I can and on occasion do confirm what I sense by discussing it with others who either agree or disagree, and typically we come to some sort of agreement. How do you do it? — Cavacava

I agree, but the issue is how do you derive objectivity (of the object) from agreement, convention, or inter-subjectivity? A group of people might all agree that the sun rises in the morning, and sets in the evening, and therefore the sun travels around the earth each day. But how would this agreement make it objectively certain that the sun travels around the earth each day?

But isn't this how we claim objective validity, the ability of another to verify my judgement, to replicate my results?

There are a number of different ways that "objective" is used, and we ought not equivocate. "Objective validity" does not mean "objective certainty" because a valid argument does not necessitate that the argument is sound.

And the word "objective" is thrown around as if it adds something. But if the argument is valid, then to say that it is objectively valid adds nothing. So if you are certain, does saying that you are objectively certain add anything? It appears to me like you are saying that your certainty is a conventional certainty. Your certainty is based in convention. You are certain that what you believe is correct, because it is what other people believe. How is this any type of real certainty?

K, conventional agreement about what is the case determines what is the case because others can verify what is the case for themselves and agree with me or not... how's that? It is a synthetic, not a deductive claim.

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From his commentators and translators come these as correctives: Kant was never for a single instant beguiled or confused by reality or practical knowledge of that reality. His ding an sich was more often ding an sich selbst: the latter being thing-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself. Kant knew the chair was a chair, and he knew that he knew it - as a practical matter. When he then reflected on exactly what he knew and how, he understood he was asking a different question, from the ground of Wissenschaft, science. His argument was that scientific thinking can't get to the chair in itself, as it is in itself. I understand this simply to mean that all knowledge falls under, can be brought under, either practical knowledge or scientific knowledge, with the consequence that all knowledge is human knowledge, and the corollary that there is no knowledge qua knowledge. Indeed, if you pursue a scientist with iterations of the question, "How do you know," if he's a good scientist, soon enough he'll acknowledge that, (at the level of questioning achieved) he doesn't, and that what passes for knowledge (at that level) is either a working hypothesis or an absolute presupposition, i.e., an axiom. So much for Kant, almost. — tim wood

Well stated. I have been discussing a Buddhist aphorism on another forum, to whit: ‘from the very beginning, not a single thing is.’ The ‘is’ here, is the salient point: sure there are tables and chairs and all manner of other things [the ‘ten thousand things’ being the Chinese term for ‘phenomena’]. But what they really are, is the question. Of course, Buddhists have a pragmatic answer: chairs, you sit on, and tables, you eat from. But don’t let that fool you into believing that they’re really ‘chairs and tables’; they simply fulfil that function, which is what makes them what they are. But, of course, that leaves a very large question; or should, anyway.

I can handle "perception" in this context: it's just something that happens (in me, if it's my perception). Phenomenon seems to be what gives rise to the perception. Let's question it. First, is it? If we agree that the perception was caused, then there was something that caused the perception - seems trivial enough. Let's just call that cause the phenomenon. It would appear the objective certainty transfers to the phenomenon - it is! — tim wood

I would think that the subject, being the perceiver, is the cause of the perception. The phenomenon is the perception, so it cannot be the cause of the perception because that would mean it causes itself.

Now, it is not clear to me that the phenomenon (not to be confused with perception) has a content independent of itself. — tim wood

I don't see how you separate the phenomenon from the perception, unless you are saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. If this is the case, then it is pointless to ask about the content of the phenomenon because you are just starting an infinite regress of "content".

To avoid this infinite regress problem, let's just make the separation by saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. How do you think that the content of the perception might cause the perception? It still seems more sensible to assume that the perceiver is the cause of the perception, and the content is utilized by the perceiver, in forming the perception, like we use utilize matter in creating things. The conscious mind takes the content (phenomena), and forms a perception (objects).

But none of this really makes a lot of sense, because now the phenomenon, as content, is just like a formless matter which the perceiver manipulates in creating a perception. So why not just assume that "the phenomenon" and "the perception" refer to one and the same thing? This is objects perceived, within the mind of the conscious perceiver.

