but that the methodological outlook of modern science brackets the constituting role of the subject, and then forgets that it has done so. Of course that attitude is contested, but it remains the default for many. So declaring that many scientists hold to scientific realism is hardly a 'straw man' :rofl: . — Wayfarer

The natural sciences don't so much bracket the subject as it is the case that the subject is not within their purview. Science is not a human being so it doesn't "forget" anything. Scientific realism is the idea that science gives us real information about, and understanding of, the world. That cannot be proven to be so, of course, as nothing in science is proven, but it is far from an implausible, let alone an incoherent idea. The strawman is that the natural sciences forget the subject, when the reality is that the subject is irrelevant to them.

Precisely the point at issue! What world are you referring to? — Wayfarer

I don't hold to a two worlds conception of nature. There is only one world. As I said before I don't accept the bifurcation of nature into phenomena and noumena.

To say it “would be the same” is to assume what is in question—namely, that the predicates of sameness, objectivity, and existence can meaningfully apply outside the framework of an observer. That’s exactly the blind spot. To which your response is invariably: 'what "blind spot"? I don't see any "blind spot"!' — Wayfarer

I don't question that the predicates you mention can meaningfully apply to what is independent from human perception―to me questioning that is a nonsense. It's not a blind spot, I understand your argument, and I simply disagree with it. I think it is you who has the blind spot in that you apparently cannot imagine that it is impossible that someone might interpret the situation differently than you and being consistent with that different interpretation disagree with you. Apparently you are too mired in your own dogma, your own sense of absolute rightness, to be able to understand that.

I think all language is inherently dualistic and nature, including our perceptual experience, is not. So, in that sense we can say that our language and hence our ideas and models are always more or less inadequate to reality.

As to my own beliefs (I don’t hold beliefs, rather I seek wisdom), part of my predisposition on these issues is formed by spiritual teachings. — Punshhh

You must believe that it is possible to attain wisdom and that some spiritual teaching or teachings can help you with that.

Okay.

I’m not claiming that the thing-in-itself is some ghostly half-real entity. My point is that existence and non-existence are categories that only make sense within experience, within a perspective. — Wayfarer

Yes, but it doesn't follow that they cannot make sense pertaining to things which are inferred to exist outside of experience.

It doesn’t mean the world literally ceases to be, but that the world as knowable is always ordered through the framework of an observer. The realist assumption—that the world would be just the same even if there were no observer—forgets this constituting role of the mind - which is precisely the point of the 'blind spot of science', which regards the world it studies as if it were simply there in itself, while forgetting that the very concepts of objectivity and existence already presuppose the standpoint of an observer. — Wayfarer

If the world doesn't cease to be then it exists, in virtue of the meanings of the terms. Of course the world as known (not as knowable) is always known by a knower―again true by definition. As to the purported "realist assumption" that the world would be just the same if there were no percitpinets, well that's obviously wrong since without percipients there would be no perceptions, and perceptions and the judgements, if any, that grow out of them, are a part of the world. Apart from percptions and judgements, the world would be the same without any observer.

You are presenting a strawman of science―it deals with the world as perceived by us, no reasonable scientists would deny that. A naive realist might think of the eyes as passive "windows" that simply allow us to look out on a world of objects which exists in exactly the same form as our perceptions of them. That is obviously wrong, you don't have to think hard to realize that.

On the other hand there seems to be good reason to think that the way we perceive things is a real reflection of the way the world acts upon us, just as the different ways the world appears to animals is a real reflection of the ways in which the world acts upon them. It seems reasonable to think that objects have mass and shape, for example, independently of our perceptions of them.

Colour is another story, although it seems reasonable to think that the reflection of different wavelengths and intensities of light from different surfaces strictly determines, along with the visual organs of particular animals, what and how colours appear to them. I don't see that we have any good reason to deny those things even if they cannot be known with certainty.

Kant frames Noumena as something only talked about in the negative sense (meaning we cannot comprehend any 'aboutness'). — I like sushi

And yet he talks about them in a positive sense, saying that noumena cannot exist in space and time, while being unable to offer an argument for that, other than that we know space and time only via our experience of phenomena. It just doesn't follow from the fact that we know space and time only via experience that there is no space and time outside that context. It is true to say that there is no space and time as experienced outside experience but that is just a tautology and as such tells us precisely nothing.

I don't know what to make of the rest of your post.

I think I know what are getting at. But if you insist that the category of existence can only pertain to the things we perceive then we can say that things as they are unperceived do not exist. Whatever way you spin to say of something that it neither exists nor does not exist is vacuous.

Added to that I think that if you are speaking about something it is a contradiction to say it doesn't exist. You might say unicorns don't exist, but they do exist as imaginary creatures. Fictional characters exist as fictional characters and so on. To say there is a thing-in-itself and then to say it doesn't exist is a contradiction. We can say it doesn't exist in the same sense as our perceptions of objects do, but to say it neither exists nor doesn't exist is just a conceptually empty self-contradictory statement. What could it mean?

I guess I just don't accept the validity of what you are claiming as the context within which you make such statements. I've said before that I don't think it is the "existence of all such supposedly unseen" things that "relies on an implicit perspective". It is what we say about those things that relies on perspective, not the things themselves. I'm not sure why you added "supposedly" and "implicit", since there can be little doubt that there are always countless unseen things, and no doubt that what we say about them does explicitly rely on a perspective, it is the expression of a perspective. It simply does not follow logically that the existence of the things relies on perspective, explicit or implicit. To say that is just a case of invalid reasoning.

What their existence might be outside any perspective is not "meaningless and unintelligible"―it's a category error to apply those categories to existents, they rather pertain to what is said. We know their existence only via the senses, and what we know of their existence is mediated by the senses as well as by the things themselves. This is shown by the fact that there is always more to be discovered about them. This would be as true if the things are ideas in the mind of God (as Berkeley claims) as it would be if they are simply real existents. I believe that is why Berkeley says he does not all deny the existence of real material objects that do not depend on us for their being. He believes they depend on God for their being, as do we.

