multiverses........You say they are fictional, but we don't know that, because that would be to know that they don't exist. — Janus

My belief, along the lines of Kant's phenomenon and noumenon, is that all understanding we have of complex objects in the world is fictive, whether "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses".

However, even if our understanding of complex objects in the world is fictive, this is independent of the question as to whether such complex objects as unicorns, tables and multiverses actually exist as facts in the world.

I started this thread to discuss things like the multiverse and my belief that, if I can't know, demonstrate, whether or not it exists, it's existence has no truth value or is meaningless. — T Clark

I know that I have the subjective experience of colours. I believe that you also have the subjective experience of colours.

I can never know that you have, and I can never demonstrate that you have, but for me, the possibility that you have a subjective experience of colours has both a truth value and meaning.

The truth value is that the proposition "T Clark has the subjective experience of colours" is either true or false.

As regards meaning, the fact that you can or can not have the subjective experience of colours has meaning to both you and me.

IE, unprovable beliefs have both a truth value and meaning.

My belief, along the lines of Kant's phenomenon and noumenon, is that all understanding we have of complex objects in the world is fictive, whether "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses".

However, even if our understanding of complex objects in the world is fictive, this is independent of the question as to whether such complex objects as unicorns, tables and multiverses actually exist as facts in the world. — RussellA

So it's a completely vacuous statement, but also misleading, since originally you singled out multiverses in particular as fictional.

you singled out multiverses in particular as fictional — SophistiCat

Far be it for me to say that the multiverse doesn't exist.

If we can never know whether the multiverse exists or not, even in principle, then we can only know the multiverse as a fictional entity, even if the multiverse does exist as a true fact.

I understand that, but my point is that you cannot make any progress in answering the question if you are not clear on the criteria that the answer should satisfy. Without that the question is effectively meaningless (as you like to say). — SophistiCat

Meaningless for you, because of the particular epistemic criteria that you set out for yourself in this case: if you can't put a proposition to an empirical test, then it is meaningless. (Not so for others, so they must be applying different criteria.) — SophistiCat

I think you are really saying the same thing I am, just using different language. I say "metaphysics" you say "different epistemic criteria." The epistemic criteria you use is what Collingwood would call an absolute presupposition. Different people in different times doing different work use different absolute presuppositions. I never claimed that my particular way of seeing things has some priority. I've said the opposite in fact.

Now, in the OP you want to turn the question onto that epistemic criterion itself. But that's clearly inapt: an epistemic criterion is not the sort of thing that you can test by the methods of science. — SophistiCat

Exactly. As I've said over and over, it's not science, it's metaphysics. It has no truth value. It's something we choose, usually unconsciously.

I know that I have the subjective experience of colours. I believe that you also have the subjective experience of colours.

I can never know that you have, and I can never demonstrate that you have, but for me, the possibility that you have a subjective experience of colours has both a truth value and meaning.

The truth value is that the proposition "T Clark has the subjective experience of colours" is either true or false. — RussellA

Comparing the multiverse to the experience of color is not a good analogy. There is strong evidence that I experience the color red. When you hold up a card colored red, ask me what color it is, and then I say red. When my brain lights up in a red way on the MRI. That's all evidence, whether or not you want to say it is not absolute proof.

When I see someone cry out when they've been injured, crying and holding their arm, do you doubt they feel pain? They'll tell you they are. They'll act like they are. They act like I do when I experience pain. If you were to put someone in pain in an MRI, I think their brain would light up the same way mine does when I am in pain. We're built the same, mechanically, anatomically, physiologically, neurologically, psychologically.

Then you'll want to talk about P-zombies which... Well, no we won't go there.

I was watching a television news show a few years ago. They were showing how MRI technology was starting to be used to read minds. They would show someone pictures while in the device. After they had built up an MRI "vocabulary," they would show the same pictures to someone else. Based on their vocabulary, they could tell when they were looking at the same pictures as the previous subject.

My belief, along the lines of Kant's phenomenon and noumenon, is that all understanding we have of complex objects in the world is fictive, whether "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses". — RussellA

Previously you used the term 'fictional', which means imagined, now you have changed to 'fictive' which has different, although related, connotations, for me at least. (Perhaps I should look them up in the fictionary). As far as I know Kant does not claim that our understandings of empirical objects are either fictional or fictive, and I'm really not sure what you are trying to get at.

