I think the takeaway is that we cannot hope to get a "one-size-fits-all" definition of 'real', or 'existent'. It seems the best we can do is hone in on a somewhat fuzzy sense of the term and hopefully sharpen that sense up a bit. — Janus

Thanks for taking the time to parse my rather terse "which direction" question! I could try to say it again, better, but your takeaway is pretty much where I was going with it. We can either adopt a definition of "real" and go on to discover things that fit our definition, or we can take a look at what I've called the "conceptual landscape," see how the various denizens relate, and then decide that "real" would be a good term to use for one of the denizens, based on how it's been used in some respectable tradition. But either way, it's a pragmatic effort, in the best sense. As you say, we aren't likely to come up with a "one-size-fits-all" definition. But it may well be the case that something like @Wayfarer's schema, for instance, can do excellent philosophical work for us, without requiring us to pin "real" down to some fact of the matter or some correct usage.

My point about universals is that they are fundamental constituents of this ‘R’. I think Wheeler’s simile of ‘paper maché’ is a little misleading, as the tenets of physical theory are rather more ‘solid’ than this suggests. But regardless the elements of the theory are real in a different sense to its objects. They comprise theories and mathematical expressions of observed regularities. — Wayfarer

Works for me. What would be interesting, then, would be to investigate the ways in which the elements of the theory are different from its objects. If I understand Wheeler's conception, that can be done without further talk about "real."

the question as to what we might mean by "mind-independent'―a term that seems to be much more slippery than 'real'. — Janus

Yes, it's slippery, but it lends itself more easily to some kind of investigation than "real" does. I simply don't know how I could tell if a philosophical object is real or not. Depends what you mean! Whereas with "mind-independent," the ground is a bit firmer. If I claim that universals and abstracta have no existence apart from minds, I'm saying they lack the property of mind-independence. If I further claim that my thought of "If p, then q" is dependent on my thinking it, whereas the proposition "If p, then q" is not, that's another way of talking about mind-independence.

You may feel there's not much difference in clarity between "mind-independent" and "real," and I agree it's not a huge categorical difference; I just find myself knowing a little better what I'm thinking about, when I think about what "mind-independence" means. This could be because "real" has so many contexts and usages, whereas "mind-independence" is rather technical, and not as widely connotative.

And in turn that begs the question as to what we might mean by "mind-independent'―a term that seems to be much more slippery than 'real'. — Janus

Yes. I keep getting myself into arguments that leave me wondering what definition of independence is in play. A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. I think that only things that are created and maintained in existence by the mind are mind-dependent. That makes for quite a short list.

We end up with worldview that literally uses universals constantly (in mathematics, definitions, logical inferences) while denying their ontological standing. — Wayfarer

Sorry. What, exactly, is their ontological standing? Are we talking platonism here?

What, exactly, is their ontological standing? Are we talking platonism here? — Ludwig V

The fact that the theoretical constructs are an essential constituent of what is considered real, while they're not themselves existent in the way that the objects of the theory are.

In your description of how the term, "real" can be compared to the term, "mind-independence", I am reminded of your attention given to Rödl awhile back. He argues for abandoning the ground being sought by either lexicon:

However, on closer inspection, it seems not to address our difficulty. We sought to comprehend how a judgment of experience can be complete in the thought of its necessity. But knowledge of the logical principle is not a judgment of experience; it is absolute knowledge. Even as there is absolute knowledge, which comprehends itself to be what it is to be, simply as judgment, this does not mend the insufficiency, which entails the incomprehensibility, of the judgment of experience. For, the logical principle supplies no justification of any judgment of experience; no scientific principle can be derived from the principle of logic. This is so precisely because the logical principle is without contrary. A judgment without contrary does not justify any judgment of experience. A judgment that justifies, as much as a judgment that is justified, has a contrary. Therefore, knowledge of the logical principle does not supply the lack from which the judgment of experience suffers; it does not complete the progression of the judgment of experience from assertoric to apodictic modality. We already saw that if the logical principle did justify principles of science, it would complete science. Completing it, the logical principle would transform science into a judgment without contrary, and in this completed science, the structure of power, power / act, act, would have vanished.

