Is this not an attempt to impose your perspective (perspectivalism) as precisely a truth beyond mere perspective? The impossibility of objectivity as objectivity itself? — sign

You're not understanding me. The objective world is perspectival. I'm saying nothing like "the objective world is impossible."

Why would you be talking about "grasping" something? — Terrapin Station

We see the unity of the human body broken up in terms of organs that function together. The brain becomes a separate object of attention with a boundary. Do we include the spine or not? Where do we draw the line? Do we include the eyes? We make a decision about what is and is not to count as brain. We pluck it out of its context as an object for inquiry.

You're not understanding me. The objective world is perspectival. — Terrapin Station

So is it something like a union of perspectives? Or is the real an intersection of perspectives? Does every perspective has some reality and then the intersection become the objectively real? Is this all matter aware of itself somehow?

We see the unity of the human body broken up in terms of organs that function together. The brain becomes a separate object of attention with a boundary. Do we include the spine or not? Where do we draw the line? Do we include the eyes? We make a decision about what is and is not to count as brain. We pluck it out of its context as an object for inquiry. — sign

You're talking about concept-formation there, right? Again, I'd ask why you're talking about that. I wasn't talking about concepts per se.

You're talking about concept-formation there, right? Again, I'd ask why you're talking about that. I wasn't talking about concepts per se. — Terrapin Station

You asked me about what I meant about 'grasping' a brain. To think that this is only concept formation is perhaps to miss an important point --which is that it is also object formation. To take the brain is some kind of simple object that is just 'given' misses the interpretation implicit in that givenness. To be sure, such 'interpretation' is largely automatic. I experience the world as objects and persons without having to try. On the other hand, we seem to have some conscious control of what we take for objects. We can question whether we are cutting nature at the joints. We can become aware or postulate (like Kant) how our own cognition shapes sensation into objects in a causal nexus. This is actually to create an object, some faculty that transforms sensation into this nexus of objects by applying concepts. (One doesn't haven't to embrace Kant. That's just an example.)

But i wasn't talking about our concepts, perception, knowledge, etc.

It's very annoying to keep changing the topic to epistemology. (And/or philosophy of language, etc.)

what it's supposed to be physically as something public. — Terrapin Station

The question seems to want to reduce meaning-as-public to the physical, missing that 'physical' itself a meaning we are publicly discussing. Note that 'mental' is also a meaning publicly debated. So reducing meaning to the mental is just as problematic as reducing it to the physical. The 'rational is the real and the real is the rational' to the degree that meaning is publicly aimed at the institution or revolution of the real. In some sense philosophy is a manifestation of the faith in the reality of the rational. It decides to take as real what stands the test of critical thought. To decide that matter is real is to institute matter as having proved itself a rational grasping or understanding of the real.

But i wasn't talking about our concepts, perception, knowledge, etc.

It's very annoying to keep changing the topic to epistemology. (And/or philosophy of language, etc.) — Terrapin Station

We can drop it if you want, but it sure seems like the heart of idealism versus materialism to me. One way to understand idealism is 'language is the essence of the world.' From my perspective, it's exactly your framing of these issues as beside the point that misses the point. But I don't want to annoy you. If we are temporarily at a dead end, that's OK.

I'm not saying it's "beside the point." Just that it wasn't what I was talking about. "A single brain" isn't an abstraction, because I'm not talking about the concept of a single brain, our our knowledge of it, or anything like that. I'm talking about the material thing, the thing that would still be present (at least for a short period of time) if everyone were to sudddenly drop dead. That isn't abstract. There are no real abstracts (in the sense of objective abstracts).

Sometimes I want to talk about, do philosophy about, etc. the world independent of human concepts, human knowledge, etc. I like ontology.

The question seems to want to reduce meaning-as-public to the physical, missing that 'physical' itself a meaning we are publicly discussing — sign

What kind of wall do you prefer to bang your head against? Brick or concrete? One with sharp extruding bits that draw blood, or more a smooth surface that just causes concussion?

