I am willing to do so. I think the best way is to ask you to say something about mind-independent reality. Then I will try to point out the contradictions. — macrosoft

"The hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron."

Over to you.

"The hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron." — Herg

There is a big statue of Lincoln in DC.

Both statements are the same kind of uncontroversial statement about our shared 'mind-dependent' world, one might say. Both have conceptual content. If we zoom on on what is 'meant' by hydrogen, we have to zoom back out to place 'hydrogen' in a wider context to give it sense. The world is a nexus of meaning, one might say. To ignore that physics is grounded in a wider context that makes it intelligible is tempting but misleading, I think.

IMV, I think a better take on 'mind-independent reality' is trans-individual reality, public or shared reality.

Even if you don't agree, try to grasp what is being said. Our language game as humans exists as a whole. These statements have no sense apart from a wider, embodied context. The talk about atoms is one more useful kind of talk. It helps us map measurements to measurements. It helps us make stuff. The leap from this to a metaphysics of atoms is not justified, IMV.

All of this is loaded with the mental. We have the idea of a rock. We have proper names that exist within an historical context. — macrosoft

No one is saying that we don't have ideas, etc.

But that's exactly what I'm talking about re it being like some weird OCD/obsessiveness about talking about us qua us.

In other words, forget about us (or just assume that this is a description of some idealist phenomena or whatever--it doesn't matter for my purposes here) for a moment, and think about painting representational stuff from life. Say that someone has someone sit for a portrait. What you're doing is akin to having some weird OCD issue where no matter what, you can only talk about the painting as the painting--you can only talk about the canvas, the paints on the canvas, etc. per se, and you either have some mental block re talking about the fact that the painting is of the portrait subject who sat for it, or you're playing some kind of trollish game to that effect.

No one is denying that the painting uses paints, has brush strokes, etc. No one is denying that in order to do a painting of Mrs. Brown, we have to have a painting in the first place. When we say that "this is a painting of Mrs. Brown" we're not denying those facts about the painting. But we're not just talking about the painting qua the painting as if we're unable to talk about the fact that it's a painting of Mrs. Brown. What you're doing is akin to saying that there's no way to say that the painting is of Mrs. Brown, no way to say anything about Mrs. Brown at all, because the painting is on a canvas, it uses paints, etc.

So when we say something about the mind-independent world, we're not saying that we're not thinking about it, that we don't have concepts about it, that we're not using language, etc. But that's not what the claim is about. The claim is about the mind-independent world. Not about our concepts.

This is like another mental defect--an inability to understand the notion of aboutness, so that you conflate tools with what the tools are working on.

So when we say something about the mind-independent world, we're not saying that we're not thinking about it, that we don't have concepts about it, that we're not using language, etc. But that's not what the claim is about. The claim is about the mind-independent world. Not about our concepts.

This is like another mental defect--an inability to understand the notion of aboutness, so that you conflate tools with what the tools are working on. — Terrapin Station

I agree with you on this point more than you might expect. As I've said, the real value of this is to reveal a certain aporia from taking either perspective as absolute. The issue is clarification in the pursuit of a less naive metaphysics. 'Aboutness' functions just fine when we don't try to make it explicit.

It's actually the pursuit of transpersonal reality that motivates the separation of what humans add on (their biases, historically limited pre-conceptions) the 'thing-in-itself' from this 'thing-in-itself.' Our discussion is itself part of this pursuit. I think it is closer to the experience to think in terms of finding the public in the private.

Let's recall that you yourself insist that meaning lives only in individual skulls. This approach especially suggests to me that all we can ever have is overlapping inter-subjectivity. The publicly real what be nothing, it seems, but the synchronized intersection of skull-trapped interpretations of the world. Personally I think there is a lot to recommend that approach, which is not to say that it is the last word. But it makes truth very human, bound to human purpose and human cognition. The quest then is (as I have said already) what is true-for-us and not just true-for-me. Making this true-for-us explicit tends to run into problems.

As I've said, the real value of this is to reveal a certain aporia from taking either perspective as absolute — macrosoft

You're off the tracks here already. What in the world is this sentence even saying? What in the world does it have to do with anything we were just talking about?

