My argument was that boulders treat cracks differently than canyons whether or not and minds are involved: — Leontiskos

My response was to refer to the argumentum ad lapidem, the 'appeal to the stone', by which Samuel Johnson famously attempted to refute Berkeley's argument of the mental nature of reality. In the context in which your argument was made, you failed to address the salient point in question, but proceeded on the mere assumption that 'of course there are mind-independent objects'.

To refer to the original context, @Leontiskos was responding to the OP Mind-Created World, but the point that the 'boulder' objection does not address is this one:

there is no need for me to deny that the Universe (or the boulder!) is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe (or boulder) 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. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object. — Wayfarer

The point is that objects have existence in themselves and exercise causal powers independently of anything we do or know. — Leontiskos

I'm personally unsure of this, although this would seem to be a common sense view. Does the world have any kind of coherence at all without us providing a point of view and the language to 'demonstrate' the relationships we see?

What we apprehend and understand can be in error. — Banno

Could not everything be in error, with some accounts just more useful in certain situations than others?

Notice this is about what we apprehend and understand, not about what is true. — Banno

But is not truth finally something we have to arrive at via apprehending and understanding? I feel like this is a bit of a loop. Are not the constituent ingredients of truth themselves subject to questioning? Note, I am not saying there is no truth just that I think truth is contingent and in that contingence lies an endless series of potential debates and nosebleeds.

What we see is a function not simply of what random pixels of shape and color happen to impinge on our retinas. It is a function of what patterns we are able to synthesize out of this chaos of sensation. We have to discern correlations among initially disparate elements of the world, and coordinate these with our own movements. — Joshs

Quite. This is the point of the book I keep referring to, Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles Pinter. He shows how this process is working even with studies of insect perception. Minds 'create' the objects of perception, not in the sense that they're otherwise or previously non-existent, but insofar as they're object of cognition (and reason, for us.)

I think that the phenomenology and enactivism that Joshs refers to is aware of this in a way that analytical philosophy is not.

One might apprehend the flower as having three petals, despite it having four. In which case, the flower has four petals regardless of what is supposed. — Banno

Hmm, i tend to feel this is the case, but isn't there a good argument that since there is literally no other source of data (i.e, no matter how many people apprehend something, that potential for error remains), that this can't reallly be concluded?

But is not truth finally something we have to arrive at via apprehending and understanding? I feel like this is a bit of a loop. — Tom Storm

I would put it this way: there are truths that we do not arrive at. Not everything that is true is known to be true. Part of the difficulty here is that 'truth' is a complex and multivalent term, as it should be.

Agree

Could not everything be in error — Tom Storm

I think we talked about this before. Error depends on things mostly being right.

But is not truth finally something we have to arrive at via apprehending and understanding? — Tom Storm

Arriving at the truth is adopting a belief. Belief and truth are different things. I think we looked at this before. Propositions are true, or not: P is true. Propositions are believed, or not, by people. Tom believes that P is true. Most statements are true or false regardless of their being apprehended or understood.

Folk hereabouts fumble that difference.

And some truths are contingent - that I just and a flat white - others not so much - that a flat white is a flat white.

I think we talked about this before. — Banno

Could be, I forget.

A better answer is the obvious point that there are different ways of using an expression such as "I see the flower". — Banno

And one of those is an affected way.

Minds 'create' the objects of perception, not in the sense that they're otherwise or previously non-existent, but insofar as they're object of cognition (and reason, for us.) — Wayfarer

Which is to say they don't create them, eh? Thus the quotation marks. It's a metaphor only. The problem arises when we (or others) don't recognize that's the case, or disregard it. Perhaps analytic philosophy is aware of this in a way phenomenology and enactivism is not.

The quotes are because the term ‘create’ has connotations beyond what is intended in this context. There is no simple way to convey the gist. The basic tenet I’m criticising is the instinctive notion of the mind independence of phenomenal objects.

The quotes are because the term ‘create’ has connotations beyond what is intended in this context. There is no simple way to convey the gist. The basic tenet I’m criticising is the instinctive notion of the mind independence of phenomenal objects. — Wayfarer

Well, if it's instinctive, it must be wrong.

Not "must be wrong" but rather "could be wrong" depending on context. Surely it depends on what is meant by "phenomenal object", as to whether it would be right or wrong to say they enjoy mind-independent existence, no?

I think it's more a case of "philosophy as talking past one another" than "philosophy as affectation", when each side assumes that either the proposition that phenomenal objects enjoy mind-independent existence or the negation of that proposition represents some absolute matter of fact.