This may enjoin us to hold the logical principle separate from science and think of absolute knowledge as distinct from empirical knowledge. But then absolute knowledge not only does not address our difficulty of comprehending the judgment of experience; it repels all concepts through which we think the judgment of experience. First, absolute knowledge—the consciousness of the logical principle—then is not necessary and does not understand itself to be necessary. For, the thought of a judgment’s validity is the thought of its necessity only because and insofar as it is a judgment that excludes its contrary. Second, absolute knowledge then cannot be an act, specifically not the original act, of the power of knowledge. For it contains no thought of a distinction of power and act and therefore cannot be an understanding of itself as the power whose acts are judgments of experience. Absolute knowledge remains enclosed within itself, repelling any connection to empirical knowledge. If we consider what we now pretend to think in the idea of absolute knowledge, we realize that, instead of the fullness of being, we think nothing at all. — Rödl, Sebastian. Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism (pp. 152-153). Harvard University Press.

Can you unpack what Rödl means here by the incomprehensibility of the judgment of experience? Is he pointing to the problem of grounding causal necessity in logical necessity? And how do you see this bearing on our discussion? What do you mean by ‘the ground being sought by either lexicon’?

A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. — Ludwig V

Yes, this conception seems to be trivial and have no interesting consequences most of the time which is why I think Wayfarer's crusade is largely vacuous and pointless. If something that we perceive clearly has a consistent mapping to something in the outside world, maintains a certain invariance (or perhaps covariance), then thats something that is genuine information about somrthing that exists independently of our minds.

why I think Wayfarer's crusade is largely vacuous and pointless. — Apustimelogist

Whereas from my perspective that is a fair description of your responses to it, but let’s not get involved in mudslinging.

I think that only things that are created and maintained in existence by the mind are mind-dependent. That makes for quite a short list. — Ludwig V

That would be the mainstream understanding. The point of philosophical analysis is to see through it.

I don't think Its mudslinging because I have made responses to your perspective befote where I have basically said that. I don't think there is any meaningful, actionable content to this mysterious noumenal-phenomrnal divide.

Is he pointing to the problem of grounding causal necessity in logical necessity? — Wayfarer

No. That would be taking for granted that we are given the means to compare "our" necessity with what is not "ours"; Which was the original complaint of Kant against Hume. Rödl is arguing that Hegel's argument nips that stuff off out at the root. The 'idealism" is not an explanation.

There are many other responses to Hegel. I am just trying to focus upon what is called out in Rödl's language.

There are broad differences between interpreters of text in the language of "idealists".

The title of that very difficult book is Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism. Do you think the absolute idealism of the title is something he is trying to advocate and explain? Or as something he wishes to rebut?

Sorry, it was a bad choice of words on my part, I was irritated. To say it more philosophically: I read your responses to this OP as specious because I don’t think they demonstrate any grasp of the point being made. It is one thing to rebut an argument by showing faults with it, but not seeing the point of an argument is not a rebuttal, and nothing you’ve said indicates that you see the point of the argument.

The work is difficult. At the same time, it is painfully simple. It relies upon very few arguments. repeated ad infinitum.

I don't read it as a replacement for other advocates.

Hegel is well known for being an advocate for this or that. Rödl is doing something different.

but not seeing the point of an argument is not a rebuttal, and nothing you’ve said indicates that you see the point of the argument. — Wayfarer

I think not seeing the point is a rebuttal. If something doesn' have any interesting consequences then I don't see a reason to uphold it.

As usual, there's a lot to unpack in Rodl, but I've generally found it worthwhile. Let me start with a simple question (and I don't want to take us too far from the main thread of this conversation): Rodl's idealism would probably view talk of "reality" and "mind-independence" as sharing a fatal flaw, such that to say one is more or less useful, philosophically, hardly signifies. That flaw would be an assumed demarcation between what we can know as real/unreal, and mind-dependent/independent. A "judgment of experience," here, has nothing to do with logical principles; I think you're suggesting we interpret such principles as the mind-independent reality that we want to connect with experience. "The logical principle supplies no justification of any judgment of experience; no scientific principle can be derived from the principle of logic."

