One way we might retort back is that reality is wider than exhaustive disjunction, yeah? — Moliere

Sort of, but my point all along has been that if we say that then we must also say that Hume is wrong. If we believe something that contradicts Hume's argument—such as that his disjunction is not exhaustive—then we must hold that Hume's argument is unsound, i.e. (3). It seems to me that you do not understand this. You do not understand that when you contradict Hume's conclusion you must also hold that his argument is unsound.

See, this is the bit I think we clash on the most. Soft neo-Aristotelianism makes enough sense to me, but if we start talking about Aristotle Aristotle then I have to say that I don't think he already did that. — Moliere

But why do you claim that Aristotle did not do something when you have such a lack of familiarity with Aristotle? That's the problem I have with anti-Aristotelians: they ignorantly dismiss Aristotle on all manner of topic. Myles Burnyeat identifies the precise place where Aristotle does what you think he did not do in his article, "Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion." (See also his, "The origins of non-deductive inference.")

I'm not opposed to tutorship at any time -- I'll never learn it all. Someone else will always know more than I. And likewise I know more than others on certain things and in the right circumstances I'll tutor them. — Moliere

Well when I said I recommend tutoring, I meant that I recommend that people tutor. But learning or being tutored is also good. Were you to tutor children I think you would soon realize how false is your idea that knowledge is about guess-making.

But why do you claim that Aristotle did not do something when you have such a lack of familiarity with Aristotle? That's the problem I have with anti-Aristotelians: they ignorantly dismiss Aristotle on all manner of topic. Myles Burnyeat identifies the precise place where Aristotle does what you think he did not do in his article, "Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion." (See also his, "The origins of non-deductive inference.") — Leontiskos

I was thinking of know-how mainly, but yes I know he's fine with inference that's informal.

The part where I think what I've said about essence matters is more about what I'd call his induction from the physics to the metaphysics. At that point, due to my Kantian influence, I feel like you need more than familiarity. It seems to me the reason that Aristotle can climb to the mind of God is because of what I said about essence -- we may be wrong about it, but there is some kind of essence to be right about, and if we assume Aristotle is right about the essence of metaphysics then he's right about his inference up to the mind of God.

Given Kant's insistence on a sort of empirical justification, and noting how such things are beyond experience, demonstrates that such inferences cannot take place. Even if there is an essence of things -- which I believe he probably believed, given his ties to Aristotle -- the Ideas can never be justified, and therefore can never be known.

Kant's cognitivism is empiricist, like Aristotle's, but he cuts off metaphysics as scientific knowledge, unlike Aristotle.

Now I'll gladly admit that I could be putting this wrong in terms of Aristotle. I can be read contra-Aristotle in many circumstances, but it's the sort of love a person who likes philosophy gives to another philosopher.

Well when I said I recommend tutoring, I meant that I recommend that people tutor. But learning is also good. — Leontiskos

Ooooh. Heh. I thought you were saying I ought go get some tutoring.

It seems to me that you do not understand this. You do not understand that when you contradict Hume's conclusion you must also hold that his argument is unsound. — Leontiskos

Maybe not.

I think Hume is right with respect to the causal relation -- we think that there's a necessary relationship between events but there's not -- and I think he's right with respect to the is/ought divide -- we must have some minor premise which connects an is to an ought, like "if x is true, then i ought y" in order to make an inference, and that minor premise is rightly described as a passion.

But I'd go further there and say there are rational passions -- just not eternally rational passions. They're developed within a particular community that cares about rationality.

I was thinking of know-how mainly, but yes I know he's fine with inference that's informal. — Moliere

Well you said, "But what if I called something that was not categorical knowledge?"

we may be wrong about it, but there is some kind of essence to be right about — Moliere

Right: like "water is H2O." Again, Darwin, Lavoisier, and Kripke all believe that there is something to be right about.

Kant's cognitivism is empiricist, like Aristotle's, but he cuts off metaphysics as scientific knowledge, unlike Aristotle. — Moliere

Yes, but people will argue until the cows come home whether Kant is an empiricist. Whatever he is, Kant is a strange hybrid.

But I'd go further there and say there are rational passions -- just not eternally rational passions. They're developed within a particular community that cares about rationality. — Moliere

Okay, I can see how you would run that.

I think this is now becoming very diffuse. Thanks for the discussion, Moliere.

