This just sounds like Kant's noumena, phenomena dichotomy or the repetitive discussions of indirect versus direct realism.. Sure our worldview is strongly shaped by our culture, our language, our limited sense perception and the way in which our mind integrates and presents sense data to us. I just don't see how that makes a reality independent of human minds any less "real" or "existent". It is our limitation not a limitation on reality independent of our minds and thoughts.
It seems like a tautology to see our minds create our reality but begs the question of a reality independent of our minds. — prothero
So what form of idealism is being promoted? What does this form of idealism have to say about cosmology (14 billion year old universe, 5 billion year old solar system and all the time before advanced or organized minds existed?) Or even the process of evolution. I just can't see how the notion that everything is just minds and mental contents, survives the modern scientific view of the world we live in.? — prothero
…seems like a tautology tosee(say) our minds create…. — prothero
As to 'not being able to see' - the very act of seeing (or not seeing) draws on the mind's structuring capacities. The thought experiment of picturing a scene from "no point of view" highlights this: our attempts to describe even an unseen reality always, implicitly or explicitly, reintroduce a perspective. It's not merely that our minds are limited in grasping an already-structured external reality. It's that the structure itself (the segmentation into "objects," the experience of "color" or "sound") arises from the interaction between the world and the mind's organizing principles. This doesn't make what we regard as 'external reality' any less than real - rather, it's to point out that its reality-as-known or reality-as-intelligible is co-constituted by mind. Self and world are co-arising, neither exists in any absolute sense. — Wayfarer
In the end it seems clear that there is a world, reality, universe which carries on with or without us and which is really quite oblivious to our conceptions and which will obliterate us (and thus our minds, perceptions and thoughts) if we get too carried away with the notion the we create reality as opposed to just living in it, temporarily and contingently — prothero
...that Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. — Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship
We are accustomed nowadays to thinking of ourselves as 'the outcome' or 'the product of' material causation, the accidental byproducts of an entirely fortuitous chain of events. Historically, idealism arose as a criticism and protest against that, the observation that whilst physically h.sapiens is a mere blip in the vastness of cosmic time, nevertheless it is us who are aware of that vastness, we are the form in which it becomes aware of itself. — Wayfarer
It should be pretty clear that I do not subscribe to Russell's view of our role in nature. — prothero
I always have had trouble with philosophical skepticism (especially solipsism) and any form of absolute idealism, even to the point of refusing to seriously entertain the premise or spend considerable time or effort to follow the argument. — prothero
Kant would argue we can know very little about the noumena. Modern science especially with the aid of instruments and technology would seem to argue we can know quite a lot, and our ability to manipulate and alter the world would seem to agree. — prothero
Arguing whether our experience of the world is direct or indirect, mind independent or mind created in some ways seems beside the point, as long as you understand cognition and perception. — prothero
What is the nature of reality apart from us or apart from our mind and experience? — prothero
One of the most decisive systematic–historical reasons for the inconsistency within the concept of nature and the concomitant exclusion of subjectivity, experience, and history from nature is, according to Whitehead, the abstract, binary distinction between primary and secondary qualities of the 17th century physical notion of matter based on the substance–quality scheme. Quantitative, measurable properties, such as extension, number, size, shape, weight, and movement, are for Galileo via Descartes through to Locke real, i.e., primary qualities of the thing itself. They are conceived as inherent to things as well as independent of perception. In contrast, secondary qualities, such as colors, scents, sound, taste, as well as inner states, feelings, and sensations, are understood to be located in subjective perception, in the mind, and are considered to be dependent on the primary qualities. They only appear to the subject to be real qualities of the objects themselves. In modernity, then, the subject—which, by the way, theoretically as well as practically, cannot be justifiably defined as naturally human—has to endow the ‘dull nature’ with qualities and values, with meaning. — Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead
This topic got away from me, moving faster than I could follow. This coupled with being really busy with work and ailing mother, it got to be over a month.But, thanks again, we should let the thread owner get a word in. — Wayfarer
Despite my efforts to the contrary and the lack of space in the title line, I don't think anybody articulated exactly what I'm trying to point out with this thread. I don't expect an answer from you since you don't claim said independentThe title of this thread—“Does anybody really support mind-independent reality?”—is precisely the issue." — Wayfarer
Per my comment just above, no, it's still mind dependent. It only indicates that the clock still relates to you even when not being immediately perceived.I offered that if we can produce concepts that don't seem to subjectively vary (e.g. the ticking of a clock), then is that not mind-independent? — Apustimelogist
You need to accept more if you're to claim mind independence. I agree that this positivist position that you (Wayfarer mostly) continually knock down is not a mind-independent view.... the positivist says I can measure, test, observe, recognise, describe etc the world we are in and if there is anything else to it, show it to me so I can measure it? If you can’t, then why should I accept that it is there at all? — Punshhh
It may presume physicalism to be based on false premises, but it does not demonstrate it, or if it does, the quote to which this is a reference does not demonstrate it.[Idealism] explains why physicalism is based on false premisses. — Wayfarer
OK, I agree with all that, but our belief being shaped by perceptions does not alter what is, does not falsify this externality, no more than the physicalist view falsifies the idealistic one.Cognitive science shows that what we experience as 'the world' is not the world as such - as it is in itself, you might say - but a world-model generated by our perceptual and cognitive processes. So what we take to be "the external world" is already shaped through our cognitive apparatus. This suggests that our belief in the world’s externality is determined by how we are conditioned, biologically, culturally and socially, to model and interpret experience, rather than by direct perception of a mind-independent domain. — Wayfarer
This part seems to be just an assertion. How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? It seems a very different view must be assumed to make these assertions. Fundamentally, I don't think there is 'importance' at all. Importance to what? Us? That's subjective importance, nothing fundamental.But the philosophical question is about the nature of existence, of reality as lived - not the composition and activities of those impersonal objects and forces which science takes as the ground of its analysis. We ourselves are more than objects in it - we are subjects, agents, whose actions and decisions are of fundamental importance.
Naive physicalism maybe. Few would assert such direct realism.And through critical self-awareness, we can come to understand that world we experience is already a mediated construction, not an unfiltered or unvarnished encounter with reality in itself. Which is what physicialism doesn’t see.
Patching it back in isn't excluding it. That it isn't a supernatural entity of its own is, yes, something excluded.Physicalism can't find any mind in the world it studies, because it begins by excluding it, and then tries to patch it back in as a 'result' or 'consequence' of the mindless interactions which are its subject matter and from which it seeks to explain everything about life and mind. — Wayfarer
I also acknowledge this, but any alternative to physicalism has the same significant explanatory gaps, so what's the point of bringing it up?You [relativist] acknowledge that physicalism has significant explanatory gaps when it comes to the philosophy of mind — Wayfarer
Yea, pretty much, and I've agreed that both 'man', 'mind' and 'object' are words referring to concepts, so it seems rather circular to suggest that 'man' is dependent on 'man'. Nothing seems to ground this.What does modern science have to say about the nature of man?
...
— D M Armstrong, The Nature of Mind
That is, as an object. — Wayfarer
I think this doesn't hold water. Observation may depend on subjectivity, but not on a subject or on a consciousness, both of which are, in the end, presumed objects. Objects being ideals, they are not the source of subjectivity, but rather a product of it.But philosophy cannot honestly sustain this stance. The human subject is not just an object within the world, but also the condition for any world appearing. Scientific objectivity depends on observation, and observation presupposes a subject—a standpoint, a perspective, a consciousness.