I don't know why you keep repeating the same mistaken conflation between the things and what we say about them, when it's been pointed out to you so many times. I put it down to stubbornness and closed-mindedness―it seems you just don't want the world to be a material world. Your position would be more coherent if you argued for the "mind of God" solution, but you just don't seem to want to embrace that either.

This leaves you with a position that has no explanatory power, because the similar constitution of our minds cannot alone explain the fact that we all, and even some animals, see the same things in the same places. That is the weakness in your position that you need to address, if you can. Continual mere assertion, pushing of stipulative definitions and marshalling of stock quotes are no substitute for cogent argument.

Because of recursion: you’re trying to explain that which is doing the explaining. ‘The eye cannot see itself’. — Wayfarer

That's not true. Consciousness is not trying to explain itself―it is reason, the discursive intellect, that is trying to explain consciousness.

(Not, of course, a reductive explanation; that would be to beg the question in favor of physicalism.) — J

Are not all explanations reductive? All explanations are given in causal terms, analysis is always in the form of attempting to establish the interactive relationships between parts, which always seems to end up being couched in terms of mechanism.

Perhaps it isn't possible to give such an explanation of consciousness because it doesn't seem to have any parts, it is thought of as just a general state or condition. So if we are going to explain consciousness it seems it would need to be in terms of an analysis of the neural processes which give rise to it, of how they give rise to it, of what is going on in the brain when consciousness is present.

There is also the problem of getting clear on just what we think consciousness is. We could hardly analyze the neural conditions that are necessary to give rise to consciousness if we don't know what consciousness is definitely enough to decide when it is present and when not. It doesn't seem to be as simple as we are conscious when awake and unconscious when asleep, for example.

How much of our days are spend being conscious? It seems to me that I, at least, am on 'autopilot' much of the time. I have no memory of what I perceived or thought during those times. Can I be said to be conscious when I am on 'autopilot'? Is it appropriate to say that quales exist only when I am self-reflectively aware of my moment to moment experience? Even in moments of self-awareness, it would seem there must be much going on of which I am not conscious.

Potential is a different thing to the noumenal, which is what we have been discussing. If something has a potential it is built into the actuality of the thing, and is real in that sense. So, I would say that actual potential exists, but that what it is potential for does not exist until it is actualized. For example, right now I have a real potential to do many in the next few minutes, but since I can only do one or maybe two things at a time most of those potentials will not be actualized in the next few minutes. For another example, referring back to mass energy, a massive body at rest has the energy potential expressed in the formula E=mc2.

The other thing that comes to mind is the idea of the quantum foam, but in that context the term "virtual" not 'potential' is used. And the virtual particles are said to wink in and out of existence. which would mean that they exist then don't exist, not that they neither exist nor don't exist.

Energy is taken to be equivalent to mass, and mass is taken to be the fundamental, essential property of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read what Russell linked earlier: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/ you'll find that energy is thought to come in two forms 'mass-energy' and 'motion-energy'. When a massive particle and its antiparticle are converted into two photons (photons are understood to be their own antiparticles) then mass energy is converted into motion energy (as photons move at the the speed of light).

The determinist perspective sees the actions of living beings as effects of external causation. The free will perspective sees an internal cause of action which has an effect on what is external. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not true―in the determinist picture there are both exogenous and endogenous causes of action.

But it is a bit of a stretch to say that all 'formal' properties of experience depend on the regulative faculties of our minds. — boundless

More than a bit of a stretch I'd say, there would seem to be no way this could be possible. We see the same things at the same times and places, and since as far as we know our minds are not connected this is inexplicable in terms of just our minds.

To me the problem is trying to make sense of the mind in purely 'physical' terms, once you assume that the 'physical' is completely devoid of any quality that pertains to mind. — boundless

I don't see why we should assume that of the physical. The world shows lawlike patterns and regularities. I think the old image of dead, brute matter died a long time ago, but it still seems to live in some minds.

But the sixth is the 'inner' sense of the mind. So, to a Buddhist when we are aware of a mental content, it's like being aware of a sense object. — boundless

Today that sense is know as interoception―the sense of what is going on in our bodies. We also have proprioception―our sense of the spatial positions, orientations and movements of the body.

I don't think that even Wayfarer reject that. — boundless

He says that there cannot be such existents, that they are neither existent nor non-existent. I think that is meaningless nonsense.

Can we be certain on how the 'external reality' is? I would say no, because our knowledge is limited and imperfect (and not strictly speaking becuase it is mediated). — boundless

I'd say there is no certainty except in tautologies if anywhere. I agree our knowledge is imperfect, but it's all we have.

Note, however, that the epistemic idealist is right in suggesting that we do not have a direct knowledge of 'reality' and our 'phenomenal world' is our 'best guess' of it, so to speak (to borrow a phrase from St. Paul, 'we know as if through a glass, darkly'). — boundless

I don't see the phenomenal world as a guess. If we were all just guessing then the fact that we see the same things in the same places and times would be inexplicable. Perhaps you mean our inferences about the nature of the phenomenal world? Even there, given the immense breadth and consistency of our scientific knowledge, I think 'guess' is too strong.

Given that we do not have a possibility to 'check' how our 'interpretation of reality' corresponds to 'reality', we IMO should grant the epistemic idealist that we cannot make certain claims on the noumenal. The epistemic idealist might say that the 'noumenal' is beyond concepts, beyond intelligibility and we should be silent on it (and you find quite similar claims in some Buddhist and Hindu tradition, to be honest). — boundless

I think it is a kind of artificial problem. We experience a world of phenomena. It seems most plausible (to me at least) that the ways phenomena appear to us is consistent with the real structures of both the external phenomena and our own bodies. We can recognize that this cannot be the "whole picture" and also that, while our language is inherently dualistic, there is no reason to believe nature is dualistic, and this means our understanding if not our direct perceptual experience is somewhat out of kilter with what actually is. I think it is for this reason that aporia may always be found in anything we say.