If you keep persisting in responding like that, I'm just going to cut it short as soon as you say anything that's gobbledygooky, that's a big nonsequitur, etc., and ask you what the heck you're talking about and what it has to do with anything else.

You're off the tracks here already. What in the world is this sentence even saying? What in the world does it have to do with anything we were just talking about? — Terrapin Station

The idea of the real world exists within an individual skull. And yet the idea of the real world is meant to include this skull and the meaning it contains. The 'real world' is an idea. Yet ideas are inside 'skulls' that are inside the 'real world.' What is really going on? I don't pick a side. It's like a mobius strip, a glitch in our human cognition. Kant examined similar glitches in CPR. We weren't necessarily evolved to revolve such issues. There are similar paradoxes in naive set theory.

The idea of the real world exists within an individual skull. — macrosoft

All ideas exist within individual skulls, so this isn't saying anything. It's like saying, "patterns of paints exist on individual canvases." Yeah, obviously.

Why would you conflate the "idea of the real world" with the real world?

The 'real world' is an idea. — macrosoft

No, it isn't. And that's such a simple mistake that it's ridiculous. The IDEA of the real world is an idea. The real world isn't itself an idea.

The patterns of paints on a canvas are a pattern of paints. That doesn't mean that the patterns of paints are only OF a pattern of paints.

For some background that similar to where I am coming from:

The absolutely “unconditioned,” regardless of the fact that it presents to reason as objective, is not an object or state of affairs that could be captured in any possible human experience. In emphasizing this last point, Kant identifies metaphysics with an effort to acquire knowledge of “objects” conceived, but in no wise given (or giveable) to us in experience. In its efforts to bring knowledge to completion, that is, reason posits certain ideas, the “soul,” the “world” and “God.” Each of these ideas represents reason’s efforts to think the unconditioned in relation to various sets of objects that are experienced by us as conditioned.

It is this general theory of reason, as a capacity to think (by means of “ideas”) beyond all standards of sense, and as carrying with it a unique and unavoidable demand for the unconditioned, that frames the Kantian rejection of metaphysics. At the heart of that rejection is the view that although reason is unavoidably motivated to seek the unconditioned, its theoretical efforts to achieve it are inevitably sterile. The ideas which might secure such unconditioned knowledge lack objective reality (refer to no object), and our misguided efforts to acquire ultimate metaphysical knowledge are led astray by the illusion which, according to Kant, “unceasingly mocks and torments us”. — SEP

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/#TheReaTraIll

No, it isn't. And that's such a simple mistake that it's ridiculous. The IDEA of the real world is an idea. The real world isn't itself an idea. — Terrapin Station

Is the real world there in your using of the phrase? What can you be referring to ? I'd say public reality, the intersection of air-gapped meanings. Of course there is a real world. The question is how this real world can exist in air-gapped skulls. Presumably you think that the brain synthesizes sensation into an indirect image of the world. Part of this image would be our philosophic examination of what is going on. The real world (which of course I believe in) is mediated by human cognition.
All we can meaningfully talk about is this mediated image of the world (from this perspective, anyway.)

If meaning lives only in the skull, then the intelligible structure of the world (meaning) is 'in' the skull --and yet this skull models its own environment. In short, we can indeed vaguely point outside of our modelling. But I think you are ignoring the tangles that occur when we try to specify exactly what we mean.

The patterns of paints on a canvas are a pattern of paints. That doesn't mean that the patterns of paints are only OF a pattern of paints. — Terrapin Station

I agree. I think the problem here is that I see your point but you don't see mine.

The absolutely “unconditioned,” regardless of the fact that it presents to reason as objective, is not an object or state of affairs that could be captured in any possible human experience. — SEP

So, aside from having some problems with the way that's phrased (for example, "presents to reason" seems extremely wonky), my immediate response to something like that is to go . . . "because?" As there is no "because" there. No argument for it. It's just a claim. (Maybe Kant presented an argument for it in the CPR or wherever, but I don't recall that if so. It's been a long time since I read much Kant . . I don't even recall what the heck the conditioned/unconditioned distinction is supposed to be)

air-gapped — macrosoft

You keep using the phrase "air-gapped"--what the heck is that supposed to be?

