not just any convention will do. Only some of what one might say actually works. There is a way in which reality does not care what you say about it. Believe what you will, you cannot walk through walls.

I suspect you do not disagree with this. — Banno

Conservatives in the U.S. like to say that the facts of nature dont care about our feelings. All I would add to this is that this logic extends to feelings themselves, and to what we say about things. Put differently, our feelings dont care about our feelings, and what we say about things doesn’t care about what we say about things. Let me parse this seeming gibberish. ‘Not caring about’ refers to a certain independence. In a very general
sense, objective empirical models of the world don’t allow us to posit absolute independence of natural objects form each other. On the contrary, a causal interdependence reigns at all levels, from the quantum to the cultural. But alongside this interrelationality, empiricism posits facts internal to objects or forces, properties or attributes that survive the changing relationships among objects and forces. These inhering properties must be assumed to survive such interactions, because they determine the nature of the relationships , what kinds of patterns are possible. For an empiricist, this is as true in human psychology as in physics. Thus, ‘my feelings don’t care about my feelings’ means that empirical models of neuro-psychological function that rely on concepts of internal computation and representation believe that feeling and linguistic conceptualization are constrained and determined by intrinsic features of the brain that do not themselves change along with ( don’t care about) minute to minute changes in feeling or discursive understanding.
They may be context-sensitive but also are fundamentally context-independent. The underlying neurological principles of language and feeling don’t care about the contextual changes in feeling and linguistic expression.

This assumption of the context-independence of the facts of empirical psychology has important ethical implications. It justifies the politics of blame( irrationality, madness, bias, cognitive dissonance, sociopathology, brainwashing).

In differently ways, writers like Wittgenstein , Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault focus on the empirical assumption of intrinsic properties that survive contextual changes in relationships.

What they propose is that every contextual relationship changes the ‘inherent’ properties of the elements that enter into the interaction. So
in a sense there are no inherences, no properties, only differences that make a difference, both to other elements and to themselves.

My aim in the following paragraphs is not to get you to agree with this , but to try and see if we can avoid the common objections to this ‘radical relativism’.

The first objection is that it is an attempt to deny or undermine science and its claims to effectiveness. Planes dont fall out of the sky , so science works, is one response.

The postmodern claim that intrinsic facts deconstruct themselves is not a critique of science in any traditional
sense of critique. It is not contradicting, denying , refuting, disproving or invalidating the assumption of internal properties , laws, forms. What is it doing is saying that our sciences already take into account the instability and movement at the heart of its intrinsic facts without knowing that it does so. If i point out a rock to you and tell you to stare at it for a while, you may tell me that it remained a rock for the whole time you were staring at it. What you don’t pay attention to is your changing eye movements, posture , attention, etc. Your behavior evinces the effects of an experience that is constantly changing, but in ways that are so subtle that they dont disturb the concept of ‘this same rock’.
Postmodernists argue that scientists are absolutely right when they say that there is a way that reality doesn’t care about how you model it, that reality is composed of
rocks , or forces, or laws with an intrinsic content that survives the contextual changes they enter into.

Postmodernists are just saying that ‘intrinsic’ , context-transcending content continues to be what it is the same way that the rock I stare at continues to be what it is, by changing continuously but very subtly.

So postmodernists are not really touching the results of the natural sciences, their predictions and laws. What they are doing is suggesting that the way of scientific progress is not via the fixing of laws and intrinsic properties bit of arranging and rearranging patterns of human relationship with the world in more and more
intricate ways. Yes, some of our attempts will work better relative to our goals than others, but the attempts that fail also contribute to this progress. The tendency of empiricism to nail down an arbitrary , intrinsic, irreducible, context-independent basis for natural objects and forces, those facts which dont care about the changes taking place around them ( or because of them), are the least interesting and least valuable aspect of science. This is what always threatens to turn science into dogma. Its most valuable quality is its ability to see process and relation within the arbitrary, the intrinsic , the lawful and the fixed.

