Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents. — Janus
It is the fact that humanity has been mesmerized by a futile search for absolute meaning — Janus
From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer
Nothing other than an expression of your own belief, or non-belief. — Wayfarer
Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents.
— Janus
From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer
Not true, Wayf. You forget language – each of us is always "outside" of each other's "mind" – thus the emergent, grammatical-symbolic commons that both facilitates and obscures our shared mentalities, or this cultural media. Yes, we cannot get "outside" of our own minds, but, as a baseline, each of us unavoidably "observes" the effects of others' minds and lives responding accordingly to their activities.From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer
:up:We don't experience ourselves as being inside a mind, but as being inside a body which is inside the world. We don't experience our minds as being radically free or absolute but as being constrained and contingent upon our bodies ... — Janus
:up:We are outside the minds of other people. — wonderer1
:100: :up:Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents. — Janus
:scream: Dionysus versus the Crucified.There are two understandings of nihilism: Nietzsche understood Christianity, and any notion of revelation, of received or imposed meaning, as being nihilistic in the sense that it nihilates the radical human capacity for creating meaning.
:fire: Amor fati.On the other hand, nihilism in the positive sense is simply the lack of received/ imposed meaning which grants to humanity a great freedom and creativity,
We are outside the minds of other people. Do you think that we can learn about the workings of other people's minds by observation of their behavior? Doesn't your statement amount to saying psychology is impossible? — wonderer1
there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it isempirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.
As soon as you think about something that is independent of thought, this something is no longer independent of thought! As soon as you try to imagine something that is independent of experience, you have an experience of it - not necessarily the sensory experience of it, but some sort of experience (imagination, concept, idea, etc.). The natural conclusion of this little thought experiment is that there is nothing completely independent of experience. But this creeping, all-pervasive presence of experience is the huge unnoticed fact of our lives. Nobody seems to care about it. Few people seem to realize that even the wildest speculations about what the universe was like during the first milliseconds after the Big Bang are still experiences. Most scientists rather argue that the Big Bang occurred as an event long before human beings existed in the universe. They can claim that, of course, but only from within the standpoint of their own present experience
Ironically, then, omnipresence of experience is tantamount to its absence. Experience is obvious; it is everywhere at this very moment. There is nothing apart from experience. Even when you think of past moments in which you do not remember having had any experience, this is still an experience, a present experience of thinking about them. But this background of immediate experience goes unnoticed because there is nothing with which to contrast it.This was well understood by Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the most clear-headed philosopher of the twentieth century. One of my favourite quotes of Wittgenstein's is this one: "[Conscious experience] is not a something, but not a nothing either! (from Philosophical Investigations) — Michel Bitbol
This was well understood by Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the most clear-headed philosopher of the twentieth century. One of my favourite quotes of Wittgenstein's is this one: "[Conscious experience] is not a something, but not a nothing either! (from Philosophical Investigations) — Michel Bitbol
We are outside the minds of other people. Do you think that we can learn about the workings of other people's minds by observation of their behavior? Doesn't your statement amount to saying psychology is impossible? — wonderer1
So this modifies Wayfarer’s idealism somewhat into a play better the ideal and the real in which neither side has priority. — Joshs
It has nothing to do with "stereotypes", but with considering the (practical) implications of an idealist stance.Wayfarer is a property-owning householder with material possessions and family responsibilities. So I probably don't fit into your stereotyped image of what 'an idealist' must be, whatever that is. — Wayfarer
Have you looked into it?https://pathpress.org/appearance-and-existence/
Thanks, very interesting page and site. I will take some time to try and absorb that. — Wayfarer
Wayfarer said:So you know things exist and you don't need a mind for knowing that?
— baker
The point is this: being a mind that is 'aware of being-a-mind-among-other-minds' (ergo finitude) presupposes 'mind-independent nonmind'. In other words, to say that 'existence is mind-dependent' entails 'the nonexistence of mind' (via infinite regress: mind dependent on mind dependent on mind dependent on ...) which is self-refuting. — 180 Proof
Basically, I'm simply arguing that whatever exists, always exists for some mind. The sense in which it exists without reference to a mind is simply unintelligible and incoherent. That is the mistake that creeps in for mistaking the assumption of mind-independence, which is all very well within the context of science, for a metaphysical principle, which it is not. — Wayfarer
And a mind is needed to make such a declaration.Existence just is the case — 180 Proof
I ignore mere assertions (bolded or not) which lack argument or evidence to warrant them.You're ignoring the bolded part. — baker
That seems ass-backwards to me, baker. "A mind" presupposes existence whether or not a "declaration" is made – whether or not it's "known something exists".Existence just is the case.