Presumably you think that the brain synthesizes sensation into an indirect image of the world. — macrosoft

What? No. I'm a direct realist. You perceive the external world directly. I'm nothing like a representationalist. I think representationalism and similar stances are unsupportable.

(Maybe Kant presented an argument for it in CPR or wherever, but I don't recall that if so. It's been a long time since I read much Kant . . I don't even recall what the heck the conditioned/unconditioned distinction is supposed to be) — Terrapin Station

As I understand it, conditioned is mind-dependent and unconditioned is 'pure' or mind-independent reality in this context.

Some kind of Kantian view is almost the natural outcome of adopting a science-dominated metaphysics. If we evolved as mainstream science has it (and I don't doubt that we did), then our cognition would be one more tool, shaped so that we perceive what is relevant to our survival and reproduction. Darwinism suggests (and largely inspired) a pragmatist epistemology. The kind of truth independent of human purposes looks theological and old-fashioned in this light, even counter to the insights of science.

I like the style of naive realism. I prefer to say that appearance is just the mediation of the real. We don't see our seeing of the tree. We just see the tree. Ultimately it's a matter of style. Each side is trying to emphasize something valuable.

I started using 'air gapped' in response to your insistence that meaning is trapped in the individual skull. I think this is initially plausible because we see the separation of brains. Then the marks and noises of language are objectively meaningless. Somehow actual meaning is encoded in dead material for decoding into meaning again at another site. From a third-person perspective, this makes sense. But it thrusts us right back into reality being mediated by private cognition. We don't see the tree. I see the tree. This Cartesian framework opens up the usual talk of solipsism. Does not this imply that we all see a different reality? Then we have to infer somehow that we are actually in the same reality. The other problem is of course individual bias. Why should anyone be seeing reality correctly? We'd each have a privately held idea of what things are really like 'next' to our current idea of what things are like, as the possibility of the revision of our beliefs.

IMV, this is all about looking at what we really intend by certain phrases. What is their conceptual content?

To ignore that physics is grounded in a wider context that makes it intelligible is tempting but misleading, I think. — macrosoft

You seem to be reasoning as follows:
Premise: Physics is only intelligible in a wider context.
Inference: If the wider context is not present, what physics is describing cannot exist.

That is an invalid argument.

This, by contrast, would be a valid argument:
Premise: Physics is only intelligible in a wider context.
Inference: If the wider context is not present, physics is unintelligible.

You are also skating over the fact that 'intelligible' must mean 'intelligible to some person or persons'. If you remove the context in which we understand physics (i.e. our current civilisation and its scientific culture), that would make physics unintelligible to us, but it would not make it unintelligible to other civilisations who will have their own context in which to understand physics - and what they will understand, e.g. that a hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron, will be the same as what we understand, even though the context in which they understand it is different. Cultural relativism may have a place in ethics, but it has no place in science.

If we evolved as mainstream science has it (and I don't doubt that we did), then our cognition would be one more tool, shaped so that we perceive what is relevant to our survival and reproduction. — macrosoft

It's a common mistake to think of evolution as only allowing things that are geared towards survival/reproduction, by the way.

At any rate, why would this result in some Kantian view?

Just in case our cognition was shaped so that we perceive what is relevant to our survival and reproduction, then a Kantian view is implied because ?

The kind of truth independent of human purposes — macrosoft

Truth isn't independent of humans. Truth is a way of thinking about the relationship of propositions to other things (I gave you my definition of this awhile ago).

Facts, however, are independent of humans. You can easily perceive facts. Or at least you should be able to.

We don't see our seeing of the tree. We just see the tree. — macrosoft

It's not just a matter of style to say that we're "seeing our seeing." That's a claim that would require some sort of support beyond simply making the claim.

You seem to be reasoning as follows:
Premise: Physics is only intelligible in a wider context.
Inference: If the wider context is not present, what physics is describing cannot exist.

That is an invalid argument.

This, by contrast, would be a valid argument:
Premise: Physics is only intelligible in a wider context.
Inference: If the wider context is not present, physics is unintelligible. — Herg

Exactly. Again, it's a conflation of how we know about things, what we understand, etc. with what our knowing, etc. is about.

Exactly. Again, it's a conflation of how we know about things, what we understand, etc. with what our knowing, etc. are about. — Terrapin Station

Yes.