Is this on the right track?

Right — and that’s why I found the Rödl passage interesting. He’s saying that logical principles don’t ground experience, but they also can’t be treated as a mind-independent reality separate from it. That’s why empirical knowledge remains incomplete if we treat it on its own. My point about the existence–reality distinction is very much in that spirit: we shouldn’t collapse reality into empirical existence, but we also shouldn’t reify reality as if it were some external substrate “out there".

That flaw would be an assumed demarcation between what we can know as real/unreal, and mind-dependent/independent. A "judgment of experience," here, has nothing to do with logical principles; I think you're suggesting we interpret such principles as the mind-independent reality that we want to connect with experience. — J

I read Rödl to not saying we could know the limits of "logical" principles. If we cannot know their limits as the basis of "experience", we cannot know their absence as a verification of fact.

My point about the existence–reality distinction is very much in that spirit: we shouldn’t collapse reality into empirical existence, but we also shouldn’t reify reality as if it were some external substrate “out there". — Wayfarer

Yes. Again, I have issues with those particular terms but that's irrelevant to the point you're making, which I think is extremely important.

I read Rödl to not [be?] saying we could know the limits of "logical" principles. If we cannot know their limits as the basis of "experience", we cannot know their absence as a verification of fact. — Paine

I'd like to hear more on this. (Did I edit your 1st sentence correctly?) I'm not sure I understand the part about "we cannot know their absence as a verification of fact."

We end up with worldview that literally uses universals constantly (in mathematics, definitions, logical inferences) while denying their ontological standing. — Wayfarer

I conclude that your position is somewhere in platonist territory, and that you think that nominalism amounts to denying their existence. I don't agree with either conjunct. In my book, there is no doubt that universals exist. The argument is about their mode of existence or (what comes to the same thing) what kind of object they are.

The fact that the theoretical constructs are an essential constituent of what is considered real, while they're not themselves existent in the way that the objects of the theory are. — Wayfarer

I don't get that. I thought you believed that our concepts and perceptions were all constructs.

That would be the mainstream understanding. The point of philosophical analysis is to see through it. — Wayfarer

No. The point of philosophy is to weigh up mainstream and fringe opinions and decide which are satisfactory and which are not.

Yes, that is what I meant.

As for what can be taken as verification, this passage from Žižek helps me see different ways to read Hegel that bears on what may be referred to as "mind-independence:

The root of this trouble lies with the deadlock at the heart of the Kantian edifice, as noted by Henrich: Kant starts with our cognitive capacity—the Self with its three features (unity, synthetic activity, emptiness) is affected by noumenal things and, through its active synthesis, organizes impressions into phenomenal reality; however, once he arrives at the ontological result of his critique of knowledge (the distinction between phenomenal reality and the noumenal world of Things-in-themselves), “there can be no return to the self. There is no plausible interpretation of the self as a member of one of the two worlds.”[381] This is where practical reason comes in: the only way to return from ontology to the Self is via freedom: freedom unites the two worlds, and provides for the unity or coherence of the Self—this is why Kant repeated again and again the motto: “subordinate everything to freedom.”[382] Here, however, a gap between Kant and his followers occurs: for Kant, freedom is an “irrational” fact of reason, it is simply and inexplicably given, something like an umbilical cord inexplicably rooting our experience in the unknown noumenal reality, not the First Principle out of which one can develop a systematic notion of reality, while the Idealists from Fichte onwards cross this limit and endeavor to provide a systematic account of freedom itself. The status of this limit changes with the Idealists: what was for Kant an a priori limitation, so that the very notion of “going over” is stricto sensu meaningless, becomes for the Idealists just an indication that Kant was not yet ready to pursue his project to the end, to draw all the consequences from his breakthrough. For the Idealists, Kant got stuck half-way, while for Kant, his Idealist followers totally misunderstood his critique and fell back into pre-critical metaphysics or, worse, mystical Schwarmerei.

