So, if I can imagine "a space" of 1m size with nothing in it, there is no reason why I cannot imagine "a space" of 1km size with nothing in it, or "a space" of 1 light year size with nothing inside it. In fact, there is no reason why I cannot imagine "a space" of any size with nothing in it. — RussellA

There is a reason, namely the limited space in your mind's eye. Unless you mean merely that we can conceive of such a space.

Kant isn't saying that we can imagine a space with nothing in it but rather that we can imagine the single, unique space with nothing in it. And that space must not itself be an object, since otherwise we would run into one of Aristotle's paradoxes: that space would need to be contained in another space, and this last space would have to be contained by yet another space, and so on in infinitum.

I doubt whether this is really impossible as Aristotle and (I think?) Kant contend, but for the moment I want to focus on whether this is consistent with the rest of Kant's philosophy.

So, to say that a cup is empty does not imply that the cup is a space, since the cup is an object, and therefore not the space to which Kant refers.

And if the empty space to which you refer in that example is not the cup itself, then it is not something that can be visualized.

And so, if you cannot in fact visualize it, that proves that absolute empty space cannot be visualized (imagined) by us in the actual world, even if there were some possible world in which we could imagine a single, absolute empty space.

Also, one can't do away with boundaries, which presuppose a space with something in it, and is therefore not empty. Unless we were to claim that the space in our mind's eye is infinite, which seems strange, since surely its size must be about the same as that of our visual field, which is bounded (though it is difficult to point out where exactly it ends).

I know Wittgenstein said that our visual field is in some sense endless, but I'm not sure what he meant by that.

As we are born with an innate concept of "red" — RussellA

I disagree with this, surely an impression of at least one red thing is needed to apprehend the notion of red, and so a man born blind has no ideas of colors (not without special training anyway, I'm thinking of creating a thread about this other subject some day). I don't see why, in principle, the same could not be true about space.

Kant is not saying that we don't observe the world (as he uses the words "sensed externally" and "intuition"), but he is saying that what we think we observe is determined by the innate nature of our brain.
Kant wrote: "Space and time are merely the forms of our sensible intuition of objects. They are not beings that exist independently of our intuition (things in themselves), nor are they properties of, nor relations among, such beings. Critique of Pure Reason (A26, A33) — RussellA

Ok.

Regardless of the degree of correspondence with any "space" existing independently of us, as we are born with an innate concept of "space", it would be impossible for the brain to ignore something that was a part of it's own structure.

In this sense, it is "impossible to imagine no space" — RussellA

I don't disagree with that last claim, I only doubt that we can imagine (that is: visualize in the mind's eye) space with nothing in it.

The objects have no color. Only when connected to our minds they have color. — SoftEdgedWonder

I agree, but I'm talking about an imagined object; if it looks like darkness in one's mind's eye, then it looks black, right? And therefore that space of darkness that I'm visualizing in my mind's eye is not empty.

Black is the color of an object (or the it). It refers to an object. Space is no object. — SoftEdgedWonder

Then in that space of pure darkness, there's a black object, and therefore that space is not empty, right?

What color has space? — SoftEdgedWonder

Well, you said it would look like darkness, so wouldn't it be black?

That's because your eyes have edges. Space can be closed, finite, and without edges. — SoftEdgedWonder

Right, and therefore I can't imagine that space that's pure darkness according to you, and I can't imagine (visualize) a space without edges.

Also, according to Kant space is an “infinite given magnitude”. If the space in my mind's eye is finite, then I can't imagine (visualize) a space with an infinite magnitude, right?

Therefore, if this infinite space is the same as the empty space to which Kant is refering, then I can't imagine it being empty, in fact I can't even imagine it not being empty.

It must be completely dark in there. — SoftEdgedWonder

But can you actually visualize, in your mind's eye, there just being darkness? When I try to do that, I can't help but also imagine space as having edges of another color.

And why shouldn't we consider that the color of space is also in space?

However, in the space above the table in front of me there is no apple. — RussellA

But according to Kant there is only one space, so the space in which the apple is must be the same as the space in which the table is. So if you imagine there being nothing in the table, then space would still not be empty, since the table would be in space, unless you can imagine just that table, not being in space, and nothing else.

So the question is, can you imagine how Kant's unique space would look like when completely empty?

I don’t see any problem in imagining the empty space in my coffee cup. — Present awareness

But according to Kant there is only one space. Can you imagine (visualize) there being only one empty space?

If there were no things in empty space, then empty space itself, would not exist. — Present awareness

But didn't you say earlier that you could imagine the empty space of a coffee cup in a vacuum? How can you imagine what would not exist?

