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. — Janus

This mis-states my view. I am not saying that “because we think about a time before we existed, therefore that time must be mind -dependent.” That would indeed be a trivial claim. What I have argued is that the concept of “a time before we existed” is only ever available as a thought. The point isn’t that the past did not exist independently, but that whatever we say about it is mediated by concepts. That is very different to how it's been paraphrased above.

Furthermore, a concept is not a physical thing — you can’t weigh it, touch it, or locate it in space. Yet concepts are indispensable to how we make sense of the world, including what is meant by 'physical' (which, incidentally, is something that is constantly being reviewed.) This doesn’t mean concepts are “unreal”; it means they belong to a different order of reality than the physical objects that they are describing. If physicalism ignores that, then it risks undermining its own claim to be coherent, since the doctrine itself is articulated in concepts. The 'standard model' of the atom is itself a mathematical construct, and whether there is any ultimately-existing point-particle which is material in nature is, shall we say, a contested question.

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 — Janus

This is the subject of the book The Blind Spot of Science, by Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser, and Evan Thompson.

What the book says that science is blind to, is the role of the subject, or more broadly, subjectivity, in the way that it construes knowledge. A précis of some of the elements laid out in the introduction:

1. The Bifurcation of Nature

Claim: The world is divided into “real” external objects (light waves, particles, forces) and mere subjective appearances (color, warmth, taste, etc.).

Blind spot: This division sidelines lived experience as illusory, even though it’s through experience that science arises in the first place. (This phrase is associated with Whitehead.)

2. Reductionism

Claim: The smallest entities (elementary particles) are most fundamental, and everything else can be explained by reducing it to them.

Blind spot: This kind of reductionism assumes that wholes are nothing but their parts, ignoring emergent structures and relationships that can’t be captured at the micro-level.

3. Objectivism

Claim: Science offers a “God’s-eye view,” revealing reality exactly as it is, independent of human perspective.

Blind spot: In practice, science is always done from within human contexts, perspectives, and methods—so the God’s-eye stance denies its own conditions of possibility.

4. Physicalism

Claim: Everything that exists is physical, and the list of physical facts exhausts all facts (chemical, biological, psychological, social).

Blind spot: Treating this metaphysical thesis as self-evident erases the distinctiveness of meaning, mind, and culture, which don’t straightforwardly reduce to physics.

5. Reification of Mathematical Entities

Claim: Mathematics is the true language of nature, and mathematical structures are the universe’s real architecture.

Blind spot: Elevating abstract models as if they are reality risks forgetting that they are human constructions grounded in lived experience.

6. Experience as Epiphenomenal

Claim: Consciousness is just a “user illusion,” like a desktop interface—useful but not fundamental.

Blind spot: Reducing experience to an illusion undermines the fact that experience is the very condition by which anything—including science—appears at all.

For those who don't think it is 'blah', details can be found here.

This mis-states my view. I am not saying that “because we think about a time before we existed, therefore that time must be mind -dependent.” That would indeed be a trivial claim. What I have argued is that the concept of “a time before we existed” is only ever available as a thought..The point isn’t that the past did not exist independently, but that whatever we say about it is mediated by concepts. That is very different to how it's been paraphrased above. — Wayfarer

As I read it the first underlined sentence in your response says essentially the same thing as the quoted sentence from me above it. Perhaps you could point out an essential difference between the two. The second underlined sentence in your response is also a trivial claim― of course it is true that if discourse is always conceptual, then anything we say is "mediated by concepts".

If you agree that a world, a universe, of things existed prior to the advent of humanity, then we have nothing to argue. I must say, though, that it puzzles me that you continue to think we are disagreeing about something despite the number of times we have gone over this.

I know about the 'blind spot' book and the prior article, the latter of which I read. I thought it was a pointless argument. because most of the natural sciences have no way of including the subject in their investigations. It is certainly true that what the various sciences investigate are the ways that different phenomena appear to us, and how they appear to function.

The question about whether or not science tells us anything about the "world as it in itself" is strictly undecidable. We can makes inferences about whether science does tell us anything about the in itself, but we cannot be sure.

For example, it seems highly implausible that a totally undifferentiated in itself could give rise to a perceived world of unimaginable differentiation―so we might find it plausible to think that differentiation is a real feature of the in itself, even though, since we can, by mere definition, only observe things as they appear, we obviously cannot certainly demonstrate such an inference to be true. That view also makes more sense of the fossil record, and astronomical observations.