The second objection to postmodern approaches to
science is that they destroy the usefulness of prediction by trying to rid the world of its stable foundations. But in the example I gave of staring at the rock, the subtle but continual shifts in the experience of something that we categorize linguistically as ‘this rock’ likely aren’t threatening to most scientists, except as a metaphysical curiosity. So what if every physicist who makes use of Einstein’s equations interprets their sense in a subtly different manner. As long as it doesnt affect their math, who cares? The language of physics handles this insignificant ambiguity in interpersonal understanding more than adequately. ( Of course , some within physics are pointing to new directions for the field that takes this ambiguity as a feature, not a bug).

The point isn’t just that the kind of instability postmodernists are pointing to within the founding facts and laws of the natural sciences doesn’t prevent science from working. It is that postmodern ways of thinking reveal what would be called the natural world to be less arbitrary and more intricately ordered than is seen within empirical approaches. This interrelational order was always the case, but science alters it to make it increasing more intricate. Planes don’t stay up in the air because of fixed facts of nature that were always the case before humans entered the picture. They stay up in the air because nature , which was always already finely ordered ( but not in a mathematically causal way) , continues to become more intricately relational because of the way humans change it with their science. Science is a human construction that achieves its effect by conceptually and physically altering the environment. We don’t simply find the order in nature, we manufacture it, in increasingly powerful and intricate ways. There are absolutely no fixed facts within or before the history of nature to make this possible , other than the recursive self-differentiating nature of nature.

When you observe another human being - call it their "brain activity" or behavior - what do you think is going on? Your notion seems to verge on solipsism.

Your act of observing is, of course, your own subjective experience. But where do the things you observe originate from? Your own mind? An uber-mind? Or do you just refuse to think about it?

If your brain/body is an illusion, why that particular illusion? Why is it universally shared?

I think a great deal of your position hinges on whether you think other humans exist, what they are, and how you know.

You're trying to have your cake and eat it, presenting, as true, a theory about how the world is which within it claims that there are no absolutely true theories about how the world is. — Isaac

The old anti-postmodernist , anti-relativist chestnut rears its head:
‘How can the radical relativist claim that there is no objective truth, when their own claim is a truth claim?’

As a postmodernist , I am not saying forms of realism and naturalism are not ‘true’. They of course are true. That is , they discern intrinsic, context-independent objects , forces or forms. The world as they see it does indeed correspond or cohere with this model. Their model is true, correct , adequate to the terrain. As long as there is such a thing as a terrain , an intrinsic content, form , law, one has the chance of being true to it. But what if one believes, as do postmodernists like Deleuze, that the terrain is what it is by being the same differently? That when we utter the word ‘true’ and mean ‘correct’ , ‘adequate’, we are riding down a river, looking at the changing scenery and seeing this flow only as a fixed object? A simple correspondence between map and territory is revealed to be the product of a synthetic activity that ties together a multitude of changing differences and calls it ‘this fact’ over and over again even as ‘this fact’ continues to be the same differently.
It turns out that the territory is itself an endless series of maps.
At any rate, the question for the postmodernist who believes this insane idea is, what does it mean for you to believe it? Is it ‘true’? If truth needs a territory , a ground, an intrinsic , context-independent fact of the matter, then what does the postmodernist need?

The postmodernist doesn’t state a proposition about the world, they don’t mirror or represent. They perform a bit of theater, they enact, produce , transform. They utter words from within the interstices of assemblies of differentiating differences, rather than representing or observing from some vantage outside the multiplicity of differences. A conscious experience is shaped by, participates in and changes a multiplicity which is at the same time linguistic , unconscious, biological , social, political , physical and many other things.