What kind of wall do you prefer to bang your head against? Brick or concrete? One with sharp extruding bits that draw blood, or more a smooth surface that just causes concussion? — Wayfarer

Ha. Well, it is a little frustrating to be misunderstood. As I understand it, I am basically trying to point out what is always already going on as we philosophize, a mutual recognition of the real through language. But meaning is misunderstood from the beginning as merely one of its own determinations ('mental' as opposed to 'physical.')

The very process proclaiming the real to be 'matter' or 'mind' or 'X' ignores its own role in the determination of the real. What 'mind' points to for any serious idealist is already bigger than the mental. Similarly the serious materialist has to include in his concept of matter whatever has been traditionally attributed to 'mind.' Call it 'mind or 'matter.' It's the real as determined by reason, so that we might even say that the real in its becoming or movement is its own determination via a self-transcendence that remembers. Statements like 'the One determines itself' sound spooky and ridiculous until one just watches philosophers at work and generalizes what they are doing, and until one understands that concepts only have determinate meaning in relation to one another.

I'm talking about the material thing, the thing that would still be present (at least for a short period of time) if everyone were to sudddenly drop dead. — Terrapin Station

You seem to assume that the stuff 'out there' independent of language is already broken up (quite conveniently!) into the objects of human discourse. Assuming for the sake of argument that this language independent stuff exists (which is admittedly intuitively appealing), how can we say anything determinate about it all without muddying its pristine independence from language/consciousness?

Sometimes I want to talk about, do philosophy about, etc. the world independent of human concepts, human knowledge, etc. I like ontology. — Terrapin Station

I relate. Indeed, philosophy thinks the human only to overcome the human. And is there anything more essentially human than this flight from the merely human? I am more human by being more bored by the merely human, one might say. Similarly I am a grander or more noble personality by thinking beyond my own petty perspective, etc. Metaphysics is language that wants to crawl out of its own skin.

It doesn't matter if it's divvied up in particular ways re edges/boundaries for whether it's abstract or not (it's not).

how can we say anything determinate about it all without muddying its pristine independence from language/consciousness? — sign

Remember that I'm a direct/"naive" realist, so I don't at all buy that we can't access "(non-mental) things-in-themselves" or that perception is necessarily theory-laden.

Re the other comment, on the other hand, being so self-centered is probably not a good thing. The world doesn't actually revolve around you.

Re the other comment, on the other hand, being so self-centered is probably not a good thing. The world doesn't actually revolve around you. — Terrapin Station

I get that. But let's note that people nevertheless pride themselves on being not self-centered. 'I'm less anthropomorphic than you.' 'I am less self-centered than you.' It's the same structure repeated of something being more noble or commendable than something else. I am interested in this unchanging structure in all philosophy. The noble or the good is the rational determination of the real. That's a rough approximation (and maybe only rough approximations are possible.)

Moreover, it's hard to make sense of 'rational' apart from some 'we,' some ideal community, perhaps only virtual. I can be alone with the truth, but what is it that makes the truth the truth? If the physical is the truth, then how do I determine the physical from the non-physical without help from others? The dream from the non-dream? Etc.

I don't think there is anything unchanging, I don't think there is anything that isn't physical, and I see the "noble," good, etc. as a matter of individual preferences.

I don't think there is anything unchanging, — Terrapin Station

So should I not expect to find anything that doesn't change? Is that something I can't count on?

I don't think there is anything that isn't physical — Terrapin Station

Then apparently the physical itself doesn't think there is anything that isn't physical. That's fine, but it seems the 'physical' has become mind-like indeed. It talks about itself. Pretty soon we might have to divide the physical into the part that talks and the part that doesn't? (I find the purely mental to be as problematic as the purely physical, to be clear.)

and I see the "noble," good, etc. as a matter of individual preferences. — Terrapin Station

Of course conceptions of the noble and good vary to some degree, but I postulate that we tend to push our own sense of the noble and good outward. In this case it's hard not to read the very statement above as the suggestion that it is noble and good to understand the noble and good to be a matter of preference. The mere fact that we present our ideas to others and reason with others suggest some desire for consensus and mutual recognition of virtue and rationality. And civil discourse presupposes all kinds of consensus that largely goes unstated. We don't talk to people who insult or threaten us or have opinions that are beyond the pale. Basically I grant that there is wiggleroom, but we don't have anarchy. (And let's not forget jails and obeying stop signs! We can't utterly separate value and rationality.)