I see a tree: I perceive a tree. Some phenomenon caused me to see the tree. Let's suppose that the phenomenon in question either is the tree that caused my perception, or is not the tree & etc. — tim wood

Here is the problem right here. The object, being the phenomenon, the perception, is inherently within the subject, being the perceiver. But you want to position this object outside the perceiver, as "the tree". Where do you get the principles which allow you to place the object outside the mind of the subject. As an object is how the tree appears to the subject, it is not necessarily how the tree is "in itself". It may not be as an object at all. So we cannot position the object outside of the mind of the subject, because "an object" is what the perceiver creates in the mind, in the act of perceiving.

This is the problem with "objective certainty". We want to assume that how the subject perceives the world, as "objects" is how the world really is, independent of subjects. That is what we "want", therefore we want to validate "objects" as independent from subjects. So we appeal to an inter-subjectivity as described by Cavacava, and we insist that this inter-subjectivity, agreement and convention concerning "objects", manifests as an objectivity which is independent of the subjects' minds. But all this really is, is an agreement amongst subjects concerning the objects within their minds. It does not validate objects which are external and independent from human minds. It is just agreement.

So we must reconsider true "objective certainty". Since objects are proper only to the minds of individual subjects, then "objective certainty" is that certainty which is proper to individual subjects. There has been a philosophical movement, very evident in Wittgenstein's On Certainty, to bring certainty outside of the minds of individual subjects, to make it a property of the community, the society as a whole, inter-subjective certainty. But this is not a representation of certainty at all, it is an illusion of certainty, as if certainty could be the property of an object, in the sense of "it is certain that...".. It is really merely saying that I can be certain of something because others are certain of it. But because someone else is certain of something is not good reason to be certain of it yourself. To find true objective certainty, we must understand certainty itself, and certainty is a property of individuals. To assign certainty to anything other than individual subjects is to demonstrate a misunderstanding of certainty.

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If I read you right, things just are properties, and it/they are in continual motion, continually changing. This iincludes mental states (from above). — tim wood

Correct.

From above, I argued that a bucket of chemicals does not explain your taste in neckties. I think you're in the position of claiming that it does. Please make your case. — tim wood

With the proviso that "bucket of chemicals" refers to "biological properties"; mental states are brain states, and brain states are biological properties. "Taste" refers to one's personal preferences regarding phenomena. Preferences, judgements, evaluations, etc. are mental states.

I have agreed that at some sub-atomic level, we're all electronic whizzies in constant motion - that as underlying ground, but not account. In the sense that metal is the "ground" of an automobile engine, but not the account of it. It's up to you to tell us how the sub-atomic particles that make up steel, for example, have in themselves the ability to become the engine. Or how your intestines, for example, cause you to favour striped over solid neckties. — tim wood

I don't know why you'd think that intestines would cause one to favour neckties in the first place. It's the mind/brain that favours; the intestines can play a role though (if you're into eating neckties).

I'm not sure what you mean by "ground" and "account" there. Do you mean ontology of the engine (i.e. what kind of thing is it?) by "ground", and "explanation" for how the engine works re "account"?

Re the engine, the materials are fashioned by people to produce an engine, of course. It's not like the sub-atomic particles decide to become an engine. The functioning engine works within a system of other materials too--the gases and fuel, for example.

:up:

But the thing itself? What about the thing itself - is that abandoned? Apparently in Cavacava's view - we don't have to worry about it. And I think there's something to this. If the tree-in-itself really is as we perceive it, then we've gained, but not more than we already have. If it isn't, well, first question would be, how do we know it isn't. Second, what difference does it make? — tim wood

The point is that the "thing itself" is not an object. The object is produced in the mind of the perceiver, in the act of perception.

The tree, then, whatever it might be, gives rise to - causes - the perception of the tree. — tim wood

This is where I strongly disagree. The perceiver causes the perception, as the agent in the act of perception. The thing being perceived does not cause the perception. The content of the perception may be associated with the thing being perceived, but this cannot be the cause of the perception, and this is demonstrated by the reality of hallucinations and dreams.