We can, however, debate on which picture of the 'noumenal' seems more reasonable. — boundless

We can, but experience on these and like forums tells me that people rarely change their opinion on account of debating about what seems most reasonable when it comes to metaphysical speculation.

If physicalism were right, intelligibility of 'the world' seems to that has no explanation at all. Just a brute fact, that allowed our minds to navigate in the world. Note, however, that mathematical and logical laws (the 'laws of reasons' in general) seem to have a character of 'eternality' (or 'time independence') and 'necessity', which both do not seem to be compatible with a view that mind isn't in some sense fundamental. — boundless

I agree. I think a physicalism that allows for the semiotic or semantic dimension to be in some sense "built in" is the most reasonable. However many people seem to interpret the idea that mind in fundamental to entail and idealist position that claims mind as fundamental substance or as some form of panpsychism which entails that everything is to some degree conscious or at least capable of experience and some kind of "inner sense". I don't think it is plausible to think that anything without some kind of sensory organ can experience anything.

Anyway we seem to agree on the major points.

But we were always going to hit this wall once straying into Buddhism. In Buddhism this whole world of appearances is nothing but maya. So how can these appearances, or a being enthralled by them, know, or account for the noumena when they themselves are part of the illusion? — Punshhh

You are assuming this world is an illusion. How could you know that when everything you could possibly know comes form your experience in this world? Something can only be said to be illusory compared to something else that is real, but we have nothing real to compare it a purportedly illusory world to. If this whole world is an illusion then your very existence is itself an illusion, yet to say that makes no sense because your existence is all you have known.

Nonsense! There's something outside those boundaries Janus, or else you wouldn't need to be making those judgements. And dismissing that external world as meaningless and unintelligible, does nothing to propagate understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Explain to me then what it could mean to say that something is, and yet that it neither exists nor does not exist?

Immanuel Kant, said that there are things one cannot experience (noumena), and that we cannot talk about such things. He also explained why this is so: our concepts apply only to things we can experience. Clearly, he is in the same fix as Nagarjuna. So are two of the greatest 20th-century Western philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that many things can be shown but not said, and wrote a whole book (the Tractatus), explaining what and why. Martin Heidegger made himself famous by asking what Being is, and then spent much of the rest of his life explaining why you can’t even ask this question. — Beyond True and False, Graham Priest

And yet Kant talks about the noumena that we cannot experience, cannot know―he says that there are things in themselves that appear to us as things, he says that they cannot exist in space and time, cause anything, or be differentiated or structured in any way. So, he contradicts himself by applying the concepts he says can only be applied to things we can experience by applying them to things he says we cannot experience.

He doesn't really know that we don't experience things in themselves, in fact he says that they are what appear to us as the things of experience, so in that sense we do experience them. It comes down to different ways of taking about it. It is of course simply true by definition that they do not appear to us as they are in themselves, because we can only know them as they appear to us. We also must acknowledge that we do not know everything about them, and could not know that we knew everything about them even if we did. Ignorance is a great part of the human condition.

Our concepts, what we say about things are not the things themselves. Our language is inherently dualistic―whereas we have no reason to think that nature itself is dualistic. The map (our conceptual models) is not the territory. Some things can only be shown, not said. Much is shown in literature which is not explicitly said. Much is shown by body language which is not said. A great part of our everyday experience cannot be captured adequately in discursive words and is better shown by poetic allusion. "A picture is worth a thousand words" and so on. All this is true, but none of it gives us license to speak pretentious nonsense in a discursive context.

I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? — Bob Ross

I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being, unless by that term you mean something like "the totality of what exists" or just the sheer fact that something always exists. The idea of self-existent being meaning a being that exists when nothing else exists makes no sense to me at all. How could our investigation of nature (natural theology) tell us that something could exist when absolutely nothing else exists?

There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person. — Bob Ross

Here again I am left with no idea what it is about nature that leads you to conclude that God is a person.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene. — Bob Ross

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that. Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

To say “nothing can be said about it” is not to claim “it is something that does not exist.” Rather, it neither exists nor doesn’t exist; in fact, there is no “it.” — Wayfarer

Unfortunately that is not a sensible, or even meaningful, thing to say―better just to remain silent. If philosophy is about anything it is certainly not about talking nonsense.

I think the pronoun 'he' reflects a longstanding understanding of God as 'father', while nature is referred to as 'mother'. I tend to think that the idea of animation, and of animating spirits in things (animism) found its genesis in the basic apprehension of the difference between life and non-life, the stationary and the moving. The animate Earth thus might include the wind, water, plants, animals―anything that visibly moves or changes might have been considered to be living in some kind of sense― inhabited by animating spirits in earlier times and then later by the spirit of one god. (That said mountains and other places considered to be sacred were also thought to be inhabited by spirits, spirits of place, which perhaps reflects the effects on human feelings different places can certainly have, and that tells me I'm presenting a somewhat simplified picture).

In any case, according to that understanding the breath of God animates the material world. God is the Father and the material world the impregnated (with the seed or breath of god) Mother. I don't think is any coincidence that there are similarities between mater and matter, material, matrix.

This vision of an animating God is fundamentally a dualistic vision it seems.―God is above and also "inscrutably" within the external matrix―he breathes life into it, so it only finds its being in God.

No doubt there is more complex story to be told than the simple one I have imagined here. The main point would be that God is radically "other', radically transcendent, and that the material world is not God, even though it finds its being in Him. It seems all we can know of God is gained by reading the book of the world and by revelation to human prophets, but what is understood from the study of the world must not contradict the revelations of scripture according to this vision.

So, to repeat what I said earlier, I think this vision of an interventionist God is very much a child of scripture, not of natural theology

Cheers, I found Matt Strassler's article about matter and energy very interesting, as it casts doubt on the assumption that matter is energy. Perhaps the equation of the two is simplistic. I need to explore this question further.

For me the problem with this 'variant' of Kantianism is that it can only explain the form of appearances, not that there are appearances at all. — boundless

Yes, and I would say that it can only explain the general forms that our experiences take, and not the commonality of experiences of particular forms (which we might call the content of experiences).