Here, Kant seems to be talking about the mental representation of time, not of time in itself. In that light, I see no conflict and I agree with the statement, especially since time is most often represented as a flow, a succession of states of things, which yes, is no more than a mental representation and is hardly foundational in a view where mental is not fundamental.. But just take the first paragraph in that section:
"1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation à priori. Without this presupposition we could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or in succession." -- Kant — Wayfarer
If this is an accurate representation of Bergson's position, he doesn't take a very scientific view. There is proper time (the thing in itself), coordinate time (an abstrction), and one's perception of time, which is what Kant seems to be talking about. Concerning (3), both clocks and people measure proper time, hence my non-scientific assessment. (4) correctly points out that the difference between people and clocks is one of precision, but better precision doesn't make it a different kind of time.... Aeon Magazine article on the Einstein-Bergson debate on time, specifically:
"To examine the measurements involved in clock time,(1) Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct.(2) But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession.(3) Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.
Bergson appreciated that we need the exactitude of clock time for natural science.(4) For example, to measure the path that an object in motion follows in space over a specific time interval, we need to be able measure time precisely. What he objected to was the surreptitious substitution of clock time for duration in our metaphysics of time. His crucial point in Time and Free Will was that measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement. --- Einstein-Bergson debate
Amateur late responder... :)Sorry for the late reply. — boundless
My problem with this is that there are also philosophical models that do not make any 'stance' about whether 'the physical' or 'the mental' is fundamental. — boundless
Most in fact, naturalism being one of them. Pretty much anything except materialism and idealism respectively. — — noAxioms
1) My comment concerned what various 'ism's state about what is fundamental, but your reply seems to be about what is.Naturalism generally explicitly denies anything 'supernatural' (there is nothing outside the 'universe' or the 'multiverse'). Unless it is something like 'methodological naturalism' I don't see how it is metaphysically neutral. — boundless
My example of one was a spacetime diagram which has no point of view. How is that still 1st person then, or at least not 3rd?Anyway, the 'third-person perspective' is said to more or less be equivalent to a view from anywhere that makes no reference to any perspective. I guess that you would say that there can't be any true 'third-person perspective', though.
Yes, it seems dualistic to assume that. No, neither needs to be fundamental for it to be dualism. They both could supervene on more primitive things, be they the same primitive or different ones.I meant: is it dualistic to assume that there is indeed consciousness and 'the material world' and none of them can be reduced to the other with the proviso, however, that any of them are 'ontologically fundamental'?
Not directly. It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence.Well, is it interesting, isn't it? I believe that, say, someone that endorses both materialism and scientism would actually tell you that the world is 'material' and totally describable. It would be ironic for him to admit that this implies that is not 'mind-independent'.
Perhaps so. This is consistent with my supervention hierarchy that goes something like mathematics->quantum->physical->mental->ontology(reality) which implies that the physical is mind independent (mind supervenes on it, not the other way around) but reality is mind dependent since what is real is a mental designation, and an arbitrary one at that. There's no fact about it, only opinion.Anyway. If, in order to be mind-independent a definition of reality must not rely on describability would not this mean that, in fact, we can't conceive such a definition of reality?
