or imperfection in nature and in human nature, for which the remedy is not to be found on the same level at which it is perceived. That is expressed in different mythological and metaphorical clothing in different cultures. In Buddhism for example, it is the observation that existence is dukkha, one of those hard-to-translate terms that is usually given as 'distressing' or 'unsatisfactory'. The root of this dukkha runs very deep, and is ultimately related to the inherent tendency of beings to cling to sense-objects as sources of a satisfaction that they can never provide, as they are by nature transient and perishable. Hence the valuing of renunciation and giving up attachments. The ultimate aim of Nirvāṇa or Nibbana is realising the state of deathlessness.

In the Christian mythos, the unsatisfactoriness of existences is put down to the Fall, which is signified by the 'fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil'. I take that to be a symbolic representation of self-consciousness, the burden of our reflexive intelligence. Through faith in Christ, the believer overcomes the sense of separateness and anxiety and the fear of death, by the realisation of the individual union or oneness with the divine (although this is highly attenuated in popular religions many of which have become corrupted in my view).

we have proven evolution to be true, we have proven general relativity. — Christoffer

Of course. Inside the Catholic Church, there was dissent over Galileo's censure. Whilst the conservatives were keen to see him condemned, there were progressives who believed the entire effort was misconceived. The Church is concerned with 'how to go to Heaven, not how the Heavens go', was their mantra. They lost the argument (much to the discredit of the Church.) Likewise after the publication of the Origin of Species, whilst some conservatives were quick to anathematize it, there were many within the Church who saw no inherent conflict between evolution and divine creation. It wasn't until the American fundementalists came along that it really blew up. But for those who never believed the literal truth of creation myth, the fact that they are *not* literally true is not the devasting blow against religion that Richard Dawkins seems to think. Origen and Augustine used to ridicule the literal reading of Scripture in the 1st and 4th centuries AD respectively.

To formulate a living beyond religious beliefs but retaining aspects that comfort against the dread. — Christoffer

I think a genuine religious path charts a way altogether beyond dread, not that that is necessarily an easy path to tread. In philosophical terms, I put it this way: humans are not simply physical beings. They are metaphysical beings, whether they know it or not. Our culture has undermined or even demolished the customary framework within which that was articulated and understood, so we're now looking to science for moral guidance, which is a mistake, as science is only quantitative and objective. But the spiritual quest is ongoing, a current Pew study shows that 70% of Americans see themselves as spiritual in some way, even outside the confines of what is strictly called religion.

You push these ideas that I'm not doing philosophy, but yet, I am — Christoffer

And thanks for your well-considered reply. I will try and keep my response brief as possible.

Not you, in particular, but our culture in general. Lloyd Gerson, who is a Platonist scholar, has a book Platonism and Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy. It's a pretty specialist text, but his argument is that Philosophy just is platonism, and that if you deny Platonism, there is no conceptual space for philosophy proper. And, he says, Platonism is irreconciliable with naturalism, which is the mainstream view by default.

I think naturalists tend to turn the kinds of dialectical skills that philosophy has inculcated into our culture against philosophy proper. Daniel Dennett is an example. His more radical books, like Darwin's Dangerous Idea, say that evolutionary theory is like a 'universal acid' that dissolves the container that tries to hold it - that 'container' being Western culture, and one of the things being dissolved, philosophy as philosophers have always understood it.

I can only formulate my world view on what we can actually prove or at least speculate as logical based on facts as we define facts. — Christoffer

We generally define facts scientifically, but existential issues are not necessarily tractable to scientific analysis.

What Buddhism is about is still such a process. It starts with the painful questions about our existence and evolves into an exploration of ideas to comfort against that sense of darkness and lack of meaning. — Christoffer

Not true. It is not about 'ideas' at all. It is about a hard-won transformative insight.

I personally believe that we need to follow science more than illusions and fantasy — Christoffer

So how can you deny the accusation of 'scientism' on the back of statements like this?