We can even postulate that the distinction between 'mind' and 'matter' is necessarily ambiguous, precisely because 'mind' is entangled in 'matter.' --or also note that the distinction is already a metaphysical axiom that obscures how we actually live in or even as meaning-matter. — sign

To me, mind is a form of matter and it is actually due to physicality, being what it is, that we get these mistaken views such as idealism, dualism or soul belief. The experiencer is not substantively evident to the experience due to things being physical such that it is physically impossible for me to turn inward on myself. We are like prisoners of our own physicality and I find it amazing and awesome that we can come to agreements on many matters and indeed disagreements also. Agreements and disagreements we are behooved to make to due to being physical, sensitive creatures living in a physical world. (I was going to use the word material but I didn't want to come off sounding like Madonna! :joke:)

I think you're in a bit of a tangle here with what Berkeley is really saying. — Wayfarer

You can imply that I have misread Berkeley all you want but it still remains that if you buy into Berkeley's immaterialism then you should accept that deity itself is but a perception also and not of any actual substance. If you don't then it's a case of special pleading. Berkeley's immaterialism is preposterous due to this simple inconsistency. And you can replace deity with whatever, because at the end of the day, they too are all just ideas.

I do kick the stone and say, "persistent existence of matter, not persistent whim of deity!"

There is the well-known and oft-quoted limerick which might have already been posted in this very thread, but it's such a gem it can hardly be repeated too often: — Wayfarer

My mum likes those inspirational quotes/biblical verses on prints (tea-towels, cushions etc.) I might get her those words printed for a xmas present!

And what you’re calling ‘objective realism’ is a very recent arrival! — Wayfarer

Maybe that term as such but ancient man did conceive of gods and other fantastical creatures very much part of the natural world with Plato being apart from the norm in contemporary Greek thinking.

I would not define a term like that, because it has too many different uses in different contexts. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is only one context pertinent here; ontology!

I can't say that I have an answer to this question because I do not understand the context. — Metaphysician Undercover

:brow: It was you that brought up these principles. I'm starting to think that you really don't know what's real or not! But in your defense, you're not the only one! :up:

You have missed the point of the difference between logical entailment and physical determination. Even if you wanted to say they are the same that would be reliant on the assumption that rigid determinism obtains, which is itself not logically necessary and we don't and can't know empirically whether it does or does not obtain , and yet we can and do know what is logically entailed by premises. — Janus

No. It is you that has missing the point. I understand what you are trying to say. What I'm saying is that it is no different than what a materialist says. We are both saying the same thing (kind of). What you call a premise, I call a cause. A premise is a type of cause - a deterministic one - like all causes and their effects. What I call an effect, you call a conclusion. A conclusion is a type of effect - an effect of premises. But then conclusions are causes too. They cause action, or behavior, and so on. The causal relationships "cross" this "boundary" between causal relationships in the mind and the causal relationships that are not part of the mind (what people refer to as the external world). Thinking of them as separate sides is what dualism does. Monism says that they are one and the same. There is no "boundary". It's just an illusion.

What idealists are doing is simply using anthropomorphic terms to refer to reality. Saying everything is "ideas" or "mind" is making a category mistake. Ideas and minds exist in only one part of reality. They are a subset - a part of a larger group of related things (causation, or processes, or relationships).

That's a good point. It's an interesting project, considering how 'matter' became 'conscious' (or however one wants to frame it.)

