The form of idealism I believe is true, is that the apparently external world is inextricably bound to and by our cognitive abilities - that we see the kind of world we see because of the kinds of beings we are. This doesn’t mean something as simple-minded as ‘the world exists in my mind’, but that the human mind is constitutive of everything we understand as reality. — Wayfarer
As Magee says in his book on Schopenhauer, humans are generally born with an instinctive sense of realism, the problems with which only become clear after considerable intellectual effort. — Wayfarer
The sense in which it exists outside of or apart from that mind is an empty question, because nothing we can know is ever outside of or apart from the act of knowing by which we are concious of the existence of the world in the first place. — Wayfarer
Only that what we can know about physical stuff is inextricable from our perceptions. Not that the actual physical stuff is inextricable from our perceptions. — khaled
nowhere did you actually propose "mind stuff" as different from "physical stuff". — khaled
"The world is my idea”—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. — Schopenhauer
So the mind independent world must have some sort of continuity that doesn't require human observation at least. — khaled
Freud remarked that ‘the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science’ , referring to the Copernican revolution, Darwin’s discovery of evolution, and Nietszche’s declaration of the Death of God. In a strange way, the Copenhagen Interpretation gave back to humanity what the European Enlightenment had taken away, by placing consciousness in a pivotal role in the observation of the most fundamental constituents of reality.
Only an idealist can find the results of a "beauty pageant"-like preference poll credible in a physical science context. Have you ever considered (and contrasted) the spectrum of QM interpretations still under discussion by contemporary theoretical physicists?I believe the overall consensus is that Bohr's view, the 'Copenhagen interpretation', has prevalied. — Wayfarer
Have you ever considered (and contrasted) the spectrum of QM interpretations still under discussion by contemporary theoretical physicists? — 180 Proof
“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.
Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”
I understand the perplexity about this point. The way I put it is this: that you're imagining the Universe going out of existence when not observed - there one minute, and not there the next. — Wayfarer
The problem with the much modern philosophy, is that it believes it can imagine the universe as it truly is in itself, with no observer present. — Wayfarer
The mind's ordering of experience and its ability to quantize and rationalise, is what makes measurement and theory possible in the first place. — Wayfarer
I just imagined my room with no one in it. — khaled
that is 'imagined non-existence' - picturing the world (or whatever) as being non-existent, in the absence of observers. So again it turns out to be a form of naive realism. The idea of existence or non-existence are both entertained by the mind. — Wayfarer
The "base matter" of which we make the presentation in the first place stays. — khaled
The 'base matter' has been found to have no base. — Wayfarer
Well we are the ones who designate a world. I don't know what else in biology could even have a concept of a "world". — Manuel
But how this physical stuff remains - what nature it has absent us - is quite obscure. Some can say colorless, odorless particles remain, or perhaps quantum fields. But the only thing we can attribute to them is whatever physics says about them.
But if Russell (and Strawson and Chomsky) is correct, then only those characteristics picked out by our mathematical equations remain, but that wouldn't exhaust what these things are. — Manuel
Another view is that structure is all there is, so in this respects we do exhaust the nature of the physical with our physics. — Manuel
All we did was designate. Label. We didn't create the something. And the something will stay behind after we die. Agreed?
Furthermore I'll add that we are also made of that "something". And that that "something" is called matter. And that there is no "other type of thing". — khaled
And that's what I don't get. A structure, needs something to get structured. A "structure without base matter" is like a building without bricks. — khaled
There is a base matter about which we can't know. — khaled
The base matter itself is affected when observed. An "ontological interpretation". The uncertainty principle isn't us being uncertain where the electron is while it's actually at position X, more like the electron itself is uncertain, it cannot be said to be at X ontologically. But this doesn't negate that the base matter must exist independently of us. The fact that we don't know where an electron is until we look at it DOES NOT lead to the conclusion that the looking is what created the electron — khaled
If everyone died tomorrow there would still be something left behind, agreed? — khaled
'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
I also agree that it is incoherent to say structure is all there is: a structure is a structure of something. — Manuel
Alice first encounters the Cheshire Cat at the Duchess's house in her kitchen, and later on the branches of a tree, where it appears and disappears at will, and engages Alice in amusing but sometimes perplexing conversation. The cat sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice; but appears to cheer her when it appears suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet field; and when sentenced to death, baffles everyone by having made its head appear without its body, sparking a debate between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether a disembodied head can indeed be beheaded. At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that "she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat".
If by creating you mean bringing matter into existence, sure we did not create it. — Manuel
It's the debate between epistemic structural realists and ontological structural realists. The former are what Strawson and Russell favor. As well as you and me. The latter view, is favored by Ladyman and Ross. These two think that there are only structures all the way down.
Yes, I also agree that it is incoherent to say structure is all there is: a structure is a structure of something. — Manuel
I am not denying that matter exists — Wayfarer
I am denying is that it possesses intrinsic or inherent reality. — Wayfarer
That is precisely what is at issue, it is what seems to occur. Avoiding that implication is the main motivation behind the 'many worlds' alternative, seems to me. — Wayfarer
I am not denying that matter exists, — Wayfarer
e form of idealism I subscribe to, on the contrary, is not denying that material objects possess empirical reality - deny it at your peril - but saying that reality comprises both the observed object and the observing subject. But the observing subject is not anywhere to be found in the objective domain, so in no sense can be derived from or imputed to the properties or attributes of objects. That is the only way to loosen the Gordian knot. For a beautiful exposition of this principle, see It is Never Known, but it is the Knower by Michel Bitbol. He is a philosopher I learned of through this forum, and one of the best discoveries I have made here. — Wayfarer
But the observing subject is not anywhere to be found in the objective domain, so in no sense can be derived from or imputed to the properties or attributes of objects. — Wayfarer
The problem being that physics, intent on discovering the fundamental physical constituents of reality, found itself embroiled in epistemology instead. — Wayfarer
Einstein asked, I presume exasperatedly, 'Doesn't the moon continue to exist when nobody is observing it?' Presumably, he asked this question rhetorically, with the implicit answer being that 'of course it does!' Nevertheless he was obliged to ask the question. Variations on this very question were at the centre of the famous Bohr Einstein debates which occupied the subsequent two decades. And I believe the overall consensus is that Bohr's view, the 'Copenhagen interpretation', has prevalied. — Wayfarer
If, at that time, an unequivocable, 'mind-independent' stratum of reality had been disclosed by physics, then the sentiment might be truthful. But it was not. This was even noted by Bertrand Russell in the concluding chapter of HWP in 1946, so it's not news. — Wayfarer
it's actually really interesting, but it only really says anything about scientific progress, not reality. — Kenosha Kid
For hundreds of years, the simplest, best, and maximally sufficient explanation for our experiences, their continuities, and our consensus about them has been the existence of a single objective reality that obeys physical laws — Kenosha Kid
Can you put this into ordinary English? — Tom Storm
Ironically, then, omnipresence of experience is tantamount to its absence. Experience is obvious; it is everywhere at this very moment. There is nothing apart from experience. Even when you think of past moments in which you do not remember having had any experience, this is still an experience, a present experience of thinking about them. But this background immediate experience goes unnoticed because there is nothing with which to contrast it. — Michel Bitbol
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