The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. I can understand that for those who long for there to be more than merely this life, the idea that what exists independently of humans is a world of physical existents lacks any appeal. It doesn't matter to me what you think, what motivates me to respond is that you always seem to be pushing the idea that there is a certainly determinable truth of the matter, rather than it being instead a matter of what seems most plausible. I see a kind of dogmatism in that view, and I am not a fan of dogmatic thinking.

you always seem to be pushing the idea that there is a certainly determinable truth — Janus

:up:

If you agree that a world, a universe, of things existed prior to the advent of humanity, then we have nothing to argue. I must say, though, that it puzzles me that you continue to think we are disagreeing about something despite the number of times we have gone over this. — Janus

I very highly agree with this, as a 3p. You both seem to accept that things existed before human minds. That's enough.

I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object. — Wayfarer

I notice you don't try to address any of the more telling points, and even when you do as here you always seem to cherry-pick, and leave off part of what I've said, hopefully not deliberately in order to make it look like I'm saying something different. Anyway its a good practice in general to quote the whole of what you are responding to.

Of course I don't deny tout court that there are determinable truths, it is a denial that there is any certainly determinable truth of the matter as to whether our science and our experience in general gives us any knowledge of the in itself. Do you agree that it can only be assessed in terms of what seems most plausible or not. If not, why not?

:cool:

So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye— the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. — Wayfarer

And here is the nub of the conflation you continually make. It is not the existence of such realities that relies on an implicit perspective, but our thinking of such an existence. If you disagree with this what seems to me most obvious point, then please explain your disagreement.

I notice you don't try to address any of the more telling points — Janus

You said you don’t care abut the truth, makes no difference to your life, and it doesn’t matter to you what I think. You’re verging on trolling and I’d appreciate it if you desisted.

For you, everything is either a matter for science, or a matter of subjective opinion. But when this is reflected back at you, you complain about it, even though it’s your frequently stated view.

I never said I don't care about the truth. I said the answer to the question about the nature of the in itself is not particularly important to me. I've said many times I have no issue with views that don't accord with mine, and all the more so in relation to this particular issue.

All I ask is for coherent arguments and coherent responses to the questions I am posing in good faith, which is something which you seem to lack.

You try to distort everything I say in order to wriggle out of answering straightforward questions.

You don't really believe I'm a troll, that's just another deflective tactic, or if you do believe that then you are an idiot with no insight. The fact of the matter is that you apparently just don't have any answers.

I never said I don't care about the truth. — Janus

You said:

The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. — Janus

Done here.

You said:

The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. — Wayfarer

It's all about context, which is something you apparently don't understand, or choose to ignore when it suits you tactically.

I believe you know perfectly well I was referring there to the truth regarding that particular issue (the nature of the in itself). And you know perfectly well that what I meant is that the question has no certain answer, and that it therefore has no real bearing on how I live my life. Talk about lacking charitability and good faith!

Done here. — Wayfarer

Right, you're "done here " without actually having done anything.: roll:

If you insist. I think the essential difference is that you’re framing the question of 'mind-independence' as if it were about what lies behind appearances, whereas the point I’m making (following Kant and Schopenhauer) is that space, time, and differentiation themselves are forms of appearance. By “forms of appearance” I mean the basic parameters (Kant’s intuitions) within which anything can appear for us at all.

You can of course say that space, time, and causality existed before humans, but “before” is itself only meaningful within the framework of space, time, and causality. The transcendental point isn’t that time and space “began with us,” but that these forms belong to the structure of experience itself, not to the world as it is apart from any observer. They are conditions of appearance, not attributes of whatever reality might be outside all appearance.

So when you say “of course discourse is mediated by concepts,” you take me to be making a trivial claim about how language operates. But the transcendental point is deeper: the very possibility of there being objects in space and time at all is conditioned by the structures of sensibility and understanding. That’s not just mediation, it’s the constitution of the world as we actually experience it. Even the “view from nowhere,” which purports to describe the world as it would be without an observer, still relies on perspective—for scale and for temporal order.

we might find it plausible to think that differentiation is a real feature of the in itself, even though, since we can, by mere definition, only observe things as they appear, we obviously cannot certainly demonstrate such an inference to be true. — Janus

You’re conflating the empirical and the transcendental again. The point isn’t that, because we only ever observe appearances, we can’t be certain about what lies behind them. I'm not talking about what lies behind them. That’s an empirical framing or speculation. The transcendental point is that “differentiation” itself is already one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. So the claim is logical, not empirical: it’s about the structure of experience, not about what we can or can’t infer about the in-itself.