We seem to have two origins. We can use language to contemplate the origin of language. Then the origin of language would exist for or within language. A Mobius strip comes to mind. — sign

Loops often come to my mind when thinking about reality. Self-awareness is like a camera pointing at it's monitor and creates a visual feedback loop of a "infinite" corridor. Natural selection is basically environmental feedback - the environment shaping itself.

No I'm not. I'm talking about objective events, objective sounds. — Terrapin Station

Well then I have no idea of what you're talking about because I have no idea of what you mean by "objective sounds".

Why would we be talking about how people use language? That's not the topic. — Terrapin Station

You seem to have a very short memory. What we've been talking about since we first engaged in this thread is how people use the word "matter", what "matter" commonly refers to. At least that's what I've been talking about, but maybe you have no idea of what I'm talking about, just like I have no idea what you're talking about above.

As for why we would be talking about this, it's because the thread is entitled idealism vs. Materialism, so it's a good idea, for starters, to have an understanding of what people refer to with "matter".

However, this conversation is going nowhere because you seem to have no idea what people refer to with "matter", and have no desire to even begin understanding.

There is only one context pertinent here; ontology! — Happenstance

Yes, the point though is that there are many different ontologies, as the title of the thread starts to indicate. In the different contexts of different ontologies, "real" has different meanings.

I'm starting to think that you really don't know what's real or not! But in your defense, you're not the only one! — Happenstance

That's right, did you read my example? To worry about the distinction between what is real and what is not real is to needlessly create anxiety. However, we all live our lives commonly making judgements about what is real, without referring to any such principles or criteria. Success in our activities based on those judgements allow us to escape the anxiety caused by worrying about the distinction between what is real and what is not real.

Well then I have no idea of what you're talking about because I have no idea of what you mean by "objective sounds". — Metaphysician Undercover

Weird. That's such a basic thing to know. Objective sounds are sounds occurring external to your body.

What we've been talking about since we first engaged in this thread is how people use the word "matter", what "matter" commonly refers to. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's not at all what I'm talking about. My topic wasn't language.

because you seem to have no idea what people refer to with "matter", — Metaphysician Undercover

I explained a number of times what I'm referring to with "matter." For the common definition, we can simply look in dictionaries.

No, I'm not saying that at all. Some matter is obviously mind on my view. I'm a physicalist, an identity theorist. — Terrapin Station


Well we probably can find more agreement than you think, then. I have the sense that you understand me to be saying some more outlandish than is the case. The German idealists were identity theorists (maybe in a different way than you), and I think they were on to something. The problem may largely be about jargon and background. — sign

If I have learned one thing from following this discussion, It is that the "identity theory" Terrapin Station is espousing is decidedly not a child of any German Idealist. First of all, there are no "phenomena" because that term implies a separation between the spectator and the show that the theory is trying to disappear.

It is that quality that prompted me to try earlier in my previous comments to understand what the difference between epistemology and ontology means in the context of the theory. Since it has consequences for epistemology, I am not sure if the status of ontology is not a product of epistemic circularity. Or another way to put it, a problem of tautology that leads to a stopping point. It reminds me
of Aristotle's description of Cratylus:

"But the reason why these thinkers held this opinion is that while they were inquiring into the truth of that which is, they thought, ‘that which is’ was identical with the sensible world; in this, however, there is largely present the nature of the indeterminate—of that which exists in the peculiar sense which we have explained; and therefore, while they speak plausibly, they do not say what is true (for it is fitting to put the matter so rather than as Epicharmus put it against Xenophanes). And again, because they saw that all this world of nature is in movement and that about that which changes no true statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing could truly be affirmed. It was this belief that blossomed into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus, who finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once."

Metaphysics 4.5

This thread appears to wander all over the place, — Metaphysician Undercover

Although reading all of the different points of view is fascinating, my thread asks only which theory is instrumentally better, Locke's material thesis or Berkeley's immaterial thesis.