As I see it both of those propositions are "not even wrong", just because we have no idea what they could even mean outside of very well-defined contexts. If there is an affectation it is the pretense that we know what we are talking about when we make such claims and counterclaims.

It really is such a pointless, boring and interminable debate that lacks any significance for human life.

Often on philosophy forums ;)

Mustn’t be forgotten that phenomena are what appears to a subject.

Mustn’t be forgotten that phenomena are what appears to a subject. — Wayfarer

Well, I always thought is was basically just a posh word for "appearances" but perhaps in some contexts it is better to think of them as data. In many common uses, you are quite right that they are related to a subject, but I think they are more like data than appearances. Two points about appearances (in many common uses:- 1) t they are essentially like a relation, "appearance" of something to someone: 2) they are used, not just for the way something looks - the way it appears (seems) to be, - but also for something hidden coming into view - the ship appeared over the horizon or the game of peek-a-boo.

As I see it both of those propositions are "not even wrong", just because we have no idea what they could even mean outside of very well-defined contexts. If there is an affectation it is the pretense that we know what we are talking about when we make such claims and counterclaims. — Janus

That is very true. The problem arises when some argument seems to require that some object exists, but (in Locke's phrase) "we know not what it is". People don't draw the more likely conclusion that the argument is wrong.

:up:

Mustn’t be forgotten that phenomena are what appears to a subject. — Wayfarer

This is one definition. On the other hand, it seems most plausible that there is a whole universe of phenomena, only the tiniest fraction of which ever appears to any "subject".

Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe (or boulder) 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. — Wayfarer

You are losing the distinction between what we know of the existence of things and their actual existence: the two are not the same.

It is indubitably the case that 'phenomenon' is from the Greek 'phainomenon' meaning 'what appears'. And I claim that a subject to whom it appears is implicit in this definition as a matter of fact (which is also, I believe, a central contention of phenomenology).

As to 'the whole universe of phenomena' they are not actually phenomena until they're an observed phenomena (c.f. Bohr 'no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon'). Which is not to say that such phenomena don't exist prior to or outside of being observed, but that nothing can be said in respect of them in the absence of any observation of them - either the claim they do exist or don't.

As always, your statement is made from a putative perspective 'outside' that of any subject - imagining the vast universe as it must be without any subject being in it. But my claim is that even such an imaginative act still relies on an implicit perspective. (That is the subject of The Mind Created World OP.)

You are losing the distinction between what we know of the existence of things and their actual existence: the two are not the sam — Janus

Cross posted whilst I composed the above, but the same response. The 'actual existence' you're proposing is that outside any perspective or point of view. But you can't legitimately occupy such a perspective. I know this is un-intuitive but that feeling is based on a kind of 'reflexive realism' - what Husserl calls 'the natural attitude' which simply assumes the reality of the sensory domain.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity*. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

*Which I take to be a reference to 'the transcendental ego' or subject of experience.

I know, as soon as I hit enter on the above, that mine is a pretty perfect example of what many here will regard as 'affectation', so I'll leave off here, and take it up in other places.

It is indubitably the case that 'phenomenon' is from the Greek 'phainomenon' meaning 'what appears'. And I claim that a subject to whom it appears is implicit in this definition as a matter of fact (which is also, I believe, a central contention of phenomenology). — Wayfarer

"What appears" could be construed as either the appearance itself or what gives rise to the appearance.
Even assuming your tale is correct, meanings change, and new usages may be more or less in accordance with the origins of terms (assuming that we are able to accurately interpret just what was meant by archaic usages). It is nowhere near as cut and dried as you would like to paint it.

The 'actual existence' you're proposing is that outside any perspective or point of view. But you can't legitimately occupy such a perspective. I know this is very un-intuitive but I'm saying, it is based on a kind of 'reflexive realism' - what Husserl calls 'the natural attitude' which simply assumes the reality of the sensory domain. — Wayfarer

I understand your way of thinking, I used to think that way or at least tried it on for a while, but I think it is misguided, based on conflating what we can clearly think existence is (based on our experience) with being able to clearly think that actual (as opposed to experienced) existence is not, or at least might not, be the same. As I read Kant this is the very point of the noumenal/ phenomenal distinction.