Where is - what is - the phenomenon, if it is not the tree itself? — tim wood

The phenomenon is the perception. You would completely distort the philosophical meaning of "phenomenon" if you were to place the phenomenon outside the mind of the perceiver. That's why Kant distinguished what's out there, what you call "the tree itself", from the phenomena, as the noumena.

I think this yields - is - Cavacava's point. He extends it by way of consensus, which arguably leads to a community OC, almost as a kind of transitivity. I accept this for what it's worth, but extend it as a greater OC through verification. — tim wood

That's exactly what I argued against. What you and Cavacava called "objective certainty" I would call a false certainty. True, real, certainty is proper to the individual subject alone; and therefore objective certainty is that certainty which occurs to the individual subject, by way of the reasoning of the individual, and not necessarily by way of consensus or community. Consensus and community may play a role in certainty, just like "what's out there" plays a role in perception, but real (and therefore objective) certainty is within the human subject, just like the phenomenal object is within the human subject.

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This is the first hurdle. Can we get past it? — tim wood

No, it doesn't appear like we can get past this hurdle. I guess you haven't been reading my posts, or you would have noticed this problem already.

The point is that the "thing itself" is not an object. The object is produced in the mind of the perceiver, in the act of perception.
— Metaphysician Undercover

Stop right there! What do you say causes the perception. You seem to be saying the object is in the mind - if I see a tree, the tree is in my mind. Is that what you're saying? — tim wood

Let me leap in here with the following observation: that 'the tree' is indeed a complex of sensations, perceptions and judgements. Part of that is 'apperception': the recognition of it being 'a tree' and then 'this type of tree', and then 'this particular tree'. The mind does that automatically, according to its acculturation, background, conditioning, and so on. So representative realism might object: well, of course I sense the tree, but the tree is the cause of these sensations and perceptions; there is a real tree, over there, and my perceptions and sensations, within my mind.

But a counter-question to that is: what is the tree, outside or, or apart from, these sensations and judgements? How do we know the tree aside from how it appears to us? How do we see 'the real tree' as it is in itself, apart from how it appears to us. The Kantian answer to that is, we don't - we only ever know the tree as it appears to us. And I think that's important because it maintains the realisation that there must be a subjective pole to the act of knowledge even of the apparently objective domain. Whereas, representative realism tends to believe that there is an always-existing world of which our knowledge is a representation. (Good blog post on this point here.)

As for the meaning of phenomena and noumena - 'noumena' is derived from the seminal Greek word 'nous', which is 'mind' or 'intellect' but has connotations which are remote from the modern sense of those words. Recall that in ancient philosophy, ideal objects such as geometrical forms and numbers and the like, were known in a way that the knowledge of sensible particulars were not; that in knowing such things as mathematical certainties, the mind realises an immediate and apodictic certainty which is incapable of error. This is the origin of the idea of a priori truths although I suppose the ancients imbued this with a kind of mystical sense that we've now lost.

What I think is forgotten in modern discourse, is the sense in which the noumenal refers to an intelligible order. Originally, this was the locus of the distinction between reality and appearance (phaenomenon). So 'the real' was 'what was seen by "nous' ' which was of a different, and higher, order to what was seen by the senses; it was the ability of the philosopher to see the hidden order of things which could only be discerned by reason, and which was a separate and higher domain than that of the material world.

I think, overall, that this sense has tended to drop out of modern philosophy. Of course, in one sense, it has been preserved in science, in that science now purports to provide that insight into the 'real order of things', but at the same time, due to its emphasis on empiricism, which is essentially validation solely in terms of 'phenomenal appearances', it has lost that sense of there being an intelligible order of which the visible world is but a reflection.

...it has lost that sense... — Wayfarer

"Lost" is an appropriate word here. The empiricism places an emphasis on the importance of the reality of the "external object" as sensed, thus denying the possibility that the mind may be mislead by sensation. So when the determined "real order of things", which is produced by intellectual endeavours such as mathematical formulations, is inconsistent with what is sensed, science is incapable of resolving the problem, lost.