And macrosoft's statement ("There is a big statue of Lincoln in DC") and mine ("The hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron") are not on a par. The statue, Lincoln, and DC are all external mind-independent objects, but describing them as a statue, Lincoln and DC requires knowledge of a particular culture and is therefore mind-dependent. My sentence about the hydrogen atom requires no knowledge of a particular culture, only knowledge of the structure of matter, which is not culture-dependent, and therefore not mind-dependent (unless one is an idealist, which macrosoft claims not to be).

And macrosoft's statement ("There is a big statue of Lincoln in DC") and mine ("The hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron") are not on a par. The statue, Lincoln, and DC are all external mind-independent objects, but describing them as a statue, Lincoln and DC requires knowledge of a particular culture and is therefore mind-dependent. My sentence about the hydrogen atom requires no knowledge of a particular culture, only knowledge of the structure of matter, which is not culture-dependent, and therefore not mind-dependent (unless one is an idealist, which macrosoft claims not to be). — Herg

This is where I think you are missing my point. You assume that the lingo of hydrogen is fundamentally different from the lingo of Lincoln and DC. And you make your argument in terms of aliens to dodge the problem. But here you assume that surely they must understand hydrogen the same way, despite it having a different position in their own wider context of interpreting the world. You also assume that they wouldn't understand a statue as a statue.

I'm not afraid of being labeled an idealist. But I don't embrace those kinds of categorizations. That you seek to place me under categories like that does humorlessly show some idealism on your part. All but the most extreme so-called idealisms (as far as can tell) boil down to emphasizing mediation --what the subject adds to the object and, finally, the entanglement of the subject and object.

Just in case our cognition was shaped so that we perceive what is relevant to our survival and reproduction, then a Kantian view is implied because ? — Terrapin Station

That would be a quasi-Kantian view. Our cognition mediates or distorts the object. We never get the object prior to this mediation. I'm not saying that this view is without problems or even my own. I'd say that its hard not to be influenced by it.

Does a bat see the world as a human does? Does a 5 year old boy see the world as 50 year old man does? Of course not. And I can only ask this question because we have an initial sense that the same world is involved in all cases. On the other hand, we never get this world unmediated. Within our distorted conceptually-laced interpretations of the world there is also the sense or notion of this world apart from our distortions. I think this derives mostly from everyday life where we find that we were wrong about the situation. As this is puffed up into a metaphysical issue, certain problems arise.

It's like Kant's dove. It found that it flew faster in thinner air and assumed it could fly faster yet in a vacuum. Metaphysical theories are parasitic on the blurriness of ordinary language and embodied, ordinary life.

I do enjoy debating with you and trying to do math with words. My goal is to illuminate the complexity of the issue, point at an aporia. To do that I have to oppose your view, indicate why it doesn't seem to be exhaustive. But I don't think a quasi-Kantian view is exhaustive either. The wheel goes around and around. Centuries of this stuff. I suspect that thinkers like Pyrrho also wrestled in this kind of controversy and that this led to a detachment from it -grokking that it has no natural end. Explicit formulations fail. Consensus is not attained. The blind guy with the elephant's ear in his hand doesn't know what the blind guy with its tail in his hand is talking about. The words won't stay fixed. For me on the big issues is how one addresses this situation itself.

You haven't addressed what kind of thing you are fundamentally up to (which I did not ask directly.) What is philosophy for? Is it a kind of science that can be done with words alone? Is it part of a wider existential project of making sense of one's life?

It's not just a matter of style to say that we're "seeing our seeing." That's a claim that would require some sort of support beyond simply making the claim. — Terrapin Station

I'd say just look at the well-worn pragmatist critique of differences that make no difference. I agree that 'just seeing the tree' and 'only seeing or seeing of the tree' do have different meaning-content in the heads of those debating, but these differences are trivial. They act pretty much the same in the real world that grounds all our talking.

These kinds of debates are one reason why a certain kind of philosophy is considered so dry and useless. (Feynmann's joke about rasiing the fork to his mouth. ) One reason why I embrace phenomenology (Heidegger's and Hegel's) is because it actually addresses the stuff people mostly care about. It isn't stuffed in a jar, talking endlessly about the right jargon for an epistemology no one asks for or lives by. If we want to be big worldly realists, I think we have the brute fact of technology that works. Painless dentistry obliterates the tiny persuasive force of a 50 page analysis of what truth 'really' is. And just as I forgot the details of your definition of truth, we all forget any individual's attempt to yank this token 'truth' out a living practice of action and conversation. We might say that a certain kind of philosophy is an endless game of 'if I could control how people talked, ....'