What I'm advocating for is to align everything towards an experience that rejects illusions and fantasy but can still reach such comforting results — Christoffer

What 'comforting results' are you referring to? If the illusions of religion are put aside, then what constitutes a real solution to the predicaments of human existence, other than comfort and standard of living?

the fact that religion exist universally across culture and history can easily be explained by analyzing human behavior — Christoffer

Which is reductionist, 'explaining away'. I have studied religion through anthropological, sociological and psychological perspectives in comparative religion, but it's not reducible to those categories, even if they provide very useful perspectives.

I cannot accept ideas and theories when I have knowledge that counters it. — Christoffer

All due respect, I don't believe you have 'knowledge that counters it'. What you have is a firm conviction.

Philosophy, of all subjects, is concerned with the meaning of existence. It is often commented that in the preamble to Aristotle's Metaphysics he mentions the difficulties presented by the different meanings of the verb 'to be'. '‘being’, as Aristotle tells us in Γ.2, is “said in many ways”. That is, the verb ‘to be’ (einai) has different senses, as do its cognates ‘being’ (on) and ‘entities’ (onta). So the universal science of being qua being appears to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of being when the very term ‘being’ is ambiguous?'(SEP)

There seems to be a casual assumption that 'everyone knows' what it means for something to exist. After all you can open your eyes and see it. But again philosophy is exploring that question from a critical - not necessarily outright sceptical - perspective.

It stands to reason that mathematical calculations are not really within scope for the way large language models work, but you do wonder why they don't incorporate a 'maths module' based on something like Mathematica, which after all has been around since the 1980s, specifically to handle mathematical queries. Wouldn't seem that conceptually difficult although there might be commercial considerations.

I just like to start with physicalism/materialism because it keeps us /me personally from believing things that just aren't true. — Mark Nyquist

And you know they're 'not true' because.....

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/rosalind-franklin-a-crucial-contribution-6538012/

Like, do people need to accept your specific philosophical ideal in order to be valued as a contributor? Is not even my questioning of certain ideas a contributing factor on a philosophy forum? Sounds a bit weird to imply a lack of contribution in that way? — Christoffer

Questioning is surely a major part of philosophy, but I don't know if you yourself realise how embedded you are in the materialist mindset. I'm not trying to be personal about it - after all, I don't know you - but you take for granted a way of seeing the world which I think is inimical to philosophy per se, which has an ineliminably ethical aspect. I mean, in your analysis, it is simply assumed that religion only ever *is* an opiate, a pain-killing illusion. I have devoted considerable time to Buddhist studies, and there is no way you could mistake Buddhist praxis as 'seeking comfort' or 'comforting illusions'. Without going in to too much detail, the principle involved is obtaining insight into the causes of suffering and cutting it at the root, which (it is said) opens up horizons of being that remain unknown to the regular run of mankind. But it is a renunciate philosophy, and creature comforts are something Buddhists have to learn to live without (a virtue which has generally escaped me).

Regarding scientism and nihilism I don't see how you can avoid it with the stance you take. The scientific mindset revolves around reduction to mathematical simples. That is what makes it so powerful. It has arrived at a method of quantization which allows it to marry mathematical logic with prediction and analysis by identifying solely those aspects of phenomena which are amenable to that method. This is the analysis of, for example, Thomas Nagel's book The View from Nowhere. But as Nagel eloquently points out in many of his other works, this is at the cost of excluding from consideration the nature of lived experience. It is also the root of the argument over the 'problem of consciousness', as David Chalmer's points out, because consciousness - our sense of who we are - is not amenable to quantitative analysis. So it produces a kind of one-dimensional existence, in which the qualitative axis has been omitted and ignored, to the point where even its existence is routinely denied.

I've never bought Nietszche's 'death of God'. Time Magazine published a cover story on it which I read aged about 11 or 12. Besides, as David Bentley Hart points out, it is not a hymn of atheist triumphalism. What if there really is a dimension to existence which is pointed to, however inadequately, in the various religious traditions of the world? Your conviction that it can only be empty words mirrors the certainty of religous dogma to the opposite effect. Religious philosophies are universal across culture and history, and show no sign of fading away, Nietszche's proclamation notwithstanding.