The problem is really not very difficult to resolve though. It stems from a misunderstanding of the act of perception, sensation. The misunderstanding is as tim woods says, that the external object causes the perception. Once we recognize that it is the perceiving being which is causing the perception (as tim would say, the being is working), not the external world which causes the perception, then we can understand that the inconsistencies between the way the mind apprehends the world, and the way that the senses apprehend the world, are all due to the different ways that one working being may interpret the world.

The content of the phenomenon is a re-presentation, — tim wood

I don't believe there's any good reason to think this. On the contrary, phenomena are all direct presentation. There is something like representation in the brain, but we don't have access to it (e.g. some configuration of neuronal firings may represent an object in some abacus-like calculation in the brain, but that's all "rough work" going on underneath conscious awareness). Consciousness isn't something locked inside the head, or in the brain, it's actually the name of a process (causal, physical process) that takes place between an object and a conscious object. The brain is a necessary part of it of course, but so is, e.g., the tree, the actual physical tree "out there." (But there's no "out there", the tree itself is part of the process.) Memory, dreams, reflections, are time-delayed perceptions, gerrymandered in various ways. (cf. Riccardo Manzotti for this "Process Externalism" - precursors being the New Realists, and a roughly similar contemporary theory from a scientific point of view being J J Gibson's theory of perception and "affordances.")

As to the rest of it, I think your problem was solved by Aristotle, in his distinction between actuality and potentiality (Act and Potency in the jargon). Aristotle harmonized Parmenides and Heraclitus by positing a kind of existence inbetween being (actuality) and nothing: potentiality. The range of potentialities an object has (e.g. of a rubber ball to melt, but not to sprout wings and fly) constitute the object's essence or nature, and causality is the transformation of one or more potentialities of an object into actualities, by the impingement of the actuality of another object (e.g. heat from a fire applied to the ball).

"Work" then, in your sense, is the application of an object's actuality (being) to another object's potential, making it actual. A machine is potentially a machine when it's switched off, it's actually a machine when it's switched on by another actuality (e.g. engineer).

And then you get into full hylomorphism, the four different types of causality, and all sorts of other things in the extraordinarily sophisticated classical (Platonic/Aristotelian/Scholastic) philosophy, in relation to which most modern philosophy is like a child's finger-painting.

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Perceptions, then, come and go. Can we say that they're caused? We can remain agnostic as to what, exactly, the cause is, but there must be one, yes? — tim wood

If you say "there must be one", then you imply necessity in relation to what you have described as contingent, the perception. Since a cause is required to bring about the contingent thing, then causation is implied here.

Perhaps the difficulty is with "cause." I only mean that for this perception of this tree, the tree is sina qua non. I'm giving no account as to how it works, simply that it does. We could parse it: no light, no perception - I can't see the tree. Light (then) reflects off the tree into my eye, and I see it : I perceive it. — tim wood

I cannot agree with this description of perception, because I have all sorts of things in my dreams, people, cars, buildings, and trees. Of course we commonly differentiate between things in dreams and things in perceptions, by saying that in the case of perception there is something present to the senses, and there is no such thing present to the senses in dreaming, but this does not dismiss the example, which indicates that objects present to the mind are created by the systems of the being which presents these objects to the mind, not by some external things.

So my argument is that your claim "no light, no perception" though it is correct, because perception is defined in such a way as to require sensation, does not amount to "no light, no tree", because a tree might appear in a dream. And, my argument concerns the real existence of objects. My claim is that the living being creates the object. As the creator of the object, it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in the perception, just like it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in dreams.

We affirmed above that when anyone says they see a tree, the one thing that does not happen is that they see a tree, agreed? There's a process, not well understood, that we call seeing the tree. But whatever it is, it involves something - we call it a tree. Is this MU's difficulty, on this understanding of cause? He (MU) appears to say that I create my own perceptions, and not only does the tree have nothing to do with it, but that apparently there ain't no tree. — tim wood

No, that's not what I am claiming. What I say is that in creating perceptions, just like in creating things in the world with one's hands, we work with raw materials to bring about the product. So in creating perceptions, the living being works with raw materials to produce the object, as the image, which is present to the mind. In the case of dreaming the raw materials used are different from the raw materials used in perception, but this does not mean that the object is not created by the being in each of the two cases.