I know about the 'blind spot' book and the prior article, the latter of which I read. I thought it was a pointless argument. — Janus

So, you thought it pointless. Is that an argument? The fact that you 'can't see the point' of that book says nothing about its content. I think it's an important book, about philosophy of science, cultural history, nature of mind, and much else besides. It’s also very much in the vein of this OP although their presentation is vastly more comprehensive (but then it was written by three professors.)

I know you have said we've discussed this time and again, but then you keep asking the same questions again and again. The mind-created world is not saying that there was not a time before h.sapiens, which is what you keep thinking that I'm saying. When I clear that up, you then say 'well what are we arguing about, again?' This has happened a number of times in this thread, I've said all that need be said. So if it is a demand for yet another explanation I'm afraid there won't be any more forthcoming.

An excerpt from Schopenhauer WWI which lays out the case with clarity:

I found your saying that rather amusing. — Janus

That's how it was meant, amusement. However, we must be careful with our use of such, because making fun of another is a form of amusement which is mean, and I don't mean to be mean.

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. — Janus

OK, so you express the second option, rather than an intellectual disability, you have an attitudinal problem which discourages you from making the effort to understand.

Let me remind you of the issue, just so that you can see for yourself, that it is not a matter of what I say being irrelevant, but a matter of your attitude. You had refused to accept the importance of intuitional knowledge, claiming that only observation experience could provide reliable knowledge, i.e. empirical knowledge.

Let's grant for the sake of argument that (intellectual) intuition sometimes might give us an accurate picture of the nature of reality ("reality" here meaning something more than mere empirical reality, that is not merely things as they appear to us, but rather some "deeper" truth metaphysically speaking). How do we tell when a particular intuition has given us such knowledge?

I won't respond to the rest of your post as it seems like either sophistical nonsense or inaccurate speculations about my motives. — Janus

The problem with your attitude, exposed here, is that any knowledge we are born with must be intuitive. And, a certain basic knowledge is required even to support the human being's observational capacity. Note, that to observe is to take notice of, and this requires that your attention be directed by your intention, at the thing to be observed.

The basic foundational knowledge, which a person is born with, provides the substance, through this form of direction, upon which all observational (empirical) knowledge is constructed. Therefore it is impossible that the observational knowledge is more reliable than the intuitive knowledge, because the intuitive knowledge is what supports the observational knowledge. Your attitude demonstrates that you would believe that a logical conclusion is more reliable than the premises which it is drawn from.

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. — Janus

I'll leave that to you and @Wayfarer, but my 2 cents is that Wayfarer is saying something a bit different. Your general point, however, is that "mind" and "mind-independence" are not terms with universal consensus, and that's quite true.

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. — Janus

On this particular topic, what I find interesting is his use of "real" and "existent" to refer, respectively, to universals and physical stuff. I'm way oversimplying, but his idea is that we could therefore speak about numbers as being real, while not "existent" in the same way that a squirrel is. As you know, I'm not fond of those particular terms, but it shouldn't blind us to the distinction W wants to make, which I believe is a valuable one. There is a metaphysical or ontological difference between a number and a squirrel, and I understand why some philosophical traditions would want to characterize it as W does. But rather than bickering about the labels, let's say more about the details of that difference, the respective properties of numbers and squirrels, etc.

When we consider the universe to be real or fake, what do we mean?

If it is real, does that mean it is all loaded in at once, in one big containment; and if it is fake, does that mean it's load is efficient, such as by having local systems load in and far away systems not loaded in?

Some people believe it's just Earth that's loaded in. That would be a very fake view. I'm more for the idea that other planets and stars exist, but only as signals until you reach their locale and they load in fully.

I don't think anyone would deny that numbers are different kinds of things than squirrels, that attributes and relations are different kinds of things than cabbages and kings, that turds and thongs are different kind of things than words and songs.

I have no more time today, so I'll have to leave it there for now.