I raised a similar point about this same issue here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11642/the-critique-of-pure-reason-discussion-and-reading-group — darthbarracuda

Oh, I didn't know that. I'll check it out soon, thanks.

...then the solipsist must be using the words differently - playing a different game. — Banno

Of course they are not going to play a game that just assumes without proof that solipsism is false.

So have they shown that they alone exist, or just redefined "self" to include us? — Banno

People can use words however they like, so long as they can clarify what they mean, if they are using the word (s) in an unusual way.

What matters in this context is that this way of defining terms would be useful in order for them to convey their solipsist philosophy (assuming there were some hypothetical solipsist out there, which is of course unlikely). What matters, then, is the content of what they say, not the labels they use.

Perhaps you believe that definitions are “essential” rather than stipulative? (By stipulative I mean that they are useful to achieve some more or less definite goals)

What is it to have a proof here? In what way are you compelled by logic? There are those - myself amongst them - who deny that this is a cogent argument. Why are you compelled, but not others? — Banno

It's just what Descartes said: though we can doubt things like the existence of the outside world and perhaps even mathematics through sceptical scenarios like the Evil Demon, we cannot doubt the truth of the proposition “I think therefore I am”, or as Russell changed it: “there are thoughts”, since in all such sceptical scenarios there obviously must be thoughts, since it's utterly inconceivable for that blindingly clear and distinct idea to not be the case. Those thoughts imply something or someone who produces them, and even if that were doubted one could not doubt the existence of those thoughts.

Now, we could go down the complete sceptic's path (I don't mind if we do, by the way. I assumed for the sake of discussion that the bar for knowledge wasn't set this high), and claim that to say that to think it inconceivable or impossible for the proposition “there are thoughts” to be false, is not a sufficient ground for that to be the case, since it may just be due to our fallible and limited cognitive apparatus. This would also apply to things like the Law of Contradiction. One could argue like this for instance:

Some theologians and philosophers were not as convinced as Leibniz and Thomas Aquinas that conceiving of God as incapable of doing what is logically impossible was not imposing limitations on him. Some later nominalists argued that not only physical laws, but also mathematics and ethics had been established by God through free decisions whose reasons are unknown to us and that those decisions could have been different from what they were; omnipotence, they thought, is not "omnipotence to some degree," since that concept is, in fact, absurd.

God simply decreed that two contradictory statements could not both be true and that two and two were four and that fornication was bad. But he could have decided to decree otherwise, and if he had, the Law of Contradiction, mathematical truths, and moral norms would have been different than they are.

We cannot imagine such a world, of course, but we cannot affirm, merely due to the poverty of our minds, that this would have been impossible for God; We must not measure the power of God with the standards of our weak and finite intelligence. — Kolakowski

Now, if we go down that path, then supposing an omnipotent God like the one described by Kolakowski exists, there's absolutely nothing about which He could not deceive us (not even Descartes's cogito, in my opinion), and even if we suppose he hasn't yet done that, there's no reason why he could not change the laws of logic or mathematics in the future.

Leibniz and Hume summarized this nicely:

(...) if this doubt (Descartes's) could once be justly raised, it would be straightway insuperable, it would always confront Descartes himself and anyone else, however evident the assertions presented by them — Leibniz

This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady, which can never be radically cur’d, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chace it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from it” — Hume

Of course, this could all just be a wild fabrication of our minds, but we have no way to tell between a scenario in which that's true, and one in which God constantly deceives us about everything, including his own existence.

But since you are not a complete sceptic, surely you will at least grant that the proposition: “there are thoughts” is absolutely certain, right?

Look at that sentence. What is the word "my" doing there? Isn't it differentiating between your claims and those of other folk? — Banno

When I use it, yes, not when a solipsist does (if that implies other people exist outside their mind). When a solipsist used it, it would be to differentiate between their claims and the claims of their figments of imagination (which are also in a sense their own claims according to their belief, in which case though it's odd to talk to oneself like that, it's not logically selfcontradictory, it happens in dreams all the time).

Why would you need to? I'm answering your question. Doesn't that imply that I think you are there? — Banno

You answered my question with a question ( “Can you prove to me that you are in pain?”) I answered that not only could I not prove that to you, but also that I couldn't prove to you that I exist, and only what exists can feel pain.

I can prove to myself that I (or at least thoughts) exist through “I think, therefore I am”, but you are not logically compelled to accept that I think, unless I first prove to you that I exist, and so no argument I can give you could convince you that I exist, if you were thorough enough with your doubts.