The question the postmodern is asks is not ‘what is true’, but ‘what remains and what changes moment to moment’? The answer has to be repeated every moment as a performance. The answer for Deleuze , Heidegger and others is that the present is a an intersection of past and present such that the past appears as already changed by the present it enters into. My world from
moment to moment is foreign and familiar at the same time , familiar because it is a cobbling of my remembered history and the way the present changes it. It is also foreign in that it never reproduces a past.
Why can’t I say that I affirm this relation between memory and change as a metaphysical truth? The traditional concept of truth would seem to run afoul of an affirmation of the world that locates no fixed content of any sort , only a continually changing structure of past-present-future. Nothing remains settled , but must be reaffirmed , and reaffirmed differently, every moment. In one sense, the only thing that is true is the formal structure of past-present. In another sense, every content , every moment , is true in that a new ‘fact’ is produced, o my lasting for the moment of tis appearance as a new difference.


The postmodernist doesn’t tell the modernist their truths are untrue , they invite them to turn truths into theater, performance, to see the flow underneath the facts. The world is indeed as ordered as the empirical truths declare it to be , but it can be seen as even more intricately ordered than this. Belief in arbitrary intrinsically fixed facts hide that richer , more intimate order from us.

Do you apply that to mathematical and logical statements as well?
— Andrew M

... But none of that undermines the ability of the rational mind to plumb the depths of reality through mathematical reasoning. ... — Wayfarer

OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements?

The article doesn't explain why idealism entails that there are no unknowable truths, it just asserts that it does. — Michael

From a previous discussion, in which you participated.

Fitch's Paradox
There's a thread elsewhere about this, but it's a dog's breakfast. Since the topic is directly relevant to anti-realism it is worth mentioning here.

Anti-realism holds that stuff is dependent in some way on us, that thinking makes it so. That is, some statement p is true only if it is believed or known to be true.
For anti-realism, something's being true is the same as it's being known to be true.

Now a direct implication of this is that if something is true, then it is known - that we know everything.

Anti-realism is apparently committed to omniscience.

The problem does not occur in realism, which happily admits to there being unknown truths. — Banno

We went to Devitt at "Devitt:Dummett's Anti-Realism", ending in a discussion of Davidson.

The part I bolded above goes to your present question. How should we now proceed?

OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements? — Andrew M

Interesting question!

Think about what the 'mathematization of nature' that was the basis of the scientific revolution enabled. It was the ability to arrive at constant, mathematically-sound frameworks and descriptions that were universally valid. Newton's laws of motion were paradigmatic. Combine that with the Galilean/Lockean division of the world into the primary and secondary attributes, along with the discovery of Cartesian algebraic geometry. Then introduce Cartesian dualism and you have fundamental elements of the framework of the early modern worldview which was thought to be theoretically infinite and potentially all-knowing. But the problem with it is, there's no actual place in it for humans, as the observing mind has already been tacitly excluded from consideration. So in that context, the idea of the human observer was not even a consideration. In this framework, and after the discovery of the principles of biological evolution, the human is dealt with simply as another object of scientific analysis. That is still very much the view of modern scientific materialism or physicalism.

The role of the subject is was rediscovered in late modernity and the early 20th Century. You in particular would appreciate how that reared its head in respect of the 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which had to consider the observing subject in its reckonings. More generally there has been what's called a 'rediscovery of the subject' through phenomenology and existentialism. But my remark that started this particular digression was about the human 'being eliminated' - which is of course a reference to eliminative materialism. In that view the quantitative, objective framework is the sole grounds of valid knowledge. Even if that's an extreme form, the objectivist framework is still highly influential in modern culture. And in that framework, the role of the subject is always bracketed out or neglected. That is the subject of the essay The Blind Spot of Science in the Neglect of Lived Experience.

Is your first point that post modernism does not address science? I'll go along with that.

Is your second point that post modernism does not undermine science? I'll go along with that, too.

Is your point that we can talk abut things in diverse ways? I don't disagree.

Again, we can say whatever we like, yet not just anything we say will do. The world places strictures on our narratives.

And again, I don't think you disagree with this.

So what is it you want here?

