:up:

The game of Twenty Questions is a good example. Ideally, every question cuts the number of remaining choices in half. And that way we cut through a world of possibilities with an exponentialised efficiency. — apokrisis

Nice ordinary example!

But that is not the same as counting. Just the reason why we struggle with holding number strings longer than seven in our working memories. — apokrisis

That makes sense to me. I have come across reports that suggest some animals can learn to do basic small number counting. They may be apocryphal.

I was addressing the quoted text from Perl. I haven't read his work but have received the impression that "apprehending form via the rational intellect" was the thought in play there. I guess it depends on whether you think "apprehending form" means recognizing it or reflecting on it. I would agree with you that the latter requires symbolic language and I don't think that is at all controversial.

Numbers are then just the form that information takes at the level of a complete semiotic abstraction in terms of the self that is aiming to regulate its world by the business of constructing states of constraint. — apokrisis

Yes, "numbers" are abstractions. But I think animals have a sense of number. The word "form" in information seems to reflect the relationship between information and form. Form and information and number all primordially rely on cognition and recognition of difference and sameness or similarity and pattern.

Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. — Perl, Thinking Being

Rational thought or the cognition, the apprehension of pattern, it is grounded in? Animals obviously recognize forms. Should we say they are rational?

I meant more when the larger reality bites.

There is no "higher" reality in a spiritual sense, nor a "true" reality (in contrast to falsehood) in a logical sense, that exists "behind" or "beneath" my beliefs about reality. Belief is reality. There is no difference. — Noble Dust

What you believe may indeed be your reality, but it's possible to become unstuck.

So, you think this thread is about the distinction between appearance and existence? If so, I don't agree. It has mostly been argued by the antirealists that there is no sense in saying that objects are this or that colour, but that is a different and merely semantic issue, whereas there is a cogent distinction between objects and their appearances.

The word 'colour' is commonly used to refer to both objects and experiences of objects, and it is not a matter of it being appropriate to use the word only in one context or the other, but the word is appropriately used in both, although obviously in different senses.

but appearance still requires a viewer. — Wayfarer

Appearance of anything requires a viewer. So where is the distinction?

Primary qualities or attributes are just those which are measurable, and, crucially, those that are said to be mind-independent. A hue may look different to different observers - although that’s hard to tell - but any value that can be measured objectively is not subject to opinion. — Wayfarer

Colour is precisely measurable, so this criterion does not work. @Banno is correct that the 'primary/ secondary' distinction is outmoded.

No, the subtly denigrating term "moral crusade" --- implying a holy mission? --- characterization of ↪Wayfarer's posts, was yours, not mine. I said he was just doing Philosophy. — Gnomon

You said:

And you accuse ↪Wayfarer of ambiguity? Hasn't philosophy itself, from the beginning, been a moral/ethical crusade? :nerd: — Gnomon

I do see Wayfarer as prosecuting a moral crusade, so yeah, I did introduce the term. It was you that suggested that the whole of philosophy has been a moral crusade and I asked you for examples and to explain why you see the chosen example(s) as constituting a moral crusade.


Also it now, looking back, seems I did not misread you in saying that you suggested that all philosophy is ambiguous:

When was the last time you saw a philosopher present an idea that was not ambiguous to someone? — Gnomon

How do we use a basic intuition to avoid an infinite regress of rules? — Joshs

We simply "get it" without having to rely on a set of rules. Sets of rules are formalizations of "getting it".

I think the salient point is that there can be multiple reductive explanations from different perspectives. So, to say that I went to the shop because I was thirsty is a reductive explanation, as much as saying I went to the shop because of certain neural activity is. Such different explanations do not contradict, and should not exclude, one another.

So for example, the epiphenomenalist might say consciousness does no work, just "goes along for the ride", so to speak, but that would be an illegitimate elimination of one reasonable way of explaining human behavior. I think what puzzles people is that we cannot combine the two explanations or achieve any absolute perspective which would eliminate one and retain the other. 'Either/ or' thinking seems to generally dominate the human mind.

How exactly does Spinoza's conception demonstrate why the experiences produced by our bodies should synch up with the evolutionary history of our perceptual organs? If everything has an experiential/mental side to it, why is our phenomenological horizon rooted to our body in the way it seems to be? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, I don't really understand the question. That said, even in the absence of understanding the question I can ask why they should not "sync up". Also, Spinoza as I read him does not claim that "everything has an experiential side to it". If you want to explore that thought take a look at Whitehead's Process and Reality.

:up:

I'm not sure what your reference to meaning and classification seeks to highlight, but my point is that intuition does matter when it comes to rule-following. If we had no basic intuitions, then each rule would require further rules setting out how it is to be followed—infinite regress follows.

Perhaps I'm in the wrong thread—what exactly do you think is the problem this thread has been trying to address?

