I can accept that something external exists, but the question is if the everyday things we talk about are reducible to those external things. — Michael
Mt. Everest existed in it's entirety regardless of whether or not one believes that.
— creativesoul
You simply assume that it does. It would have been more open-minded to have written: "Mt. Everest existed in it's entiretyor not regardless of whether or not one believes that." — Janus
If you re-read the entire post, you'd see that I said "if"... — creativesoul
I wonder, what does the realist say about abstracts/mathematics; is it something human's created, or did it always exist and we just uncovered/discovered its truth... ? — 3017amen
Realism about one domain doesn't entail you to be a realist about another. — Marchesk
Which domain clearly sets out what all human thought and belief consists of? — creativesoul
Which domain clearly sets out what all human thought and belief consists of?
— creativesoul
The mental? — Marchesk
I wonder, what does the realist say about abstracts/mathematics; is it something human's created, or did it always exist and we just uncovered/discovered its truth... ? — 3017amen
So... the mental is the domain which clearly sets out what all human thought and belief consist of? — creativesoul
You don’t have much to say about it because we’re - roughly speaking - on the same page, and/or because you don’t think it’s worth going down that road — I like sushi
The only evidence we have is that change occurs because of a will, when we will something we cause change to occur, we have no evidence that things change because they follow Laws independent of a will, that's an unsubstantiated postulate of modern science. — leo
What is the evidence, though, of this will? Of course we have some intuitive notion, but don't we have an equally good intuitive notion of law? The idea of nature includes necessity. To me it seems that something like law is fundamental to any kind of talk of nature of essence. Time is quietly involved in all of our thinking. What can knowledge be if we don't expect what we have knowledge about to continue acting as it has acted? — Eee
We also have an intuitive notion of law, but isn’t it the case that it is will that creates law? — leo
The laws that society follows were created by people through their will, and other people follow them. — leo
Whereas the laws of Nature would be an instance of laws that spontaneously appear without a will involved, and we don’t have an intuitive notion of that. — leo
There is no reason that the laws of Nature should continue being the same in the future as they have been in the past, we cannot know that they will, that’s the problem of induction. Maybe it is a will that is keeping them constant through time? — leo
When I think of that it leads me to the idea that our existence within this universe might be a test, as some religions have proposed. — leo
To me this sounds like God, which is fine. But I need a voice from the sky or a burning bush. And even then I'd look for hidden technology. Even if certain things are possible, I'm also keenly aware that human beings are masters of fantasy. As I see it, we are haunted by visions. Our big brains are like fun houses. Perhaps we only face reality, when we do, in order to arrange things so that we can go back to sleep for as long and often as possible. Even this philosophy forum and philosophy itself is a bit like a dream in the context of the rest of my life. And yet I love to dream philosophy.Maybe there is a will that runs the laws of Nature in this universe, a will that has given us freedom to act within these laws, and watches what we are going to do with that freedom. — leo
I must confess that 'will' was a concept in Schopenhauer that I could never digest. I like many of his ideas, but 'will' struck me as too vague, and I'm still finding it vague here. — Eee
Certainly human beings created laws, and certainly they had certain feelings tangled up in that. I can make sense of 'feelings' and 'actions.' — Eee
I agree, and for this reason I expect the fact that we and the universe are here in the first place will remain mysterious. Or even unexplainable on principle, in that any explanatory principle would seem to have to be true for no reason. — Eee
I agree about the problem of induction. But note that you suggest the will as an explanatory entity. This would be the law of the laws. Why should we expect to will to continue as it has? The will as intelligible entity (albeit vague) seems to be tangled up in time. It has a nature that can be leaned on as a source of hypotheses. — Eee
Personally I don't believe it, but I do have other narratives, such as the value of mortality for forcing ourselves outside of our vanities, into a realization of how distributed and networked human virtue and knowledge are. If we were individually immortal, we might remain little monsters. Only together are we semi-immortal. The same great ideas and feelings move from vessel to fragile vessel. It's a hall of mirrors. Our own good and evil is reflected in millions of faces around us. My will is not at all single. For me we're all terribly multiple. — Eee
To me this sounds like God, which is fine. But I need a voice from the sky or a burning bush. And even then I'd look for hidden technology. Even if certain things are possible, I'm also keenly aware that human beings are masters of fantasy. As I see it, we are haunted by visions. Our big brains are like fun houses. Perhaps we only face reality, when we do, in order to arrange things so that we can go back to sleep for as long and often as possible. Even this philosophy forum and philosophy itself is a bit like a dream in the context of the rest of my life. And yet I love to dream philosophy. — Eee
Who made that absurd statement? That would be like saying "the apple makes no difference to what the apple is".It is indeed an absurd question; however, the question is simply a response the absurd statement “knowing makes no difference to what is known.” In order for the realist’s claim to have any meaning, he must know that which he defines as unknown. In other words, he claims to have knowledge about that which he cannot—by his own definition—have knowledge about. He can’t support his claim by relying on his experience of “knowing x” because said experience would fall under the condition of “x being known;” it is impossible for him to prove that “knowing makes no difference to what is known” unless he takes it as gratuitous. With the development of quantum mechanics, we know that observation or measurement does in fact alter the being of an object—take Schrödinger’s Cat as an example. Therefore, if the realist takes “the being of X is independent of its being known” or “knowing makes no difference to what is known” as simply a “given” on faith. With that being said, the realist’s position is undermined by groundbreaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics which subsequently serve as evidence that go against the realist’s assertion that “knowing makes no difference to what is known.” — PessimisticIdealism
How does QM undermine realism if different scientists are coming to the same conclusion based on their observations of reality external to them? Who is it that agrees with them to form a consensus on QM if there is no external world? How can they share ideas via words on paper or sounds in the air if they only get at their own subjectivity, and not at the real actual paper with real ink scribbles and see, and interpret it, the same way?With that being said, the realist’s position is undermined by groundbreaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics which subsequently serve as evidence that go against the realist’s assertion that “knowing makes no difference to what is known.” — PessimisticIdealism
Why then not see this universe as having been created and being maintained, with us having the freedom to act within a range of actions that the outside entity allows us to have? — leo
Sometimes we ask why there is something rather than nothing, but aren’t we able to create things out of nothing? Sometimes we have ideas that do not seem to come from anywhere, to be caused by anything, as if they were free creations. — leo
And I can’t believe that arrangements of atoms who arose out of some random primordial soup through laws that were there for no reason would be able to imagine such things, and feel such beauty. — leo
Are you talking about what thought and belief refer to? Or are you talking about the nature of thought and belief? — Marchesk
That a proposition isn't certain is not a reason to assume its negation. — Sophisticat
Which domain sets out what all thought and belief consists of? — creativesoul
We can do that. But I should mention that I don't think we're free. The responsible, free agent seems to me like an important fiction, but a fiction nevertheless. As I see it, we're all entangled in the causal nexus. Even if we're not exactly predictable, I think we all have a sense of human nature. To have a nature is to be caught in necessity. — Eee
Our ideas appear in our 'minds' in languages that have evolved over centuries, though. — Eee
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