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) — Terrapin Station

At some point there is always some grounding in the obvious --and this itself is obvious upon even a brief consideration. We are already in a shared language before we can even start to question one another about these things. Our lives indicate sufficient certainty in quite a few beliefs. If somehow a bat manifested a human-like consciousness, it would rattle our entire sense of things. The barest logical possibility is impotent, just as the notion of absolute certainty is a theological artificiality.

I'd say our true situation involves a groundless ground, an operating system we can't get behind and can only imperfectly grasp with that same operating system. When I step out of bed in the morning, I don't know that the floor is there -- I know it. Our high level thinking depends on a massive foundation of inconspicuous, automatic 'backgrounding.' One 'proves' this via a 'formal indication,' a phenomenological pointing-out. Such phenomena are covered-up by a pre-interpretation of the situation that needs it to be a certain way more than it just wants to see what's there. Something like an honest memory comes into play. We reflect in a theoretical mindset on what occurred outside that theoretical mindset. For instance, we look at ordinary conversation about easy, worldly matters and realize that we shared a meaning space. We inconspicuously and automatically lived in the same room, knowing that the same objects were visible to both of us and interpreted as a chair for sitting, a painting for looking at. The words of others weren't sounds to be translated into meanings. They were (shared) meaning itself (a direct realism, you might say.) We can of course call all of this an 'illusion' or 'projection of the subject.' That's a stereoscopic perspective. But we still do this in that same 'illusion.'

The irony in Herg's anti-idealism is that s/he takes a model (the idea of hydrogen) for the thing itself. — macrosoft

I have certainly never taken either a model of the hydrogen atom, or the idea of a hydrogen atom, to be the hydrogen atom itself. I never confuse a model or idea of a thing with the thing itself.

I hold to the working hypothesis that there is an externally existing world of objects that causes us to have perceptual and other experiences which in their turn cause us to evolve a model of said external world of objects. We can't be sure how fully or accurately we are modelling the external world of objects, partly because some of its properties may be causally inert in relation to our perceptions, and partly because a causal chain does not necessarily transfer information along its length with completeness or accuracy; but the working hypothesis that there is a world of objects that broadly matches our model of it is justified by the fact that it is by far the most economical explanation for our perceptions.

At some point there is always some grounding in the obvious --and this itself is obvious upon even a brief consideration. We are already in a shared language before we can even start to question one another about these things. — macrosoft

I don't believe it is obvious, though, and I wouldn't say it has anything to do with language.

Re your second paragraph, I have no idea what the topic even is.

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? — macrosoft

When I was a kid, I was more or less sheltered from religious beliefs. My parents are atheists, my maternal grandfather was a Russell-like atheist, I didn't have any friends who were particularly religious, etc. I wasn't familiar with any religious beliefs in any detail until I was about fifteen years old. I also come from a family of practical jokers who will sometimes go to great lengths for a practical joke. April Fool's Day was probably my maternal grandfather's favorite holiday. So when I finally learned a bit about religious beliefs, I seriously thought that people were practical-joking. I said, "Wait a minute--you believe what?? :lol: "

The reason I'm not an idealist is very similar. It strikes me as a "Wait a minute--you believe what?? :lol:" thing, something for which there is no good reason to believe. ( Despite many requests to folks to attempt to provide what I'd consider a good reason to believe it.)

Re truth, I've already given you my truth theory. I see truth purely as a "technical issue," something where my truth theory won't make any sense to someone not familiar with the conventional way of looking at truth under analytic philosophy. They'd have to understand that first. The various colloquial senses of "truth" are a mess in my opinion.

I don't want to talk about epistemology all of the time. I don't want to do anthropology or psychology or sociology all the time. I don't only want to talk about humans. And I definitely don't want to talk about philosophy of language all of the time. If philosophy weren't capable of veering from philosophy of language I would have never pursued philosophy in any manner. When I'm doing ontology it's not at all about language/about words per se. I'm only also doing words/language because I can't do anything else on a message board. It's necessary to use language. That doesn't imply that language is the subject matter.