Nit: A thing 'looking like' anything is by definition a sensation, so while a world might (by some definitions) exists sans an sort of sensations, it wouldn't go so far as to 'look like' anything.Imagine 'how the world looks like' without any kind of sensations. — boundless
How do you account for the past, before any human-like intelligence existed? — Relativist
1) boundless made no mention of life forms. An observing entity is indeed implied, but I personally don't consider 'observing entities' to be confined to life forms.There were no sensations in the universe before life came into being. — Relativist
It is related to sentient experience in that some sentient thing is conceiving it. But that isn't a causal relation. Objects in each world cannot have any causal effect on each other, and yes, I can conceive of such a thing, doing so all the time. Wayfarer apparently attempts to deny at least the ability to do so without choosing a point of view, but I deny that such a choice is necessary. Any spacetime diagram is such a concept without choice of a point of view.The point is: can you conceive a world that has absolutely no relation to 'sentient experience'? — boundless
I don't consider this to be just a physicalist problem. The idealists have the same problem. It's a problem with any kind of realism, which is why lean towards a relational ontology which seems to not have this problem.The problem for me, however, is to explain from a purely physicalist point of view why there are these 'structures' in the first place. — boundless
I would say that if one denies the existence any kind of external reality (solipsism) or affirms that, at most, there might be something else but we do not interact in any way with that is irrational. — boundless
To emphasize what little weight I give to said basic intuitions, I rationally do not agree. Denial of existence of any kind of external reality isn't necessarily solipsism. At best, it's just refusal to accept the usual definition of 'exists', more in favor of a definition more aligned with the origin of the word, which is 'to stand out' to something (a relativist definition).I agree. That is contradicted by our basic intuitions. — Relativist
I consider myself quite the skeptic, but not in the solipsism direction. None of this 'cogito ergo sum' logic which leads to that.I always have had trouble with philosophical skepticism — prothero
The universe, not being contained by time, includes all times, so there is no 'this universe before life emerged'. This universe has life in it, period. A subsection of it before a certain time is a subset of the universe, not the universe itself.
Now if you deny this and have the universe contained by time, then it isn't really a universe, just an object that at some moment was created in a larger 'universe'. — noAxioms
I don't understand why you deny our basic intuitions about there being an external world. Surely you intuitively accepted this during your childhood, so what led you to believe you were mistaken?To emphasize what little weight I give to said basic intuitions, I rationally do not agree. Denial of existence of any kind of external reality isn't necessarily solipsism. At best, it's just refusal to accept the usual definition of 'exists', more in favor of a definition more aligned with the origin of the word, which is 'to stand out' to something (a relativist definition). — noAxioms
Cognitive science shows that what we experience as 'the world' is not the world as such - as it is in itself, you might say - but a world-model generated by our perceptual and cognitive processes. So what we take to be "the external world" is already shaped through our cognitive apparatus. This suggests that our belief in the world’s externality is determined by how we are conditioned, biologically, culturally and socially, to model and interpret experience, rather than by direct perception of a mind-independent domain.
— Wayfarer
OK, I agree with all that, but our belief being shaped by perceptions does not alter what is, does not falsify this externality, no more than the physicalist view falsifies the idealistic one. — noAxioms
But the philosophical question is about the nature of existence, of reality as lived - not the composition and activities of those impersonal objects and forces which science takes as the ground of its analysis. We ourselves are more than objects in it - we are subjects, agents, whose actions and decisions are of fundamental importance ~ Wayfarer
This part seems to be just an assertion. How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? — noAxioms
1) boundless made no mention of life forms. An observing entity is indeed implied, but I personally don't consider 'observing entities' to be confined to life forms. — noAxioms
It is indeed an assumption. It being an 'object' seems to be a mental designation, so not part of the assumption of whatever it is in itself not being observation dependent.The assumption that the object is at it is, in the absence of the observer, is the whole point. That is the methodological assumption behind the whole debate. — Wayfarer
Any such aspect wouldn't be a an inextricable aspect of the thing in itself, given said assumption above.The fact that there is an ineliminable subjective aspect doesn’t falsify that we can see what is, but it does call the idea of a completely objective view into question.
I can think of several that might do all that, but you probably would not choose that vocabulary to describe something not-you doing the exact same thing. The not-human thing doing say 'experiments' has no effect on things being what they are, again, given the assumption of lack of dependency above.Because we make judgements, for starters. We decide, we act, we perform experiments, among other things. What object does that?
Maybe. At least one interpretation gives a role to a sentient observer, leading to solipsism. The rest seem to discard altogether it as a distinct interaction separate from other kinds.Standard QM by itself is silent, I believe, on what is an 'observer'.