Then introduce Cartesian dualism and you have fundamental elements of the framework of the early modern worldview which was thought to be theoretically infinite and potentially all-knowing. But the problem with it is, there's no actual place in it for humans, as the observing mind has already been tacitly excluded from consideration. — Wayfarer

There is a place for the mind in Cartesian models , but as outside agent, for Descartes the divinely directed rational organizer of data, and for Kant the divinely directed organizer of ideas. If we bring the subject into more intimate relation with science, we run the risk of not going far enough , by retaining the divine origin of the contribution of consciousness to the nature of the world.
This keeps subjectivity at a distance from natural objects and thus remains a dualism.

To truly transcend dualism, we need to see perspectival relationality and valuative difference as inherent in nature at all levels, not just as emanating from ‘mind’.

Dualism is a useful explanatory metaphor provided it is understood correctly.

'The meaningful connectedness between things — the hierarchical organization of all we perceive — is the result of the Gestalt nature of perception and thought, and exists only as a property of mind.'

'The external universe, outside the scope of observation by any living being, is the residue after all sensable qualities have been taken away. What remain are only formal entities which have no concrete interpretation. Thus, the universe uncoupled from observation is an abstract system in search of an interpretation. ...The material universe, of course, has an independent existence quite apart from observers. But the important lesson for us is that this external universe is very different from the way we imagine it to be. The mind of living beings projects all manner of sensable features onto material objects, hence we perceive the world with all the properties we have projected onto it—but objectively the unobserved universe is formless and featureless.'

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 85). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

we can say whatever we like, yet not just anything we say will do. The world places strictures on our narratives.

And again, I don't think you disagree with this.

So what is it you want here? — Banno

Things we say or theorize, and actions we perform that ‘won’t do’ change our circumstances in ways that make it possible for the theories that ‘will do’. This was an important point of Nietzsche , Heidegger, Deleuze and others. Negation and contradiction are treated as failure, lack, accident by the philosophical tradition up to Hegel and Marx. Dialectical progress is supposed to transcend lack and contradiction.
But this implies that the right way corresponds to what is true and the wrong way is simply error and mistake.
Postmodernists argue that what is important about scientific and philosophical progress is not that we get on track with what ‘will do’ and discard as a waste what
won’t do’ , but that all change in thinking
‘ does it’ in some sense. That is, contributes to moving us into new realms of scientific and philosophical practice.

It’s not that the world places strictures on our narratives, it’s that our incipient ventures into new
territories of interchange with our world necessarily have the character of vagueness and confusion. We initially don’t seem to be able to make our way around in the new world we create for ourself because we haven’t yet found a way to articulate its larger dimensions in concrete terms, even if we can generate what seem to be clear propositional statements. We call this ‘error’ and discount its value.

If we point to Einstein’s formulas as an example
of ‘getting it right’ we picture a world external
to us that is shaped in a very precise way that the theory fits perfectly like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
But if I were to suggest that Einstein’s formulas are just elaborations and translations of Kant, then the metaphor of puzzle piece becomes less powerful.
If you might accept this idea just for the sake of argument, then the question is , can we view the move from Descartes to Kant to Hegel as threading the needle just so, crafting a puzzle piece that fits ever more tightly onto the puzzle of nature? In my view , every outlook by every human being on the planet correlates with some
figure or other on the developmental trajectory of philosophy. There are no outliers, no individual
with a ‘wrong’ worldview , an outlook that ‘won’t do’. All outlooks are valid in their own way , are useful in their own context, and belong to the larger developmental history. Nature doesn’t produce strictures , only opportunities for personal change that at some points is muddled, confused , incoherent and at others crystallizes into clarified notions. The development of ideas feeds on itself, is self-reflexive, complexifies and diversifies itself at the same time as it becomes more intimate with itself. The world is self-reflexive, not correlational. Strictures and sayings that ‘won’t do’ are not wrong paths , only phases of the right’ path, the only path , the historical path toward increasing integration and intricacy of intersubjectively produced experience.

OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements?
— Andrew M

Interesting question! — Wayfarer

OK, but I still didn't get a clear "yes" or "no". :smile:

The role of the subject is was rediscovered in late modernity and the early 20th Century. You in particular would appreciate how that reared its head in respect of the 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which had to consider the observing subject in its reckonings. — Wayfarer

Yes. It's the case that human beings construct the experiments, observe the results, theorize, and draw logical conclusions from their theories. Thus the human being is implicit in every aspect of the endeavour. That theorizing can also be about human beings, such as with the Wigner's Friend thought experiment (i.e., what happens when one observes an observer).