Graphic by Huston Smith


I see the role of renunciate philosophies as being especially crucial in today's world, because consumption obviously has to be drastically curtailed. It is a known fact that human consumption overshoots the Earth's productive capacity and that we are approaching many forms of economic and environmental catastrophe. Whilst science will be absolutely crucial in dealing with all of that, a mindset based on consumption and material pleasure surely can only ever be an impediment to dealing with it. But what alternative does our culture provide? It has rejected or dismantled the idea of virtue as being tied to quality of character and purity of vision. After all, there's nothing to see, right?

we attribute further ideas of meaning and purpose to all of this is out of existential dread and fear. We cannot cope with this sense of meaninglessness and therefor seek comfort in ideas that makes us feel special. — Christoffer

Makes me wonder what you think you have to contribute to a philosophy forum.

this is exactly what I wish to put forward, that beliefs that are rational defensible are philosophically justifiable. — FreeEmotion

Well, good luck with that, seems a worthy undertaking to me.

:up: Glad to hear. More fool me for believing Trump’s shtick, I guess. Although still wouldn’t be surprised if the case is tossed on appeal.

But presumably human cognition, emotion, awareness, and behavior are equally describable in terms of adaptive algorithms , data, environmental feed-back and pattern-matching. — sime

A description is not the thing described.

if the rock ever began to act like a human, then I would change my mind about the rock — sime

That would cause me to change my mind about many things, including my sanity.

Chatbots are a different matter, though. I asked a chatbot.



Oddly enough, I believe it's correct.

Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies

Those passages are surprisingly resonant for me. I have been making a very similar observation in another thread in respect of Descartes' Meditation #3, especially the pernicious consequences of Descartes' concept of 'spiritual substance'. I will try and find time to listen to some of the materials.

The reasoning is this.. — Patterner

Totally agree with what you’re saying, but it seems to miss the point that it was intended to address, i.e. whether it makes any sense to say that ‘rocks have consciousness’. I for one think it doesn’t.

I have to say, I feel that the NY civil case against Trump Corp's valuation practises is on very shaky ground and will get tossed on appeal. As Trump keeps saying, valuation is a subjective process, and furthermore none of the banks who accepted his inflated valuations brought a complaint about them or apparently lost any money. Neither did the IRS with respect to valuations quoted for tax purposes. (And boy do I hate it when Trump is right about something.)

What with Trump literally threatening a dictatorship and leading in the polls, the DoJ ought to keep its powder dry for the real Trump killer cases - the Jan 6th secession, the Classified Top Secret Files in the bathroom, and the Georgia cases. The NY cases (the fraud one and the hush money one) are mainly a distraction from the big ones. And the big ones have to hit their mark, expeditiously. Even though I think Trump will be beaten fair and square in the end, everything available has to be brought to bear.

There's no middle ground between existing and not existing. — RogueAI

That's precisely the point of the long post above.

Would you want this on your tombstone? — jgill

What is on my tombstone will probably only matter to someone else.

:up: At least you're seeing the problem, which I think few do! My argument is that it is because of the ability of the (rational) mind to grasp abstractions and signs, that the meaning of an item can be preserved whilst the form and media changes. I think it mitigates against materialist theories of mind, because the meaning (in the sense of the conveyed information) transcends or can be separated from the forms in which it can be encoded.

Suggest you read the Science News article. They note the idea goes back to Aristotle, but I think it is one of the things that fell out of favour with the abandonment of Aristotelian realism.

Alright, if that is your position.. — Mark Nyquist

That is not 'my position'. It is a fact. There is nothing like the ability of DNA to store and transmit in information outside the realm of organic life, and for that reason, it is a matter of dispute whether and in what sense organic life is only or wholly physical, or whether biology really can be reduced to physics. Put it this way - if you were presented with everything known about physics, there would be no way to infer from that the complex relationships that govern organic interactions.

This is one of the motivations behind biosemiotics (something I've learned a bit about from this forum.) Biosemiotics 'is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.