The claim that the raw materials are the cause of the product would indicate a gross misunderstanding of what is going on. The fact is that the working being may create all sort of different products with all sorts of different raw materials, as is evident from my example of dreaming, as well as the various different senses which produce distinct images of the world.

Let's suppose it real, it then puts the question to MU: either it (MU's experience of being whopped and perhaps returning the favour) is all in his head, or he has to 'fess up and say plain that something about it came from "outside" and caused his perception. Which is it? — tim wood

Clearly the pain derived from being whopped is a product of the living body. To move backward down the causal chain, looking for an outside cause, is to take a step away from understanding the cause of the pain. Since you are requesting that we move in this direction, which is the direction opposed to the direction which leads to understanding, I think you are leading us toward misunderstanding.

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You’re quoted statement seems to me to only be an incomplete statement. Imo, more completely stated, “Phenomena are mind-caused re-presentations of the mind-independent noumena regarded”. This where mind is readily understood in the commonsense fashion and where phenomena and noumena are understood in Kantian manners—who after all popularized the concept of phenomena within our modern lexicon, tmk [though, like Wayfarer, I’m preferential to the ancient, original understanding of these two terms; e.g., a word on the tip of one’s tongue is a given (a particular known meaning) apprehended by the mind (nous, hence noumenal) devoid of any phenomena (i.e., appearances, either visual or auditory), making the meaning of this word at the tip of one's tounge a purely noumenal apprehension in the ancient sense of these terms… this, however, being a foreign interpretation to our modern Kantian understandings of phenomena and noumena ... and I'll here stick to the Kantian meaning of these terms]. At any rate, as per Kantianism, members of the same species will share common mind-caused phenomena to re-present the same noumena, which will be independent of the individual or collective minds pertaining to members of the given species. The more different two species are, the more different their mind-caused phenomena in relation to the same independent noumenon will be; yet all species—trees, ants, humans, etc.—will perceive the same noumena in terms of its solidity and location, for example (where it to be a solid, e.g., a boulder [trees do perceive/sense boulders and react to them in their root growth).

To me at least, the phenomenal is mind-dependent, as MU states ... but not the Kantian noumena it re-presents to the perceiver.

Also, experienced phenomena (contra abstract understanding of phenomena at large) will always be experienced as a direct presentation of what is, as gurugoeorge states … but this does not of itself make phenomena when abstractly addressed non-representational of what is regarded.

BTW, don’t have much to argue in the being/process debate. Still, whether it holds any inkling of ontological value or is strictly a poetic metaphor unrelated to the ontic which it addresses, I’ve always found it interesting that the being/process dichotomy within metaphysics can be easily compared to the particle/wave duality in QM—such that whether it is being or else process/working will be to a large extent dependent on contexts of observation. Though of in one way a rock is a bundle of ever-changing processes; thought of in another way a rock is a (relatively) changeless thing; but you can’t think of a rock in both ways at the same time and in the same way. You can maybe differentiate aspects of it in this way, such as its atoms and their activity—neither of which would then be the rock as gestalt entity/process—but then these atoms too are either things or processes, and so on ad infinitum. Same then applies to whether a machine is a set of workings or, else, a thing, imo. But again, since I don't now know how to evidence that this observation has any ontological value, I wouldn't know how to debate it.

I think there's two ways to understand "phenomena are presentation" - either in an idealistic/phenomenological sense, in which there's nothing (or there cannot be shown to be anything) "out there, behind" the phenomenon; or in what I believe to be the true sense, in which the "out there" is in causal continuity with the "in here."

One might say, in a trope, that the idealistic/phenomenological view is "thin" (notionally a sort of flat surface, like a map, beheld by a hovering, abstract, point of view) whereas the correct view is "thick" (a participated-in "rod" with beholder and beheld as two poles of one existent).

From a few days past:

( )

An old thought just came to me, one can apply issues of phenomena on an impartiality spectrum—such that most partial is fully limited to what is for the individual and only for the individual and what is most impartial equally is for all sentient beings regardless of type, degree, and quality of awareness.