This obliteration is liberating though. Since philosophy as epistemology has no real persuasive force, we might as well stop pretending we are scientists of some kind and get back to existential and phenomenological issues, the 'literary' stuff that embarrasses those with a theological itch to find god-as-method in a dead set of propositions.

All ideas exist within individual skulls, so this isn't saying anything. It's like saying, "patterns of paints exist on individual canvases." Yeah, obviously. — Terrapin Station

That obviousness is actually what deserves being challenged, and not from some notion of magical machinery but in terms of the phenomenon of being 'in' a language. Your approach seems to be (implicitly) building up the 'life-world' from a dead world of objects. This is indeed a natural approach. But its complementary approach is equally persuasive. We examine the life-world first and trace how the image of a dead world of whatever-stuff is built up within the meaningful discourse of this life-world. For me the stereoscopic view is more comprehensive. Especially since 'your' approach 'covers over' the phenomenon of 'world' explored by Heidegger and others. It simply ignores experience that doesn't fit its unconsidered present-to-hand approach. It applies an un-investigated contingent understanding of being as if this understanding were necessary. It understands clock time (ultimately spatial) as the only kind of time. Among other things this traps its theory of meaning in an instantaneous atomism.

And for what really? To understand itself as an armchair science, as far as I can tell, a 'neckbeard theology.' In its hard objectivity that ignores values as mere projections on dead stuff it fails to ask what its own investment in such a vision is. Pragmatism is far more worldly. Armchair science still understands Truth as something sacred or valuable in itself. Why does this vision stop half-way? What is this feeling it has for truth-apart-from-purpose? You mentioned a flight from anthropomorphism. To me this is almost the essence of the human, this desire to be trans-human. I think philosophy as the armchair science of words is 'religiously' charged. Else why not a post-Baconian epistemology of power-as-knowledge? The 'worldly' philosophy is just sophistry, speech as a hammer. As I see it, one grasps this and decides one wants to do 'existential' things with this hammer. Traditional epistemological concerns seem to be cashed out in politics and technology, relegating armchair science to the bleachers.

That obviousness is actually what deserves being challenged, — macrosoft

It's fine to challenge it, but the challenge had better be good/well-justified, and you'd better expect the challenge to be challenged.

A challenge from language fails from the get-go, because the topic isn't language. Language is simply the means via which we're communicating, but it's not the topic, and if you think it's the topic, you're supremely confused.

Thinking that we're talking about language per se is thinking that we're talking about the painting qua the painting when we're talking about the painting being a painting of Mrs. Brown That's the fundamental lack of understanding that I was referring to and that you didn't address very well.

'd say just look at the well-worn pragmatist critique of differences that make no difference. I agree that 'just seeing the tree' and 'only seeing or seeing of the tree' do have different meaning-content in the heads of those debating, but these differences are trivial. They act pretty much the same in the real world that grounds all our talking. — macrosoft

The differences are trivial to whom? We need to ask individual people whether they matter to them, don't we? Importance, mattering, etc. are to individuals, and different individuals feel different ways.

Our cognition mediates or distorts the object. — macrosoft

That's a claim. What's the support for it?

Does a bat see the world as a human does? Does a 5 year old boy see the world as 50 year old man does? Of course not. — macrosoft

How would you know this? (Note that I'm not suggesting an answer either way--that either they do or do not see the world "the same." I'm simply asking how we know such things. Our answer to whether they see the world the same and whether and how we know this has a bearing on whether the method via which we're claiming to know it is even workable)

You haven't addressed what kind of thing you are fundamentally up to (which I did not ask directly.) What is philosophy for? — macrosoft

Sorry re not answering this above. Re "What philosophy is for?" The answer to that is different for different people. There is no right or wrong answer (at least not in terms of anyone's motivation, the purpose they have in mind for it, etc., even if some of that might not be achievable).