I do believe that the great merit of Kant (and epistemic idealism in general) is his view that mind isn't a 'passive' recorder of 'what happens' but that it actively interprets phenomena. I also believe that we can't easily differentiate what is 'mind-dependent' from what is 'mind-independent', an antinomy if you will. — boundless

For me the fact that the mind is not "passive recorder" is uncontroversial. We are affected by what is external to our bodies via the senses, and the ways those effects are processed are endogenous functions, and not subject to interpretation right up until conscious awareness occurs. Of course part of that process would seem to consists in processing by neural networks which have been established by past experiences.

So, it is hard to say what we might mean by 'mind-dependent' in distinction to 'body/brain dependent'. When we talk about "mind-independency' (or we might say 'body/brain-independency') the meaning is plain―it simply refers to whatever exists, has existed or would exist if there were no percipients.

That there are such existents is strongly suggested by science and even by everyday experience. Of course as soon as we perceive something it no longer strictly qualifies to be placed in that category.

Well, I am sympathetic to theism, in fact. IMO, our mind can 'produce' the representation because the 'external reality' is itself intelligible. However, we can only know it by interacting with it and producing a representation of it, which is the 'phenomenal world'. It's not a 'deceptive' veil - at least, if we remember that it is also the result of the interpreteation that our mind makes of the 'external reality'. In fact, I think that the act of 'knowing' is always mediated. The 'external reality' is the 'known', our mind is the 'knower' and the 'phenomenal world' (or the 'representation') is the medium by which our mind can know the external reality. — boundless

I agree with most of what you say here, although I'm not clear on how you have related it to theism. In Kant was the problem that the senses might thought to be deceptive veils, and I think Hegel effectively dealt with that error in his Phenomenology.

If we do away with the external world we are left with a mere Phenomenalism, which seems to explain nothing. By "external world" I simply refer to what lies outside the boundaries of our skins. I cannot see any reason to doubt the existence of external reality defined that way. What the ultimate nature of that external reality might be is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It might be ideas in the mind of god, or it might simply be a world of existents.

You seem to allude to the idea that without god the intelligibility of the external world is inexplicable. I don't see that―I think our brains are highly evolved pattern-recognition organs, as are the brains, to a much less sophisticated degree, of simple embrained organisms. I conjecture that once a pattern is cognized a requisite number of times, a neural network that enables re-cognition is established. We can recognize a vast array of forms and regularities encountered in our everyday perceptual experience. That this process is not fully understood is down to the enormous complexity of the brain, and I don't see the fact that it is not comprehensively understood as disqualifying it as the best explanation.

The alternative idea that the things we perceive are ideas in God's mind or some universal mind of collective storehouse of mind and that their intelligibility is thus simply "built in" seems far less comprehensible to me, and also implausible given the unimaginable complexity of the world that God or universal mind or "storehouse" would have to "hold in mind".

But, as I've said many times, what different folk find most plausible comes down to their basic presuppositions, so it seems to me to be almost a "matter of taste". That doesn't mean I don't think those who hold very different views are wrong―I do, but I acknowledge that they likewise think I am wrong. Given the gulf between basic presuppositions I often wonder whether fruitful dialogue between people whose basic worldviews differ radically is even possible. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a polite agreement to agree to disagree.

The problem is that we have every reason to think there is a world prioir to perception, and because it seems impossible to imagine how a perception of vast differentiation could emerge from a featureless mass or from nothing at all, then I see it as most plausible to think that the world was already differentiated long before humans or even percipients arrived on the scene.

Not that I think the question and the answer to it matter that much, at least not to those who just accept that we live in a material world consisting of many, many things which don't depend on us for their existence.

That view would obviously be more bleak, and hence more significant, to those who wish there to be more than just this life.

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?
I agree. — 180 Proof

:up:

Question for @Bob Ross: if god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate? — Bob Ross

The idea of god intervening just is an idea of separation. Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'. Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology.

As photons don't consist of matter, they can be considered immaterial. — RussellA

If matter just is energy then, then photons are material. Are electrons, protons and neutrons material in your opinion?

Conclusion - as some immaterial things have a real existence and as God is immaterial then God has a real existence. — RussellA

That would be an invalid inference.

Yes, I told you, "order" itself. It is value not restricted by spatiotemporal context. It provides the foundation for mathematics upon which spatial temporal concepts are constructed. — Metaphysician Undercover

As far as I know mathematics exists only in the spatiotemporal world. There can be no order without things to be ordered.

It seems reasonable to think that, for example, the visual field is already differentiated for infants n terms of areas of different tones and colours, before they learn to recognize anything as anything. Also they would be aware of different sounds, smells, tastes and tactile "feels" and bodily sensations. Otherwise how could anything stand out for them in the first place?

Selection on someone's part is required for there to be more than one thing.
— Metaphysician Undercover

This too. — AmadeusD

I think this is arse-about. If there were not already more than one thing no selection could ever occur.

:up: I agree with what you say there and you've covered the issue more throughly than I had, so I have nothing further to add at this point.

Differentiation need not be spatial nor temporal. We have differentiation of meaning, intention and value. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do we know of any meaning, intention and value outside the context of this spatiotemporal existence?

we can conclude that differentiation is prior to perception. — Metaphysician Undercover

No argument from me about that conclusion.

If you refuse to uphold a proper definition of "differentiation", as an act which requires selection, just so that you may equivocate, then you make philosophical discourse impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Now you are contradicting what you said earlier. Differentiation just refers to the existence of more than one thing. So "selection" on our part is not logically required for there to be more than one thing.

Well, putting religion and spirituality to one side, no. But is there a good reason not to? — Punshhh

Religion and spirituality are not really discursive endeavors. Is there a good reason not to put religion and spirituality aside when doing philosophy?