Everything is determined by particles and how they interact, so no one ever goes and gets a drink "because they feel thirsty" (at least not in the causally efficacious sense of "cause.") — Count Timothy von Icarus

Feeling thirsty can be considered to be a purely physical process. It's not that mental processes are "along for the ride" if you think of the mental and physical accounts as two ways of looking at the one thing, as Spinoza did. On that account the idea of the mental causing the physical or the physical causing the mental is merely a category error.

Exactly...the reductionists seek to analyze the physical in terms of the mental (idealism) or the mental in terms of the physical (eliminative physicalism). Tendentious thinking prevails on both sides.

The point being that counting is intuitive...the act enacts a logic which is inherent to animal cognition, so no need to think of it as rule-following except in its more complex elaborations. But even there the foundational intuitive logic is the underpinning.

The logic of adding goes back to grouping objects, animals, people, together.

You might say rule-following has its genesis and foundation in pattern recognition and mimicry.

As far as I know science never purported to be able to directly study anyone's experiences. It generally acknowledges that its ambit of investigation, its whole data source, is restricted to what reliably appears to the human senses.

Right. When "science" undermines realism it undermines itself, and those who do not notice this live in an alternate reality where their perceptions are good enough when it comes to "science" and untrustworthy otherwise.* — Leontiskos

:up: 'Real' refers to whatever we all reliably experience in common ways via the senses. including (internal) bodily sensations. Hence colours, just as shapes and objects, are not imaginary, but real.

Whether the word 'colour' refers to experiences or to the dispositions of objects to cause more or less reliable colour experiences, is a matter of stipulation, Both usages are intelligible. And yet @Michael seems to believe that there is some determinate fact of the matter that could enable us to declare one usage "true" and the other "false".

Or fortunate... depending on perspective.

I don't see the point in examining our notions of identity under the light (or more aptly in the darkness) afforded by thought experiments which utilize scenarios that are most likely impossible.

The objection is presumably something like, "Oh, well the difference is her memory, and her memory is part of her brain, and her brain is part of her body. So it is a bodily change after all." But this is a strange and non-commonsensical way to talk. It is really an elaborate theory of the relation between grandma's lack of recognition and the putative underlying physical causes, and when we talk about "body" we aren't usually talking about such things. For example, you wouldn't go home to your family and tell them, "Grandma experienced a bodily change today." — Leontiskos

It is both commonsensical and commonplace to attribute memory loss to physical changes in the brain, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make. I would also point out that there would be differences in body language between the granny who recognizes me and the granny who doesn't.

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied. — 180 Proof

Yes, the idea of the body being the best picture of the soul seems right to me. I am also reminded of Spinoza's "the soul is the idea of the body".

And what else can the idea of hylomorphism pertain to but the body?

the soul is the interconnectedness of those experiences, that gives rise to a sense of self which is the subject. — Lionino

Is this not just the continuity afforded by memory?

We can also say that, for instance, a tree has a persistent identity over time. I plant a tree when a child and then seventy years later I see the tree has grown into a mighty Eucalypt. The tree is a concatenation of self-regulating processes including metabolism. The material constituents are constantly changing, and the form is constantly morphing, but nonetheless it is distinct from all other trees. Shall we then say with Aristotle that trees and all other living things are, on account of hylomorphic perdurance, ensouled?

I'm not the one that raised the question of ambiguity in this thread. So, it should be incumbent upon the raiser to give examples. — Gnomon

I said that Wayfarer does not present an unambiguous position. It looks like I misread you to be suggesting philosophy is commonly ambiguous, whereas I now see you were suggesting it has largely been a moral crusade. So, my bad for hasty reading.

In any case I don't agree with the latter. Apart from moral philosophy, the focus has mostly been on ethics, in the sense of how best to live, with the focus not principally on relations with others, but on personal flourishing and/or getting it right epistemologically speaking.

And I didn't say Wayfarer's philosophy is "rife with them" (ambiguities) but rather that I didn't think philosophy generally is.

Firstly I haven't said there are no ambiguous claims from philosophers, but I don't believe philosophy in general is rife with them. So that said, how about you give a good example or two of what you take to be an ambiguous claim from a well-known philosopher.

Berkeley had a clear position. According to him the explanation for the persistence of things and the fact we all perceive the same things was that God has them in mind. If you want to participate in discussion and debate that purpose is defeated if you can't or won't declare and argue for a clear and consistent position. I'm not saying that discussion and debate is what philosophy is all about, just that it you want to do that, then have something unambiguous to present.

What @Wayfarer does on here seems to me to be more social commentary, a kind of moral crusade, than philosophy.

OK, I think what you say there is uncontroversial and perfectly compatible with realisms (other than naive realism).

