Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong

Sirius

Here's the minimal description of metaphysical realism. You must be committed to all 3 claims to be a realist.

1. There exist objects that are mind-independent

2. We can grasp the features of objects external to our mind

3. We can justify our knowledge of objects external to our minds

The negation of metaphysical realism can be obtained in the following manner. I will use idealism for it, which includes solipsism.

1. Deny the existence of mind-independent objects and/or

2. We cannot grasp the features of external objects which happen to be mind-independent and/or

3. We cannot justify our knowledge of mind-independent objects

Here's why I believe the distinction is misguided & wrong

1. Regardless of whether idealism or realism is true, our phenomenological experience of the world would remain unchanged. We would still believe in the existence of the same number of objects. In other words, the idealist and realist would live life behaving in similar manner. What this tells us is the idealist and realist distinction does not solve any problems in a unique manner, unlike say the discovery of a new cure or mathematical fact. Even an idealist monk who has allegedly attained enlightenment still feels pain & has to look right or left before crossing the road. At best, this distinction only induces a change in our attitude towards the world. If you value pragmatism, then this should raise your eyebrows. It seems we should accept idealism or realism based on what kind of a life we want to live. It should be guided by our feelings and attitudes, not truth apt facts.

2. The boundary between mental & extra-mental objects is blurry even if we accept this distinction. Pick any object X you regard as extra mental with following features a,b,c..etc. Its conceivable that I can alter all the features you perceive of X by changing your brain chemistry or neural structuring. In which case, the object X would just be some empty "thing in itself" with no inherent features to it, If we still establish an identity across change. Apply this argument to all objects in the world and you will end up reducing the entire world to one substance, which is neither mental nor extra-mental, since it cannot be grasped via concepts or experience. We have arrived at a contradiction. The boundary between extra mental and mental objects belongs to neither camps. Kant ran into this problem and there hasn't really been any satisfactory response to it.

3. The problem of justification and truth commitment mentioned in the 3rd point is deeply connected to your view on the reliability of folk psychology, semantic externalism/internalism & foundationalism/non-foundationalism. Let's start in the opposite direction. I take it that we cannot justify all of our beliefs ad infinitum. Justification comes to an end somewhere, call these basic beliefs. We can either accept them with dogmatism (which I reject) or subject them to the possibility of revision in case there is a great change in our overall worldview. This is known as confirmation holism. How is this connected to metaphysical realism vs anti realism ? I don't see why anyone can't accept realism or idealism as a basic belief that is taken for granted without any justification. As such, this dispute cannot be resolved by any appeal to arguments or evidence. Now let's get to semantic externalism vs internalism. If the first is true, then solipsism would be ruled out on the simple ground that meaning can't just be in your mind. Whereas if the latter is true, then solipsism becomes a lot more plausible. But we have to remember, metaphysical anti realism doesn't always reduce to solipsism. There are many forms of idealism where other minds act as external agents within the mind of God. There can be no help from semantic arguments or philosophy of language here to resolve our dispute. Now let's return to the first point. If science has shown anything, our folk physics, chemistry, biology etc has turned out to be guided by mistaken intuition and inferences. We didn't evolve to study our minds in some retrospective manner. Maybe the whole game of dividing the world into ideas and non-ideas is based on mistaken rules ? It's entirely possible that when we reconstruct our experience in a manner that is not authentic to our experience of the world. Many philosophers are troubled by the fact our inner experience appears to be cashed out in ineffable terms (qualia, propositional attitudes, cognitive content, feelings). We may have to live with this discord between subjective & objective world as a barrier erected by evolution. Call this neo-mysterianism with respect to metaphysical realism vs non realism.

javra

↪Sirius

What I find to be an important issue in all this is how "mind" is defined or else understood.

For one example, in C.S. Peirce's philosophy of objective idealism, physicality is a grand, global, and in many ways ubiquitous, effete mind - does this effete mind belong to me and my individual (non-effete) mind, to you, to anyone? But if it did would this not then logically contradict the very premise of there being an effete mind thus defined and understood?