I'm in no way denying that people use objects, I just don't want to engage in something where my subject matter can only be people. People are self-centered enough.

These word games do not impress me. I do not consider them as true philosophy. They are more like counterfeit philosophy.

And I have never been a fan of this particular ontological "proof of God" either.

There are stronger proofs of God. We do not need the ontological one.

pre-theoretical sense of sharing meaning with others. — macrosoft

What would you give as an example of a shared meaning?

There are stronger proofs of God. We do not need the ontological one. — hks

Give it your best shot.

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? — macrosoft

Your support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object" is that you don't drive without your contact lenses in? How is that a support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object"?

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. — macrosoft

If you think that I'm extolling the "atomic approach" (I wouldn't say that I am, though I'm not entirely sure what the "atomic approach" amounts to in your view), it would be wrong to suggest that my view/my account of how meaning, communication, etc. work can't account for any observable phenomena, including the "fluidity and complexity of actual life." You could suggest something observable that you feel I can't account for, though, and I'll explain how I do account for it.

It wants proofs of the same truths — macrosoft

I'm definitely not asking for "proofs" of anything, and as I explained, I have a subjectivist view of what truth is.

It models its interactions with others (even the others most trusted and familiar) in terms of meanings trapped in skulls — macrosoft

That part is accurate about my view, but that's why I asked you for an example of a shared meaning (in terms of something observable).

The irony in Herg's anti-idealism is that s/he takes a model (the idea of hydrogen) for the thing itself. — macrosoft

Does it? Did you ask Herg about that? Maybe it's that Herg sees models/ideas as different than what the model is a model of, or the idea is an idea about.

I've stressed many times that it's important not to conflate to ideas and what they're ideas of. Just like it's important to not conflate a painting and what it's a painting of. Ideas, concepts, etc. are like paintings. They're not identical to what they're a painting of. And visual artists can only make paintings, but it's not the case that they can only experience or know-by-acquaintance paintings. You should probably ask them if they're confusing their painting for the thing that they're painting.

In a certain sense all philosophy has been (shades of) idealism. — macrosoft

In the sense of "Let's say things that are incorrect."

It questions common sense and superstition by considering the subject's distortion of the object. — macrosoft

How about we take it a step further and question whether subjects necessarily "distort objects" and question how we could know that if we're going to claim it?

The 'pure object' is itself an idea/ideal — macrosoft

Or so one brand of philosophical "common sense" or superstition would have it. How about we question that?

A naive theory of reference — macrosoft

A theory of reference is going to be a philosophy of languge topic. We can do things other than make theories of reference our topic, though.

Let me ask this. If we were going out to lunch together, and talking about menu items, would you insist on talking about how it is that language works, the relation of our ideas to the menu items, etc.? Or could we just think about food and what we're going to order?

forgets that it can't give its elusive 'pure object' content that isn't 'stolen' from the impure object — macrosoft

The idea that objects are "elusive" is a claim you're making but not supporting..

Language is something like the primary human phenomenon. — macrosoft

Any kind of hierarchy like that is going to be dubious.

Humans are radically social — macrosoft

Radically social? What's the difference between being just-plain-old social and being "radically" social?

palpably sharing a kind of 'meaning field.'[/quote]

What observable do you take to amount to a "meaning field"?

If we build things up from the isolated subject — macrosoft

You've used a "building" metaphor a number of times but I'm not sure why.

"organ-ism" — macrosoft

Why are you hyphenating "organism" and italicizing "ism"? No idea why you'd write that that way.

An isolated human being is not fully human in some sense. — macrosoft

I wouldn't say I'm positing anyone being isolated, so you'd have to clarify what you're reading that way. Re whether whatever you're reading that way counts as "fully human" or not, wouldn't that simply be about the way you're using the term "fully human"?