Even if that's an extreme form, the objectivist framework is still highly influential in modern culture. And in that framework, the role of the subject is always bracketed out or neglected. That is the subject of the essay The Blind Spot of Science in the Neglect of Lived Experience. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that the way forward is to reject the Cartesian framework in its entirety, not emphasize the subject horn of its spurious subject/object antithesis. Otherwise one is still in the Cartesian thrall (as are the objectivists).

All quite familiar.

Again, not all accounts are the same. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is of little use in iPhone design. Sure, some engineer might find it enlightening in such a way that they are able to produce a smaller antenna, or some such; but the Book of the Dead will not replace Maxwell's equations in antenna design.

But now we might also add the classic critique of Feyerabend - if anything goes then everything stays. If all narratives are to be treated the same, then the conservatives in the U.S. liking to say that the facts of nature don't care about our feelings is as valid as your own account of feelings. PoMo suits the right as well as it suits the left. You will be aware of the discussion as to the extent that PoMo underpins some of the intellectual defences of Trump's lies.

Your blade does not have a grip. It cuts the hand wielding it.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is of little use in iPhone design. Sure, some engineer might find it enlightening in such a way that they are able to produce a smaller antenna, or some such; but the Book of the Dead will not replace Maxwell's equations in antenna design. — Banno

The Tibetan book of the dead is of little use in iPhone design for the same reason that it is of little use in the design of Cartesian or Kantian philosophy, because it belongs to a discursive space of reasons that does not produce the kind of intelligibility that makes iPhone design possible. On the other hand , the space of reasons that frames iphone design includes not only Maxwell’s equations , but the fundamental philosophical architectures that make Maxwell’s applied work , and digital technologies in general intelligible. This takes us back to the rationalistic era of Leibnitz. No rationalism, no digital revolution and no iPhone.

The iphone has nothing in it of Hegel or post-Hegelian thinking. Look to the next technological revolution for those kinds of devices (already envisioned by Dennett and other post-Hegelians) followed by Nietzschean and postmodern devices. There’s always a long lag time between the laying of the philosophical foundations and the final instantiation of those ideas in the form of machines, so it will be a while before we see them on the market.

- if anything goes then everything stays. If all narratives are to be treated the same, then the conservatives in the U.S. liking to say that the facts of nature don't care about our feelings is as valid as your own account of feelings. Your account suits the right as well as it suits the left. You will be aware of the discussion as to the extent that PoMo underpins some of the intellectual defences of Trump's lies. — Banno

All narratives are valid in the sense that they mark a necessary moment in the development of culture and science. This is different than saying all narratives should be treated the same, and that we should have no preference for one over the other. One won’t have an adequate understanding of any narrative if one doesnt know how to place it within the context of an overarching historical development. This means seeing it as subsuming a more traditional narrative and being subsumed by a more complex and intricate narrative. We will always prefer what we consider to be the narrative that subsumes all others, because it allows us to see the older narratives as valid while being able to transcend their limitations. Trump’s thinking harks back to early 20th century politics in the U.S. Thus it is valid in that historical context, laying the groundwork for the more progressive thinking that followed and depended on it , and would have perhaps been considered progressive by the standards of that era . It has since been subsumed and superseded by more complex thinking, in the opinion of many of us , so now we demonize it. We can attempt to coax Trumpists to progress beyond the limits of that moldy narrative , but there are limits to how far any of us can move within and beyond a worldview that we inhabit. Best to politically separate Trumpists and post-Trumpists rather than trying to punish, threaten , cajole , bribe or harangue them into moving in our direction

I've been building the second of four new above-ground garden beds. Progress has ben slow because of the unusual cold. I already have cauliflower, spinach and Brussel sprouts growing in the first bed. I've put in three tubs to hold about 120l of water in the base of each, with a fill of volcanic rock, mostly recycled from old mulch. This has ben covered in straw from the chook's bedding, which needed replacing. I keep them in deep litter to avoid bumble foot in the wet. Then more old soil, to be toped off with the contents of a previous above-ground garden, refreshed with clean soil and cow shit.