However, even if our understanding of complex objects in the world is fictive, this is independent of the question as to whether such complex objects as unicorns, tables and multiverses actually exist as facts in the world. — RussellA

So are you claiming that facts are ficts, and that the difference between tables and unicorns is that one is a fict or fact in the world and the other a fict or fact in an imagined world or something like that? Is the world also fictive for you?

(As an aside, there is a philosopher, Markus Gabriel, for whom the world does not exist, since to exist is to exist in a world; or as he terms it "field of sense", and the world does not exist in a world, else there would be an infinite regress. 'The world; is just a placeholder for the sum of all possible fields of sense for Gabriel, if I have understood him correctly).

There is strong evidence that I experience the color red. When you hold up a card colored red, ask me what color it is, and then I say red. When my brain lights up in a red way on the MRI. That's all evidence — T Clark

The MRI scanner can make measurements of your brain when you look at the colour red, but can the MRI scanner determine that you are experiencing what Chalmers calls the "qualia" of the colour red and others call the subjective experience of the colour red ?

Previously you used the term 'fictional', which means imagined, now you have changed to 'fictive' which has different, although related, connotations, for me at least. (Perhaps I should look them up in the fictionary) — Janus

To save you having to look words up in the dictionary, both fictive and fictional are adjectives describing literary ideas created by the imagination, ideas that are unreal or untrue.

However, fictive is more creative, or more imaginative, than fictional, as in the fictive world of Blade Runner and the fictional world of Around the World in Eighty Days.

The MRI scanner can make measurements of your brain when you look at the colour red, but can the MRI scanner determine that you are experiencing what Chalmers calls the "qualia" of the colour red and others call the subjective experience of the colour red ? — RussellA

I have two responses.

First, most people on the forum here don't accept personal experience as evidence. A good example is reported personal experience of God. Based on that, there is no evidence at all for qualia, so, yes, it is a metaphysical property or meaningless. No, I don't believe that.

Second, the whole "hard problem of consciousness" is a made up problem. Consciousness is a mental process. Mental processes grow, emerge I suppose, out of brain processes the way life emerges out of chemistry. What's the big deal? No, I don't want to get into a discussion of the hard problem of consciousness here.

My belief, along the lines of Kant's phenomenon and noumenon, is that all understanding we have of complex objects in the world is fictive, whether "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses". — RussellA

If we can never know whether the multiverse exists or not, even in principle, then we can only know the multiverse as a fictional entity, even if the multiverse does exist as a true fact. — RussellA

You keep going back and forth between calling everything in our experience and imagination fictional (thus rendering the claim vacuous) or specifically those things that we cannot empirically verify (thus merely misusing the word 'fictional'). What's funny is that what you refer to as 'noumenon' is real according to the first criterion (as opposed to the 'phenomenon') and fictive according to the second.

As I've said over and over, it's not science, it's metaphysics. It has no truth value. It's something we choose, usually unconsciously. — T Clark

I would say that anything that you are capable of affirming or denying perforce has a truth value, and not just those things that can be scientifically verified.

The two words are related and each has it constellation of associations. Fictive has a greater constellation.

In any case you haven't addressed the point of my response which was that we don't simply imagine the things in the world in any way analogous to how we imagine the things of our literary fictions.

First, most people on the forum here don't accept personal experience as evidence. A good example is reported personal experience of God. Based on that, there is no evidence at all for qualia, so, yes, it is a metaphysical property or meaningless. No, I don't believe that — T Clark

Your previous statement was "There is strong evidence that I experience the color red. When you hold up a card colored red, ask me what color it is, and then I say red. When my brain lights up in a red way on the MRI. That's all evidence."

Your new statement seems contradictory to your previous statement.

Your new statement seems to say that there cannot be evidence for what may be called "qualia".
Your previous statement seems to say that there can be evidence for what may be called "qualia"

You keep going back and forth between calling everything in our experience and imagination fictional (thus rendering the claim vacuous) — SophistiCat

Not quite.

Taking a table as a particular example of "everything in our experience". Our understanding of what a table is may be fictional, without rejecting the idea that there are facts in the world which we think of as a table. The word "fictional" retains meaning, as fictions in the mind are set against facts in the world.