I don’t see what belief has got to do with this, surely if something is cogent, it’s not a question of belief. — Punshhh

Cogent means clearly (and thus clearly expressible) and convincing, so I asked whether you had a clearly expressible and convincing reason to believe in a demiurge. Are you suggesting you have experienced the demiurge? When we experience (perceive) an ordinary object, we know what we have experienced because it is most times there, and we can go back and check, and we check with others if we are in doubt, and confirm (or disconfirm) that they also perceive the same object there.

That gives us cogent reason to believe in such objects, but I don't think the same applies with a demiurge. If we have what we think to be such an experience, what it is an experience of remains a matter of interpretation, and I think that should give us pause. If we feel an unshakeable conviction regarding what it was an experience of, it will be enough to non-rationally convince us, but it will not be enough to non-rationally convince others unless they have a will to believe as we do.

the world of experience is constituted through the mind’s forms and categories, not simply received as a mirror of things-in-themselves. — Wayfarer

As usual you go too far―you forget the role of the body and the world. "Co-constituted" would be a better term. Even if our minds were all exactly the same, which as @Wonderer correctly points out, they are not, that alone cannot explain the commonality of experience, even between us and the animals. This is a point you have repeatedly glossed over.

That's true, it is to reject the move Kant's philosophy makes, and I do that because I don't see a cogent argument for the empirical/transcendental distinction―I mean I understand the thinking but I just don't agree with it.

It's a way of thinking about things, about how we can imagine they might be, but I find other ways of thinking more convincing. What I'm arguing against is the notion that the distinction is somehow necessarily true, as opposed to being merely a possible way of thinking about things.

So, I'm fine with others holding to the distinction and organizing their thoughts accordingly, but it's not for me.

Perhaps. Do we have any cogent reason to believe in a demiurge, though, beyond the fact that it's (kind of) an imaginable possibility?

Kant is not making positive claims about what the in-itself is; he is showing what cannot be said of it without misusing our own concepts. To say “space and time are forms of intuition” is not to ascribe a property to the world in itself, but to mark a limit: we only ever encounter things in those forms, so they cannot be applied beyond them. — Wayfarer

I disagree. If Kant is saying that space and time or differentiation could not exist in the in itself then he is making a positive statement about it. To be sure he is defining the limits of certain knowledge―we cannot be certain that space and time and differentiation exist in the in itself, but nor can we be certain that they do not. There is no such thing as any definitive "misuse of concepts". That is purely stipulative. There are no "concept police"―we each decide for ourselves what makes most sense to us. It is just here that I see dogma creeping in―in notions of "philosophy proper" and "misusing concepts" and "cannot be applied beyond them".

If someone doesn't buy the empirical/ transcendental bifurcation of nature (a bifurcation which is certainly not a given) then they will obviously have a different take on what can sensibly be said than someone who does buy that bifurcation. When it comes to philosophy it's a pluralistic world, and all the more so in modernity than ever before. Perhaps you deplore that...in any case I celebrate it.

As I see it, the problems we, as a species, face are not philosophical so much as they are practical. Materialism in the consumerist, not the philosophical, sense is one of the main problems. It's apparent that loss of religion is not much of a contributing factor.

If you want an argument framed in the empirical or inductive terms you're demanding, then you’ll need to keep waiting. — Wayfarer

No, as I said all I want is any actual reasoned argument that isn't mere stipulation.

You have something in mind when you say that. — Wayfarer

So what? I can acknowledge that what I have in mind may have no bearing on the nature of nature―the nature of reality in any absolute sense is something about which we can only speculate. I don't accept stipulative limits on what I may or not speculate about, or what I may or may not find most plausible.

The question then becomes: what must be true for such experience to be possible at all? Kant’s answer is that space and time must be a priori forms of intuition — conditions of possibility for experience, not attributes of things-in-themselves. Without them, there could be no experience of a world in the first place. And this is based on analysis of the nature of experience and reason - not of the observations of the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

How can anything be deduced about the in itself from "the nature of experience and reason"? I cannot see how anything could come from such a phenomenological analysis other than insights into the nature of experience. As I see it this is the weakness in Kant's system―on the one hand it concludes that nothing at all can be said about the in itself, and he proceeds to make claims about it, for example that it could not be spatiotemporal, differentiated and so on.

You still haven't outlined any actual argument to that effect. You say the argument is not inductive or deductive (or I imagine abductive) and that it is "transcendental". Merely labelling it tells me nothing, I want to see the argument laid in whatever terms are appropriate.

That said, all arguments are either deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments are based on premises which themselves are not demonstrated within the arguments themselves. Inductive arguments are inferences to the best explanation―but there province is the empirical, so that won't do according to your own standards. Is the argument merely stipulative?

You want an empirical argument, and there isn't one. — Wayfarer

As I said, I simply want any kind of argument clearly laid out that demonstrates that space, time, differentiation etc. must be confined to the world as cognized. I'm still waiting.

This is why it’s an error to object that “all our science tells us there was space and time before humans.” Of course science presupposes space and time, because its subject matter is appearances; but that doesn’t show that space and time belong to or are caused by the in-itself. — Wayfarer

The existence of anything we can imagine presupposes space and time, and you are right that doesn't demonstrate that space and time exist beyond perceptual experience, or that they are caused by the in-itself. But it also doesn't demonstrate that they cannot belong to or be caused by the in itself.

The whole point of The Blind Spot is not to complain that chemistry or astronomy fail to include the subject, but to highlight what happens when the methods of natural science are misapplied to questions of philosophy. — Wayfarer

I don't think it a matter of the methods being misapplied to questions of philosophy, so much as the knowledge given by science being applied to questions of philosophy. Science has given us a very different picture of the nature of the world as it is experienced than the medieval or the ancients had. We simply don't know how different the philosophies of the greats of antiquity and medieval times would have been if they had been around today.

It all depends on what you mean by "philosophy". Science may not be of much use to phenomenology, for example, although that said the phenomenology of a modern individual will not be the same as that of a medieval or ancient. Gadamer argues that we can only approach an understanding of those times via the texts we have access to hermeneutically.