At the most partial level, it is the phenomena I perceive. Less partially, it is the phenomena which we perceive—and the inclusivity of this “we” will indicate the degree of impartiality relative the the most partial perspective of the “I” when solely addressed. For example, this "we" could be one and one’s buddy, one’s group(s), one’s total species, all mammals, etc. Lastly, that which is equally applicable to all sentience is most impartial relative to any particular sentience.

Replace “impartiality” with “objectivity”—as can be quite validly done—and you can then address objective phenomena … as long as this objectivity is not addressed in terms of an absolute but, instead, in terms of being relative to the inclusiveness of all sentient beings addressed.

From this, we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species. Whichever properties are present to other species of life will then be more impartial/objective … until we arrive at things such as natural laws that address without any contradiction why things are as they are--such as why the moon’s presence needs to be even were all sentience to be sleeping due to the many causal factors which the moon manifests upon everything else, from ocean tides to, if I'm not mistaken, at least some circadian rhythms which occur even when we’re sleeping.

This, of course, in some ways might be contradictory to what many/most? nowadays understand by “objective reality” … but I find that it yet holds validity as an interpretation of objectivity, hence the objective world, and, consequently, of physical objects.

Via this interpretation of "objectivity as impartiality", one then can cogently address things such as the objective certainty of objective phenomena; e.g. it is objectively certain (and not my illusion) that the tree with green leaves is taller than the gray tree next to it which is devoid of leaves.

Also, from a Kantian point of view, such an understanding of the the objective world, when addressed from a fully impartial pov, would strictly consist of noumenal givens which our mind re-presents to us via mind-dependent/created phenomena.

If there are intrinsic errors found in this reasoning, please let me know.

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From his practical knowledge, we gather that, as a practical matter, none of this matters. The tree is a tree; the loaf of bread is just that; his table of friends - his biography tells us that however untraveled he was, he was also sociable and enjoyed company - were just as they seemed. What then of noumena? — tim wood

It is the ancient question of 'reality and appearance' - so it's not just something that can brushed off.

The very notion of 'the noumenal' arose out of the attempt to make sense out of the riot of phenomena - to search for the order, the logos, that causes things to be as they are. In that sense, very much the precursor to science itself, although in those days, the questions also always involved what would now be regarded as questions of quality and meaning, which are nowadays relegated to 'the subjective'.

I'm in this thread because of a recent wrestling match with a small but (imo) good book, The Phenomena of Awareness, C. Tougas. — Tim Wood

Terrific book, by the look of it. The beginning of Chapter Two has been a focus of mine since joining philosophy forums; the point about 'the nature of =' is something I have often (and usually unsuccessfully) laboured to make. it is a delight to read such a succinct exposition. And it's in my uni library! :party:

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Actually, no matter. If a perception is caused by something present to the senses, then what is it that is present to the senses? — tim wood

The point I am making is that it is incorrect to say that a perception is "caused" by the thing which is present to the senses. Do you not understand sensation as an activity of living beings? And isn't the act of sensing the cause of a sense perception? The living being is sensing, and this act of sensing is the cause of what you call "a perception". The external thing which is being sensed (and may well be passive) does not cause the perception, the sensing activity of the sensing being causes the perception.

Compare this to other activities which sentient beings are involved in. A human being builds a house. Would you say that the wood causes the existence of the house? Or is it the constructive activity of the human being which causes the existence of the house? Likewise, a human being sees a tree. Would you say that it is the tree which causes the perception of the tree, or is it the constructive, sensing activity of the human body which causes the perception of the tree?

If you get to the point of understanding that the sensing activity of the sentient being is the real activity which causes the existence of a sense perception, you might come to realize that it is not at all necessary that the external thing which is represented in the sense perception is even similar to the representation in perception. For instance, the word "tree", though it is used by the sentient being to represent the external thing, is not at all similar to the visual image. The thing which represents is not at all similar to the thing represented. So we ought not think that the external thing which we call 'tree" is even similar to the visual image which represents it in sense perception.

If a "system of the being," how does that work; what gets it going? — tim wood

Well isn't this one of the mysteries of life? How is it that a living being is self-moving? How is it that the will is free? But we can easily understand that it is so, without understanding how it is so. One can understand that water freezes when it gets cold without understanding how it is so.