Can you prove you are in pain? How? — Banno

No, in fact I can't even prove to you that I exist.

What do you think proof is? What does it consist in? Something that forces agreement? — Banno

I'm talking about a logical proof.

My claim is simply that there's nothing logically self-contradictory about solipsism.

You asked me a question; therefore you believe I am here. QED. — Banno

I believe it, yes, I'm not a solipsist.

But a solipsist doesn't need to assume that you exist (if that's what you imply by “being here”), they may say that when talking to you, they are talking to a figment of their imagination, and that you being here implies “here, in my mind/imagination/dream”.

Can you prove your mind (and thoughts) isn't the only thing that exists? How?

Refute it? Anyone who thinks themselves the only thing in existence is mad; I see them. — Banno

Of course, from a practical point of view a solipsist would be insane (and has anybody ever really been a solipsist?), but there's no way to refute solipsism logically, you can't prove to a hypothetical solipsist that you aren't just a figment of their imagination or part of their dream, and so you can't prove to them that you see them.

Then I cant see how you avoid solipsism.

If all that is, is your perceptions, then other people are just your perceptions. — Banno

Took the words out of my mouth.

But it's more like we can't refute solipsism, rather than its being the case (if there are no noumena).

Sure, I know how the argument works. I also know "perspective" and "point-of-view" have been metaphored to mean all sorts of things.

I was just wondering if there's anything in the argument that would actually justify using the "perspective" metaphor if it weren't already to hand.

This might serve as an example: objects closer to you appear larger in your visual field than those farther away -- art-class perspective. You could metaphorically extend perspective to include the value people place on things by also metaphorically extending (visual) size to stand in for value -- a bit like the way a word cloud shows words in sizes that (approximately) preserve the proportions of their frequencies within a corpus.

I just can't quite come up with anything like that for, well, all of reality. So we have this "perspective" metaphor, but I don't know what it means. — Srap Tasmaner

I mean, when talking about about perspective, I just used that as shorthand for what I said in my previous post, nothing more and nothing less.

Basically, we can't have access to the non human perspective of, say, a bat, because we can't “peer” into its mind while at the same time abandoning our own mind, so we can't be certain that it doesn't have a different logic, and since we can't dissociate ourselves from our brains in order to tell how reality would look or be like when not filtered by our mental apparatus of perception and reasoning, we can never give a satisfactory answer to the question whether psychologism is correct or not.

A philosopher from my country put it like this, when interpreting Kolakowski's The Presence of Myth:

The problem of knowledge can be summarized as follows: Is there something objective outside of our perception? And if that something exists, does our knowledge give a valid account of its nature, or rather does it account for the nature of our own mind? And if the mind is not (as traditional psychology, including psychoanalysis believed) a radically different instance of the brain, but is a biological-evolutionary derivative of the brain, then: Is all knowledge simply a material by-product of the brain of a mammal, but without the character of a validity that transcends our zoological condition?

The central question, as it has been posed throughout the history of philosophy, is this: Does the thing exist outside of the act of perception? For Kolakowski, the problem with this question is that although it is true that it is possible to formulate it, by means of a topological reference (the adverb "outside of"), this is still absurd since it is assumed that we are capable of seeing a “Whole”, while we remain “outside” of it and thus assess whether the thing is “inside” or “outside”.

Undoubtedly this way of reasoning seems like a mere metaphor, which does not shed much light on the problem of knowledge. Such a question cannot be formulated (more than metaphorically, I repeat) in virtue of the fact that we do not have consciousness, nor can we ever have it, of a transcendental instance: an "I" abstracted from time and space, that is, outside of all time and space.

Obviously, we know the answer to these questions from traditional philosophy, and we also know that Immanuel Kant's great contribution to the history of thought was to show that human knowledge is not derived only from the sensible impressions generated by our mind, rather, in addition to these empirical elements, a “something else” is needed. And that something else is given by the subject, who, immersed in space and time, apprehends the phenomena, but never the things in themselves (the so-called "noumena").

From this perspective, the so-called "problem of knowledge", which has preoccupied philosophers for thousands of years, disappears in one fell swoop. And not only does it disappear, it is revealed as nonsense.

Indeed, it is impossible for a human being to think in non-human terms, from a pre- or super-human perspective, thus valuing the “primal objectivity” of a world: value-neutral, ahistorical, timeless, and also, making a judgment on how that ontological condition prior to one's own existence is.