Biosemiotics integrates the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigmatic shift in the scientific view of life, in which semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features. (Wiki)'

A key point about biosemiotics is the shift from the metaphor of 'mechanism' to that of 'language' or 'signs'.

You're simply advocating what is called 'brain-mind identity theory'. This is the philosophy of mind that the mind and the brain are one and the same, and that knowledge, reason, affective states, and so on, are 'brain states'. I know some of the philosophers that argue for that view, but I also know that it has generally fallen out of favour as being too simplistic. Even those who still propose such a view argue for a form of 'non-reductive physicalism' which accepts that while mental states are physical in nature, they cannot be fully reduced to brain states, due to the conceptual issues of trying to equate brain-states with affective states or propostional knowledge. This allows for a physicalist view of the mind without the strict identity claims of the earlier theory, but at the cost of having a very open definition of 'physical' (like, 'whatever it is, it must be physical'.)

Your laugh at what I said seem to imply that you feel what I said was nonsense, but now I can't find that response anymore? — Christoffer

that's 'cause I deleted it. I try to avoid making sarcastic remarks. But what I was parodying, was the fact that your post misunderstands confuses the existential question of purpose with the functional sense of purpose assumed by physics. What it is 'getting towards fastest' according to that account, is maximum entropy - like 'the heat death' of the Universe. So, great! We can all rejoice that we're doing our bit towards eventual total non-existence.

The existential sense of purpose I'm referring to, is the kind of question philosophers and the religious ponder - is there a purpose to existence, other than pro-creating and 'passing on our genes'.

Not so - DNA encodes and conveys information. That was one of the major scientific discoveries of the 20th century. reference

Without brains any meaning would not even exist. Just physical matter existing as physical matter. Why should I take you seriously? — Mark Nyquist

Living organisms without brains exist, but they embody information in the form of DNA, which is what differentiates organism from inorganic matter.

interminable and pointless — Janus

What is 'interminable and pointless' is trying to explain it to others, but hey, it's a philosophy forum. :-)

If you remove brains from the relevant environment information doesn't exist.
Can you refute that? — Mark Nyquist

Well, information archicture first manifests in extremely simple organisms, without brains. But leaving that aside, (1) the nature of meaning is not a question for brain science at all. And (2) the same general observation can be made concerning the multiple realizability of information in brain states. This means that the same meaning (1+1=2) can be replicated across an enormous variety of brain states. Only the meaning remain constant, whilst the states themselves change all the time. Furthermore, whatever the brain state is, it always must culminate in the semantic fact of 1 + 1 equalling 2, any other output is false. So it can't really be understood in respect of 'brain states', which is just a hand-waving way of referring everything back to physical science.

I know, as soon as I hit enter on the above, that mine is a pretty perfect example of what many here will regard as 'affectation', so I'll leave off here, and take it up in other places.

It is indubitably the case that 'phenomenon' is from the Greek 'phainomenon' meaning 'what appears'. And I claim that a subject to whom it appears is implicit in this definition as a matter of fact (which is also, I believe, a central contention of phenomenology).

As to 'the whole universe of phenomena' they are not actually phenomena until they're an observed phenomena (c.f. Bohr 'no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon'). Which is not to say that such phenomena don't exist prior to or outside of being observed, but that nothing can be said in respect of them in the absence of any observation of them - either the claim they do exist or don't.

As always, your statement is made from a putative perspective 'outside' that of any subject - imagining the vast universe as it must be without any subject being in it. But my claim is that even such an imaginative act still relies on an implicit perspective. (That is the subject of The Mind Created World OP.)

You are losing the distinction between what we know of the existence of things and their actual existence: the two are not the sam — Janus

Cross posted whilst I composed the above, but the same response. The 'actual existence' you're proposing is that outside any perspective or point of view. But you can't legitimately occupy such a perspective. I know this is un-intuitive but that feeling is based on a kind of 'reflexive realism' - what Husserl calls 'the natural attitude' which simply assumes the reality of the sensory domain.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity*. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

*Which I take to be a reference to 'the transcendental ego' or subject of experience.