I've a mesclun salad mix in punnets ready to plant, and garlic on order that should be here soon. I also plan to grow carrots in rotation. The bed is quite large - a few square metres.

Whatever the point is with regard to the thread or to my posts remains obscure. I don't see anything here I haven't already addressed.

I've a mesclun salad mix in punnets ready to plant, and garlic on order that should be here soon. I also plan to grow carrots in rotation. — Banno

now I’m hungry

OK, but I still didn't get a clear "yes" or "no". — Andrew M

It's the kind of question to which an answer can only take the form 'it depends on what you mean'.

Let me re-iterate - the argument from mathematical Platonism is based on the straightforward observation that numbers are real, but not in the same sense that objects are. They're real in the sense that they're the same for any rational intelligence, but they don't exist as material objects, because they can only be grasped by the mind.

Empiricism rejects the reality of number on the basis that numbers don't exist within the time-space framework. But to me, that simply signifies a basic deficiency in their philosophy. (That is the subject of the articles under 'Philosophy of Maths and Universals' on my profile, especially the last.)

But the criticism of the quantification of nature by modern science is a different matter again. That is the subject of a lot of commentary in philosophy of science. Even though Platonism is involved in both cases, they're separate arguments. The former argument is a rationalist philosophical argument for the reality of intelligible objects, the latter is a critique of scientific materialism.

It seems to me that the way forward is to reject the Cartesian framework in its entirety, not emphasize the subject horn of its spurious subject/object antithesis. — Andrew M

No, don't agree with that, it's a matter of interpreting it correctly. I agree that there are many implicit problems in 'post-Cartesian' discourse. As I said, my view is that many misinterpret Descartes by depicting 'res cogitans' is a kind of spooky substance or actual ghostly thing, and then wondering how 'it' can 'react' with 'physical matter' (which is a problem that was also inherent in Descartes himself, as observed by Husserl). Once you adopt that framework, Cartesian dualism seems clearly absurd - but the problem is one of interpretation. There really are subjects of experience, and objects of experience, you can't simply turn a blind eye to it because it's too hard to figure out.

Again, this is where the book I am referring to, Mind and the Cosmic Order, brings a lot of clarity. See the quotation in the post above. (It doesn't have anything to say on Platonism as such, although it does mention both Descartes and Kant, but it makes a great deal of sense in terms of mind and world.)

Idealism doesn't hold that some statement p is true only if it is believed or known to be true. Idealism holds that only minds and mental phenomena exist. It's a position regarding the substance-nature of the world, not about truth.

The non-existence of an external material world doesn't entail that all counterfactuals are knowable and that all mathematical theories are provable. Taking an extreme form of idealism as an example, even if only my mind and my experiences exist, I don't know what I'm going to experience tomorrow.

I've absolutely no interest in a God-of-the-gaps argument. Even if there were an uncertainty to resolve around the means by which potential states become actual states it would a) be best resolved by experts in that field, and b) have absolutely nothing to do with a character from some 2000 year old folk story. — Isaac

Well, you seem to be ill-informed. Theologians and metaphysicians are the "experts in that field" of "the means by which potential states become actual states". So, from your reply, I conclude that you have no interest in this question, and you just want to take for granted that such a thing happens. That's fine, it's the assumption made by most.

Your example falls flat. Of course the future is unknowable. But that is the case for both the realist and the idealist. The question is, does p exist as true before it is experienced? If not, then I don't see how you avoid the charge of solipsism. If so, then you are just giving another name (i.e., mind stuff) to what makes up the external world.

Does p come into being at the moment it is experienced? Or is it lurking in some uber-mind?