Are you saying that the universe is nothing more than an unstructured collection of items about which nothing can be said other than that they are distinct from each other? Because that is what insisting that the universe is nothing more than a "set" implies. — SophistiCat

I only said it was a possibility, but point taken.

If not, then where is the mistake? In referring to the universe as an "object"? OK, let's not refer to the universe as an "object". Where does that get us? We aren't any closer towards answering the question of whether we should expect the universe to have a cause. — SophistiCat

I thought Russell's point was that the notion of cause applies only to objects (“particular things”). If the universe is neither an object nor an abstraction produced by the mind, then what is it?

He did at one point say that the word "universe" had no meaning, which I thought was rather confusing. Perhaps where he was going with this was to say that the word "universe" has the function of a quantifier, rather than a proper noun, but he didn't get to develop that thought. — SophistiCat

True, he could've been refering rather to universal quantification, I didn't think about it like that.

But then we agree that the universe is not a thing or object, so that it doesn't exist in the same sense in which an apple exists (or would you say a quantifier exists?), and therefore there is no sense in applying the notion of cause to it as we would with an apple, no?

Recall how the unrestricted comprehension of predicates resulted in a set theory paradox that Russell had discovered earlier. Perhaps Russell was pushing in that direction when he offered this objection:

Well, I don't know. I mean, the explanation of one thing is another thing which makes the other thing dependent on yet another, and you have to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire to do what you want, and that we can't do.
— Russell — SophistiCat

If to ask for the cause of the universe is to repeatedly ask, one by one, for the cause or sufficient reason of each of its parts, then I agree we can't do that. Plus there's no reason to suppose that all of its parts must have a common cause, as that seems to infringe the maxim “same cause, same effect”.

But in the end, where Russell makes a stand is merely in denying that the principle of sufficient reason applies to the world as a whole. — SophistiCat

True, as can be seen in the video, maybe his argument is just that Copleston commits the fallacy of composition when he tries to infer that the universe must have a cause because each of its parts have a cause.

The universe is a class or a set in the sense that these abstractions can be used to talk about the universe as the "sum total" of all there is, but not in the sense that that is all there is to say about the universe. As you rightly point out, classes and sets leave out relations between their members, such as causal relations, so they probably aren't the right sort of abstraction to use here. — SophistiCat

Well, I just don't see how we can tell whether the universe is a set in the same sense in which we are sets of atoms, or merely a set in the sense in which the set of all the objects in my table is a set. I'm just suggesting that to think the word universe refers to an object and not merely to a set may be a mistake.

If we suppose that the universe, defined as the sum total of all there is, isn't merely a set but also a thing (in the same sense in which an apple is a thing), then we could question Russell's claim, for why would the notion of cause not apply to the total then? That would be as arbitrary as saying that the notion of cause doesn't apply to me because I'm the “sum total” of the atoms that make up my body, and that therefore we could only apply the notion of cause to atoms.

But even that won't do, since atoms are also sets of subatomic particles, which in turn are also sets of smaller things, and so on; so that in the end we wouldn't be able to apply the notion of cause to anything except the ultimate constituents of matter. Unless matter is infinitely divisible, in which case we would have to abandon the notion of cause altogether.

If you and I stand a ways apart, and between us there's a red car and a blue car, the red car closer to me and the blue closer to you, from my perspective the blue car is behind the red car and from yours the red car is behind the blue car. Which is true?

Obviously both are true, because "behind" only makes sense given a particular perspective. Insofar as the plain statements, "B is behind R" or "R is behind B" appear to contradict each other, it is only because each statement carries presuppositions that have not been made explicit. Rather than being contradictory, they turn out to be not only equally true but equivalent once you've made those presuppositions explicit. (If from this side B is behind R, then it had better be true that from the other side R is behind B.)

There can be bad angles -- I'm thinking of baseball, for instance, where the umpire at second base may not be able to see from his angle whether the fielder's glove is actually touching the runner's leg. From another angle it will be perfectly clear. But the umpire's might be the only perspective from which you can see whether the runner's foot was touching the bag, so to get the whole story you may have to combine the views from more than one perspective. We have no trouble doing this, because we believe the world was in exactly one state at the moment in question, and each perspective shows us some of that state. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with all that, but when speaking of non human perspective, I meant rather this: either our logic is merely a product of our brain, so that a different organism, with a different brain structure would translate (so to speak) reality in a different way than we do, to a different logic, or there's one “true” logic, which is an ontologically given a priori structure of the world, such that all beings, no matter what sort of brain structure they have, must be constrained in their thinking by its laws.