The only ambiguity there is "a kind of inherent reality". I presume you are referring to a naive notion of reality, and if so I agree with you that thinking that the world is in itself just as we perceive it to be probably is the default, unexamined response. But I would suggest that anyone with a basic level of philosophical training or understanding would not fall for that one.

So, it seems that we have cycled around to the familiar point where it appears that we are not disagreeing about anything. But then I won't be surprised if the cycle repeats because you seem to vacillate as to whether you want to make an ontological claim or merely an epistemological one.

It is one thing to say that things unperceived are not the same as we perceive them to be and altogether another to claim that when unperceived they don't exist.

But nowhere have I said 'there is no world', only that we can't see it as if we were not a part of it, that the objective stance is treated as if it were an absolute, which it isn't. — Wayfarer

So you acknowledge that unperceived things exist, and you are only denying that we can see things as they are when unperceived? In that case there would seem to be no argument since our being unable to see things as they are unseen would seem to be a mere tautology.

Right, and this is just what I've been saying except I don't think the fact that we must acknowledge that there is a reality beyond our perceptual and conceptual capacities is without significance, since it is a fact about the human condition.
— Janus

Better yet, we can subtract the human from the epistemic equation as best we can. That is, apply the scientific method, or Peirce's logical arc of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation. Arrive at the view that represents the limits of inquiry for a community of rational thought. Act as if it were the Comos that is contemplating its own Being. — apokrisis

I agree with what you say, and I think it follows on from what I said. It's the best we can do.

This is an ontological commitment we might make as part of an evolutionary metaphysics. Such as Big Bang cosmology. — apokrisis

I believe the Universe evolved, and I think this belief entails that there were an untold number of events and processes that occurred before there were any perceivers..

One can’t believe in physics without going along with its least action principle. Optimisation of dialectical balances just is the reality physics describes. — apokrisis

I don't have the background to understand what you are saying or hinting at here.

The "thing in itself" (which I'm saying is 'the Universe with no observers) represents the reality that lies beyond our perceptual and cognitive reach. This underscores the limits of human knowledge and reinforces the idea that our understanding is always shaped by the conditions of our cognition, making any direct knowledge of the "thing in itself" both impossible and meaningless within our conceptual framework. — Wayfarer

Right, and this is just what I've been saying except I don't think the fact that we must acknowledge that there is a reality beyond our perceptual and conceptual capacities is without significance, since it is a fact about the human condition. What I don't agree with Kant about is that we are (by dint of practical reason) warranted in populating that "realm" with the artifices of our own imagination and faith in the context of intersubjective argument. What we choose to believe in our own hearts is another matter; the point is that something seeming right to me cannot constitute an argument for why anyone else should believe as I do.

There was a mention earlier in this thread about Kastrup's 'mind-at-large', and my questioning of that in a Medium essay. On further reflection, I am beginning to see that this could be conceptualised as 'the subject' or 'an observer' in a general sense. It doesn't refer to a particular individual, nor to some ethereal disembodied intelligence that haunts the Universe. But I wonder if it might also be plausibly understood as represented by the 'transcendental ego' in Kant and Husserl. Also, quite plausibly, the role of 'observer' in physics, which is never something included in the mathematical descriptions. — Wayfarer

I cannot make sense of the idea of an "observer" apart from individual observers. We are finite temporal observers. Is there an infinite atemporal observer? Do we even know what that could mean? So, for me the "transcendental ego" is just an idea, I can't imagine how it could be a reality. I don't deny that it might be a reality, but I don't see how we could understand what such a reality could be, any more than we could understand what the reality of the in itself could be.

When it comes to imaginable possible more or less coherent explanations for how it is we all perceive the same things I can only think of 'actual mind independent' existence in the form of actual mind independent existents or ideas in a collective or universal mind, which is Kastrup's solution. I personally find the actual mind independent existents more plausible, but I can't mount an argument for that because there is no objective measure of plausibility. What is one person's plausibility is another's incredulity.

What is clear from ten years of interactions, is that you don't understand what I write despite repeated efforts on my part to lay it out as clearly as I can. I'm about at the end of my tether as far as you're concerned. — Wayfarer

I understand what you write, but I don't see just what is your reasoning for thinking what you think, and also it is not precisely clear to me just what it is that you do think. Your reference to a "transcendental ego" above is an example; I think that is a much less clear idea than the idea of a collective mind, or the idea of mind-independent existents.

So there are the known unknowns and then the unknown unknowns which we can believe surely also must exist? That kind of thing? — apokrisis

Sure, why not?

For me, it would is a matter for empirical inquiry. As in how far does one really get by employing tunnel vision?