For me this is the blind-spot of an analytic or atomic approach. It needs a atomic meanings, atomic subjects in skulls. — macrosoft

I'm very confused about how you're using the term "atomic," too. I wouldn't say that I'm talking about "atomic" anything. You'd have to explain what you're reading that way/how you're using that term.

It needs categories that are artificial — macrosoft

What would be an example of a category that's not artificial?

In short, it tries to model existence after mechanism as opposed to organism. — macrosoft

If we're talking about building models per se, it would just depend on what one is modeling. For example, if you're modeling the sun, you're not going to be concerned with modeling organisms, because there are no organisms on/in the sun. If you're modeling bacteria, most of your model is going to be focused on organisms. It's probably best to model what you're modeling, and not what you're not modeling. ;-)

I think the driving image is that of certainty — macrosoft

Personally I think that philosophy has tended to make very stupid mistakes (including idealism), when it has concerned itself with certainty.

the primary goal of describing — macrosoft

I think that describing, seen as something valuable in itself, is a misguided goal, too. As I said recently in a couple other threads: "NO description is like what it's describing. No description conveys an experience of what it's describing, conveys its qualities, etc. Descriptions are just sets of words, after all, and what they're describing isn't a set of words, or at least isn't the same set of words . . . Descriptions are sets of words that individuals take to tell something about, charactize in some way, etc. various things about something else. That's all they are."

So focusing on descriptions as if there's something special about them is pretty misguided I think, and that's probably part of where the misguided enchantment with language qua language is coming from.

I don't need to give it my best shot. Aquinas has already done so. Have you heard of him perhaps?

Perhaps you could relate how you consider that proof to be superior to others. You, after all, are the one claiming such a superiority.

You express a lot contempt for certain ideas and people but I haven't seen you put much skin in the game yourself by defending your assertions. If you just want to stay on sidelines, perhaps you should adopt a less combative tone.

If you do not dismiss the multitude of archaic superseded ideas then you become awash in detritus. And perhaps you should prove why you disagree with Aristotle on The Prime Mover and with Aquinas on The First Cause etc.! You seem to have mastered the fallacy of shifting the burden. Your methods are Sophist. Anyone who has studied anything can easily see that.

Er, you were the one saying one proof was better than another. Asking for a defense of that opinion offers you an opportunity to explain why.

Your reply to the request asserts other opinions that you are also not defending. You demur by claiming they are self evident. So far, you have not produced anything to shift in any direction.

The insulting tone could be seen as an ad hominem argument but that is not quite right because your claims are a not a rebuttal to anything I have claimed.

Nothing has happened yet.

Fair enough. That sketch was helpful.

What would you give as an example of a shared meaning? — Terrapin Station

When you typed this out to ask me the question, you expected with no genuine doubt that I could understand you and answer. When you got out of bed this morning, you didn't check to see if you had legs. Our sense of others is so 'primordial' or 'automatic' and our embeddedness in a language is so complete and natural that it just works automatically most of the time. That's all that 'pre-theoretical' really means. My gripe with certain epistemological concerns is that they aren't honest enough about these basic, dominant ways of just being in the world.

Another example would be the symbol on restrooms for men or women. Or road-signs as we drive. Or someone flipping the bird or the peace sign. We don't receive sense-data and then put it all together with difficult. It is there right away as a meaningful gesture. Sure, afterwards we can wonder how the brain makes all this happen. But we are always already in a field of this kind of meaning before we are sophisticated enough to start speculating about brains. And of course doing science already presupposes the idea of true-for-everyone. Our basic human situation is massively social, even if we hide away to commune with our own mind in a language we learned via practice and speech within a living community.

And perhaps you should prove why you disagree with Aristotle on The Prime Mover and with Aquinas on The First Cause etc.! — hks

Why not start a thread in which you present and defend Aristotle's and Aquinas' arguments? Then we would all have something to get our teeth into. More interesting for the rest of us than this bickering about off-stage arguments.