Now, supposing that the laws and principles of logic we employ are produced by our brains, then since our brain would always translate everything to the “language” of our logic, we could never apprehend the logic that in fact governs the world, unless it happened to be the same as our logic.

But we have no way of telling if that's the case, just as the brain of another animal which evolved differently could translate everything to a different logic from ours, and we could not tell if that animal would “grasp reality” correctly or not.

This all seems to go back to Kant: since we cannot know or experience the “thing in itself”, we are trapped in the egocentric predicament.

If Kolakowski is right, the quetion arises as to how (and if at all) progress in the field of epistemology is possible. — Mersi

Kolakowski just says we don't know if psychologism is correct, and cannot ever know, since in order to answer the question we would have to apprehend reality from a non-human perspective in order to judge whether “reality” matches with what we perceive and apprehend intuitively, which is impossible.

So as you say, what we see as “progress” could be merely illusory, it could be that for instance we can't help believing that the Law of Contradiction is true, and yet the Law is in fact false, in which case there wouldn't be any progress.

Because then we would never know when nor why our ideas of the outside world coincide with this outside world. — Mersi

If our ideas of the outside world coincide with the outside world, that means our logic reflects some given a priori structure of the world, so that logical principles such as Modus Ponens and the Law of Contradiction existed before we humans begun to exist on earth, not being merely a creation of our brains. But the problem, as I said, is that we can't ever tell a scenario in which psychologism is false from one in which it is true, since they both appear identical.

How could we apprehend the world from a non human, non biological perspective? By dying? But then we would not be able to apprehend anything.

at least in that context, "universe" does not apply to a class. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But what Russell seems to be saying is not that it applies to a class, it's that it is a class.

The universe is the sum total of actual energy and matter that exists, and the volume occupies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But isn't it true that a “sum total” must be a class or set?

Suppose I have 5 apples: there is little doubt that each individual apple exists, but does a set that has only those 5 apples as members exist? I'd say it doesn't, not in the same sense in which each individual apple exists anyway.

But I suppose a counterargument to what I say would be to point out that we, for example, are sets of atoms, and that therefore sets can exist. Russell himself seems to have held this view, suggesting that he may have changed his mind about this subject:

From all this it seems to follow that events, not particles, must be the "stuff" of physics. What has been thought of as a particle will have to be thought of as a series of events.

The series of events that replaces a particle has certain important physical properties, and therefore demands our attention; but it has no more substantiality than any other series of events that we might arbitrarily single out.

Thus "matter" is not part of the ultimate material of the world, but merely a convenient way of collecting events into bundles.

I guess the difference between both those senses of the word “set” is that in the case of the set of 5 apples, they need not be organized in any particular way, whereas in the case of us as sets of atoms, it is not just the members, but also their being organized in a certain way, which defines the set as a whole.

But then it could be asked why the same thing that holds about a set of atoms could not be said also about the universe. I guess that's a possibility, but it's also possible that there is no such thing as “the” universe, and that it is just a set like the set of 5 apples. I'm left doubtful.

Thus the Big Bang talks about the universe expanding. Indeed, some of the best evidence for the theory comes from evidence of this expansion. Classifications don't expand, these text books clearly refer to an expanding material entity, the universe — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not so sure, they could just use the word “universe” as a way of grouping events, as Russell maintains. When physicists talk about “the universe expanding”, they mean things like: “the distance between the milky way galaxy and other galaxies is increasing”, which does not require assuming that there's a thing called universe out there, only a set of descriptions of events/states of affairs. The word “universe” could just be a shortcut to express those facts, “a handy work on some connections” as Russell put it.

Phrases in which the word “universe” appears may merely mislead us because of their grammatical structure.

I think the questions in your OP lead to the problem of psychologism, this may interest you: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychologism/

Personally, I agree with Kolakowski when he says that this dispute is unsolvable, since the question: “Does logic reflect some given, a priori structure of the world, or does it merely reflect how the brain of us humans works?” is beyond the realm of any possible experience.

The problem is you really have two definitions, the physicalists universe as all actual material, and its potential states, versus the subjective world with all potential experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd actually use only the first definition (both the known and the unknown actual material) you give, since when speaking about “all actual material” I think we are still talking about a set or class of states of affairs or things, not about a thing. Just like Kant's idea that space is not a thing, since things are in space, the universe is not a thing, since things are in the universe (in the sense of belonging to the set or class we call “universe”).

Where do you think I used the second one? I did say that if we take the word “cause” to mean something different from what it means in a question like: What's the cause of a burning house?, then the question “what is the cause of the world?” would have to be answered with: our human minds, which cause all sets or classes in order to group events into bundles.