You keep going back and forth between calling everything in our experience and imagination fictional (thus rendering the claim vacuous) or specifically those things that we cannot empirically verify (thus merely misusing the word 'fictional'). — SophistiCat

Not quite.

Our concept of complex objects, such as a table, is a fictional interpretation of facts in the world. Our knowledge of facts in the world derives from empirical observation of the world discovered through our five senses, such as a screeching noise, the colour red, a sweet taste, an acrid smell, the pain of a needle. Our imagination assembles these parts into a whole. Each part, a particular sensation through one of our five senses, directly comes from a fact in the world through empirical observation. The whole, our concept of a table, is a fictional assembly of mereological relations between these parts.

you refer to as 'noumenon' is real according to the first criterion (as opposed to the 'phenomenon') and fictive according to the second. — SophistiCat

Kant did not argue that the world of the noumenon does not exist, for there to be an appearance, there must be something for there to be an appearance of. In Kantian philosophy, a noumenon is a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.

There are things in the world, and as facts in the world they are real. But, our understanding of complex objects, such as tables, which are assemblies of things in the world, is fictive.

we don't simply imagine the things in the world in any way analogous to how we imagine the things of our literary fictions. — Janus

I am trying to be careful in distinguishing complex objects, such as "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses" from simple empirical experiences through our five senses, such as a screeching noise, the colour red, a sweet taste, an acrid smell, the pain of a needle.

This is why I previously wrote: "My belief, along the lines of Kant's phenomenon and noumenon, is that all understanding we have of complex objects in the world is fictive, whether "unicorns", "tables" or "multiverses""

I believe that our understanding of complex objects, such as a table, is as fictional as our understanding of Sherlock Holmes, but this does not include our experience of simple sensations, such as the pain of a needle, through the five senses.

In Kantian philosophy, a noumenon is a thing as it is in itself..... — RussellA

There are nineteen uses of the concept “noumenon” or its derivatives in CPR. None of them equate noumena with the ding an sich.

I have no argument for how you personally wish to think of noumena; the idea has been tossed helter-shelter for centuries. I’m merely calling attention....rhetorically at that.....to a conflict with the stated reference.

Your new statement seems to say that there cannot be evidence for what may be called "qualia".
Your previous statement seems to say that there can be evidence for what may be called "qualia" — RussellA

At the end of the statement you quoted it says "No, I don't believe that."

There are nineteen uses of the concept “noumenon” or its derivatives in CPR. None of them equate noumena with the ding an sich. — Mww

I didn't know of the debate about how a noumenon relates to a "thing-in-itself". More reading to do.

A relevant paragraph in Critique of Pure Reason is:
"The concept of a noumenon, i.e., a thing which is not at all to be thought as an object of the senses, but rather only as a thing on its own (solely through a pure understanding), is not at all contradictory, for we still cannot assert of the sensitivity that it be the single, possible manner of perspective."

Rather than writing "In Kantian philosophy, a noumenon is a thing as it is in itself.", perhaps I should have written "In Kantian philosophy, a noumenon is a thing on its own".

I didn't know of the debate...... — RussellA

It’s all the Good Professor’s fault. He took care to say exactly why and how he wanted noumena to be understood (A249/B306), in accordance with a brand new approach to metaphysics in general, then proceeded to make it seem like not that. So people fall back on, “See? Toljaso!! He said ‘the thing-in-itself (noumena)’, right there!!!” (B315).

As to the debate, the whole thing boils down to.....understanding did something, while not contradictory, yet for which it had no proper authority. The text subsequently makes clear that noumena have no legitimacy in the metaphysical nature of human cognition, the debate itself grounded in noticing the former and disregarding the latter.
————

perhaps I should have written "In Kantian philosophy, a noumenon is a thing on its own". — RussellA

According to the text, the best to be done along those lines is, noumenon is that which understanding thinks on its own.

Questions

1. What is x? [not a statement; ergo, can't be true or false]

can be rephrased as

2. x is p OR x is q OR x is r OR x is...[a statement; ergo, can be true or false]

Metaphysical statements

An example:

3. God exists Or God doesn't exist [we don't know; we cannot know; nevertheless, a statement that can be true or false]

can be rephrased as

4. Does God exist? [not a statement; neither true nor false]

:joke:

Toljaso — Mww

One of my favorite philosophers.

Perhaps the most commonly referenced one ever.