I think this is now becoming very diffuse, but thanks for the discussion Moliere. — Leontiskos

Same to you, as always. :heart:

Thank you again for such a detailed engagement with each of the positions I listed. I appreciate that you are trying to find a more holistic framework rather than getting stuck in one perspective. I am replying to you again because I have some additional thoughts that I didn't have during my first reply four months ago.

I agree that solipsism and cosmic solipsism look ego-centric, and that pantheism/panentheism often rely on redefining words. I also agree with your point that simulation theory, whether true or not, makes little practical difference - if this is the only reality we can access, it is our reality.

Where I’d like to push back a little is on panpsychism and nihilism. On panpsychism, you treat it as mostly untestable, but I wonder if you’re open to the possibility that even if we could measure gradients of consciousness, the deeper question of what it feels like to be matter will still elude science. And on nihilism, you suggest that it’s just “depression before we create our own meaning.” But what if the human capacity to invent meaning is itself fragile and contingent - isn’t that a reason to take nihilism seriously as a persistent condition, not just a passing phase?

I also like your suggestion that empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Maybe the question isn’t ‘which is right?’ but ‘how can they work together?’ to give us the most complete account of reality.

For me, the open problem is: if all our approaches (empirical, rational, phenomenological, pragmatic) remain within the limits of human cognition, how do we ever know we are not simply locked inside those limits rather than perceiving reality as it is? Do we need to accept that reality-in-itself will always remain partly unknowable?

I also like your suggestion that empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Maybe the question isn’t ‘which is right?’ but ‘how can they work together?’ to give us the most complete account of reality. — Truth Seeker

That's a very interesting idea, but, as you say, it isn't quite clear how all of them might be fitted together. One might start by observing that empiricism and rationalism do seem to fit together in the sense that they deal with different things - experience vs concepts. But fitting in the other two is more difficult.

For me, the open problem is: if all our approaches (empirical, rational, phenomenological, pragmatic) remain within the limits of human cognition, how do we ever know we are not simply locked inside those limits rather than perceiving reality as it is? — Truth Seeker

A lot depends on how you think about it. In some sense or other, we can describe limits to our cognition. But how do we know about them? It can't be because we can get beyond them, so it must be that our knowledge within its limits points to, or, possibly, even creates, the idea of something more to be known. The other observation I would make is that one can consider what we can know and bemoan our fate in being confined within them, ignoring the fields of knowledge that those limits create. There are two sides to a limit; on one side there's all that is open to us, on the other side, there is all that is closed to us.
If we can have so much as the idea that there is something beyond out limits, we open up the possibility of transgressing the limits and exploring beyond the frontier. If we then look at our history, it seems pretty clear that we then work out how to extend out knowledge beyond them. The limit is a moving frontier, not so much a limit as a border between what we have learnt and what we will discover.

Do we need to accept that reality-in-itself will always remain partly unknowable? — Truth Seeker

"Partly" is interesting. You seem to be accepting that we do in fact know some things about reality-in-self. Which suggest that we can know more. No doubt, there will always be more to be learnt - every answer is the foundation for the next question. Perhaps this is just an infinite process and the idea that our knowledge will ever be complete is no more than the impossibility of completing such a process.
But I'm not sure what you mean by "reality-in-itself". How does it differ from "Being-in-itself"?

I think 'real' stands for logical grounding; where something unreal would be like a toon who exists in a toon world where there is no logical grounding. Magic is not unreal so long as there's logic behind it's manifestation; shooting a fireball from the hands might be real one way but unreal another.

Akin to immersion in video games. We expect special effects to be 'realistic'(properly blended, proper looking; looking as if they have logical grounding).

That’s a thoughtful response. I like your framing of limits not as static barriers but as moving frontiers that expand with discovery. It raises for me two further questions.

First, when you suggest that “partly” knowing reality-in-itself implies that we do in fact know something of it, what safeguards do we have against simply projecting structures of our cognition outward and mistaking them for reality? Kant, for example, would say phenomena always bear the stamp of our categories, so even our best science may be telling us more about how our minds structure experience than about things-in-themselves. How do we tell the difference?

Second, you asked how “reality-in-itself” differs from “Being-in-itself.” For me, “reality-in-itself” gestures toward what exists independently of any observer, while “Being-in-itself” (to use Sartre’s term) connotes the sheer presence of things apart from consciousness. They might overlap, but one emphasizes ontology, the other epistemology. I’m curious: do you see them as distinct, or just two ways of naming the same riddle?

That’s an intriguing way of putting it. If I understand you right, you’re linking “real” not so much to existence as to coherence - something is real if it has logical grounding, even if it is radically unlike our ordinary world.