When it comes to metaphysical speculation, I can't see how we have any better, or even other, guide than science. Science doesn't prove anything metaphysical (or even empirical for that matter) but for met at least, when it comes to questions which are undecidable, because no logical or definitive empirical purchase can be gained on them, science remains the source of knowledge that informs decisions about what is most plausible. As I've said many times, though, what seems most plausible will vary from pone individual ot another, and there is no definitive criteria for what is most plausible.

If you insist. I think the essential difference is that you’re framing the question of 'mind-independence' as if it were about what lies behind appearances, whereas the point I’m making (following Kant and Schopenhauer) is that space, time, and differentiation themselves are forms of appearance. — Wayfarer

I understand that is what Kant and Schopenhauer contend, but the salient question is as to whether they are also more than that. Kant says space and time are "the pure forms of intuition"―I don't know about "pure" but following Kant's usage of 'intuition' we can say that perception comes in spatiotemporal form. Reflecting on experience in a phenomenological way we can say that all perceptions are spatiotemporal, even that all perceptions must be spatiotemporal.

If you then go on to say that there is no space and time absent perception an argument is required, and that is just what is not to be found. It doesn't follow deductively that if space and time are forms of intuition they therefore cannot exist outside of that context. It also doesn't follow inductively, because all our science tells us there must have been space and time prior to humans or even percipients in general.

The transcendental point isn’t that time and space “began with us,” but that these forms belong to the structure of experience itself, not to the world as it is apart from any observer. — Wayfarer

And here it is again―a claim without an argument to support it. It's true that those forms "belong to the structure of experience" but it certainly doesn't follow deductively or inductively that that is all they are. So, just what is the actual argument?

Kant allows things in themselves, which Schopenhauer takes him to task for, because it is inconsistent with his claim that space and time are only forms of intuition and have no other existence, and you can't have things without differentiation, space and time. Schopenhauer then posits that there can only be a 'thing in itself', and that this is a consequence of Kant's own contentions.

But an amorphous 'thing in itself', undifferentiated (as it must be absent space and time) seems to be a highly implausible candidate for being able to give rise to the almost infinitely complex world we find ourselves in.

You’re conflating the empirical and the transcendental again. The point isn’t that, because we only ever observe appearances, we can’t be certain about what lies behind them. I'm not talking about what lies behind them. That’s an empirical framing or speculation. The transcendental point is that “differentiation” itself is already one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. So the claim is logical, not empirical: it’s about the structure of experience, not about what we can or can’t infer about the in-itself. — Wayfarer

And here is the same unargued framing again. I don't accept that the world, that nature, is bifurcated into "empirical" and "transcendental"; that framing merely assumes what is to be demonstrated.

I don't deny that differentiation is one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. I agree with that. You then say it is a logical claim not an empirical one―I would say it is neither, that it is a phenomenological claim based on reflection on the nature of experience. In any case, to say it again, that is not the point at issue―the point at issue is whether it follows logically from the accepted fact that differentiation is required for perception to occur, that there is no differentiation absent perception. And that claim simply does not follow logically. That there must be differentiation for perception to occur rather suggests, to me at least, that it is plausible to think that differentiation is in the nature of the pre-conceptual, pre-cognitive, world. Of course I acknowledge that that conclusion is also not strictly logically necessitated. It is an inductive or abductive claim, and we all know none of those are certain. Nothing in science is absolutely certain.

So, you thought it pointless. Is that an argument? — Wayfarer

I have already said at length why I think it is pointless. I think it is pointless because the natural sciences cannot deal with the subject. How would you include the subject in the disciplines of chemistry, geology, astronomy, paleontology and so on? Only the human sciences and ethology can bring in the idea of the subject, and the latter only the non-human subject.

Different kinds of beings—animals with other sensory endowments, artificial intelligences with architectures unlike our own, or even extraterrestrial intelligences—would inhabit worlds structured in ways not reducible to ours (recall Wittgenstein’s remark: “If a lion could speak, we would not understand him”). — Wayfarer

None of that is at issue―I have never denied that human experience is different from (most) animal experience. I say "most" because the experience of some kinds of animal seems to be much closer to human experience than that of others.

I always thought that Wittgenstein quote to be somewhat silly. If a lion could speak the same language as we do, then we should be able to understand it. If the lion could speak, but is speaking "lionese" then of course we could not understand it, just as we don't understand any other unfamiliar language. We could learn lionese if the lion could learn our language and then translation may be possible. "It takes two to tango".

While is true that the perceptual experience of different animals is very different form ours on account of the different nature of the sensory organs, observation shows us that animals inhabit the same world we do. This is shown by the consistency of their behavior. Lions prey on gazelle, wildebeest; animals small enough for them to effectively bring down. We don't see them trying to bring elephants or rhinoceros. So they must be able to assess the size of animals in ways that make perfect sense to us. They have to eat, mate, sleep, defecate and they play and show affection to one another in ways similar to how we do. So they are not all that far apart from us.

Finally, there isn't much point quoting Kant, since I am well familiar with his philosophy, and since I've already said many times that I don't agree him on some central points. Are you wanting to appeal to authority by quoting him (and others)?

I want to hear an actual argument for why space, time, differentiation, form, matter and all the rest cannot exist beyond the context of perception. And I should note, I acknowledge that if there is space, time, differentiation, things in general outside the context of perception, we should not expect them to be just as we experience and understand them. That would be naive realism, and I'm not arguing for that. I have in mind something along the lines of Ontic Structural Realism.

I don't think anyone would deny that numbers are different kinds of things than squirrels, that attributes and relations are different kinds of things than cabbages and kings, that turds and thongs are different kind of things than words and songs.

I have no more time today, so I'll have to leave it there for now.

You said:

The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. — Wayfarer

It's all about context, which is something you apparently don't understand, or choose to ignore when it suits you tactically.

I believe you know perfectly well I was referring there to the truth regarding that particular issue (the nature of the in itself). And you know perfectly well that what I meant is that the question has no certain answer, and that it therefore has no real bearing on how I live my life. Talk about lacking charitability and good faith!

