They can argue that we have evidence of things other than one's self (as the realist does) but also that the notion of material things is nonsense, whereas things like consciousness and sense-data are immediately apparent. — Michael
Is it special pleading when the realist says we have evidence of material things but not of magic or the supernatural? — Michael
If someone thinks it's not conceivable that there's a sheep in a field without it being painted blue, I wouldn't say that they're making an assumption. — Terrapin Station
Right, which is why I already pointed out in the same post (because I predicted that you'd make that argument and tried to head you off) that you seemed to have overlooked:The nature of sense-data (or "qualia") is a difficult subject for both the idealist and the realist (e.g. the "hard problem of consciousness"). And, yes, both sides of the argument should provide a full account of it if they want to defend their position. But that's a separate issue to your claim that idealism entails solipsism, which is the claim I'm addressing. My point is just that one can claim that only mental phenomena exists without having to believe that only one's own mental phenomena exists, and that one can claim that there is direct (or indirect) evidence of other minds without having to believe that there is direct (or indirect) evidence of something like the material things the realist believes in. — Michael
It would help if you take into consideration the entire post when responding so I don't have to repeat myself.What does the idealist mean with their use of "other" as in "other minds", if not external, or apart from your mind? What is it that separates your mind from others? What is the medium in which all these minds exist, if not some external world? Aren't you confusing anti-realism with idealism? — Harry Hindu
If the alternative to my position which you describe above logically leads to consequences which are far more absurd, which it does, then you should reject or at least revise the premise or premises which lead there. — S
This is genuinely very funny. But what's interesting is that you don't mean it to be. Do you know that there actually exist driverless cars now? Imagine if a driverless car was set on a course to travel from Manchester to Exeter, and then we all died before it reached its destination. It wouldn't continue to travel in miles per hour? It wouldn't be going, say, 30 miles per hour in an easterly direction? Even if the speedometer displayed "30mph", and even if the needle on the compass was pointing towards "E"? . — S
What about the windshield? Would it not be 1.5m2, even though it was made to that specification? What about the clock? When enough time has passed that the time displayed changes from "18:00" to "19:00", would an hour not have passed? — S
I already said that in my view it's not conceivable. That you think it is doesn't help me. — Terrapin Station
The only objective absurdity I can think of is a logical contradiction and neither realism nor idealism have any contradictions.
How is idealism more absurd than realism? — TheMadFool
I don't see how this is relevant. A number printed by a machine is not a measurement. A number needs to be interpreted according to standards before it's a measurement. That's why speedometers need to be properly calibrated. The speedometer reading might be frozen at 30 mph for all eternity, it's really irrelevant to the question of whether an hour is actually being measured. — Metaphysician Undercover
The windshield was measured, and therefore has a measurement. But what I am asserting is nonsense is the supposed hour of time which passes with no one to measure that hour. The clock doesn't measure the hour, for the same reason I explained with the speedometer above. The clock will show some numbers, but those numbers are meaningless without interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover
Then the idealist is simply wrong. One can demonstrably conceive of an unconceived object. I can, at least. Why should I believe that anyone else is so different from me in this respect?
I can also predict where this is going to go, and that the idealist will make an error in his or her reasoning here. "But you're conceiving of it!". Yes. Yes I am. — S
Is there a rock? Yes or no? — S
The transcendental idealist...can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call 'external', not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us.' (CPR A370)
How would you help the sheep-and-blue-field guy? — S
Ironically, all of that is irrelevant, and this is going exactly as I predicted. Okay, then by your definition, they don't have a measurement. So what? I don't care if you want to speak dumb. You'd have to make an additional argument that I should speak dumb. Importantly, this still doesn't mean that the car wouldn't be travelling at 30mph in an easterly direction, that the windshield wouldn't have an area of 1.5m2, and that an hour hadn't passed. And your point about a faulty speedometer obviously violates the thought experiment. You think I meant a faulty speedometer? No. Don't assume a faulty speedometer. Assume a working speedometer. — S
Okay, but you still have the gigantic problem of explaining innumerable things in nature of various sizes, for example in terms of height in metres, which have yet to be measured. It's like you don't even understand the purpose of measurement. The purpose of measurement is to find out what specifications something is. The problem here is your frequent misuse of a term such as "determine". No, not determine, find out. The specifications are predetermined, otherwise there would be nothing to find out, and that obviously wouldn't make any sense. They're objective. It's already of a particular size, say, a specific height in metres. We only measure it to find out the specifics. — S
The rest of your post completely misses the point yet again, because you fail to realise that you're begging the question by assuming premises I don't accept, and then drawing conclusions from these premises. . — S
It has zero effect on my argument. If you want to validly argue against me, then you cannot beg the question. If you want to be unreasonable, then please continue doing what you're doing. — S
The rest of your post completely misses the point yet again, because you fail to realise that you're begging the question by assuming premises I don't accept, and then drawing conclusions from these premises. — S
Yes, i believe you. And i would even argue that it is obligatory when following the logic of idealism for the idealist to accept any realist claims to the contrary of allegedly "conceiving of an unconceived object", as contradictory as that might sound. For the idealist can always interpret the realist's statements in a way that satisfies idealistic logic.