That makes me wonder, though: does “logical grounding” mean internal consistency within a system, or correspondence with the structures of our actual world? A toon world might be internally consistent but still disconnected from what we ordinarily call reality. Similarly, “magic” in a fantasy novel can follow strict rules (e.g. conservation of energy in a different form), but is that “real,” or just “fiction with rules”?

Maybe the crux is whether logical grounding alone is enough for reality, or whether we also need some bridge to empirical verification. Otherwise, couldn’t we end up calling any consistent fiction “real” in its own frame, even if it has no existence beyond the story?

First, when you suggest that “partly” knowing reality-in-itself implies that we do in fact know something of it, what safeguards do we have against simply projecting structures of our cognition outward and mistaking them for reality? — Truth Seeker

I'm afraid I'm somewhat handicapped here, in that I don't really understand what reality-in-itself is. I mostly understand Reality as everything and anything that is real. I difficulty understanding that because most things are real when we describe them in one way, but not real when we describe them in other ways. There's not one group of real objects and a distinct group of unreal objects.
But then I don't understand what "reality-in-itself" is. Your concern about simply projecting the structures of cognition outward is not unreasonable. But there's no single answer. We have to consider case by case. If we do that, we find ways of distinguishing between projections and reality. We see a particular spectrum of light, and we have discovered that the spectrum is much wider than just the colours. But we have discovered that by means of our vision as it is and we have developed ways of grasping the invisible parts of the spectrum. We know that some birds (migratory ones) can perceive the magnetic field of the earth and use that to navigate from A to B even though we don't (directly) perceive it ourselves. So there may be distortions in our perception of the world, but we can deal with them when we discover them.

Second, you asked how “reality-in-itself” differs from “Being-in-itself.” For me, “reality-in-itself” gestures toward what exists independently of any observer, while “Being-in-itself” (to use Sartre’s term) connotes the sheer presence of things apart from consciousness. They might overlap, but one emphasizes ontology, the other epistemology. I’m curious: do you see them as distinct, or just two ways of naming the same riddle? — Truth Seeker

But don't both those definitions create a puzzle about what does exist independently of any observer, or what the presence of things apart from consciousness is. What are the criteria that tell us these differences? Or are you asking what we know independently of all the ways we have of knowing anything? It's like asking how we can walk without legs. Of pay for things without money.
At the moment, I'm trying to work out whether they are distinct issues or different varieties of the same issue. I suspect they are quite closely related, but not identical. It's possible that they may be the same issue formulated as epistemology and then as ontology, but the fact that Reality does not equal Existence tells against that.

I appreciate your honesty about not being entirely sure what “reality-in-itself” means - that’s partly why I asked the question, since the term itself is slippery. Kant framed it as noumenon, that which exists independently of our forms of cognition. But, as you point out, every example we can give (light spectra, bird magnetoreception, etc.) still relies on human conceptual frameworks to describe it. So maybe “reality-in-itself” always risks being a placeholder for “what we don’t yet know how to grasp.”

Your examples show how science extends perception beyond its native limits, which suggests that even if we begin with projection, careful cross-checking can reveal where we’ve mistaken appearance for reality. Still, I wonder: do those successes give us reason to think we are asymptotically approaching reality-in-itself, or only that we are continually refining the human image of the world?

On the second issue, I like your thought that “reality does not equal existence.” That helps explain why “reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” might not be identical. The first emphasizes the independence of what is (an epistemic concern: what exists beyond our categories?), while the second stresses sheer givenness without relation (an ontological concern: what is apart from consciousness?). Perhaps they are two faces of the same riddle, but one seen through the lens of knowing, the other through the lens of being.

Do you think it’s coherent to maintain that these distinctions are useful heuristics even if, in practice, we can never step outside cognition to test them? Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself?

Kant framed it as noumenon, that which exists independently of our forms of cognition. — Truth Seeker

Actually, my understanding (admittedly based on encyclopedias) that there is a distinction iin Kant between the noumenon and Being-in-itself. But I'm not at all clear what that amounts to. Then there are all the various ways that philosophers have articulated Being-in-itselr. But I think we have to accept that there is a very respectable philosophical tradition that is sure that there is something beyond appearances.

Still, I wonder: do those successes give us reason to think we are asymptotically approaching reality-in-itself, or only that we are continually refining the human image of the world? — Truth Seeker

Refining and/or extending, I would say. I can't see beyond the frontier - that's how it is defined. So there's no way of telling which it is. On the other hand, we can't know if we are approaching, asymptotically or not, any kind of terminus.

Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself? — Truth Seeker

In a word, yes. There's an argument I encountered in learning about the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that one cannot explain how a picture pictures - or at least, not by drawing a picture. (If you can understand my picture of picturing, you can already understand a picture. If you can't understand a picture, drawing a picture is just more of what you don't understand. That's one way of understanding Wittgenstein's showing, not saying. So I think that that how language points beyond itself is something one can show, but not say. Very frustrating for philosophers. Yet every human baby gets it. Most animals are very bad at it, though I'm told that pigs can do it.

But, as you point out, every example we can give (light spectra, bird magnetoreception, etc.) still relies on human conceptual frameworks to describe it. — Truth Seeker

How could that not be so? Anything we could come up with would immediately become a human conceptual framework. The only way out of the puzzle is to turn it round and look at it the other way. Human conceptual frameworks enable understanding the world, including letting us understand what we cannot grasp.

So maybe “reality-in-itself” always risks being a placeholder for “what we don’t yet know how to grasp — Truth Seeker

My inclination is to say that the whole thing is a mistake, resulting from the regrettable tendency of philosophers to test everything to destruction. Yet it is a well-established way of thinking and the moving frontier is the best I can do by way of extracting some sense from what people say about it.
But I would insist that Reality-in-itself is not a thing, nor is there a special class of things that we can separate off as being real, leaving whatever is unreal on one side. We know something about everything and there is much that we don't know about everything. Mostly, it's a question of aspects, not of distinct objects - though there are also unknown objects, I've no doubt. The story of the discovery of pulsars is a nice example. A mysterious phenomenon resists every attempt at explanation. Finally, after studying it more carefully, we develop a concept which "saves" the phenomena and a new kind of object enters our collective ontology.

Do you think it’s coherent to maintain that these distinctions are useful heuristics even if, in practice, we can never step outside cognition to test them? — Truth Seeker

We can always push at the boundaries and find places and methods where there are new forms of cognition to be had.

Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself? — Truth Seeker

Language is always important, but I'm not sure that it is ever the whole story. I do think philosophers should be much more careful about generalizations and pay more attention to differences. So it's quite tempting to sweep reality-in-itself and being-in-itself together and I'm sure they are related. But I'm also sure that they are different, and both need to be recognized.

Thank you, that’s a really thoughtful response. I like your idea that “reality-in-itself is not a thing” but rather a way of speaking about aspects, limits, and frontiers. The pulsar example is helpful, because it shows how what seems mysterious and “beyond us” can eventually be integrated into our conceptual framework without invoking any separate ontological realm.

Still, I wonder: if we treat “reality-in-itself” as simply “what resists explanation until new concepts arrive,” doesn’t that risk reducing it to nothing more than the horizon of human cognition? In that case, the notion stops doing the metaphysical work Kant meant for it, and becomes more of a pragmatic placeholder. Do you think that’s an adequate way to interpret the tradition, or is something lost when we set aside the stronger claim that something exists independently of our ways of knowing?

On your last point, I agree that philosophers often overgeneralize. But if “reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” are different, as you suggest, how would you articulate the difference without collapsing one into epistemology and the other into ontology? What criteria let us say: “this is about reality” vs. “this is about being”? Or is the best we can do to recognize that the distinction is heuristic rather than hard and fast?

There's no criteria for testing which of your experiences are of something real and which are false, for instance, drug induced, right?

I'm afraid I'm somewhat handicapped here, in that I don't really understand what reality-in-itself is. — Ludwig V

As an analogy, let’s assume that I’m trapped in a windowless room. Something enters the room. I can see that it exists and what it looks like and how it behaves now that it’s in the room, but I don’t know that it existed or what it looked liked or how it behaved before it entered the room (or after it leaves); perhaps it’s very different (or doesn’t exist) when not in the room.

In this case “being in the room” is an analogy for “being seen”.

There's no criteria for testing which of your experiences are of something real and which are false, for instance, drug induced, right? — frank

You may be right that there’s no absolute criterion. Every experience, whether sober perception or drug-induced vision, arrives through the same subjective channel. The difference is usually practical rather than metaphysical: some experiences cohere with others in stable, intersubjective ways, while others clash and collapse under scrutiny. But that coherence doesn’t prove we’ve accessed “reality itself,” only that we’ve settled on a framework that works for human purposes.