When you typed this out to ask me the question, you expected with no genuine doubt that I could understand you and answer. — macrosoft

Yes. And my account of meaning, understanding, communication etc. does not at all have shared meaning, yet it very easily accounts for this. So that's not an example of shared meaning.

Another example would be the symbol on restrooms for men or women. Or road-signs as we drive. Or someone flipping the bird or the peace sign. — macrosoft

Again, none of these are examples, because it's very easy to account for this stuff under my version of what's going on.

Yes. And my account of meaning, understanding, communication etc. does not at all have shared meaning, yet it very easily accounts for this. So that's not an example of shared meaning. — Terrapin Station

I am trying to point at a primary sense we have in ordinary life of being intelligible to one another. Our language functions transparently for us most of the time. This general idea is discussed below. My claim is that while using language we experience a pre-theoretical sense of shared meaning. This include reading. I'm not saying your theory is wrong. This isn't about explicit theory versus explicit theory. It is perhaps about the dependence of explicit theory on an in-explicit primary situation. BTW, this is one of the ideas that made me realize that Heidegger wasn't just smoke in mirrors. To me it's 'obvious' in retrospect, but it never occurred to theoretical me that objects really do show themselves in different modes.

Heidegger argues that we ordinarily encounter entities as (what he calls) equipment, that is, as being for certain sorts of tasks (cooking, writing, hair-care, and so on). Indeed we achieve our most primordial (closest) relationship with equipment not by looking at the entity in question, or by some detached intellectual or theoretical study of it, but rather by skillfully manipulating it in a hitch-free manner. Entities so encountered have their own distinctive kind of Being that Heidegger famously calls readiness-to-hand. Thus:

The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’. (Being and Time 15: 98)

Readiness-to-hand has a distinctive phenomenological signature. While engaged in hitch-free skilled activity, Dasein has no conscious experience of the items of equipment in use as independent objects (i.e., as the bearers of determinate properties that exist independently of the Dasein-centred context of action in which the equipmental entity is involved). Thus, while engaged in trouble-free hammering, the skilled carpenter has no conscious recognition of the hammer, the nails, or the work-bench, in the way that one would if one simply stood back and thought about them.

Tools-in-use become phenomenologically transparent. Moreover, Heidegger claims, not only are the hammer, nails, and work-bench in this way not part of the engaged carpenter's phenomenal world, neither, in a sense, is the carpenter. The carpenter becomes absorbed in his activity in such a way that he has no awareness of himself as a subject over and against a world of objects. Crucially, it does not follow from this analysis that Dasein's behaviour in such contexts is automatic, in the sense of there being no awareness present at all, but rather that the awareness that is present (what Heidegger calls circumspection) is non-subject-object in form. Phenomenologically speaking, then, there are no subjects and no objects; there is only the experience of the ongoing task (e.g., hammering).
— SEP

Your theory is sophisticated. I have nothing against it. But it tries to capture something larger than itself, the very thing that makes it possible.

Okay, but I'm saying that the idea of shared meaning is wrong. It gets wrong what meaning is, and if the observable phenomena are posited as shared meaning, then it follows that when we set up, say, computer systems to mimic the observables, or set up robots to do something like the Chinese Room, we have to say that they are doing meaning. There's a problem with that, however. We're clearly doing things that computers and robots are not doing--which also goes into why they're not persons, why they're not due the same moral considerations as persons, and so on.

Your support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object" is that you don't drive without your contact lenses in? How is that a support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object"? — Terrapin Station

I can't read the road-signs without my corrective lenses. When I put them in, I can. Did the signs change? Or just my mediation? (I was trying to give you a break from my longwindedness.)