— 180 Proof
And a mind is needed to make such a
declaration.
Thats's because you _take for granted_ thatThat seems ass-backwards to me, baker. "A mind" presupposes existence whether a "declaration" is made or not. — 180 Proof
This play is undoubtedly characteristic of the ways in which we conceive of human perception, experience and judgement. Do you want to suggest that it has an actuality beyond that? — Janus
This is indeed a very common belief about how we exist, especially in Western cultures. It's how we are often taught to think of ourselves and to take such thinking for granted.We don't experience ourselves as being inside a mind, but as being inside a body which is inside the world. We don't experience our minds as being radically free or absolute but as being constrained and contingent upon our bodies — Janus
As if your're not fixated by this same idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver; it's just that your particular idea of this absolute authority or lawgiver is different than some other people's.If you look at the general history of human culture it is fairly clear that humanity has been labouring under the "aegis of tutelage", fixated by the idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver. The horrific crimes against humanity which such absolutism has given rise to are hardly questionable. although of course it is possible to bury one's head in the sand in denial.
This is a very common axiomatic claim. — baker
This is indeed a very common belief about how we exist, especially in Western cultures. It's how we are often taught to think of ourselves and to take such thinking for granted. — baker
As if your're not fixated by this same idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver; it's just that your particular idea of this absolute authority or lawgiver is different than some other people's.
Not having such an idea would probably make one insane. — baker
Yes. Every aspect of the world interacts with every other such that no laws , rules or fixities constrain it. Instead, interactions produce new interactions which produce new interactions. The cosmos is in the business of reinventing its past constantly. The ideality of this continual self-creation does not depend on the mind of a human subject. We are simply a participant in it, but a participant who can rapidly reinvent worlds. The fact that there are no laws constraining future possibilities on the basis of a fixed in place history does not mean change and becoming means chaos and arbitrariness. On the contrary, we live in natural and social circumstances of relative stability and familiarity. One does not need a universe of already fixed properties in order to be able to anticipate new events. — Joshs
There are approaches within psychology which argue that
‘mind’ is not an inside set off against an outside, but an inseparable interaction, a system of coordinations with an environment in which what constitutes the perceiving (the inside) and the perceived environment ( the outside) are defined and changed by their reciprocal interaction. Because as individuals embodied and embedded in the world we are already outside ourselves in this way, there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others.
Mind is thus treated no differently than organism , which has no true ‘inside’ given they it is nothing but a system of interactions with an environment it defines on the basis of its normative way of functioning. But neither is there a true ‘outside’. So this modifies Wayfarer’s idealism somewhat into a play better the ideal and the real in which neither side has priority. — Joshs
...there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others. — Joshs
If the physical is naturally understood to have substantial or substantive existence, and it is upon that idea of substance that the notion of reality is founded, and the idea of a mental substance is untenable, then what justification would we have for saying that anything non-physical is real?
The alternative to eliminative physicalism would be to say that mental phenomena are real functions of some physical existents, and that the only sense in which they are not physical is that they do not (obviously) appear as objects of the senses. — Janus
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36) — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36
...physics reveals a physical world that is almost completely insubstantial. "Substantial" and "real" have a meaning in the context of physics, but not one that meets the demands of this philosophical wild-goose chase. Berkeley was wrong about many things, but about this, he was right. — Ludwig V
It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world i
A bunch of chalk on a blackboard, not a universe. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think what you mean by 'substantial' and 'substantive' is 'tangible' and/or 'measurable'. Those are the empirical criteria for what is considered to exist. — Wayfarer
It depends on what you mean by 'substantial'; if you mean something like "tangible' then sure. Is mass fundamental in physics, specifically in QM?
If what is is fundamentally energetic, then that is what I would mean by "physical". Is there an alternative view to this?