A salient passage from the Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic, On Time:

We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the case with objects in themselves and abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us. We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which therefore does not necessarily pertain to every being, though to be sure it pertains to every human being. — Kant CPR, A42/B59

Kant’s point is that the world we know is not reality as it exists in itself, but as it is constituted through the forms of intuition* and the categories of understanding. Space and time, along with all empirical relations, are not independent features of things but conditions of appearance, inseparable from the way our sensibility is structured. If the human subject—or even the subjective constitution of the senses in general—were removed, the whole edifice of appearances would vanish. Yet this does not imply a solipsistic dream-world: the structures through which the phenomenal world is constituted are the same for every human being, which is why the world of appearances is shared, lawful, and communicable. This pertains to every human being, although not necessarily to other kinds of beings.

Different kinds of beings—animals with other sensory endowments, artificial intelligences with architectures unlike our own, or even extraterrestrial intelligences—would inhabit worlds structured in ways not reducible to ours (recall Wittgenstein’s remark: “If a lion could speak, we would not understand him”). Their phenomenal worlds would not be the same as the human world, though they would be no less real for them. Kant’s formulation thus anticipates the idea of a plurality of possible “mind-created worlds,” each bound to the conditions of cognition proper to a type of subject. What we call the world is, then, always the world as it manifests for beings like us—never the unconditioned reality in itself.

--------------

* Kant defines intuition at the very outset of the Critique of Pure Reason: “In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as a means is directed as an end, is intuition” (CPR, A19/B33). Intuition, for Kant, is the immediate givenness of objects to the mind, as distinct from concepts, which mediate and organize what is given.

When we consider the universe to be real or fake, what do we mean?

If it is real, does that mean it is all loaded in at once, in one big containment; and if it is fake, does that mean it's load is efficient, such as by having local systems load in and far away systems not loaded in? — Barkon

I think that our concept of "the universe" is a useful fiction.

If you insist. I think the essential difference is that you’re framing the question of 'mind-independence' as if it were about what lies behind appearances, whereas the point I’m making (following Kant and Schopenhauer) is that space, time, and differentiation themselves are forms of appearance. — Wayfarer

I understand that is what Kant and Schopenhauer contend, but the salient question is as to whether they are also more than that. Kant says space and time are "the pure forms of intuition"―I don't know about "pure" but following Kant's usage of 'intuition' we can say that perception comes in spatiotemporal form. Reflecting on experience in a phenomenological way we can say that all perceptions are spatiotemporal, even that all perceptions must be spatiotemporal.

If you then go on to say that there is no space and time absent perception an argument is required, and that is just what is not to be found. It doesn't follow deductively that if space and time are forms of intuition they therefore cannot exist outside of that context. It also doesn't follow inductively, because all our science tells us there must have been space and time prior to humans or even percipients in general.

The transcendental point isn’t that time and space “began with us,” but that these forms belong to the structure of experience itself, not to the world as it is apart from any observer. — Wayfarer

And here it is again―a claim without an argument to support it. It's true that those forms "belong to the structure of experience" but it certainly doesn't follow deductively or inductively that that is all they are. So, just what is the actual argument?

Kant allows things in themselves, which Schopenhauer takes him to task for, because it is inconsistent with his claim that space and time are only forms of intuition and have no other existence, and you can't have things without differentiation, space and time. Schopenhauer then posits that there can only be a 'thing in itself', and that this is a consequence of Kant's own contentions.

But an amorphous 'thing in itself', undifferentiated (as it must be absent space and time) seems to be a highly implausible candidate for being able to give rise to the almost infinitely complex world we find ourselves in.

You’re conflating the empirical and the transcendental again. The point isn’t that, because we only ever observe appearances, we can’t be certain about what lies behind them. I'm not talking about what lies behind them. That’s an empirical framing or speculation. The transcendental point is that “differentiation” itself is already one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. So the claim is logical, not empirical: it’s about the structure of experience, not about what we can or can’t infer about the in-itself. — Wayfarer

And here is the same unargued framing again. I don't accept that the world, that nature, is bifurcated into "empirical" and "transcendental"; that framing merely assumes what is to be demonstrated.

I don't deny that differentiation is one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. I agree with that. You then say it is a logical claim not an empirical one―I would say it is neither, that it is a phenomenological claim based on reflection on the nature of experience. In any case, to say it again, that is not the point at issue―the point at issue is whether it follows logically from the accepted fact that differentiation is required for perception to occur, that there is no differentiation absent perception. And that claim simply does not follow logically. That there must be differentiation for perception to occur rather suggests, to me at least, that it is plausible to think that differentiation is in the nature of the pre-conceptual, pre-cognitive, world. Of course I acknowledge that that conclusion is also not strictly logically necessitated. It is an inductive or abductive claim, and we all know none of those are certain. Nothing in science is absolutely certain.