There are thus two main versions of this passage:[383] (1) Kant asserts the gap of finitude, transcendental schematism, the negative access to the Noumenal (via the Sublime) as the only one possible, and so forth, while Hegel’s absolute idealism closes the Kantian gap and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. (2) It is Kant who goes only half-way in his destruction of metaphysics, still maintaining the reference to the Thing-in-itself as an external inaccessible entity, and Hegel is merely a radicalized Kant, who moves from our negative access to the Absolute to the Absolute itself as negativity. Or, to put it in terms of the Hegelian shift from epistemological obstacle to positive ontological condition (our incomplete knowledge of the thing becomes a positive feature of the thing which is in itself incomplete, inconsistent): it is not that Hegel “ontologizes” Kant; on the contrary, it is Kant who, insofar as he conceives the gap as merely epistemological, continues to presuppose a fully constituted noumenal realm existing out there, and it is Hegel who “deontologizes” Kant, introducing a gap into the very texture of reality. In other words, Hegel’s move is not to “overcome” the Kantian division, but, rather, to assert it “as such,” to remove the need for its “overcoming,” for the additional “reconciliation” of the opposites, that is, to gain the insight—through a purely formal parallax shift—into how positing the distinction “as such” already is the looked-for “reconciliation.” Kant’s limitation lies not in his remaining within the confines of finite oppositions, in his inability to reach the Infinite, but, on the contrary, in his very search for a transcendent domain beyond the realm of finite oppositions: Kant is not unable to reach the Infinite—what he is unable to see is how he already has what he is looking for. Gérard Lebrun has clarified this crucial point in his analysis of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s antinomies.[384]

The commonplace among defenders of Kant is that Hegel’s critique, although apparently more audacious (Hegel sees contradictions everywhere), only domesticates or blunts the Kantian antinomies. Kant is, so the story goes (as retold from Heidegger to postmodernists), the first philosopher who really confronted the subject’s finitude not only as an empirical fact, but as the very ontological horizon of our being. This led him to conceive antinomies as genuine unresolvable deadlocks, inescapable scandals of reason, in which human reason becomes involved by its very nature—the scandal of what he even calls “euthanasia of Reason.” The impasse is here irreducible, there is no mediation between the opposites, no higher synthesis. We thus get the very contemporary image of a human subject caught in a constitutive deadlock, marked by an a priori ontological split or gap. As for Hegel, although he may appear to radicalize antinomies by conceiving them as “contradictions” and universalizing them, seeing them everywhere, in every concept we use, and, going even further, ontologizing them (while Kant locates antinomies in our cognitive approach to reality, Hegel locates them in reality itself), Hegel’s radicalization is a ruse: once reformulated as “contradictions,” antinomies are caught in the machinery of the dialectical progress, reduced to an in-between stage, a moment on the road towards the final reconciliation. Hegel thus effectively blunts the scandalous edge of the Kantian antinomies which threatened to bring Reason to the edge of madness, renormalizing them as part of a global ontological process.

Lebrun demonstrates that this commonly shared conception is thoroughly wrong: it is Kant himself who actually defuses the antinomies. One should always bear in mind Kant’s result: there are no antinomies as such, they emerge simply out of the subject’s epistemological confusion between phenomena and noumena. After the critique of Reason has done its work, we end up with a clear and unambiguous, non-antagonistic, ontological picture, with phenomena on one side and noumena on the other. The whole threat of the “euthanasia of Reason,” the spectacle of Reason as forever caught in a fatal deadlock, is ultimately revealed as a mere theatrical trick, a staged performance designed to confer credibility on Kant’s transcendental solution. This is the feature that Kant shares with pre-critical metaphysics: both positions remain in the domain of Understanding and its fixed determinations, and Kant’s critique of metaphysics spells out the final result of metaphysics: as long as we move in the domain of Understanding, Things-in-themselves are out of reach, our knowledge is ultimately in vain.