"That" and "the" aren't nouns and the universe is and I think Russell's claim runs into the problem that universe certainly can be defined meaningfully in the way the word is most commonly employed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If your claim here is that there is some thing which is meant by the word “universe”, then what would that thing be? Remember that when Russell talks about the word universe having no meaning, he means that there isn't an object to which the word “universe” refers, not that the word “universe” is meaningless in the sense of being unintelligible (which seems to be also how Copleston interpreted him).

Some of Russell's passages in Mysticism and Logic illustrate this:

I believe the conception of "the universe" to be, as its etymology indicates, a mere relic of pre-Copernican astronomy(...)

In the days before Copernicus, the conception of the "universe" was defensible on scientific grounds: the diurnal revolution of the heavenly bodies bound them together as all parts of one system, of which the earth was the centre.(...)

When Copernicus swept away the astronomical basis of this system of thought, it had grown so familiar, and had associated itself so intimately with men's aspirations, that it survived with scarcely diminished force—survived even Kant's "Copernican revolution," and is still now the unconscious premiss of most metaphysical systems.

The oneness of the world is an almost undiscussed postulate of most metaphysics. "Reality is not merely one and self-consistent, but is a system of reciprocally determinate parts"[19]—such a statement would pass almost unnoticed as a mere truism. Yet I believe that it embodies a failure to effect thoroughly the "Copernican revolution," and that the apparent oneness of the world is merely the oneness of what is seen by a single spectator or apprehended by a single mind.

I suppose the problem for physicalism in asserting various aspects of material being is a set of brute facts is on the one hand, that we keep peeling back layers on the onion and finding that these brute facts do have causes resulting from other layers of fundemental forces, and our elementary particles prove they can break down into even more elementary particles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True, but one of Russell's points in the debate is that one can't apply the notion of cause to things like sets or classes:

C: Well, to say that there isn't any cause is not the same thing as saying that we shouldn't look for a cause. The statement that there isn't any cause should come, if it comes at all, at the end of the inquiry, not the beginning. In any case, if the total has no cause, then to my way of thinking it must be its own cause, which seems to me impossible. Moreover, the statement that the world is simply there if in answer to a question, presupposes that the question has meaning.

R: No, it doesn't need to be its own cause, what I'm saying is that the concept of cause is not applicable to the total.

but if I read him right he seems to be falling back into a Parmenidean trap. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I actually see it as the opposite of what you say, since according to Parmenides if a word can be used significantly, it must mean something other than other words, something outside the mind, and Russell is denying that by pointing out that there are words like “the” or “and” which do not refer to any object, and yet can still be used significantly.

I suppose it could be maintained, however, that if the word “universe” referred to something in some platonic realm, it would still need to have a cause, as well as that whole platonic realm. But then we are no longer talking about the universe as an “all encompassing whole”.

Hmm, I think there may be some equivocation involved in how scientists and philosophers approach and argue that question. The former usually mean “the observable/known universe” when talking about the world, whereas the latter usually mean both the observable/known and the unobservable/unknown universe when they use that same word.

Do you agree that the “universe” is not a thing in the same sense in which, say, a rock is a thing, but is rather a set or class of things/events? (I'm referring to Kant's view on this point) Because if so, it would seem like there is no sense even in asking for the cause of the known universe, unless we mean merely to repeatedly ask for the cause, one by one, of each element of the set/class “universe”.

Anyway, the point of the OP? What question/s do you wish to discuss? — 180 Proof

The point was just the remarks (discussing if they are wrong, and if so why), that’s why I didn’t check the “question” box.

But I can make a question for you: Is the question: “does the cause of the world exist?” a meaningful question to you?

Q is a unintelligible sentence i.e. Q is neither true nor false. That's that. — TheMadFool

So if Q is nonsense, it is not false.

P is a proposition. Say P is neither true nor false. ~P & ~~P = ~P & P = P & ~P (false) — TheMadFool

If P is nonsense, then so is not P. The conjunction of P and not P is false if either P is false or not P is false. But neither are false, so the conjunction is also meaningless.

Ergo, Q must be false. — TheMadFool

This conclusion contradicts one of your premises, Q can't be false and also not true and not false at the same time.

In your "red the is apple", the phrase is intended to convey that the apple is red, so I don't see why as a phrase it's meaningless. — Manuel

I mean that it's meaningless because it's poorly formed, in order to understand it you have to rearrange the words, and then you are no longer referring to that statement, because you don't have that poorly formed statement in mind, instead you are referring to the statement “the apple is red”.