For example, when a realist is asked to explain himself, he might say "When I say that I am conceiving of an unconceived object, I have this particular image in mind". All that the idealist can say in response is "I wish you wouldn't name that experience "unconceived"!" — sime
The issue you're dealing with is your innate realism. Yours is the so-called 'argumentum ad lapidium' used by Johnson against Berkeley, who said of Berkeley's idealist arguments, 'I refute it thus!' whilst kicking a stone. — Wayfarer
What you're not allowing for, is that the very notion of 'existence' is what is at issue.
From a naive realist viewpoint, of course the Universe is populated with all manner of things that nobody has ever seen yet. The alternative appears absurd, not to say monstrously egotistical.
But the question you're dealing with is the question of the nature of knowledge itself. How do we know about stones (and quasars and the rest) ? Why, it's through a combination of the reception of sensory data, with our reasoning capacity. That is the very substance of knowledge itself. We are sensory and intellectual beings, and our knowledge is derived from the combination of those capacities - capacities which are themselves dependent on the abilities of the knowing subject - the very factor which the so-called 'objective sciences' always want to leave out. — Wayfarer
Now the Kantian form of idealism argues that in some fundamental respect, knowledge of anything whatever is inextricably bound up with the apparatus of the understanding. Even those things which apparently, and empirically, exist independently of us, are only known to us, by virtue of the organs of knowledge and the capacity of reason, about which Kant says — Wayfarer
The transcendental idealist...can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call 'external', not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us.' (CPR A370)
Now, lest you dismiss this all as philosophical claptrap, do take the time to peruse this article which asks a very similar question to that posed in the OP, as considered through the perspective of the hardest of hard sciences, to whit, physics. And it is precisely this issue which has been thrown into sharp relief by the so-called 'observer problem' in physics. — Wayfarer
Try in various ways to explain how alternatives make sense to me, via various ways of characterizing, detailing what I'm talking about, what properties I'm referring to/how those properties can obtain, what it amounts to for them to obtain, etc. — Terrapin Station
That the car is moving at 30mph is a judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover
. What is it exactly that you're talking about here? I am talking about a rock. Say, this rock I'm holding in my hand right now. I'm then reasoning about what would happen to it. To begin with, are you talking about the same thing as me? The rock? — S
I am a realist regarding both the existence of objects and the meaning of words. — S
It's arguable whether Kantian idealism is even idealism. It has some things in common with both idealism and realism. Parts of it are fundamentally realist. — S
What about the world before we existed? How plausible is it that there was no world before us, and would be no world after us? — S
'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
As I said, you're basically using the same argument as Johnson against Berkeley. — Wayfarer
Right - but this is an exercise in philosophy, and philosophy questions what we normally take for granted. Whereas, you're arguing on the basis of its very taken-for-grantedness - 'why should I not take the reality of 'the rock' (world, universe, whatever) for granted?' And there is no answer to that, other than to say that questioning the taken-for-granted nature of common experience is what philosophy does. — Wayfarer
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107 — Wayfarer
Is there another way to say “I can conceive an unconceived object”? — Mww
Kantian idealism isn’t the idealism of Berkeley or Descartes, but it is a necessary dualism which retains a strictly mental, re: subjectivist idealism, parameter, annexed directly with an empirical realism. Which was the foundation of my comments on the experiment. I’m sure you’re aware of all that. — Mww
a) I'm not going to have as a premise that time is one of the forms of our sensibility, b) I'm not even sure what that even means, c) I don't know enough about the demonstration referenced, and d) I am seeking more of a simplified discussion, starting from easier, basic stuff, then building from there. — S
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