So, you thought it pointless. Is that an argument? — Wayfarer

I have already said at length why I think it is pointless. I think it is pointless because the natural sciences cannot deal with the subject. How would you include the subject in the disciplines of chemistry, geology, astronomy, paleontology and so on? Only the human sciences and ethology can bring in the idea of the subject, and the latter only the non-human subject.

Different kinds of beings—animals with other sensory endowments, artificial intelligences with architectures unlike our own, or even extraterrestrial intelligences—would inhabit worlds structured in ways not reducible to ours (recall Wittgenstein’s remark: “If a lion could speak, we would not understand him”). — Wayfarer

None of that is at issue―I have never denied that human experience is different from (most) animal experience. I say "most" because the experience of some kinds of animal seems to be much closer to human experience than that of others.

I always thought that Wittgenstein quote to be somewhat silly. If a lion could speak the same language as we do, then we should be able to understand it. If the lion could speak, but is speaking "lionese" then of course we could not understand it, just as we don't understand any other unfamiliar language. We could learn lionese if the lion could learn our language and then translation may be possible. "It takes two to tango".

While is true that the perceptual experience of different animals is very different form ours on account of the different nature of the sensory organs, observation shows us that animals inhabit the same world we do. This is shown by the consistency of their behavior. Lions prey on gazelle, wildebeest; animals small enough for them to effectively bring down. We don't see them trying to bring elephants or rhinoceros. So they must be able to assess the size of animals in ways that make perfect sense to us. They have to eat, mate, sleep, defecate and they play and show affection to one another in ways similar to how we do. So they are not all that far apart from us.

Finally, there isn't much point quoting Kant, since I am well familiar with his philosophy, and since I've already said many times that I don't agree him on some central points. Are you wanting to appeal to authority by quoting him (and others)?

I want to hear an actual argument for why space, time, differentiation, form, matter and all the rest cannot exist beyond the context of perception. And I should note, I acknowledge that if there is space, time, differentiation, things in general outside the context of perception, we should not expect them to be just as we experience and understand them. That would be naive realism, and I'm not arguing for that. I have in mind something along the lines of Ontic Structural Realism.

If you then go on to say that there is no space and time absent perception an argument is required, and that is just what is not to be found. It doesn't follow deductively that if space and time are forms of intuition they therefore cannot exist outside of that context. It also doesn't follow inductively, because all our science tells us there must have been space and time prior to humans or even percipients in general. — Janus

The appeal to “all our science” actually illustrates my point. Science already presupposes space, time, and causality, because its subject matter is empirical appearances. That’s why science can’t speak to whether those forms belong to the thing-in-itself — it only ever investigates within them.

And here it is again―a claim without an argument to support it. — Janus

There is indeed an argument. The kind of argument at issue isn’t inductive or deductive but what Kant calls transcendental. We begin with the undeniable fact that we have coherent experience of objects ordered in space and time and governed by causal laws. The question then becomes: what must be true for such experience to be possible at all? Kant’s answer is that space and time must be a priori forms of intuition — conditions of possibility for experience, not attributes of things-in-themselves. Without them, there could be no experience of a world in the first place. And this is based on analysis of the nature of experience and reason - not of the observations of the natural sciences.

This is why it’s an error to object that “all our science tells us there was space and time before humans.” Of course science presupposes space and time, because its subject matter is appearances; but that doesn’t show that space and time belong to or are caused by the in-itself. It only shows that empirical science is silent on the very question transcendental philosophy is raising. Which is as it should be! Natural science assumes nature as the object of its analyses. It is not engaged in this kind of analysis.

Similarly, to say that the “thing-in-itself” must somehow give rise to the complex world is to misapply the category of causality beyond its scope. Causality, like space and time, is one of the forms of appearance — it structures phenomena but has no application beyond that. Kant was adamant on this point: the in-itself is not a hidden causal agent behind appearances, but simply a limiting concept marking the boundary of experience. Schopenhauer departs from Kant when he identifies the noumenon with Will, but he does so knowing this goes beyond Kant’s strict prohibition (which is a separate issue.)