For me, personally, there are many different attractions and uses for it, at least a la its analytic incarnation, including that it's simply how I naturally think, I find it entertaining--and partially because of the things that people say under its guise that I find utterly ridiculous, it provides a great set of critical thinking tools, it's given me another option re how to make a living, etc.

As for what I see philosophy as doing, yes, I basically see philosophy and science as doing the "same thing" via a different methodology. Here's something I wrote about this recently in another thread:

Science and philosophy are mostly looking at the same things, just with different methodological approaches and slightly different focuses.

Science is experiment-oriented, focused on theorizing and proposing hypotheses that we then attempt to falsify via empirical experiments (whereupon, in lieu of falsification, we consider the hypotheses provisionally verified, at least so long as the experiment was well-designed).

Philosophy is not experiment-oriented. It's more focused on critically examining assumptions that we make [including assumptions that both itself and the sciences make about the world and how it can be examined], as well as trying to describe, account for and occasionally prescribe things about the world based on abstract structural relations. — Terrapin Station

And macrosoft's statement ("There is a big statue of Lincoln in DC") and mine ("The hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron") are not on a par. The statue, Lincoln, and DC are all external mind-independent objects, but describing them as a statue, Lincoln and DC requires knowledge of a particular culture and is therefore mind-dependent. My sentence about the hydrogen atom requires no knowledge of a particular culture, only knowledge of the structure of matter, which is not culture-dependent, and therefore not mind-dependent (unless one is an idealist, which macrosoft claims not to be). — Herg

I'm not bringing this up to disagree with you, just to emphasize that one way they get misled is by noting that calling it "hydrogen" rather than "floopap" or whatever, calling it an "atom" rather than a "pleen" or whatever, and so on, does require cultural knowledge. In other words, if there's an OCD obsession to focus on us and the language we use (or how we know things, or whatever the particular obsession is), then they're going to see the Lincoln statue and the hydrogen atom similarly in that regard--they both have the part of the meat of the chicken that they're obsessed with, so they just chomp down on that--whether it's what you were pointing to or not, and they discard the rest.

And then since we can't talk about this stuff without using language for obvious reasons (or without involving knowing, etc.), the OCDs are perpetually fueled for their obsession, can perpetually chomp down on the meat they like and discard the rest, because we can't present anything without that meat being there.

It's akin to imagining someone obsessed with counting. You try to give them directions to the store to buy milk, but they can't do that, because all they can do is count how many miles it was to the store, how many light posts they passed, how many other cars were on the road, how many cartons of milk there were, etc.--all they can do is count things, all they can do is engage an obsession.

The differences are trivial to whom? We need to ask individual people whether they matter to them, don't we? Importance, mattering, etc. are to individuals, and different individuals feel different ways. — Terrapin Station

Indeed. And that is where the personal, 'existential' position shows its face. And I suggest this is all vaguely structured by an image of the ideal human being.

That's a claim. What's the support for it? — Terrapin Station

I don't drive without my contact lenses in. I'd be breaking the law. Or are the blurry signs not the same as the less blurry signs?

The supreme kind of mediation is happening right now as you interpret these marks on your screen.

A challenge from language fails from the get-go, because the topic isn't language.Language is simply the means via which we're communicating, but it's not the topic, and if you think it's the topic, you're supremely confused. — Terrapin Station

And I think this is a questionable assumption. Language is something like the primary human phenomenon. Humans are radically social, palpably sharing a kind of 'meaning field.' If we build things up from the isolated subject (an 'I' which has 'meaning'), we rip this ego like an organ out of the larger organ-ism of the community. An isolated human being is not fully human in some sense. I do not mean an adult who lives on the moon for a year. I mean a child who is raised by wolves. For me this is the blind-spot of an analytic or atomic approach. It needs a atomic meanings, atomic subjects in skulls. It needs categories that are artificial and discrete. In short, it tries to model existence after mechanism as opposed to organism. I think the driving image is that of certainty and clarity, which are worth goals. But 'truncating' the object of investigation for these goals violates the primary goal of describing what is --in the name of what ought to be (oh, but existence should just fit my method of grasping it.). This means facing and tolerating that which will not come into perfect focus.