Hence, as this one of many examples tries to illustrate, the very notion of "mind-independence" is thoroughly contingent on what one understands by the term "mind". Via at least certain interpretations, there is no reason to deny a reality independent of each and every individual non-effete mind (yours, mine, etc.) to which we all conform that is nevertheless of itself an effete mind and, hence, mind-dependent.

As to the overall gist of the thread as expressed by the title, for my part, I can only answer "yes": the often used dichotomy between metaphysical realism and anti-realism is - or at least can be - useless and/or wrong. I however say this as one who believes in Peirce's appraisal of physicality being effete mind.

Leontiskos

1. Regardless of whether idealism or realism is true, our phenomenological experience of the world would remain unchanged. We would still believe in the existence of the same number of objects. In other words, the idealist and realist would live life behaving in similar manner. — Sirius

Why think this? Different beliefs often lead to different behavior. A pragmatist could argue for a belief on the basis of a desired behavior, as you suggest, but a non-pragmatist could argue for a belief on the basis of the truth and the consequences of believing the truth.

To take a common issue, realism or anti-realism with respect to sex or gender will have radical societal implications. "Realists and non-realists with respect to sex or gender would live life behaving in a similar manner," is not at all a plausible claim. Other examples would be less obvious, but still true, and would play out over a longer time scale.

Sirius

↪Leontiskos

To take a common issue, realism or anti-realism with respect to sex or gender will have radical societal implications

I don't think this is true. Let's take someone who holds my view expressed above & also happens to believe in biological essentialism. He can still believe its possible to divide the essence of "male" or "female" or any other gender into different combination of biological essences.

It's also fairly common from my perspective to treat essences as universals which aren't neccesarily opposed to particulars. I refuse to side with either platonism or nominalism here. Both create unnecessary problems, where there are none in the first place.

Metaphysics realism or anti realism can at best change your attitude or feelings towards the world. But my proposal seeks to unite both attitudes together. You cannot live in your head or just with your body. This fits with my ethical worldview quite nicely. You can't be a good person unless you dissolve the subject-object distinctions that is often presupposed in modern philosophy beginning from Descartes. In a way, I'm returning to the Christian or Muslim mystics or eastern philosophers like Lao Tzu or Nagarjuna. My tolerance of others knows no limit. It's a tolerance which isn't based on refuting other worldviews, but based on dissolving differences.

Sirius

↪javra

Hence, as this one of many examples tries to illustrate, the very notion of "mind-independence" is thoroughly contingent on what one understands by the term "mind". Via at least certain interpretations, there is no reason to deny a reality independent of each and every individual non-effete mind (yours, mine, etc.) to which we all conform that is nevertheless of itself an effete mind and, hence, mind-dependent.

Yep. This is my precise point. The boundary where you draw the distinction between the mind and the world other than the mind is relative or contingent. Here's my broad or folk understanding of how a person goes through life or any self contained activity in general. We enter life or any new activity in harmony with our "surrounding", with the Tao. But this prevents us from being "useful". So we draw rough boundaries between the subject and object and try to overcome the obstacles in our "surrounding". This goes on until we become so skilled and united with our work that there is no distinction between our mind and the world out there. This is called a return to childhood. This is why true genius is the ability to be a child once again. Modern philosophy and culture is unfortunately deeply embedded in this divide between metaphysical realism/irrealism. It's a false dilemma. There is no absolute mind-independent boundary.

Leontiskos

I don't think this is true. Let's take someone who holds my view expressed above & also happens to believe in biological essentialism. He can still believe its possible to divide the essence of "male" or "female" or any other gender into different combination of biological essences. — Sirius

"Can still believe" is not a good test. For example, someone who does not believe that humans have greater dignity than animals "can still believe" that human rights trump animal rights, but it is a helluva lot harder.

Sirius

↪Leontiskos

"Can still believe" is not a good test. For example, someone who does not believe that humans have greater dignity than animals "can still believe" that human rights trump animal rights, but it is a helluva lot harder.

Well. That's if you subscribe to some kind of foundationalism and you hold there is a clear distinction between knowledge & belief. I don't hold to either position. On top of this, I hold to truth pluralism, no single theory of truth can make sense of what is the case, reality.