Locke builds his case on an ability to abstract ideas from general terms and on primary and secondary qualities. Locke continues on from Descartes by offering indirect realism and by saying that it is ok to doubt, with the little knowledge we have we can still get by and build working scientific theories.

Berkeley attacks Locke over abstract ideas, something he says he cannot do. He also attacks primary and secondary qualities and tries to show that even primary qualities are subjective. Berkeley rejects Locke's mitigated scepticism that asserts a materiel substratum that is something that Locke cannot know what it is, indirect realism is a mistake. He goes back to Descartes and says there is no mind body problem, all there is are minds. Everything comes from God and is just ideas, thus we can know directly what is going on.

If we could try and stay on topic it might help us get somewhere.

Locke builds his case on an ability to abstract ideas from general terms — Jamesk

I don't think that is true of Locke at all. His 'representative realism' is rather that ideas are 'inscribed' on the mind by experience, that we are born 'tabula rasa' (a blank slate) and whatever ideas we have, we receive through experience - one of the dogmas of empiricism. The ability of the mind to generalise was not, I think, something much considered by Locke, and indeed one of his main weaknesses (as it was also with Berkeley).

But Locke's distinction of 'primary and secondary' is indeed fundamental to him, and the very point on which Berkeley attacks him. 'Locke’s question was, “What in the perceived body causes ideas in the mind?” His answer was primary and secondary qualities. He believed that there was a clear and definite distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of an object. Primary qualities were those that are intrinsic to the object. Examples of these would include the object’s bulk, figure, color, or texture. An object’s secondary qualities were somewhat more complex. Locke described them as the relationship between the object’s physical substance and the way our mind perceives and interprets them through our senses. He argued that secondary qualities only exist in the world because of our relationship to the object. Therefore the existence and knowledge of other things is revealed through the sensation of a material that underlies all physical substance. We can figure out that objects exist outside of our mind because we have knowledge of these things independent of the things themselves. In other words, physical substances exist whether we perceive them or not, and therefore it is a physical substance that makes up the object. This is Locke’s main point.'

It was this idea that was to become central to modern science, with the primary qualities being equated with those elements of an object that are precisely quantifiable - mass, velocity, chemical composition, and so on. Secondary qualities were associated with the mind of the perceiving subject, and included colour, flavour, and so on. You can see how easily this attitude tended towards the basic kind of materialism that you see advocated by some posters here - that what 'really exists' are the measurable physical attributes of objects that exist independently of any act of perception.

It was this that Berkeley attacked. Any attributes of an object, even those so called 'primary', are present to us as 'ideas in the mind'. He says - I think misleadingly - that 'what we know are ideas'. Why that's misleading, is because it's not as if 'ideas' are the objects of perception; rather it's that whatever we know, is present in our mind as 'an idea'. And we never know anything that is not present as an idea, because that is what 'knowing' comprises!

Both are clearly indebted to Descartes in the sense that they hold his 'clear and distinct ideas' as fundamental to knowledge.

Great post, thanks. Some of my ideas on what you said.

The ability of the mind to generalise was not, I think, something much considered by Locke, and indeed one of his main weaknesses (as it was also with Berkeley). — Wayfarer

Berkeley says that we cannot form abstract ideas of colour without shape, or of bodies without a background, motion without something moving. It is this separation that Locke uses to describe primary and secondary qualities that Berkeley calls abstract ideas. Berkeley says he cannot abstract in that way, can you think of an abstract man, of no particular size, body type, colour, hair etc?

It is this abstraction that allows Locke to claim the general term of matter. For Berkeley this is incoherent, because he cannot imagine a secondary quality in absence of a primary one and so Locke is abusing language by only using it as symbols of denotation. I am still not 100% on how this works, but I hve limited language understanding.

