I was under impression..... — Corvus

I would agree with your impression, in that WE....humanity in general....have no conscious need of TII. It is only metaphysics, and that only under certain theoretical conditions, that finds it needful, and from that need, finds it necessary.

When I see the monitor in front of me, it is a monitor itself. — Corvus

That’s experience talking, reason...conscious thought..... taking the backseat. Your eyes do not have the capacity to inform of a thing, but only that there is a thing to be informed about. Eyes don’t think, plain and simple. It follows that reason quietly informs that the thing you are seeing now doesn’t conflict with what you know that thing to be. In effect, Nature doesn’t waste time repeating itself. This explains why we don’t have to learn what a thing is at each and every instance of its perception. Neurobiology aside, which is something of which WE REALLY don’t have any conscious need.

All you’re logically entitled to say, in this particular case, is....the thing in front of you is a monitor. Anything else is superfluous, or wrong. Wrong here meaning claims for which the justifications are suspect.

All you’re logically entitled to say, in this particular case, is....the thing in front of you is a monitor. Anything else is superfluous, or wrong. Wrong here meaning claims for which the justifications are suspect. — Mww

I feel what Kant wanted was to draw limitation on our capacity of knowing. What we see and know is perfectly doable for our daily life. But to go deeper asking what is behind in the external world, we hit the walls of TII.

The totality of everything we can possibly be aware of — Benj96

Exactly. This is how our reality is created. It is created and carried by our consciousness.

No single individual can know for sure the true reality only their own rendering of it. — Benj96

Right.

Interesting video, so thanks for that.

I feel what Kant wanted was to draw limitation on our capacity of knowing. — Corvus

We don’t really know the limits on our capacity of knowing, for to grant that we even have a limit, we may then question the irrefutably certain, and if we do that, we lose the warrant for any knowledge at all. While we know empirical knowledge is always contingent, we also possess knowledge that is universal, re: mathematics, and necessarily true, re: pure formal logic. From that, the limitations become referenced more to contradictions, and less to the innate capacity for knowing.

Having a limitation on our capacity for knowing is given from the kind of system by which we know anything. But that kind of limitation is not addressed by Kantian epistemological metaphysics. He is concerned with the limits on reason itself, and from that, limits on permissible knowledge claims.
————

But to go deeper asking what is behind in the external world, we hit the walls of TII. — Corvus

In a way, I suppose. That which is external to this world is unknowable, as is the TII. But the TII is ontologically real in this world, whereas that cannot be said for that which is external to this world. Hell....there might not even be an “external to this world” to contain things, which makes the TII immediately disappear.

The TII is not external to this world, they are each and all right here in it. The only difference between the thing and the thing in itself, is us.

Hell....there might not even be an “external to this world” to contain things, — Mww

:scream:

Sorry.....what???

Never mind, poor attempt at mock surprise

Great. Now I get to wonder about it.

Welcome to my world. :naughty: :halo:

Thanks. Not bad so far.

So tell me.....are there folks here that bother with reality requiring observers?

There's all kinds of traditions, views and personal quirks. So I assume there are some who think so.

Like solipsism, it's not a question that can be refuted by arguments.

Ahhhh. Exercise in futility?

We can't say what aspects of our own thought are futile. Maybe we realize that thinking about X was a waste of time or, one becomes aware that what one thought was misleading turns out to be correct.

What's more likely still is that we were wrong all the time and never found out. Might be the case given the history of thought.

What's a waste of time for one person, is the lifeblood for another.

And, we all die in the end. So futility is kind of built-in anyway. So... who knows?

Does reality require an observer? — Benj96

Does observer need reality?
If not we may as well still believe in flat earth. :smile:

So futility is kind of built-in anyway. — Manuel

Yeah, pretty much. So...pick battles that can be won rather than wars that can’t.

I feel what Kant wanted was to draw limitation on our capacity of knowing. What we see and know is perfectly doable for our daily life. But to go deeper asking what is behind in the external world, we hit the walls of TII. — Corvus

:up:

And, we all die in the end. So futility is kind of built-in anyway. So... who knows? — Manuel

Kant argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system. — SEP, Immanuel Kant

Likewise the arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo and other sources in Plato.

Nowadays such ideas are dismissed as antiquated or archaic, but I wonder if they're really understood. What we don't notice is that we're unconsciously treating human beings as objects or as phenomena, as part of the natural order, whilst overlooking the very faculty of the psyche which discerns reason.

It's "built in" to the way we experience the world. We just can't enter into the head of another person, we can only see bodies.

The closest analogy of getting inside someone else's head is to read a high-quality novel, which may give a rough impression of what you are pointing out. But even in this case it's only a distant approximation of actual experience.

Or so it seems to me.

The notion of reality includes, in addition to (let's just say) the observed, a erceiver/observer. A similar situation is a story which I consider is incomplete/empty in the absence of a reader.

Note also subjectivity; we each bring to the table a certain point of view, a particular perspective, a one-of-a-kind take on the observed. I guess what I'm saying is $Reality = Observed + Observer$.

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

Think of how knowledge is defined: Justified, true belief. Belief is a notion that's predicated on beings that can believe (an observer). Reality too is defined in a way that has observers baked into it.

I think that debate confuses something: we can't have an observer without a reality to go along with it; what would such an observer then be "observing?" But we can have a reality without an observer; the universe existed long before anyone inhabited it. Was it not in some sense a 'reality' at that time? In a nutshell, that is my answer (not trying to be a smarty aleck, either.).

On second thought, maybe the 'observer' is in something like the Matrix, and the observer isn't observing something 'real.' Then my conclusion isn't true. But I would say that maybe it is generally true...

No: again: an observer doesn't even generally 'require' a reality to observe either. I.e., Descartes' Meditations. So scratch all of that...

Every "observer" (i.e. measurement / interaction) is reality-dependent – presupposes reality – and therefore cannot be observer-dependent. That said, in a quantum mechanical sense, the "Big Bang" (i.e. symmetry-breaking computable recursion) functions as "The Observer" that most plausibly is still (i.e. c13.8 billion years later) 'collapsing the wavefunction of the universe.'

By the way, one proposed solution to the The Anthropic principle (why is the universe such that life (observers) is possible/actual?) is there's a multiverse out there and some of them don't harbor (carbon-based) life (observers) since the required level of complexity would never evolve. In other words, reality, understood in the usual sense, doesn't need for there to be (an) (carbon-based) observer(s).

What's fascinating about reality requiring an observer is that there must've been at least ONE from the very beginning of reality. If said observer had a photographic memory, we're all in for a treat, right? Find this observer and let him/her tell us what really happened, is happening, and will happen! Nothing beats an eye witness when it comes to solving a case.

Reality (dream) $\rightarrow$ Observer (dreamer)

What's fascinating about reality requiring an observer is that there must've been at least ONE from the very beginning of reality — Agent Smith

Right. Otherwise it could not exist now.

Right. Otherwise it could not exist now. — jgill

:ok:

From a logical perspective, the beginning of time can be chosen arbitrarily. All one has to do is reorder their knowledge accordingly. One can choose the beginning of time to be right now, by conceptually separating the temporal order from the causal order, and then choosing the temporal order to start now.

Nothing within it is nearer or further, older or newer, closer or further away — Wayfarer

Unless these features are observer independent.