In what, then, does the difference between Kant and Hegel with regard to antinomies effectively reside? Hegel changes the entire terrain: his basic reproach concerns not what Kant says, but Kant’s unsaid, Kant’s “unknown knowns” (to use Donald Rumsfeld’s newspeak)—Kant cheats, his analysis of antinomies is not too poor, but rather too rich, for he smuggles into it a whole series of additional presuppositions and implications. Instead of really analyzing the immanent nature of the categories involved in antinomies (finitude versus infinity, continuity versus discontinuity, etc.), he shifts the entire analysis onto the way we, as thinking subjects, use or apply these categories. Which is why Hegel’s basic reproach to Kant concerns not the immanent nature of the categories, but, in an almost Wittgensteinian way, their illegitimate use, their application to a domain which is not properly theirs. Antinomies are not inscribed into categories themselves, they only arise when we go beyond the proper domain of their use (the temporal-phenomenal reality of our experience) and apply them to noumenal reality, to objects which cannot ever become objects of our experience. In short, antinomies emerge the moment we confuse phenomena and noumena, objects of experience with Things-in-themselves.

Kant can only perceive finitude as the finitude of the transcendental subject who is constrained by schematism, by the temporal limitations of transcendental synthesis: for him, the only finitude is the finitude of the subject; he does not consider the possibility that the very categories he is dealing with may be “finite,” i.e., that they may remain categories of abstract Understanding, not yet the truly infinite categories of speculative Reason. And Hegel’s point is that this move from categories of Understanding to Reason proper is not an illegitimate step beyond the limits of our reason; it is rather Kant himself who oversteps the proper limits of the analysis of categories, of pure notional determinations, illegitimately projecting onto this space the topic of temporal subjectivity, and so forth. At its most elementary, Hegel’s move is a reduction, not an enrichment, of Kant: a subtractive move, a gesture of taking away the metaphysical ballast and of analyzing notional determinations in their immanent nature. — Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Zero, chapter 5

I understand Rödl to be standing with Gérard Lebrun's reading of Hegel here. The question of the "real" is not a place in a schema. The limit of the "natural" is not pointing to its supersession.

here is no single way of categorizing things as real or not. It depends on what kind of thing you are talking about. — Ludwig V

I still don't think you'll get a particularly clear criteria unless its contextually baked in. I think conceptually, its really hard to say one way or the other on any example.

I cannot say I am surprised at how quickly you got off the boat. A shame, because it is quite obviously a silly line of thinking.

The Ted Kaczynski archive?

I offer this far more simple excerpt from the Nishijima-roshi, a Sōtō Zen priest who died in 2012, in respect of the real and the existent:

The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit.

So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit. I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.

Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.

So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word spirit is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Gudo Nishijima-roshi, Three Philosophies and One Reality

Compare with Terrence Deacon’s absential:

Absential: The paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind; described as a constitutive absence.

Constitutive absence: A particular and precise missing something that is a critical defining attribute of 'ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences.

Also Wittgenstein's aphorism:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

I conclude that your position is somewhere in platonist territory, and that you think that nominalism amounts to denying their existence. I don't agree with either conjunct — Ludwig V

The decline of Platonist realism is well-established intellectual history. The constellations of attitudes which Lloyd Gerson designates 'Ur-Platonism' (the broader Platonist movement including but not limited to the Dialogues of Plato) is realist about universals (see Edward Feser Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance). But to say that, is to invite the question, 'if they're real, where do they exist?' The usual response is to say that they're the products of the human mind, and so of the h.sapiens brain, conditioned as it is by adaptive necessity and so on. This is the 'naturalised epistemology' route. The neo-traditionalist approach is that the ability to perceive universals and abstract relations is the hallmark of the rational intellect which differentiates humans as 'the rational animal'. It doesn't take issue with the facts of natural science, but differs with respect to the interpretation of meaning.