I have already said at length why I think it ('The Blind Spot of Science') is pointless. I think it is pointless because the natural sciences cannot deal with the subject. — Janus

The whole point of The Blind Spot is not to complain that chemistry or astronomy fail to include the subject, but to highlight what happens when the methods of natural science are misapplied to questions of philosophy. Natural science quite properly takes its object to be nature understood as appearances, measurable, predictable and law-governed. The problem arises when that methodological 'bracketing of the subject' is turned into a claim about reality as a whole, as though subjectivity were a negligible illusion.

That’s why I see the book as supporting my OP. On the one hand, you appeal to “all our science shows us that…” but at the same time dismiss the very critique that The Blind Spot points out — namely, that science cannot, by its own terms, adjudicate questions about the conditions of appearance or the role of the subject.

I want to hear an actual argument for why space, time, differentiation, form, matter and all the rest cannot exist beyond the context of perception. — Janus

You want an empirical argument, and there isn't one.

The question then becomes: what must be true for such experience to be possible at all? Kant’s answer is that space and time must be a priori forms of intuition — conditions of possibility for experience, not attributes of things-in-themselves. Without them, there could be no experience of a world in the first place. And this is based on analysis of the nature of experience and reason - not of the observations of the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

How can anything be deduced about the in itself from "the nature of experience and reason"? I cannot see how anything could come from such a phenomenological analysis other than insights into the nature of experience. As I see it this is the weakness in Kant's system―on the one hand it concludes that nothing at all can be said about the in itself, and he proceeds to make claims about it, for example that it could not be spatiotemporal, differentiated and so on.

You still haven't outlined any actual argument to that effect. You say the argument is not inductive or deductive (or I imagine abductive) and that it is "transcendental". Merely labelling it tells me nothing, I want to see the argument laid in whatever terms are appropriate.

That said, all arguments are either deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments are based on premises which themselves are not demonstrated within the arguments themselves. Inductive arguments are inferences to the best explanation―but there province is the empirical, so that won't do according to your own standards. Is the argument merely stipulative?

You want an empirical argument, and there isn't one. — Wayfarer

As I said, I simply want any kind of argument clearly laid out that demonstrates that space, time, differentiation etc. must be confined to the world as cognized. I'm still waiting.

This is why it’s an error to object that “all our science tells us there was space and time before humans.” Of course science presupposes space and time, because its subject matter is appearances; but that doesn’t show that space and time belong to or are caused by the in-itself. — Wayfarer

The existence of anything we can imagine presupposes space and time, and you are right that doesn't demonstrate that space and time exist beyond perceptual experience, or that they are caused by the in-itself. But it also doesn't demonstrate that they cannot belong to or be caused by the in itself.

The whole point of The Blind Spot is not to complain that chemistry or astronomy fail to include the subject, but to highlight what happens when the methods of natural science are misapplied to questions of philosophy. — Wayfarer

I don't think it a matter of the methods being misapplied to questions of philosophy, so much as the knowledge given by science being applied to questions of philosophy. Science has given us a very different picture of the nature of the world as it is experienced than the medieval or the ancients had. We simply don't know how different the philosophies of the greats of antiquity and medieval times would have been if they had been around today.

It all depends on what you mean by "philosophy". Science may not be of much use to phenomenology, for example, although that said the phenomenology of a modern individual will not be the same as that of a medieval or ancient. Gadamer argues that we can only approach an understanding of those times via the texts we have access to hermeneutically.

When it comes to metaphysical speculation, I can't see how we have any better, or even other, guide than science. Science doesn't prove anything metaphysical (or even empirical for that matter) but for met at least, when it comes to questions which are undecidable, because no logical or definitive empirical purchase can be gained on them, science remains the source of knowledge that informs decisions about what is most plausible. As I've said many times, though, what seems most plausible will vary from pone individual ot another, and there is no definitive criteria for what is most plausible.

How can anything be deduced about the in itself from "the nature of experience and reason"? — Janus

The direct analysis of knowledge and experience is precisely the subject matter of philosophy. Kant is not making positive claims about what the in-itself is; he is showing what cannot be said of it without misusing our own concepts. To say “space and time are forms of intuition” is not to ascribe a property to the world in itself, but to mark a limit: we only ever encounter things in those forms, so they cannot be applied beyond them. If you read that as a claim about what the in-itself is like, you’re projecting your own belief in a reality “behind” appearances back onto Kant.