On the other hand, we could just refer to things as phenomena, whether experienced or not and allow that our perceptions of those phenomena give us limited knowledge and understanding of them. It's just different ways of thinking, but both sides of this interminable and pointless debate seem to want to have it that there is a fact of the matter, and that the reality is just one way and not the other. " There really are cups even when no one is looking at them" or "there really are no cups when we are not looking at them". I mean, what the fuck does it matter?

interminable and pointless — Janus

What is 'interminable and pointless' is trying to explain it to others, but hey, it's a philosophy forum. :-)

So, philosophy forums are pointless then? :wink:

There are also a few definitions or conceptions of what doing philosophy consists in.

It seems to me you fail to understand that others do understand your point of view and simply disagree with it.

Does the world have any kind of coherence at all without us providing a point of view and the language to 'demonstrate' the relationships we see? — Tom Storm

How could we possibly know?

Ask yourself when you last acted as if there were no other people, no things, no animals, i.e. nothing other than yourself. — Ciceronianus

The psychological equivalents of solipsism are narcissism and egoism. Which are fairly common, and appear to be on the trajectory to becoming virtues.

When did you last believe, and treat, people you see across the street from you as if they were only, e.g., 6 inches tall because that's how they appeared to be when you saw them, and thought that they became 6 feet tall when they crossed the street to speak to you?

When did you last ponder whether the car you're driving was in fact a car having the characteristics of a car as you understand them to be, or instead something else you can never know (if, indeed, it was anything at all)? When did you last question whether the office building in which you work remained the same building, because it looked one way when you entered it in the morning, when the sun was out, but did not look the same as it did then when you left it at night?

Chances are you never did anything of the sort.

Actually, children do such things, according to Piaget's theory of cognitive development. :)
It covers also issues of perspective, object size, object permanence.

Object permanence is the understanding that whether an object can be sensed has no effect on whether it continues to exist. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of young children's social and mental capacities. There is not yet scientific consensus on when the understanding of object permanence emerges in human development.
/.../
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

I don't say certain philosophers are hypocrites, or even that they're disingenuous when they contend that what we see and interact with every day without question isn't real, or can't be known, but when what we do is so contrary to what we contend, or what we contend is so unrelated to what we do as to make no difference in our lives, I think we have reason to think that we're engaged in affectation.

Western philosophy has affectation built in as a feature, in the assumption that an argument can somehow "stand on its own", regardless of who is making it; "a fallacious ad hominem" is considered a pleonasm, as if every argument against the person is automatically fallacious.

And so we have a whole philosophical culture of people saying things they don't mean and that aren't meant to be taken seriously, at least not by everyone.

Ah, if only we were in a court of law. I would object to your "response" as being unresponsive, and I think any Judge in the external world would sustain the objection. — Ciceronianus

Exactly. You're thinking like a lawyer, not a philosopher. Except that we're at a philosophy forum.

But in this unhappy, imperfect universe we must make judgments without the benefit of absolute knowledge, on the best evidence available at the time we make them. And we do, in real life, if we're wise. — Ciceronianus

But must these judgments amount to a certainty that justifies burning people at the stakes? For a lawyer, perhaps, certainly.

People who are not lawyers and otherwise not in the business of professionally judging others, can get by just fine without pronouncing definitive judgments upon others, and can instead live with tentative.

Have you ever thought that those children in pre-Renaissance painting actually were little adults? Or just that the artists who painted them thought they were?

That was actually the prevailing belief back then: that children are just like adults, only smaller. The belief was that children were only quantitatively different from adults, but not qualitatively. (I read somewhere Kant believed children cried because they were angry because they couldn't use their bodies properly yet.)
In the 20th century psychological theories of cognitive and moral development put forward the idea that the differences between children and adults are in fact qualitative.

The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. — Banno

Much of what people call "petals" are actually bracts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bract
Since it's the season, what you see in a poinsettia, those Christmasy bright red things are bracts, not petals.
Just so as to be botanically clear.

This difference between bracts and petals is another good example of how our perception of things is socio-culturally shaped.

I know you can't drop all that nonsense about things in themselves and phenomenal states of consciousness, and although it provides a basis for some wonderful pretence, in the end it confuses you. — Banno

But @Hanover is a lawyer, right? He has to make sense of things in a way that is consistent with his profession.

I would expect that an infant sees what I see when it looks at a flower, despite it not having any sense of what is socially agreed upon. — Hanover

This is doubtful, already physiologically.
A human infant's vision is qualitatively different from that of human adults; also, infants have not yet mastered object permanence.

This concept would apply cross-culturally as well, lending support to the idea that we reach out to the flower to pick it not due to some inter-subjective, socially agreed upon basis, but because we think the flower it out past our hand ripe for picking.

The standard counterargument to this is the complexity of color words across different languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term