The dog that didn't bark could be the clue. The world as it "is" might exist as an optimisation algorithm such as we find at the base of all physics – the least action principle. The "ought" that eliminated all the other worlds that felt they too might have been possible if we hadn't outcompeted them in the race to be the case. — apokrisis

I'm not sure what you are getting at with your first sentence. "The world as it is" is for us just an idea, but it doesn't seem to follow that the world as it is is just an idea. Do you think anything would exist if humans, or if you like, any other perceivers didn't exist? I'm not interested in the question as to what its mind-independent existence would be like, because I don't think we can answer that; it's kind of a meaningless question. "Optimization algorithm" is still an anthropomorphic notion, so perhaps we could rule that out?

But does he clearly believe either side of the proposition at any time? There are those who assert and won't explain. There are those who don't understand. Then there is this other thing of seeming to agree and then slipping back across the boundary towards the other side. A foot in both camps.

There are many ways that arguments are never won on PF. :wink: — apokrisis

Of course, I agree that these kinds of arguments can never be settled, and that people believe whatever they do for not purely rational reasons. So, we are all here telling others what seems most plausible, most salient, most important to us individually. We are all just one small voice in the greater cacophony that is human thought and belief.

But if we are here to argue sensibly it seems at least reasonable to be called upon to state a clear position. My complaint about @Wayfarer is that he cannot or will not do that. We don't all have to agree with one another, but it would help to at least know what the others' coherent and consistent standpoints are (if they have such). If the standpoints presented are not lucidly articulated and internally consistent then why should they be taken seriously?

A constant reminder that incomprehension of an argument doesn't constitute a rebuttal.

So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Hence 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. — Wayfarer

It's not that I don't understand what you are saying, it's that I don't agree with it, but you don't seem to be able to fathom that. You say "the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective", but from my perspective your mistake is that it is not that the existence of such realities "relies" on an implicit perspective, but that the judgement that there are (or are not) such realities is an expression of a perspective.

If you believe that there is a reality as to what is the case regarding whether such unseen realities rely for their existence on some perspective, then you are claiming that there is something mind-independently the case; that is that there are or are not such realities.

I don't see how you can escape from that. If you claim that sages can directly know what is going on you are claiming that something is the case regardless of any perspective, that is that sages either can or cannot know directly what is going on, or else your claim becomes meaningless.

You say it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any mind, which seems to imply that it is true only from that perspective. From what perspective do you imagine it to be untrue?

What are these and how would we know? — apokrisis

Well, in line with what I said, we don't know what they are. Do you really think the whole story consists in what we can be consciously aware of? I get it that if we can't know about something it, as Banno puts it, "drops out of the conversation", but I also think that it is a significant fact about the human condition that there is much that determines what and who we are, what we experience and how we interpret it, that is precognitive. Whether or not you acknowledge that determines your basic orientation towards life.

The irony is that someone like @Wayfarer who doesn't want to acknowledge that many things have happened, are happening and will happen that we can never know about, nonetheless believes that sages can "directly" know "what is really going on".

I think you are saying that we perceive the differences that have meaning for us, differences that make a difference for us, and that that meaning is the global background or context against which particulars can stand out. I agree with that, but I also think there are many differences we just don't perceive at all but that nonetheless make a difference to how and what we perceive.

The world is what is the case.
— Banno

For whom? And what was their purpose?

Always just half the story. — apokrisis

It seems plausible to think that there is much that is the case despite there being no one around to notice it, care about it, or comment on it, or even able to be consciously aware of it. I don't see that equating with "lumpen realism" if by that term you mean 'naive realism'. I think what we consciously experience always is "just half the story".

The world just is as it is, regardless of what you think of it
— Banno

It's a given, right? — Wayfarer

What is the alternative? That the world just is what it isn't? I have to say, Wayfarer, that I am yet, after all the exchanges we have had over the last twelve or however many years, to gain any clear idea of what it is you are actually arguing for.

(1) reality has an ineluctably subjective pole — Wayfarer

Reality as experienced and interpreted by us has a subjective pole, so no disagreement there.

(2) that no world can be imagined in which this is not the case — Wayfarer

We can imagine that the world without us has no subjective pole, in fact it seems to be the most plausible conclusion. We cannot imagine "what the world is like" without perceivers, because the idea of 'what it is like' is meaningless outside the context of perception and judgement. On the other hand, we can imagine that it is differentiated, that is that it is not amorphous, and the idea that it is differentiated has more explanatory power than the idea that it is amorphous, because if it were amorphous there would be no explanation for how we come to perceive difference.

(3) that this subjective pole or ground is never itself amongst the objects considered by naturalism — Wayfarer

Yes. obviously not because it is a concept not a concrete thing.

that the emphasis on objectivity as the sole criteria for what is real is deeply mistaken on those grounds. — Wayfarer

Objectivity is not a criterion, but a mode, of existence.