To give a funny example. It's perfectly & easily feasible to believe the bones of dinosaurs were placed by Satan to trick creationists into believing in evolution. You just need to revise all your beliefs.

Once again. Harder according to whom ? You can't get inside someone else's head and decide whether X belief is unbelievable. Instead of attacking this ubiquitous reality of people and trying to get around it, our epistemology should acknowledge it's limits. Categorizing methods of obtaining knowledge & justification will always fall short & exclude important exceptions. We should not suffer from poverty of examples.

Banno

↪Sirius

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

This is a regular topic. What follows is a re-write of stuff from three years ago.

Speaking very roughly, just to get started, realism holds that ...stuff... is independent of what we say about it; anti-realism, that it isn't.

"Stuff", because the content makes a difference.

For instance, if our topic is aesthetics, then aesthetic anti-realism is the view that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder; but an aesthetic realist might hold that beauty and ugly are a part of whatever it is we are beholding.The realist says that something is either beautiful, or it isn't, while the anti-realist perhaps says that being beautiful is an attitude we take towards the item.

A further example. An ethical realist might say good and bad are as much aspects of the world as matter and volume; while an ethical anti-realist might say that no observation of the world will reveal good or bad, because they are not 'out there' to be found.

Stealing blatantly from my Rutledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, a realist would generally hold to a set of beliefs that includes: that correspondence to the facts is what makes a statement true; that there may be truths we do not recognise as such, do not believe and do not know; that the Law of excluded middle holds for things in the world; and that the meaning of a sentence may be found by specifying it's truth-conditions.

An ant-realist may in contrast hold that truth is to be understood in sophisticated epistemic terms, perhaps as what a "well-conducted investigation" might lead us to believe; that there can be no unknown truths; that we need include "unknown" as well as true and false in our logical systems; and that the meaning of a sentence is to be found in what it might assert.

Going back to the main point I'd like to make here, one can be a realist in one area and an anti-realistin another. SO for my part, I've argued against typical examples of anti-realism such as pragmatic theory, logical positivism, transcendental idealism and Berkeley's form of idealism. I have however also defended a constructivist view of mathematics, an anti-realist position; and off-handedly rejected realism in ethics and aesthetics.

It is important to note that there is a difference in logic sitting behind the distinction between realism and anti-realism. Realists supose that a proposition is either true or it is false, and that there are no alternatives. Their attitude towards truth is binary. On the other hand, anti-realists are happy to admit at least a third possibility, that a proposition might be neither true nor false, but have some third value. Anti-realism became more prominent towards the end of last century with the development of formal paraconsistent and many-valued logics.

I think a large part of the difference between realism and anti-realism can be explained by making use of Anscombe's notion of direction of fit. This is the difference between the list you take with you to remind yourself of what you want to buy and the list the register produces listing the things you actually purchased. The intent of the first list is to collect the things listed; of the second, to list the things collected. The first seeks to make the world fit the list, the second, to make the list to fit the world. So perhaps anti-realism applies to ethics and aesthetics because we seek to make the world as we say, while realism applies to ontology and epistemology because we seek to make what we say fit the world.

This by way of background.

Leontiskos

It's perfectly & easily feasible to believe the bones of dinosaurs were placed by Satan to trick creationists into believing in evolution. You just need to revise all your beliefs. — Sirius

Revising all one's beliefs is not perfectly easy.

I said changing a societal belief from X to Y would have radical implications. You replied that "one could believe" Y without moving into those implications. This is a modal notion which is quite foreign to reality. Beliefs have implications, just as knowledge does, and changes in belief will involve changes in behavior.

Once again. Harder according to whom ? — Sirius

Revising all one's beliefs is hard for everyone. It's not as if there is no commonality between humans, here.

Banno

SO to your OP. Your account is quite neat. I'll take it that we are here talking about realism as it applies to ontology - to what exists and what doesn't, and not to aesthetics, ethics or mathematics, each of which has it's own version of the realism/anti-realism debate.