I've stressed many times that it's important not to conflate to ideas and what they're ideas of. Just like it's important to not conflate a painting and what it's a painting of. Ideas, concepts, etc. are like paintings. They're not identical to what they're a painting of. And visual artists can only make paintings, but it's not the case that they can only experience or know-by-acquaintance paintings. You should probably ask them if they're confusing their painting for the thing that they're painting. — Terrapin Station

I've tried to raise the same point several times. It's an old point. The thing we talk about is so wrapped up in meaning that when we try to talk about the thing itself we are peeling an onion.

I agree that stuff is out there. My point is that a naive view ignores the problems with explicit accounts of the situation. It doesn't even see the problem. On the one hand it appeals to common sense, a basic sense of our shared reality. Only fools think everything is mind! Well, sure. But those 'fools' were motivated by equally naive versions of the thing in itself. All that such naive understandings of this thing in itself have on their side is common sense. But show me the idealists who didn't share this same common sense. Hence they were looking at the complexities of mediation, including the vanishing-for-explicit-theory of those mysterious noumena.

My position is aporia.

'In philosophy, an aporia is a philosophical puzzle or a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry, often arising as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises (i.e. a paradox).'
...
In Pyrrhonism aporia is intentionally induced as a means of producing ataraxia. — wiki

Pyrrho fascinates me as a dialectician who (I speculate) was wily enough to work through all the usual moves and see the futility of explicit accounts. Who know? Maybe the brother was down with semantic holism.

I'm very confused about how you're using the term "atomic," too. I wouldn't say that I'm talking about "atomic" anything. You'd have to explain what you're reading that way/how you're using that term. — Terrapin Station

I think semantic holism gets it right(-er). The 'atomic approach' understands words to be charged with significant independent meaning. In short, the atomic approach downplays context and ambiguity. The holistic approach emphasizes that language functions as a soft machine, a nexus of dynamic meanings. What's appealing about the atomic approach is that it makes arguments more possible, more believable. One can do 'word-math' with relatively stable meanings. Sans those atomic meanings, one is thrown into a bottomless pit of interpretation. But one is also able to let go of any particular jargon. (And maybe I'll change mine up soon, since 'shared meaning' blah blah isn't cutting through the noise.)

If we're talking about building models per se, it would just depend on what one is modeling. For example, if you're modeling the sun, you're not going to be concerned with modeling organisms, because there are no organisms on/in the sun. If you're modeling bacteria, most of your model is going to be focused on organisms. It's probably best to model what you're modeling, and not what you're not modeling. — Terrapin Station

As I mentioned, what was being modeled was existence --human or 'first-person' existence as a whole. I like philosophy that aspires to make sense of all experience without remainder, which includes perhaps especially a making sense of its own sense-making. This part is maybe the hard and central part for philosophy --yet it all hangs together.

Okay, but I'm saying that the idea of shared meaning is wrong. It gets wrong what meaning is, and if the observable phenomena are posited as shared meaning, then it follows that when we set up, say, computer systems to mimic the observables, or set up robots to do something like the Chinese Room, we have to say that they are doing meaning. There's a problem with that, however. We're clearly doing things that computers and robots are not doing--which also goes into why they're not persons, why they're not due the same moral considerations as persons, and so on. — Terrapin Station

I'll meet you half-way here. A random sentence generator could send out an email to 6 billion human beings. Maybe some of those emails would be convincingly human. We can say that readers of such messages would not 'actually' be sharing meaning. But what I have in mind is the first-person sense of existing in a meaning field. As these random emails are being read, the reader is 'transparently' 'there' with what is being said.