I thought you believed that our concepts and perceptions were all constructs. — Ludwig V

One of the central questions of philosophy is what, if anything, exists sui generis—independent of construction—and what relation our mental constructs bear to it.

By presenting the readings concerning different ways to understand idealism in Kant and Hegel, I was not trying to challenge your views regarding the role of materialism in present and past cultures. I am suggesting that what concerns Rödl does not support either side of what you have framed as the choices available to us.

What do you see as the choices or sides that I'm making available?

I will try to answer your question in the next few days. I have work to do.

On the other hand, we have exchanged words for many years now regarding how to understand what has been written about such things. Shall I write as if none of that ever happened?

Please don't go to any trouble. Those passages you provided were on-point, but they are very dense and difficult, without the background in Hegel and Kant which Rödl has. It's only that, since this thread has been active (a couple of years now), I feel that its basic points are often been mis-interpreted (not saying by you.)

Your question about choices is a fair response to my challenge. I will think about it.

I get that an old thread may not be the best place to respond. Maybe J's thread on Rödl would be better.

I wouldn't mind that. We all kind of left off, as it's a challenging book, but on the other hand, I thought we were actually making some headway. I'm willing, anyway.

Okay. I will try to show up there with something.

Either way, to me, it appears as if you have an intellectual disability. I apologize for saying "mentally handicapped". — Metaphysician Undercover

I see no difference between the two terms. Anyway either way I'm not offended, so no need for apology. I found your saying that rather amusing.

I can understand your words easily enough, but they seem irrelevant and thus pointless, so I think our starting assumptions are probably so far apart that the effort required for me to unpack what you might be getting at seems to be not worth it.



Cheers J, it seems we agree about the "takeaway".

If I claim that universals and abstracta have no existence apart from minds, I'm saying they lack the property of mind-independence. — J

The problem I see is that it's not clear what we mean by "mind" and even less clear what we might mean by "mind-independence". For example Wayfarer says that because it is us thinking about the time before we existed that the time before we existed must be mind-dependent. On that stipulation everything we think about must be mind-dependent, as opposed to merely the way we think about it. He'll say that physicalism is incoherent because it is a concept we invented, and concepts are not physical, therefore physicalism cannot be true. I think that is tendentious nonsense.

But it may well be the case that something like Wayfarer's schema, for instance, can do excellent philosophical work for us, without requiring us to pin "real" down to some fact of the matter or some correct usage. — J

Pretty much all I see in Wayfarer's posts is the attempt to explain (away) modern philosophical positions and dispositions in psychological terms―the rise of science has caused us to become blind to something important in traditional "proper" philosophy, modernity has lost its way, "blind spot in science", physicalism could not possibly be a coherent position, blah.

I don't find any of that remotely convincing, worth taking seriously or even interesting, so you must be seeing something there I don't.

You may feel there's not much difference in clarity between "mind-independent" and "real," and I agree it's not a huge categorical difference; I just find myself knowing a little better what I'm thinking about, when I think about what "mind-independence" means. — J

That's fair enough―we probably all carry different sets of associations with these terms―which of course is part of the problem with the attempt to mint clear and precise definitions. One thing I think is not needful of precise definitions in order to be clear to me―if I say I can think about a mind-independent reality, say whatever existed before there were any percipients and someone says "but you're not really thinking about a mind-independent reality, because you're using your mind to think about it", and then i point out the conflation in such an argument between what is being thought about and the act of thinking about it, and that falls on deaf ears, then my respect for the one making that argument falls, because I start to smell an unpleasant odor of confirmation bias at work.

Yes. I keep getting myself into arguments that leave me wondering what definition of independence is in play. A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. I think that only things that are created and maintained in existence by the mind are mind-dependent. That makes for quite a short list. — Ludwig V

Right, and the words you used show the ambiguity that is traded on "anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent"; on one construal this is true by definition of course anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent, but if you say 'the objects I have in mind are not necessarily mind-dependent, even though the thoughts I have about them are" that, for me, clears up any confusion.