Of course, what is an observer is a matter of interpretations.intuition — boundless
Your choice of tense suggests that at said earlier time, 'the universe' (and not just the subset of the universe events where the time coordinate is some low value) 'was' devoid of life, that the universe changes over time. This is not consistent with a universe not contained by time.No, I don't think the universe is contained by time, but I believe time is real within the universe - and therefore there was a time before life emerged. — Relativist
I said I give little weight to intuitions since the purpose of intuition isn't truth, but rather pragmatism. Hence I question all intuitions and don't necessarily reject all of them (most though).I don't understand why you deny our basic intuitions about there being an external world.
Long story. The childhood intuition didn't hold water, just like God, or the time 'flowing' and there being a 'present' all seeming very intuitive, but completely lacking in empirical evidence. So I learned to be rational rather than to rationalize.Surely you intuitively accepted this during your childhood, so what led you to believe you were mistaken?
Your choice of tense suggests that at said earlier time, 'the universe' (and not just the subset of the universe events where the time coordinate is some low value) 'was' devoid of life, that the universe changes over time — noAxioms
I said I give little weight to intuitions since the purpose of intuition isn't truth, but rather pragmatism. Hence I question all intuitions and don't necessarily reject all of them (most though). — noAxioms
Because we make judgements, for starters. We decide, we act, we perform experiments, among other things. What object does that? ~ Wayfarer
I can think of several that might do all that, — noAxioms
How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? — noAxioms
I was going to suggest a thermostat, which performs experiments and acts upon the result of the experiment. I always reach for simple examples. But you'll move the goalpost no doubt.We decide, we act, we perform experiments, among other things. What object does that? — Wayfarer
Now we drag purpose into the mix. That wasn't in the original question (quoted above),. Most guys doing experiments in the lab are also doing those experiments due to the needs of their employers, not their own purposes, so does that make them not actual acts and experiments now?But AI is an instrument which has been created by human engineers and scientists, to fulfil their purposes. It's not a naturally-occuring object.
'Think' and 'decide' have now been added to the list. Hard to wedge especially that first word into what the thermostat is doing.The question stands - what kinds of objects think, decide, act, perform experiments? — Wayfarer
I beg to differ. That very phrase is used to describe what a self-driving car does, that it can perform its task without direct human intervention.AI is not a naturally occurring object, nor does it possess agency in the sense of autonomous intention.
Only for current lack of anything else defining different ones. There are devices that operate under their own goals, one notorious example being a physical robot that make multiple escape attempts, sometimes getting pretty far.It operates within a framework of goals and constraints defined by humans.
No, they don't always. OK, the game playing ones play games, but they don't play the way the humans tell them to. Driving cars are constrained by the road rules which admittedly are human rules. They'd do far better if they made up their own rules, but then the humans would likely not be able to follow them.So - AI systems embody or reflect human agency
I can designate a robot, rock, or person each as objects. Your choice not to do so would be your choice.so again, they're not objects, in the sense that the objects of the physical sciences are.
I must disagree. The (3D) state of the universe changes over (1D) time, but the (4D) universe does not. Similarly, the air pressure at a mountain changes over altitude, but the mountain itself, nor the air about it, is not at one preferred altitude, in any reference frame.The universe does change over time, from the perspective of any intra-universe reference frame. — Relativist
The pragmatic part of me still believes it, and it's the boss. The rational part thinks otherwise, but the boss, while it doesn't mind, is certainly not swayed. Part of growing up was to recognize the conflict between the two and keep them separate.You had a belief about the external world, and now you don't.
What if there are no beliefs, only acknowledgement of possibilities? I don't go that far, but I do try to identify rationalization when I see it and try to cut through fallacious reasoning.I can understand questioning it, given that it is possibly false, but most of our beliefs are possibly false and (I assume) you nevertheless continue to believe most of them.
What if we took away just the bold part? This world produces living organisms that interact with it. How would that interaction differ from the same word that is real?Regarding this particular intuition: IF there is an external world, and this world produced living organisms, those living organisms would necessarily need to successfully interact with that external world.
How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? — noAxioms
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