You say the argument is not inductive or deductive (or I imagine abductive) and that it is "transcendental". Merely labelling it tells me nothing — Janus

Transcendental arguments are about the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. That’s why they don’t fit the ordinary deductive/inductive scheme: they’re not stipulations, and they’re not empirical hypotheses. They’re analyses that show why we cannot so much as conceive experience without already presupposing the framework of space and time. To then ask if those forms “belong to the in-itself” is to misapply them beyond their scope. Deduction (a priori) and induction (a posteriori) are both central to Kant, but transcendental arguments are a different mode of analysis: they begin from the fact of experience and ask what must be presupposed a priori for it to be possible. For that reason, they don’t fit neatly into the deductive/inductive scheme so much as transcend it.

As I said, I simply want any kind of argument clearly laid out that demonstrates that space, time, differentiation etc. must be confined to the world as cognized. I'm still waiting. — Janus

If you want an argument framed in the empirical or inductive terms you're demanding, then you’ll need to keep waiting.

The existence of anything we can imagine presupposes space and time, and you are right that doesn't demonstrate that space and time exist beyond perceptual experience, or that they are caused by the in-itself. But it also doesn't demonstrate that they cannot belong to or be caused by the in itself. — Janus

You have something in mind when you say that.

Kant is not making positive claims about what the in-itself is; he is showing what cannot be said of it without misusing our own concepts. To say “space and time are forms of intuition” is not to ascribe a property to the world in itself, but to mark a limit: we only ever encounter things in those forms, so they cannot be applied beyond them. — Wayfarer

I disagree. If Kant is saying that space and time or differentiation could not exist in the in itself then he is making a positive statement about it. To be sure he is defining the limits of certain knowledge―we cannot be certain that space and time and differentiation exist in the in itself, but nor can we be certain that they do not. There is no such thing as any definitive "misuse of concepts". That is purely stipulative. There are no "concept police"―we each decide for ourselves what makes most sense to us. It is just here that I see dogma creeping in―in notions of "philosophy proper" and "misusing concepts" and "cannot be applied beyond them".

If someone doesn't buy the empirical/ transcendental bifurcation of nature (a bifurcation which is certainly not a given) then they will obviously have a different take on what can sensibly be said than someone who does buy that bifurcation. When it comes to philosophy it's a pluralistic world, and all the more so in modernity than ever before. Perhaps you deplore that...in any case I celebrate it.

As I see it, the problems we, as a species, face are not philosophical so much as they are practical. Materialism in the consumerist, not the philosophical, sense is one of the main problems. It's apparent that loss of religion is not much of a contributing factor.

If you want an argument framed in the empirical or inductive terms you're demanding, then you’ll need to keep waiting. — Wayfarer

No, as I said all I want is any actual reasoned argument that isn't mere stipulation.

You have something in mind when you say that. — Wayfarer

So what? I can acknowledge that what I have in mind may have no bearing on the nature of nature―the nature of reality in any absolute sense is something about which we can only speculate. I don't accept stipulative limits on what I may or not speculate about, or what I may or may not find most plausible.

I want to hear an actual argument for why space, time, differentiation, form, matter and all the rest cannot exist beyond the context of perception. And I should note, I acknowledge that if there is space, time, differentiation, things in general outside the context of perception, we should not expect them to be just as we experience and understand them. That would be naive realism, and I'm not arguing for that. I have in mind something along the lines of Ontic Structural Realism.

The Ontic structural realism, may be external and pre-existing to the perception of humanity (or any beings on earth), but intrinsic (internal and not pre-existing) to the perception of a greater being of which humanity is a constituent part, such as a demiurge.

Perhaps. Do we have any cogent reason to believe in a demiurge, though, beyond the fact that it's (kind of) an imaginable possibility?

The point isn’t that Kant makes positive claims about the noumenon. It’s that he shows where our concepts lose their foothold — not stipulatively, but by analysis of what experience itself presupposes. If one rejects the empirical/transcendental distinction, then of course it looks like dogma. But that’s just to reject the very move Kant’s philosophy makes.

That's true, it is to reject the move Kant's philosophy makes, and I do that because I don't see a cogent argument for the empirical/transcendental distinction―I mean I understand the thinking but I just don't agree with it.

It's a way of thinking about things, about how we can imagine they might be, but I find other ways of thinking more convincing. What I'm arguing against is the notion that the distinction is somehow necessarily true, as opposed to being merely a possible way of thinking about things.

So, I'm fine with others holding to the distinction and organizing their thoughts accordingly, but it's not for me.