He argued that secondary qualities only exist in the world because of our relationship to the object. Therefore the existence and knowledge of other things is revealed through the sensation of a material that underlies all physical substance. We can figure out that objects exist outside of our mind because we have knowledge of these things independent of the things themselves. In other words, physical substances exist whether we perceive them or not, and therefore it is a physical substance that makes up the object. This is Locke’s main point.' — Wayfarer

Yes he did argue this but Berkeley denies any direct sensation from the underlying material, all we sense is the object being supported by matter. Locke himself says that matter is 'something I know not what'. Which is enough for Berkeley to claim Locke is being insufficiently empirical basing a theory on such flimsy evidence. His evidence of ideas seems much stronger and offers a direct sensory experience of the object as long as we can accept God in the role of producer, director, editor and author of our experience of the world.

It was this that Berkeley attacked. Any attributes of an object, even those so called 'primary', are present to us as 'ideas in the mind'. He says - I think misleadingly - that 'what we know are ideas'. Why that's misleading, is because it's not as if 'ideas' are the objects of perception; rather it's that whatever we know, is present in our mind as 'an idea'. And we never know anything that is not present as an idea, because that is what 'knowing' comprises! — Wayfarer

Locke says that ideas are inscribed on the mind (as you said in the beginning of your post) Berkeley says that our experience of the object causes an idea of it to form, however all we can know directly are our ideas. Hume developed this with the copy principle that ideas are copies of impressions.
They are all three legitimate empirical approaches, and all probably wrong but until today we don't really understand how the mind works and we cannot know the full nature of 'ideas'.

If I have learned one thing from following this discussion, It is that the "identity theory" Terrapin Station is espousing is decidedly not a child of any German Idealist. First of all, there are no "phenomena" because that term implies a separation between the spectator and the show that the theory is trying to disappear. — Valentinus

I looked into it, and I agree. There is a vague similarity in an attempt to overcome dualism, but that's all I see from a brief perusal.

Seeking an alternative to the classic dualist position, according to which mental states possess an ontology distinct from the physiological states with which they are thought to be correlated, Place claimed that sensations and the like might very well be processes in the brain—despite the fact that statements about the former cannot be logically analyzed into statements about the latter. Drawing an analogy with such scientifically verifiable (and obviously contingent) statements as "Lightning is a motion of electric charges," Place cited potential explanatory power as the reason for hypothesizing consciousness-brain state relations in terms of identity rather than mere correlation. This still left the problem of explaining introspective reports in terms of brain processes, since these reports (for example, of a green after-image) typically make reference to entities which do not fit with the physicalist picture (there is nothing green in the brain, for example). To solve this problem, Place called attention to the "phenomenological fallacy"—the mistaken assumption that one's introspective observations report "the actual state of affairs in some mysterious internal environment." All that the Mind-Brain Identity theorist need do to adequately explain a subject's introspective observation, according to Place, is show that the brain process causing the subject to describe his experience in this particular way is the kind of process which normally occurs when there is actually something in the environment corresponding to his description. — https://www.iep.utm.edu/identity/

As far as I can tell this is the same old grasping of 'internal' and 'external' experiences in the same causal network. Is it any deeper than saying that opiates makes the pain go away?

And is phenomenology about the internal environment? https://medium.com/@LancePeterson/heidegger-s-lectern-1919-4c5a3ca47ccd

The genius of Heidegger was to show that the theoretical gaze is a devivification of world-with-others-in-language and the postulation of an isolated a-historical subject. It installs the gap itself! I am not an 'I' for myself most of the time and objects aren't just there to be stared at. The world is more like a using-of-objects, neither subject nor object. An event. 'It worlds.' The 'mysterious internal environment' is a creation of the same approach that objects to it. It's just the shadow cast by the fiction or implement of the deworlded ego (impossible to think of without its object.)

Much more can be said (it's more complicated than this, I confess!), but I'll stop there.

It is this separation that Locke uses to describe primary and secondary qualities that Berkeley calls abstract ideas. — Jamesk

Actually you're correct in that. I now recall that Locke explained abstractions very much as generalisations or general ideas, and that Berkeley criticized them on those grounds. But to really go into details would take a bit of revision and reading and work beckons!