In that sense, the line between “real” and “false” experiences may be fuzzier than we like to admit. What we call “real” might just mean “reliably integrated into our form of life,” while “false” means “fails to integrate.” That’s not proof that reality-in-itself is off-limits, but it does suggest that our ordinary tests are pragmatic rather than metaphysical.

but it does suggest that our ordinary tests are pragmatic rather than metaphysical. — Truth Seeker

:up: So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.

Still, I wonder: if we treat “reality-in-itself” as simply “what resists explanation until new concepts arrive,” doesn’t that risk reducing it to nothing more than the horizon of human cognition? In that case, the notion stops doing the metaphysical work Kant meant for it, and becomes more of a pragmatic placeholder. Do you think that’s an adequate way to interpret the tradition, or is something lost when we set aside the stronger claim that something exists independently of our ways of knowing? — Truth Seeker

I'm not sure that I'm interpreting the tradition, because that suggests that it makes sense. That's what I question. If I'm right, there is no metaphysical work for the concept to do.
I don't reject the claim that some things exist independently of our ways of knowing. I don't think that conceptualizing those things as unknowable is coherent - it gives with one hand and takes back with the other. I'm not always sure how we draw the line between what is independent of our ways of knowing and things that only exist because we think they do. Mathematical objects, for example, are hard to classify. There are much more interesting - and answerable - questions inherent in that approach.

On your last point, I agree that philosophers often overgeneralize. But if
“reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” are different, as you suggest, how would you articulate the difference without collapsing one into epistemology and the other into ontology? What criteria let us say: “this is about reality” vs. “this is about being”? Or is the best we can do to recognize that the distinction is heuristic rather than hard and fast? — Truth Seeker

The difference is hard to articulate. But I'm clear that most things that are not real do nonetheless exist, for the most part. But things that do not exist are not even usually even unreal. It is easy enough to draw the distinction when you consider specific cases, but very hard to generalize over all real things or all things that exist. I doubt whether such generalizations are even coherent.

As an analogy, let’s assume that I’m trapped in a windowless room. Something enters the room. I can see that it exists and what it looks like and how it behaves now that it’s in the room, but I don’t know that it existed or what it looked liked or how it behaved before it entered the room (or after it leaves); perhaps it’s very different (or doesn’t exist) when not in the room. — Michael

I don't think this analogy is helpful. What things can enter a windowless (and doorless) room? Sounds, maybe? Not much else. How did I get into the room? It seems that you do know what kind of thing the something is while it is in the room. That will give you a basis for working out what existence it has outside the room. I can see that you are trying to articulate the kind of vision that Berkeley has, but if it does anything, it makes Berkeley even more implausible.

So this may be a collective dream. We don't know. — frank

I don't think it is a question of whether it is or is not a collective dream, but of how one chooses to think about it or how one decides to approach and cope with the reality we experience.

So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.
— frank
I don't think it is a question of whether it is or is not a collective dream, but of how one chooses to think about it or how one decides to approach and cope with the reality we experience. — Ludwig V

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:

It seems that you do know what kind of thing the something is while it is in the room. That will give you a basis for working out what existence it has outside the room. — Ludwig V

All I can do is assume. But perhaps it looks and behaves very different when outside the room. It’s impossible for me to know.

So this may be a collective dream. We don't know. — frank

I agree.

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin: — frank

What's the evidence that it is?

All I can do is assume. But perhaps it looks and behaves very different when outside the room. It’s impossible for me to know. — Michael

No, you can work it out. If it is, say, a fly in the room, it is unlikely to change much outside the room. If it is a chrysalis or a caterpillar, it will likely be very different outside the room.

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:
— frank
What's the evidence that it is? — Ludwig V

I didn't say that it is, just that it could be. We don't know.

I didn't say that it is, just that it could be. We don't know. — frank

OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be?

OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be? — Ludwig V

I don't think we have any criteria for determining what's real and what isn't in the philosophical sense. It's interesting to consider that this might be a dream or some kind of collective construct.

All we can do is 'hold on' to what we are apart of. That which we are 'holding on' to is reality.

If it is, say, a fly in the room, it is unlikely to change much outside the room. If it is a chrysalis or a caterpillar, it will likely be very different outside the room. — Ludwig V

On what grounds can you justify the likeliness of something changing outside the room if you've never been outside the room?

I don't think we have any criteria for determining what's real and what isn't in the philosophical sense. It's interesting to consider that this might be a dream or some kind of collective construct. — frank

Each to their own.

On what grounds can you justify the likeliness of something changing outside the room if you've never been outside the room? — Michael

I.ve been around long enough to know the difference and to know what a fly is.