What you call confusion, I call neglect on your part of the very phenomenon that makes this accusation of confusion possible and meaningful.

they're going to see the Lincoln statue and the hydrogen atom similarly in that regard — Terrapin Station

The irony in Herg's anti-idealism is that s/he takes a model (the idea of hydrogen) for the thing itself. Science has evolved over the centuries. No doubt other unwitting idealists thought Newton's vision was the thing itself and not just another imperfect model at some point. In a certain sense all philosophy has been (shades of) idealism. It questions common sense and superstition by considering the subject's distortion of the object. The 'pure object' is itself an idea/ideal--along with the pure subject our fervid epistemologists just assume. A naive theory of reference ('it's not about the language') forgets that it can't give its elusive 'pure object' content that isn't 'stolen' from the impure object.

You try to give them directions to the store to buy milk, but they can't do that, because all they can do is count how many miles it was to the store, how many light posts they passed, how many other cars were on the road, how many cartons of milk there were, etc.--all they can do is count things, all they can do is engage an obsession. — Terrapin Station

To me this is a good description of the atomic approach to meaning. It ignores the fluidity and complexity of actual life and gets caught up in differences that make no difference. It wants proofs of the same truths it lives by when not on a part-time quest for an life-divorced notion of certainty and clarity. It models its interactions with others (even the others most trusted and familiar) in terms of meanings trapped in skulls --never mind the palpable , pre-theoretical sense of sharing meaning with others.

It offers theses that are immediate consequences of the way the terms are initially interpreted as discoveries about our shared reality (idealism, realism, etc.). It concerns itself with an implicit ought (what we should mean by X) and neglects the is (what he, she, or we mostly mean by X).

Don't take the following sketch of a caricature personally, please. I'm trying to contextualize why I think a certain approach to philosophy is obsolete (for me anyway.)

William James talked about tough and tender minded philosophers. I get the sense that anti-idealism identifies with toughness of mind. It opposes itself to silliness, wishful thinking, exotic language. In the name of truth, right? It is maybe even an implicitly macho facing-of-the-truth that wipes the icing off the cake as sugary stuff for weakling who can't handle reality without the sweetener.

The problem with this position is that truth as Truth is pure icing. These anti-idealists still just want to talk about ideal truth, unworldly truth. The genuine tough-minded epistemology is power as knowledge. Those who simply ignore AP philosophy do so from the basic tough mindedness of practical life. As Hume pointed out long ago, induction in all its deductive groundlessness is our dominant epistemology. Whatever reliably gives us what we want is true. The talk of philosophers is less convincing than a working hair-dryer.

But 'tough minded' philosophers who obsess over idealized words yanked from the living language ignore their situation. They contrast themselves with 'idealists' who...obsess over language. Their 'discoveries' follow from their stipulated, artificial definitions of words used with staggering complexity and facility in that unknown (forgotten, neglect, ignored) frontier of ordinary life. They take this particular mindset as a paradigmatic of human existence itself. The subject is a disengaged starer-at (not user-of) objects. The subject is a lonely chap who needs proof that he exists, despite such a request being the affirmation of a shared reality in the first place. He consciousness is burdened also perhaps by the lack of a proof that there is such a thing as consciousness. He's not sure that it's just wrong to run down children in one's car. Most of us feel that it is wrong, but this isn't theologically certified proof. He's just not sure that anything that doesn't just sit their for his vision like a mountain actually exists. He's scientific, of course, but can't quite say how science exists. It can't be shared meaning, since that's a tender-minded superstition.

The above is a bit of a caricature, obviously, but I'm trying to deflate the notion that mere talk about objective truth is significantly (or even at all) less tender-minded than its perceived opposite. Compared the pragmatic sophists who long ago grasped power as truth and war as epistemology, Truth-seeking philosophers are all sentimentalists, talking, talking, talking as others run the world ---mostly by persuasion within the murk of living, ordinary language. For the sophist, 'proof' is just another name for persuasion, for manipulating social and physical reality with language as a hammer. Philosophy a priori sets itself against this vulgarity sentimentally, 'gripped by an attunement.' The big-boy talk of realism is once more theological spiderweb, trampled over or ignored by a vulgar but more genuine realism that scoffs at words that don't do anything. Hence theology of neckbeards, with unworldly Truth as its god and a hobbled notion of rationality as its Holy Ghost.