Also remember Chomsky's example of "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously." is semantically meaningless, but it has proper grammar. So the issue might go a bit deeper. — Manuel

That's correct, proper grammar does not guarantee meaning. I don't think I claimed otherwise.

In classical logic if a proposition P is neither true nor false then P & ~P (contradiction). — TheMadFool

Wrong, check the truth table for contradictions: contradictions are always false.

Plus a statement such as “the gostak distims the doshes” is just senseless, it does not even make sense so as to be self-contradictory.

I was answering the question of the thread. Looking at the OP, I don't think saying "red the apple is" is unintelligible. It is poorly phrased, but it clearly has content. — Manuel

I wrote “red the is apple” as an example of a phrase that's meaningless, despite the fact that the individual words that comprise it are not.

Personally, in my own thinking, I'm inclined to the view that possibility is more likely to exist that nothing. Nothing is a lack of anything. It's not even a state, per se. — Manuel

I think that argument can go on forever, since the other party will retort that nothing existing was far more likely since “nothing” was much simpler than the actual universe, in the same as a universe just like ours, but were a star didn't exist, was more likely to exist than the actual universe.

Hmm, but I thought you said such statements were not even wrong? Or were you only refering to the other statements in the OP?

Of course no one disputes that if “something exists” is true, then “nothing exists” is false. But the more interesting question is whether the statement “something exists”, if true, is necessarily true or not.

One could approach the question by saying, like Pauli did, that these things are "not even wrong."

They can't even be evaluated along a right/wrong axis. — Manuel

That's right, we could say that “nothing exists” is not false as Kolakowski maintains, but rather senseless.

To be consistent however, we would in that case also have to say that “something exists” is senseless, even though it seems intuitively true and is often presented as an indubitable basic belief by some foundationalists.

That's an interesting way of looking at it, perhaps that's what Kolakowski intended to say.

If it were though, it still seems troubling: if the statement “something exists” is analytic as he maintains, then its negation “nothing exists” would have to be self-contradictory. And yet, what is contradictory about that statement? Some people, like Sean Carroll, hold that there actually could have been nothing, which clearly can't be the case if “nothing exists” is a self contradictory statement. Yet they see nothing logically impossible about it, presumably because they don't accept the idea that something can't be the case simply because we can't conceive of it or imagine it.

I mean specially this passage here, which is pretty clear:

In the eyes of the phenomenalist, the metaphysician is powerless to "prove" his point of view; from the metaphysician's perspective, the very concept of 'proof', thus restricted, implies a philosophical choice which he has no reason to adopt. They are both correct in the sense that they both make a logically arbitrary decision, but the phenomenalist is usually more reluctant to admit this.

Perhaps this other passage (earlier on the same book) can give context:

An empiricist can hold firmly to the theory that the concept of a necessary being is absurd, and a metaphysician can go on to say that the empiricist's denial implies an epistemological doctrine that is far from obvious; that all the criteria of cognitive validity turn out to be those elaborated by modern empirical science.

From what you say, Kolakowski is engaging in the logical heresy of treating existence as a first-order predicate. For some that alone would be sufficient to reject his line of reasoning.

On that account, "Something exists" is not well-formed - is not grammatically correct - and so is not the sort of statement that can be given a truth value.

I'd go along with that. — Banno

About the question whether it's grammatically correct or not, it's interesting that Kolakowski himself seems to be more or less aware of your criticism and similar ones, and gives this reply (he talks about it in relation to the ontological argument):

The empiricist can go further. He can assert that the very use of the concept of existence in the absolute sense is not permissible and that "existence" is an idea no less unintelligible than the idea of ​​"nothing." When we say that an object exists, we always mean that it belongs to a class of objects, or simply that it exhibits some well defined properties; we do not have access to existence in the metaphysical sense, as the opposite of "nothing."

We can safely translate all the sentences in which the expression "exists" or its negation appears, into a language in which it is only permissible to use the "is" as a copula and then we will get rid of all the supposed metaphysical mysteries; it is not the case that a horse has the property of existence, as opposed to Pegasus who has the property of nonexistence: both statements are absurd unless they mean, respectively, 'horses (as defined by a set of properties) appear in experience ”,“ winged horses do not appear in experience ”.