They are all three legitimate empirical approaches, and all probably wrong but until today we don't really understand how the mind works and we cannot know the full nature of 'ideas'. — Jamesk

Berkeley, Hume and Locke were all very perceptive and clever men and their ideas live on in our culture (especially Locke, whose influence on the formation of modern liberalism can hardly be overstated.)

One thing I will say is this - I think Locke's basic idea that the mind 'represents' object is fatally mistaken on the following grounds: when you ask the question, how can you distinguish between the object, and its representation? If you say, here on the one hand, is the thing, and there, on the other, is the idea of the thing then the question must be asked, from which perspective do you make that distinction between object and idea?

Because, whatever 'thing' you select to make out as an 'object', then that 'thing' is only known to us as a bundle of perceptions, sensations and judgements - whatever it might be. And I think this is perfectly consistent with science as per the following blog post:

According to evolutionary biology, Homo Sapiens is the result of billions years of evolution. For all these thousands of millions of years, our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through billions of lifetimes in various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate - in such a way as to give rise to the mind that we have today.

Recently, other scientific disciplines such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a hierarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic nervous system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of ‘discursive reason’ (and perhaps beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science.)

Consciousness plays a central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ - and also the apparent coherence and reality of the 'external world'. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in fact totally dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, the bulk of which are completely unknown to us.

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ an object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the light-waves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc).

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely below the threshold of conscious perception.

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them (i.e. Locke's tabula rasa). Rather, consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on, not to mention the activities of reason, which allows us to categorise, classify and analyse the elements of experience.

Now I don't think that either Locke or Berkeley's philosophy could have taken this into account; but I think that Kant's does. It was Kant who criticized his predecessors, and showed how empiricism and rationalism inform each other. See Kant's Metaphysics (although that might be better as a separate thread.)

As far as I can tell this is the same old grasping of 'internal' and 'external' experiences in the same causal network. Is it any deeper than saying that opiates makes the pain go away? — sign

It is deeper. I am not convinced by the argument but it is interesting. If the relationship between epistemology and ontology is problematic in the thesis, maybe it is troublesome outside of it.

I can describe the theory as a reduction but am I reducing other things to do it? The theory appears to be completely uninterested in helping me answer that question. The silence of Cratylus, perhaps.

In regards to the Heidegger approach to contending points of view on the matter of experience, I prefer Sartre who noted that not all of our experiences of awareness require the "Ego." That view is less entangled with what we mean by meaning and how objects are what they are in relation to being an object.

It is deep... If the relationship between epistemology and ontology is problematic in the thesis, maybe it is troublesome outside of it. — Valentinus

Well I do think the relationship between ontology and epistemology is deep indeed. I've been thinking about Hegel lately. The real is rational and the rational is real. This collapses ontology and epistemology. What we as rational inquires acknowledge as truly/objectively there is a product of rational debate. And merely approaching reality as if reason can reveal it already implies that it is essentially rational. Moreover, engaging in philosophy implies that it is good to reveal reality rationality. This is certainly an oversimplification, but I'm quite taken by this interpretation of Hegel's insistence that all philosophy was idealism. (and Derrida's that it is all humanism, albeit a humanism always trying to surpass itself.)

And again, because they saw that all this world of nature is in movement and that about that which changes no true statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing could truly be affirmed. It was this belief that blossomed into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus, who finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once. — Valentinus

Ah yes, the gap between us and the absolute is taken as the absolute itself! And of course such thinkers don't acknowledge the intelligibility of their own discourse which establishes the absolute impossibility of the absolute. It occurs to me that rejections of absolute knowledge just make our finite knowledge in its plurality absolute. It is all the absolute we can hope for and therefore the functioning absolute.

In regards to the Heidegger approach to contending points of view on the matter of experience, I prefer Sartre who noted that not all of our experiences of awareness require the "Ego." That view is less entangled with what we mean by meaning and how objects are what they are in relation to being an object. — Valentinus

Sartre is great too. He touches on some stuff that I've just never found in Heidegger.