Maybe this will help. In some sense, meaning is absolutely trapped in skulls. Perhaps I should have emphasized that I really do get that. But I take that from-the-outside-view for granted. I'm not attracted to the supernatural, etc. Never have been. And I'm a hard-core atheist in the ordinary sense of the word. I also was very steeped in pragmatism and instrumentalism. And I've studied the 'evil' thinkers, the egoists with seriousness. So, despite appearances, I am NOT (in my book) coming from some kind of New Age angle in the least. I am describing subjectivity. Part of this description involves the sense of not being merely subjective. From an atoms-and-void perspective (shorthand for whatever the latest physics is, as I vaguely understand it), this is an illusion thrown up by the brain. Sure. I agree. On the other hand (here comes the mobius strip), all of our mumbo jumbo is nevertheless occuring 'there' in that 'illusion' of shared meaning --hence the aporia. Would I not be actually crazy if I didn't think there was a real Mr. Station on the other side of this conversation? I suppose it's 'really' my brain controlling my fingers to send symbols for your eyes which take them to your brain. Of course. But all of this is so transparent for us. It disappears like the hammer in the hammering. My gripe is that the trapped-in-brains thing is not wrong but almost a place from which to start, not stop. Now that we are here in this illusion, I'm taking a look around.

In case you or others haven't looked into it:

For instance, meaning holism seems to result from radical use-theories[4] that attempt to identify meaning with some aspects of our use. Examples of this could be:

Theories that identify a sentence's meaning with its method of verification. Verificationism, combined with some plausible assumptions about the holism of confirmation (Hempel 1950; Quine 1951), would seem to lead to meaning holism.

Theories that identify a word's meaning with its inferential role. Which inferences one endorses with a word depends on what one means by one's other words, and so (when combined with a rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction—see below) the web quickly spreads to the entire language. (Block 1986, 1995; Brandom 1994; Field 1977; Harman 1973, 1993; Sellars 1954, 1974)

Theories that take what a person means by a word to be a functional property of that person, and assume that functional properties are individuated holistically. (Block 1998; Churchland 1979, 1986)
Theories that identify what a person means by a word with all of the beliefs that they would express using that word. (Bilgrami 1992, 1998)

Identifying meaning with the beliefs associated with a word or its inferential/functional role leads quickly to a type of meaning holism because of the way that the connections between such beliefs and inferences spread through a language. For instance, a word like “squirrel” might be inferentially connected to, say, “animal” which is in turn connected to “Koala” which is connected to “Australia”, and through similar chains, every word will be related inferentially to (and thus semantically entangled with) every other term in the language (especially when one considers connections like that between, say, “is a squirrel” and “is not a building” or any other thing we take squirrels not to be). Changing the meaning of one word thus changes the content of at least some of the inferences and beliefs that constitute the meaning of other terms in the language, and so a change in the meaning of one term quickly leads to a change in the meaning of the rest. — SEP

One more, which is especially to the point.

Semantic holism, simply put, is the idea that words have no meaning apart from the context, or sentences, in which they are used. This can, perhaps, be better understood by looking at the meaning of holism, and contrasting it with another view of meaning, atomism.

Holism is the idea that something can be more than the sum of its parts; more specifically holism usually refers to reality. It contends that one must understand reality as a whole; that one can't start by examining the parts of reality and end up with an accurate picture. This is more easily seen if we look at biological holism. For example, a duck is more than simply a collection of "duck parts", and thus we can not break a duck down into "duck parts" and end up with an accurate picture of a duck.

Holism can be contrasted with atomism, which is the idea that everything can be broken down into smaller parts. Applied to biology one would argue that one can obtain an accurate picture of a duck by breaking down the duck into fundamental "duck parts".

Apply holism to language and we get semantic holism. The idea behind semantic holism is that every word has meaning only in relation to other words, sentences, or the language (as a whole) in which it is used. For example, semantic holists would argue that the word "tree" does not always refer to the same object for everyone. More specifically, if I say "All trees have green leaves" and you say "No trees have green leaves", there is not necessarily a disagreement. Both of us could simply be referring to different concepts of a tree. Atomism, on the other hand, would claim that one of us is wrong. Either my statement "all trees have green leaves" is false, or your statement "No trees have green leaves" is false.