Thus, not only assertions about a necessary being are removed, but also clauses such as "something exists" or "horses exist." This is, of course, a possible philosophical option: a radical phenomenalism very close to the ontological nihilism of the Buddhist sages. If an empiricist is right to take his premise to the extreme — and I believe he is — then the concepts of existence and nothing, being on the same plane of unintelligibility, are effectively removed from the field of our legitimate curiosity.

If, on the other hand, we admit the legitimacy of those concepts, there is nothing to protect us from Leibniz's formidable question: why is there something rather than nothing? Once we admit it and confront it, the necessary Being, Anselm's God, whose non-existence is unthinkable, emerges as an intellectual compulsion.

Again, the God thus imposed on our mind appears simply as a biblical "sum qui sum", not as the Christian Judge and Benefactor, and yet this God is not a figmentum rationis either. Once again we are faced with two irreconcilable options: either the point of view of the radical phenomenalist, an ontological nihilism that outlaws the very idea of ​​the existence of the society of intelligible entities, or the admission that the question of existence leads to necessary existence. In the philosophical instrumenterium there are no commonly acceptable "higher" principles to which to appeal in order to settle the conflict between these options (except spurious appeals to moral considerations, etc.).

In the eyes of the phenomenalist, the metaphysician is powerless to "prove" his point of view; from the metaphysician's perspective, the very concept of 'proof', thus restricted, implies a philosophical choice which he has no reason to adopt. They are both correct in the sense that they both make a logically arbitrary decision, but the phenomenalist is usually more reluctant to admit this.

Personally I feel inclined to agree with his view here, it has a very sceptical flavor to it.

Can a distant whisper barely heard by you contain instructions that may save or take a life? — Outlander

Yes, but an instruction is neither true nor false.

To clarify further: according to Kolakowski, the proposition “something exists” could be analytic.

An analytic proposition is a proposition such that its contradictory is self-contradictory.

If that was the case, then the proposition “nothing exists” would be self-contradictory, but what exactly is self-contradictory about it? It's not that clear to me.

We cannot imagine/ conceive that there should be or should have been nothing at all, but this alone is not enough to say that there is something impossible in that state of affairs, unless we accept the premise that whatever is inconceivable or unimaginable is impossible, which Kolakowski seems to accept here:

It seems that we are again faced with the problem of the contingency of the world; We could be unable to conceive of the "world's nonexistence", that is, absolute "nothingness" and therefore have reason to believe that "necessarily, something exists"

But a good objection to this line of argument is given by Wittgenstein, in his Remarks on Color:

You can't think of white water, etc. " This means that it is not possible to describe (e.g., paint) how something white and clear would look like, and this means: it is not known what description, what representation, these words demand of us.

When we come to grips with logic, "I can't imagine that" means: I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to imagine here.

Likewise, we could argue that we cannot even understand what description or representation the word “nothing” asks of us and consequently could not imagine how absolute nothingness would even look like, in which case the statement “nothing exists” would not be false, it would be senseless. For how could we say that a statement in which we don't understand what the subject means, is false?

Neither true nor false is a contradiction which is false. — TheMadFool

Not necessarily, the statement “Caesar is a prime number” is meaningless (according to Carnap at least), but isn't a contradiction.

Another example: “abracadabra is an ulterior motive” is meaningless, but not self-contradictory.

Basically, Kolakowski is equating meaninglessness to falsehood.

Meaninglessness means neither true nor false. — TheMadFool

So he just made an obvious mistake? I'm somewhat skeptical of that, but it's possible nonetheless.

The statement “nothing exists” is either false or meaningless (neither true nor false), but obviously not both false and meaningless.

Ok, but what I'm wondering about is: how can Kolakowski know that the statement “nothing exists” is false if he doesn't understand what the statement means?

going by the most common definition of “unintelligible” meaning “impossible to understand” — Amalac

So a statement may be unintelligible to some people and still be false, but it seems strange to say (though is perhaps not impossible) that a statement is understood by no one and never will be, and yet is false, wouldn't you agree?

I should clarify that I'm referring to statements that are not understood by anyone and never will be due to their very nature, like: “abracadabra is an ulterior motive”, not statements that a person doesn't understand because of their ignorance or limited cognitive capacity.

You have a point I suppose, going by the most common definition of “unintelligible” meaning “impossible to understand”, it would seem clear that a statement can't be both (known to be) false and impossible to understand. If that's the case, Kolakowski is very clearly wrong.

What puzzles me is what Kolakowski meant when he said that the statement “nothing exists” is simultaneously false, unintelligible and absurd (that's what my translation says anyway), if not that it is false, impossible to understand and absurd, since it seems odd that a philosopher of his intellectual capacity would make such an obvious mistake.