Ontic structural realism, things just being the math that describes them, seems like the terminus point for this trend. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36
Yes, it was. But there's another aspect to this. When the physicists banished colour and sound from their theories, they forgot, or chose to ignore, the fact that their experiments and observations were conducted in the ordinary world in which colours and sounds are inextricably part of what we observe (and the point that Berkeley makes, that colour and shape (space) are inextricably linked.) If colours and sounds are not objective how can the science which proves them be objective? (Sense-data/ideas won't do the job. Ordinary common sense experience of independently existing objects in the objective world is essential.)With which I agree. I take his main point to be a reference to the well-known 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which has undermined the whole idea of the 'mind-independent reality' of the objects of quantum physics, although I don't want to go into the whole 'interpretations of physics' tangle. — Wayfarer
I don't quite understand this; surely Descartes had no idea about the existence of his own mind? But there is something in what you say. We do tend to leave ourselves with no alternative but to "reduce" everything to physics (except the observer, of course). But when you define matter and mind in relation to each other, you cannot abolish mind without reviewing and reshaping matter.The question becomes, how do you demonstrate or prove the existence of such a 'thinking thing'? Why, you can't! It's a specious concept. So what are we left with? The other half of Descartes' duality, namely, res extensia, extended matter, which Modern Science has proven so extraordinarily adept at analyzing and manipulating. — Wayfarer
I think the subject-object format has deeper roots than 17th century science. It is embedded in language (or at least the languages we are familiar with) but it is more than just a grammatical quirk; it affects everything we think. What we tend to forget is that every object can also be a subject, so that there is no logical gap, or gap of any sort, between the two. Most of the time, this is not particularly problematic. But it does get confusing when self-reference creeps in. That's why things get so hard when the observer becomes the observed.I am proposing in this OP, that this amounts to more than just a theoretical paradigm - it's also a worldview, and one which is essentially the default view of secular, scientifically-informed culture. I also claim that an implicit assumption of this worldview is the 'subject-object' relationship — Wayfarer
Quite likely. But there will be continuity as well.This is why the argument in the OP says that an alternative to this view is a perspectival shift, a different way of seeing, which also turns out to be a different way of being. — Wayfarer
I don't have much to add to this long-running discussion of Mental vs Physical priority. So, I'll just post a few thoughts stimulated by the OP.This is why the argument in the OP says that an alternative to this view is a perspectival shift, a different way of seeing, which also turns out to be a different way of being. — Wayfarer
What we tend to forget is that every object can also be a subject, — Ludwig V
now we are facing a "hard problem" that appears to have no solution. The framework that establishes the problem has to go. — Ludwig V
I don't quite understand this — Ludwig V
Not to create a physical world from scratch, but to create a metaphysical model of the world that we sense (feel) and make-sense of (comprehend). — Gnomon
I'm sorry. A misunderstanding. I thought your reference to the subject/object relationship was to subject and object in the general, grammatical sense. But, of course, I should have remembered that logic describes this in the more general format of subject/predicate. However, tables etc can be subject - of pictures, investigations, conversations, etc. They can also, in ordinary language, do things like blocking fire exits, squashing fruit, supporting vases, etc. Equally, a human being can stand in the object-place in a sentence, being looked at, rather than looking, being pushed, rather than pushing and in general being objectified. Self-awareness seems to screw this model up, but given how this all works, I don't see why one shouldn't simply say that self-awareness involves objectifying oneself, imagining one is looking at oneself.How so? Subjects are invariably sentient beings are they not? Tables and chairs and billiard balls are objects, but how are they subjects of experience? Isn’t saying that a version of panpsychism? — Wayfarer
I thought the point of the cogito that was that is the one thing that we cannot doubt, and classical epistemology regards self-knowledge (which was always of the mind) was the only thing, apart from logic, of which we could be certain and which was therefore the foundation of epistemology.And whilst any of us can see and interact with material substance, the existence of ‘res cogitans’ is conjectural, and the proposed ‘interaction’ between the two ‘substances’ problematic. — Wayfarer
That's certainly true, but a point of view is an abstract, context-dependent concept, not at all the same as a conscious person. However, "I" is more like "a point of view" in that it has no content, being constructed in the same sort of way as a point of view.Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a science from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene. — Wayfarer
Yes, that is quite right. But "exists" doesn't really tolerate half-way houses, so we have to talk of modes of existence or maybe categories, which gives a pluralist world, which is much more appropriate than monist, dualist or any other set number.A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. — Wayfarer
I don't believe our world-view is unified, except possibly in the world-views of philosophers. On the contrary, it is the lack of unity that enables us to distinguish reality from perception.By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. — Wayfarer
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