There are a few criticisms of holism, which may help shed light on exactly what it is. The first one being that there is no sentence which can be thrown out as incomprehensible or irrational, unless you are the speaker. This is a consequence of semantic holism because you, as a listener, most likely don't subscribe to every assumption that the speaker is making. This leads to a second criticisim; that is, since our concepts are in a constant state of flux, and since the meaning of every word is determined by its relation to every other belief you have, you can't "translate" what you meant by a previous statement. (See indeterminacy of translation). — internet...accidentally closed the window

I'd say that we have a slow semantic drift. Revolutionary philosophers shake the tree closer to the trunk.

but the working hypothesis that there is a world of objects that broadly matches our model of it is justified by the fact that it is by far the most economical explanation for our perceptions. — Herg

In short, your 'reality' is just the virtual entities that are economical. And that also suggests (seems to me) some kind of Platonism. What are electromagnetic waves? Your models are equations structured or organized by virtual entities. I've taken a few physics classes. This came up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation

My point is that science to be experimental relies on publicly accepted measurements. Public measurements seem to depend on individual human sense organs, networked by language. We model our measurements, one might say, if trying to minimize addition to the facts. These are quantitative measurements. For falsifiable accuracy we need rational numbers. In practice, floating points numbers are used for speed --a finite set of numbers on a finite state machine. (Turing machines don't exist except in human intuition, seems to me.)

AFIK, numbers are just part of human cognition. They aren't 'out there.' You say that the world 'broadly' matches your economic models. I say very broadly. Those models in some strange way mediate what's out there. I agree. But so does my grokking of furniture, also economical, in that it keeps my ankles un-bruised.

Peel the onion. I do not in the least dispute modern science. I do think the metaphysical interpretation of that science is non-trivial. My gripe is that we don't have a non-controversial grasp on what numbers even are. And yet scoffing 'realists' just toss off the idea that the world is 'really' broadly like those dear, familiar ghosts--the real numbers. The dominant epistemology in human affairs as far as I can tell is practical power. Taking our models as more than implements is inherently 'theological' and 'metaphysical,' concerned as it is with a truth-beyond-economy. And it's even an old Greek theology of number, Pythogoreanism of some sort. I'm laying it on thick, I confess. Don't mean to be rude.

In short, your 'reality' is just the virtual entities that are economical. And that also suggests (seems to me) some kind of Platonism. — macrosoft

I'm not a Platonist, I'm a nominalist. Across the board, and to my bones.

You're still accusing me of confusing the model with the reality. And once again, I do not.

I'm sitting on a chair. It's a real chair, not a virtual chair. If it were a virtual chair, I would need some other explanation than the existence of the chair for the fact that I feel a chair under me. I don't.

Science tells me that the chair consists of a lot of rather extraordinary stuff that I can't see or feel. But science also tells me exactly how that stuff explains why I see and feel the chair. So it is rational to accept that the real external chair consists of this real external extraordinary stuff. Science's model is a model of reality. But the model is not the reality of which it is a model.

AFIK, numbers are just part of human cognition. They aren't 'out there.' — macrosoft

They're neither of those. They're an aspect of reality. There are no numbers but there are things that can be numbered, and that would be true even if there were no humans to number them.

My gripe is that we don't have a non-controversial grasp on what numbers even are. — macrosoft

The controversy is entirely the fault of meddling philosophers like Plato. "We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see." (Berkeley. Somewhat ironic, since he was one of the greatest dust-raisers of all.)

I can't read the road-signs without my corrective lenses. When I put them in, I can. Did the signs change? Or just my mediation? (I was trying to give you a break from my longwindedness.) — macrosoft

From your comments about this, we have to conclude that you believe that there are things external to yourself such as road signs, glasses, and so on. You believe that you can observe them, that you can know something about them, something about what they're really like, how they really "behave," where that can be contra to your experience of them. Why would you believe this, how could you possibly know any of it if you can't observe the world as it is, if you can only observe your own mind per se?