Regardless of whether idealism or realism is true, our phenomenological experience of the world would remain unchanged. We would still believe in the existence of the same number of objects. — Sirius

I don't think this is quite right. I'll use an example I've used to the point of tedium here about. When you take your coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher, does it still exist? A realist might say that it either exists or it doesn't, and since we have no reason to think it has ceased to exist, then we can reasonably maintain that it still exists. On this view, there are at least two things in the world, the cup and the dishwasher.

On the other hand, the anti-realist might suppose that since the cup is in the dishwasher we cannot perceive it, and so cannot say for sure if it exists or not. They might conclude that at best we can say that it is neither true nor false that the cup exists. They would conclude that there is at least only one thing, the dishwasher.

These two differ as to how many things they are willing to say there are in the world. But you are quite right that this is about a difference in attitude towards the world, in this case a difference in attitude towards what we might count and what we might not. There is a difference in how the realist and the anti-realist set things out, in what is to count as existing or not exiting.

I would here draw attention to Anscombe again, and to direction of fit. What is to count as an item on our list is something we decide, so our list is more like the one we take shopping than the one we receive at the checkout.

Banno

Kant ran into this problem and there hasn't really been any satisfactory response to it. — Sirius

There is, actually, curtesy of Wittgenstein's beetle in a box argument. We can say nothing about the supposed thing-in-itself, so it cannot have a use in the conversation. It's a useless notion that can be set aside.

Unfortunately folk continue to say quite a bit about it.

Banno

I take it that we cannot justify all of our beliefs ad infinitum. — Sirius

This might be right. But it is worth noting that there are things that you know, believe or are certain. Moore made the claim that "Here is a hand". On a forum such as this, we might instead point out that you are now reading this post. Now if you find it difficult to doubt that you are now reading this sentence, then you might also grant things such as that there is a language in which it is written, that someone wrote it, that there are screens and devices and networks linking you to that writer, and so on.

This is not so far form Quine's ontological holism. Once you grant that there are things that it makes no sense to doubt, quite a bit follows.

schopenhauer1

There is, actually, curtesy of Wittgenstein's beetle in a box argument. We can say nothing about the supposed thing-in-itself, so it cannot have a use in the conversation. It's a useless notion that can be set aside.

Unfortunately folk continue to say quite a bit about it. — Banno

I'm not sure that's a response. Since Kant didn't have much to say about it either other than as a theory of something that is probably there, but can't say much (X); it's about a wash with the beetle argument. A lot of words spent saying what Kant already said, shame.

Banno

↪schopenhauer1

Kant perhaps would have agreed with Wittgenstein. And if they are right, than we can do away with the so often repeated idea that somehow it is important that we cannot know the nature of the thing in itself. It isn't, it's irrelevant, and takes up far too much time and effort.

schopenhauer1

Kant probably would have agreed with Wittgenstein. — Banno

But you have already turned this on its head. Rather, I would have phrased it, "Wittgenstein should have (rightly) attributed the point to Kant himself" instead of going off on something Kant explained (unnecessarily as if sui generis from Kant).

It isn't, it's irrelevant, and takes up far too much time and effort. — Banno

As you probably know, Schopenhauer fills the X with "The Will" and Hegel "absolute unfolding in dialectic of history", etc. and others with various other things, but is that not more of a 19th century debate that has somewhat faded away unless discussing "history of philosophy" and/or people take up the debates anew (as I often do, but reoriented with newer information at hand and different arguments)?

Banno

↪schopenhauer1

Sure. Folk want to talk about stuff about which they can't say anything. Off-topic, but be my guest.

Banno

↪javra

I don't see as we need the mysticism.

↪Leontiskos

Gender as a case in point. Some folk need there to be only two genders, and so force everything into this or that box. That's an attitude, not an observation. It's taking a list with only two things on it to the shop, not looking at what is on the shelf.

Janus

↪Banno

This reminds of one of Ashleigh Brilliant's sayings: "My biggest problem is what to do about all the things I can't do anything about".