Done here. — Wayfarer

Right, you're "done here " without actually having done anything.: roll:

I never said I don't care about the truth. I said the answer to the question about the nature of the in itself is not particularly important to me. I've said many times I have no issue with views that don't accord with mine, and all the more so in relation to this particular issue.

All I ask is for coherent arguments and coherent responses to the questions I am posing in good faith, which is something which you seem to lack.

You try to distort everything I say in order to wriggle out of answering straightforward questions.

You don't really believe I'm a troll, that's just another deflective tactic, or if you do believe that then you are an idiot with no insight. The fact of the matter is that you apparently just don't have any answers.

I notice you don't try to address any of the more telling points, and even when you do as here you always seem to cherry-pick, and leave off part of what I've said, hopefully not deliberately in order to make it look like I'm saying something different. Anyway its a good practice in general to quote the whole of what you are responding to.

Of course I don't deny tout court that there are determinable truths, it is a denial that there is any certainly determinable truth of the matter as to whether our science and our experience in general gives us any knowledge of the in itself. Do you agree that it can only be assessed in terms of what seems most plausible or not. If not, why not?

:cool:

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. — Wayfarer

And here is the nub of the conflation you continually make. It is not the existence of such realities that relies on an implicit perspective, but our thinking of such an existence. If you disagree with this what seems to me most obvious point, then please explain your disagreement.

This mis-states my view. I am not saying that “because we think about a time before we existed, therefore that time must be mind -dependent.” That would indeed be a trivial claim. What I have argued is that the concept of “a time before we existed” is only ever available as a thought..The point isn’t that the past did not exist independently, but that whatever we say about it is mediated by concepts. That is very different to how it's been paraphrased above. — Wayfarer

As I read it the first underlined sentence in your response says essentially the same thing as the quoted sentence from me above it. Perhaps you could point out an essential difference between the two. The second underlined sentence in your response is also a trivial claim― of course it is true that if discourse is always conceptual, then anything we say is "mediated by concepts".

If you agree that a world, a universe, of things existed prior to the advent of humanity, then we have nothing to argue. I must say, though, that it puzzles me that you continue to think we are disagreeing about something despite the number of times we have gone over this.

I know about the 'blind spot' book and the prior article, the latter of which I read. I thought it was a pointless argument. because most of the natural sciences have no way of including the subject in their investigations. It is certainly true that what the various sciences investigate are the ways that different phenomena appear to us, and how they appear to function.

The question about whether or not science tells us anything about the "world as it in itself" is strictly undecidable. We can makes inferences about whether science does tell us anything about the in itself, but we cannot be sure.

For example, it seems highly implausible that a totally undifferentiated in itself could give rise to a perceived world of unimaginable differentiation―so we might find it plausible to think that differentiation is a real feature of the in itself, even though, since we can, by mere definition, only observe things as they appear, we obviously cannot certainly demonstrate such an inference to be true. That view also makes more sense of the fossil record, and astronomical observations.

The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. I can understand that for those who long for there to be more than merely this life, the idea that what exists independently of humans is a world of physical existents lacks any appeal. It doesn't matter to me what you think, what motivates me to respond is that you always seem to be pushing the idea that there is a certainly determinable truth of the matter, rather than it being instead a matter of what seems most plausible. I see a kind of dogmatism in that view, and I am not a fan of dogmatic thinking.

Suppose a table exists mind-independently. A table is an object, not a relation.

Suppose space exists mind-independently. As with the table, then isn't space an object rather than a relation? — RussellA

A relation is an object of thought. I think it can rightly be said that spatial relations are concrete (as opposed to purely conceptual). The distance (amount of space) between any two things at some "point in time" is not dependent on perception, even though the measurement of that distance can be said to be so.

Objects are generally thought of as being perceivable macro entities. I would say the space between two perceptible things is itself perceptible (although of course it will mostly not be a perceptually empty) space.

There is always going to be something that can be construed as ambiguous in anything we say, which may be interpreted as going against what we are saying. It's a lovely feature of natural language.

Ha, yes it also seems to be related to the substance dualist/ aspect dualist polemic, but I think it's really quite different. Wasn't it Hegel who first alerted us to the fact that all ideas contain the seeds of polemic?

Seriously though, I think the MWI/ CI polemic is a far more complex issue―at least on the CI side.

Either way, to me, it appears as if you have an intellectual disability. I apologize for saying "mentally handicapped". — Metaphysician Undercover

I see no difference between the two terms. Anyway either way I'm not offended, so no need for apology. I found your saying that rather amusing.

I can understand your words easily enough, but they seem irrelevant and thus pointless, so I think our starting assumptions are probably so far apart that the effort required for me to unpack what you might be getting at seems to be not worth it.



Cheers J, it seems we agree about the "takeaway".

If I claim that universals and abstracta have no existence apart from minds, I'm saying they lack the property of mind-independence. — J

The problem I see is that it's not clear what we mean by "mind" and even less clear what we might mean by "mind-independence". For example Wayfarer says that because it is us thinking about the time before we existed that the time before we existed must be mind-dependent. On that stipulation everything we think about must be mind-dependent, as opposed to merely the way we think about it. He'll say that physicalism is incoherent because it is a concept we invented, and concepts are not physical, therefore physicalism cannot be true. I think that is tendentious nonsense.

But it may well be the case that something like Wayfarer's schema, for instance, can do excellent philosophical work for us, without requiring us to pin "real" down to some fact of the matter or some correct usage. — J

Pretty much all I see in Wayfarer's posts is the attempt to explain (away) modern philosophical positions and dispositions in psychological terms―the rise of science has caused us to become blind to something important in traditional "proper" philosophy, modernity has lost its way, "blind spot in science", physicalism could not possibly be a coherent position, blah.

I don't find any of that remotely convincing, worth taking seriously or even interesting, so you must be seeing something there I don't.