Or in other words, one's argument that everything is mentally mediated or that we can only know our minds a la some sort of representationalism can't be that there is some stuff in the world that's like x (there are road signs that are like such and such), but one experiences it differently than that (one sees the road signs in a blurry way), hence one mentally mediates everything.

Your argument can't be that because the conclusion doesn't allow the first step. You'd not be able to say that there's some stuff in the world that's like x. Per the conclusion, that first step is just as much only your mental content. You'd have no ground for saying that there are road signs external to yourself, that you can experience anything about them, etc.

Now, there's just as much a problem with saying that the stuff in the first step is just as much only your mental content, but I'll get to that later.

From your comments about this, we have to conclude that you believe that there are things external to yourself such as road signs, glasses, and so on. You believe that you can observe them, that you can know something about them, something about what they're really like, how they really "behave," where that can be contra to your experience of them. Why would you believe this, how could you possibly know any of it if you can't observe the world as it is, if you can only observe your own mind per se? — Terrapin Station

Of course I believe in the external world. As for the rest, I've already chanted aporia, aporia, aporia. This old subject-object realist-idealist game is a dead end. It is grounded in a false picture of language. As I've mentioned, all I've been trying to do is to pick the position on one side to bring out the complexity and futility of the language game. The phenomena of world and truth defy explicit capture. Indeed, explicit capture uses or even lives these phenomena without even realizing it. People debate endlessly in a performative contradiction. If they didn't already believe in one another and that there was some kind of shared truth (shared meaning), they wouldn't bother.

This old subject-object realist-idealist game is a dead end. — macrosoft

If you're claiming that everything is mentally mediated, it's a game you're playing, isn't it?

If you're claiming that everything is mentally mediated, it's a game you're playing, isn't it? — Terrapin Station

I said that that's what idealists have really meant.

You are missing the big picture. This game is endless and artificial. The pragmatist critique put it to bed long ago. I was arguing that everyone knows very well in a mostly inexplicit way that we live in a shared world which is mediated by our body and personality. Because we don't really doubt this and because those with 'different' theories live the same way, this approach reduces philosophy to a shallow game, a sport of arguing about trivialities that grasps itself as a science of science.

Removed from the context of practice (or a world that resists and others who can literally bomb us into 'agreement') the whole endeavor has an unworldly pallor. I've been trying to unmask 'realist' talk as every bit as 'theological' and 'silly' as 'idealism.' The game itself is dust. This is why looking at ordinary and pre-theoretical life/consciousness is valuable. It makes the functioning, actual ground imperfectly but sufficiently visible to make a nit-picking theory of knowledge look like the construction of tiny ships in a bottle that will never sail.

It makes the functioning, actual ground imperfectly but sufficiently visible to make a nit-picking theory of knowledge look like the construction of tiny ships in a bottle that will never sail.

God bless you, macrosoft. You said it, bub!

I said that that's what idealists have really meant.

You are missing the big picture. This game is endless and artificial. The pragmatist critique put it to bed long ago. I was arguing that everyone knows very well in a mostly inexplicit way that we live in a shared world which is mediated by our body and personality. Because we don't really doubt this and because those with 'different' theories live the same way, this approach reduces philosophy to a shallow game, a sport of arguing about trivialities that grasps itself as a science of science.

Removed from the context of practice (or a world that resists and others who can literally bomb us into 'agreement') the whole endeavor has an unworldly pallor. I've been trying to unmask 'realist' talk as every bit as 'theological' and 'silly' as 'idealism.' The game itself is dust. This is why looking at ordinary and pre-theoretical life/consciousness is valuable. It makes the functioning, actual ground imperfectly but sufficiently visible to make a nit-picking theory of knowledge look like the construction of tiny ships in a bottle that will never sail. — macrosoft

What would you say that you're trying to accomplish in all of that? What is/what are the end goal(s)?