Perhaps the philosophers' biggest problem is what to say about all the things they cannot say anything about.

schopenhauer1

Sure. Folk want to talk about stuff about which they can't say anything. Off-topic, but be my guest. — Banno

‘Can’t say anything’ is tricky here, as it’s taken to mean both a normative restriction and a factual one. Schopenhauer, for instance, did say something about it- he called it the Will. However, he emphasized that the Will can only be described negatively (in terms of what it is not) and that any description of it must be analogical or metaphorical. So, in this sense, he did say something about what we don’t really ‘know’ in a direct, observable way. What you’re really getting at is that we can’t prove it beyond speculation. It remains a theory and can never be confirmed empirically; we know it only analogically, not through observation or experimentation. So ‘can’t,’ to me, seems unnecessary here- it’s more a matter of someone’s opinion about what can or should be discussed than an actual barrier to speaking about it.

Banno

↪Janus

Pretty much. Perhaps it's about joining up the stuff we can talk about in a coherent fashion.

Of course, you can show stuff as well as say it.

Tom Storm

This reminds of one of Ashleigh Brilliant's sayings: "My biggest problem is what to do about all the things I can't do anything about".

Perhaps the philosophers' biggest problem is what to say about all the things they cannot say anything about. — Janus

Nice.

Banno

↪schopenhauer1

The will is shown in the doing.

Janus

Perhaps it's about joining up the stuff we can talk about in a coherent fashion.

Of course, you can show stuff as well as say it. — Banno

Coherence exists within some context or other. Philosophers have invented language games wherein they purport to be somehow saying the unsayable. Perhaps that would be, if successful, a form of showing rather than saying, of implicit allusion rather than literal explicitation.

Banno

↪Janus

Those games can be coherent. Hence their appeal.

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away!

javra

↪javra
I don't see as we need the mysticism. — Banno

Unlike this very statement, what I said was neither gibberish nor poetry – instead being a rational proposition.

Rather, delineating “mind-independence” with a lack of delineation for what “mind” is will be vague or else fuzzy reasoning. Mystical reasoning, if one’s so prefers to term such.

… then again, if minds are beetles in a box, then by what justification will the very notion of “mind-independence” not likewise be?

schopenhauer1

The will is shown in the doing. — Banno

Schopenhauer took the step of describing his ideas through metaphor and analogy, pushing language to approach what lies beyond direct understanding. Wittgenstein’s 'show, don’t say' principle feels more like a self-imposed limit than a necessity. Schopenhauer’s approach suggests that even if language is imperfect, it still allows one to explore abstract and elusive ideas. By drawing a strict line around what we can talk about, he is really just conveying his sense of what’s worth discussing, not an absolute law of how or when to use language.

Banno

↪javra

I'll leave you to it. I can't make much of your comment. I'm not sufficiently effete, perhaps.

↪schopenhauer1

In a way Wittgenstein subsumed and then expanded Schopenhauer.

javra

I'll leave you to it. — Banno

Some other time maybe.

Janus

Nice. — Tom Storm

:cool:

Hence, as this one of many examples tries to illustrate, the very notion of "mind-independence" is thoroughly contingent on what one understands by the term "mind". Via at least certain interpretations, there is no reason to deny a reality independent of each and every individual non-effete mind (yours, mine, etc.) to which we all conform that is nevertheless of itself an effete mind and, hence, mind-dependent. — javra

The problem is that we all know what we mean by 'mind' in the ordinary context. In the extraordinary context the notion is nothing more than a vague gesturing. All very good for poetry, but for ontology not so much.

So, we have every reason to believe that the things of the world are independent of our minds and virtually no reason to believe otherwise.

Then if you still want to claim that things are mind-dependent you need some notion of a collective or universal or "effete" mind, and these notions cannot be coherently discoursed because there is no common experience to definitively relate them to.

javra

The problem is that we all know what we mean by 'mind' in the ordinary context. — Janus

I don't so far find justification for this claim. But groovy all the same. Then, please enlighten me as to what we all know "mind" to be in the ordinary sense.

I'll start here: What aspect of what we are aware of will not be an aspect of our own minds?

Banno

What aspect of what we are aware of will not be an aspect of our own minds? — javra

Not at all a loaded question, that one.

You cant taste oysters without using your mouth, therefore you can't tase oysters as they are in themselves.

Might as well ask what oysters would taste like if we did not have the ability to taste.

Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong

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