Of course the future is unknowable. But that is the case for both the realist and the idealist. — Real Gone Cat

That’s the point. Banno is arguing that if idealism is the case then everything is known (even referring to us as being omniscient). I’m explaining that this isn’t the case. Even if idealism is true I still don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

If not, then I don't see how you avoid the charge of solipsism — Real Gone Cat

Idealism argues that only minds and mental phenomena exist. It doesn’t argue that only my mind and mental phenomena exist.

Does p come into being at the moment it is experienced? Or is it lurking in some uber-mind? — Real Gone Cat

That depends on the specific form of idealism. Some argue the former, others the latter.

If not, then I don't see how you avoid the charge of solipsism. If so, then you are just giving another name (i.e., mind stuff) to what makes up the external world. — Real Gone Cat

The idealists I know argue that the world is objectively the case, it just isn't made of matter. It is mind when seen from a particular perspective. What holds reality together is consciousness at large - not your consciousness, or mine.

There are idealists who argue that materialism is incoherent because matter is just what can be measured, it has no qualities - taste, touch, colour, smell, etc. These are provided by us through our brains. So in a strange way they say is materialists who are solipsists, or prisoners of the brain in their skulls.

The idealists I know argue that the world is objectively the case, it just isn't made of matter. It is mind when seen from a particular perspective. What holds reality together is consciousness at large - not your consciousness, or mine. — Tom Storm

So we're all Borg. Got it.

Idealism argues that only minds and mental phenomena exist. It doesn’t argue that only my mind and mental phenomena exist. — Michael

Ah, the Hive Mind.

Does p come into being at the moment it is experienced? Or is it lurking in some uber-mind?
— Real Gone Cat

That depends on the specific form of idealism. Some argue the former, others the latter. — Michael

The former is called solipsism. The latter is a form of materialism that just calls matter by another name.

Ah, the Hive Mind. — Real Gone Cat

No, that isn't implied at all.

The former is called solipsism. — Real Gone Cat

No it isn't. There can be multiple minds, each with individual experiences.

The latter is a form of materialism that just calls matter by another name. — Real Gone Cat

I could say that materialism is a form of idealism that just calls mental phenomena by another name.

It seems that mental phenomena belong to minds. If not my mind, then a Hive Mind.

If p comes into existence at the moment of being experienced, it is only part of the mind experiencing it. I.e.,solipsism.

Existence a priori subjective experience is what realists believe. So the uber-mind is indistinguishable from the material world.

You just don't want to admit that your pristine mind is the product of base, filthy matter and energy. In an earlier post I identified this as hubris. Or a god complex.

It seems that mental phenomena belong to minds. If not my mind, then a Hive Mind.

If p comes into existence at the moment of being experienced, it is only part of the mind experiencing it. I.e.,solipsism. — Real Gone Cat

It's not solipsism because there are multiple minds, and it's not a hive mind because they're separate.

So the uber-mind is indistinguishable from the material world. — Real Gone Cat

Presumably the materialist doesn't claim that the material world is the experience of an uber-mind? They're clearly distinguishable.

Your claims treat experience as a thing that exists somewhere within the human body, with other things (“nodes”) between it and the tea cup. Yet the only two objects in your scenario are the person and the tea cup. This poses a problem for me that I cannot get past. No amount of neuroscience can force these objects into existence, put distance between them, and pretend other objects interfere in their interacting.

It's not solipsism because there are multiple minds, and it's not a hive mind because they're separate. — Michael

If there is multiple minds, then isn't it necessary that there is something which separates one mind from another? Isn't this what matter is?

The postmodernist doesn’t tell the modernist their truths are untrue , they invite them to turn truths into theater, performance, to see the flow underneath the facts. — Joshs

Then you're arguments are missing an important detail. Why? If it's not that the way you see the world is true, then why would I want to see it that way, what's in it for me?

Then you're arguments are missing an important detail. Why? If it's not that the way you see the world is true, then why would I want to see it that way, what's in it for me? — Isaac

That might be the case. If postmodernism is presented as just skepticism, there would be no reason to have standards of truth.