You may feel there's not much difference in clarity between "mind-independent" and "real," and I agree it's not a huge categorical difference; I just find myself knowing a little better what I'm thinking about, when I think about what "mind-independence" means. — J

That's fair enough―we probably all carry different sets of associations with these terms―which of course is part of the problem with the attempt to mint clear and precise definitions. One thing I think is not needful of precise definitions in order to be clear to me―if I say I can think about a mind-independent reality, say whatever existed before there were any percipients and someone says "but you're not really thinking about a mind-independent reality, because you're using your mind to think about it", and then i point out the conflation in such an argument between what is being thought about and the act of thinking about it, and that falls on deaf ears, then my respect for the one making that argument falls, because I start to smell an unpleasant odor of confirmation bias at work.

Yes. I keep getting myself into arguments that leave me wondering what definition of independence is in play. A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. I think that only things that are created and maintained in existence by the mind are mind-dependent. That makes for quite a short list. — Ludwig V

Right, and the words you used show the ambiguity that is traded on "anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent"; on one construal this is true by definition of course anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent, but if you say 'the objects I have in mind are not necessarily mind-dependent, even though the thoughts I have about them are" that, for me, clears up any confusion.

Then where is this relation? — RussellA

The relation just is the amount of actual space between them. That is, if you allow that space exists mind-independently, which I find it most plausible to think.

I find 'indirect/critical realism' (e.g. perspectivism, fallibilism, cognitivism/enactivism) to be much more self-consistent and parsimonious – begs fewer questions (i.e. leaves less room for woo-woo :sparkle:) – than any flavor of 'idealism' (... Berkeley, Kant/Schopenhauer, Hegel ... Lawson, Hoffman, Kastrup :eyes:) which underwrites my commitment to p-naturalism. — 180 Proof

:100:

When someone says that they perceive the colour red, science may discover that they are looking at an electromagnetic wavelength of 700nm.

Where in an electromagnetic wavelength of 700nm can the colour red be discovered? — RussellA

I think this way of speaking is misdirecting. We don't look at wavelengthts of light, wavelengths of light affect our eyes producing the perception of colours. So, red is not discovered in an electromagnetic wavelength of 700nm, as though we are somehow looking into light, light enters our bodies causing the discovery of colours.

It strikes me that, in a sense, Kant is a kind of dualist with his phenomena/noumena distinction. — Tom Storm

That would be one interpretation. As far as I recall form when I was reading Kant and reading about Kant quite intensively (although it was quite a few years ago now, so I could be getting it not quite right) Kant scholars are divided between a 'dual worlds' interpretation where there is the phenomenal (empirical) world and the noumenal world and a 'dual aspect' interpretation where there is one world with both a phenomenal and a noumenal aspect.

Sorry my remark about metaphysics was prompted by many of the comments made here about it, but you're right, it is a field that has made a comeback in current philosophy. — Wayfarer

And it is now a field very different from "traditional" metaphysics.

Russell makes a simple but important point about universals: things like the relation “north of” or the quality “whiteness” are real, but they’re not located in space or time, and they’re not just mental events.
Here’s the gist of his argument in four steps: — Wayfarer

To me this makes no sense. The relation "north of" exists in space and time between objects. If you move the objects the relation may change. When you think about it everything is either north or south of everything else. To my way of thinking "north of" only exists in its instantiations. If The Problems of Philosophy was written after his rejection of idealism then it seems Russell didn't completely escape it's hold on him.

And the question is, in what direction does the justification go? Do we discover a knowledge or nous of a certain sort of thing, and say, "This is real", based on what "real" means? Or do we have a term, "real", which we then attempt to match with certain sorts of things in order to discover what it does or could mean? — J

At first I thought you were suggesting that we might have a noetic intuition as to what's real and then define 'real' according to that intuition. then I wondered whether you were using nous in the modern sense of know-how.

Then I noticed that you were not suggesting defining "real' in terms of the nousy intution, but saying the nousy intuition might be thought to be real or not based on the meaning of 'real'.

Your second idea seems to make more sense, anyway. We can cite examples and say whether they qualify as real or not. It would really just be using examples to illustrate how the term is commonly used in various contexts. We might discover that some examples qualify as real in one context and not in another.

I think the takeaway is that we cannot hope to get a "one-size-fits-all" definition of 'real', or 'existent'. It seems the best we can do is hone in on a somewhat fuzzy sense of the term and hopefully sharpen that sense up a bit.

And BTW, I think (most) universals are every bit as mind-independent as you do. But there we are: "mind-independent" is a property or characteristic we can get our teeth into. Adding ". . . and real" seems unnecessary. — J

And in turn that begs the question as to what we might mean by "mind-independent'―a term that seems to be much more slippery than 'real'.

My own view is that a naturalistic account of the strong emergence of mental properties, (that incorporates concepts from ethology and anthropology), including consciousness, can be consistent with a form of non-reductive physicalism or Aristotelian monism (i.e. hylomorphism) that excludes the conceivability of p-zombies and hence does away with the hard problem. Form in addition to matter is ineliminable in the description of our mental lives, but form isn't something standing over and above matter as something separate or immaterial. — Pierre-Normand

Yes, no matter without form and no form without matter―that makes good sense to me.

:ok:

:up: Too subtle for me, it seems. Can you explain why Davidson is being inconsistent in dismissing the view that Clark Kent cannot fly?

I think they are used in both ways, but the answer to "What is red" is never a frequency. Largely because that's an unsupportable answer... — AmadeusD

I am out of time, but I just want to address this; the frequencies are in the science of optics referred to as being of different colours―the colours of refracted light we can see plus colours we cannot see, but some other animals can, and certain instruments can detect―ultraviolet and infrared.

Who here thinks honour killings are... honourable? — Banno

I certainly don't―there can be no reasonable justification for them―they are despicable, as are genital mutilation and foot-binding.

He is inconsistent with his views at this juncture -- if he is dismissing the view that Clark Kent cannot Fly so readily. — I like sushi

If Superman and Clark Kent are the same entity, and Superman can fly, then so can Clark Kent. Do you think that Superman needs his suit in order to be able to fly?