:up:

If you then go on to say that there is no space and time absent perception an argument is required, and that is just what is not to be found. It doesn't follow deductively that if space and time are forms of intuition they therefore cannot exist outside of that context. It also doesn't follow inductively, because all our science tells us there must have been space and time prior to humans or even percipients in general.

I agree. And we have the question: "from whence these structures?" You cannot make an appeal to natural selection, or human biology, or physics, because these all only relate to the phenomenal.

I think the culprit here is the deflated notions of causality Kant is working with, particularly Hume's influence on him. On such a view, causes are indeed mere phenomenal constant conjunction. But in the broader sense of causality, to say that the noumena have no cause is to say they occur for no reason at all, and are in a sense not intelligible or actual.

The appeal to transcendental argument doesn't decide things here because the arguments for the prior actuality of what is in the senses and received by the intellect is of the same basic type, and its only real assumption is that the world is intelligible and not arbitrary (and thus appearances cannot be arbitrarily related to what they are "appearances of" without ceasing to be appearances of anything, and merely being sui generis actualities that occur of themselves, a violation of the premise of intelligibility and the idea that things don't spontaneously move themselves from potency to act "for no reason"). I'd argue that Kant actually oscillates between accepting these premises to make some points and then denying them for others.

You can see this tension throughout the First Critique, where Kant seems compelled to write things like:

The non-sensible cause of these representations is entirely unknown to us, and therefore we cannot intuit it as an object; for such an object would have to be represented neither in space nor in time (as mere conditions of our sensible representation), without which conditions we cannot think any intuition. Meanwhile we can call the merely intelligible cause of appearances in general the transcendental object,' merely so that we may have something corresponding to sensibility as a receptivity.

A494

This comes a few sections after denying that causality applies here. And he is here speaking about what he knows about the "unknowable." In the Transcendental Aesthetic he is acutely aware that appearances must be appearances of something, but I am not so sure he secures that his are.

Nevertheless, Kant's starting point and problems are still very popular in modern empirical philosophy, so he at least functions as a solid diagnostician for where certain assumptions lead.

Yet this does not imply a solipsistic dream-world: the structures through which the phenomenal world is constituted are the same for every human being, which is why the world of appearances is shared, lawful, and communicable. This pertains to every human being, although not necessarily to other kinds of beings.

According to Kant's assertions. But from the initial response by his peers there has been the question of if he actually leaves himself any grounds for claiming this, or if his system implies the opposite. Kant's letters show he was acutely aware of a "subjective idealism problem."

Perhaps. Do we have any cogent reason to believe in a demiurge, though, beyond the fact that it's (kind of) an imaginable possibility?

Well, putting religion and spirituality to one side, no. But is there a good reason not to?

I don’t see what belief has got to do with this, surely if something is cogent, it’s not a question of belief.

It wouldn’t be a unique situation, as a human is a colony of cellular organisms. And a beehive, a termites, or ants is a colony of colonies of cells. Each cell, while being alive, has no idea (pretending that a thinking being was able to experience the life of a cell) that it is part of a larger being, or how that would work. Likewise a human would have no idea of the larger colony (that they are a part of) as an entity, including through all knowledge discovered in our world.

It seems to me you’re wanting the 'in itself' to carry explanatory power — to be the hidden cause or ground of appearances — and then faulting Kant for not providing an explanation of how that could be. But that’s exactly what he bars: categories like causality or potency/act only apply within the domain of appearance. The in-itself isn’t an explanatory posit or cause, but a limiting concept marking the boundary where explanation ceases to apply. When Kant says “there must be something corresponding to sensibility as receptivity,” he isn’t smuggling in a cause; he’s pointing out that appearances can’t be appearances of nothing — but beyond that, no determinate claim is possible.

I suspect you're reacting to a sense of a ‘God-shaped hole’ - an expectation that the noumenal ought to be, in fact, the numinous (which despite the apparent verbal similarity is an entirely different concept.)

As far as subjectivism is concerned, Kant was indeed concerned to avoid the charge of “subjective idealism,” but that’s why the Critique insists that the forms of sensibility and categories of understanding are not personal idiosyncrasies but universal structures of human cognition. They’re what make possible a shared, lawful, and communicable world in the first place. He says that objectivity itself arises from these common faculties. So while later critics argued about how secure this deduction was, Kant’s own position was clear — the phenomenal world is not appearing within a self-enclosing solipsism, but is the necessary correlate of common cognitive structures