Consider them as synonyms of unclear. — Angelo Cannata

Alright then. But I think it's the concepts being unclear which makes them more universal than other concepts and as such more useful for understanding the universal, which, at least according to you, is the object of study of philosophy.

But at the same time, I think that what those concepts refer to are the only things which can be considered universal. Therefore, perhaps philosophy can best be defined as the study of the relationships between universal concepts and their referents.

I have a rule not to reply to Meta, it's not worth one's while. — Banno

I guess it's true what they say, 'rules are meant to be broken'. Maybe that's a new rule we ought to apply more often.

The Principle of Relativity is that the laws of physics must be the same for every observer. — Banno

So you say, the laws of physics are rules which are not broken. You can express relativity theory in this way, but the outcome is the same as what I expressed. Applying the same laws of physics from different observational perspectives renders "the way things are" as different from each of those perspectives.

The "laws of physics" don't describe the way things are, they describe the way things behave. Notice that in all activities and interactions, there are things which are engaged in those activities. If we adhere to the principle that the laws which apply to those activities must remain unbroken, then the things which are involved in those activities must be different, depending on one's observational perspective. This is shown in concepts such as "length contraction", and "relativistic mass".

Either we can start with the premise, "the way things are is different from different perspectives" as I did, and conclude "the laws of physics are the same for every observer", or we can start with your premise, 'the laws of physics must be the same for every observer", and conclude "the way things are is different from different perspectives".

It's really just a matter of what happens when we uphold your expressed necessity, the laws of physics "must" be the same for every observer. If we maintain this necessity, and apply this principle to empirical observations, we are forced to conclude that "the way things are" is different, depending on the observer's perspective.

What this demonstrates is that if realism assumes that there is a single reality of "the way things are", then the laws of physics are incompatible with realism. This ought not be surprising to you, given the issues with quantum mechanics.

You might find the principle, 'rules are meant to be broken' to be more consistent with reality. Then if you replace your stated necessity, that the laws of physics "must" be the same from every observational perspective, with 'the laws of physics are not applicable in some observational perspectives', you could have something consistent with realism.

The "way things are" is the same for all observers. — Banno

Clearly this is false as demonstrated above. The laws of physics which are assumed to be the same for all observers, do not describe "the way things are". They describe the physical interactions of things, how things behave, not the way things are.

Anyway, back to ignoring Meta. — Banno

It's always the same. Whenever someone proves you wrong, you resort to ignoring that person, and persist with your evil ways of preaching what has been demonstrated to you as wrong. Maybe you ought to break that habit.

What do you mean exactly by "directly interact" ?

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is.

Or, perhaps even more to the point, is there a method whereby it is possible to determine if the existence of my consciousness and the existence of the world it experiences are always necessarily codependent and interconnected, or if one can exist independently of and unconnected to the other?

I think it's the concepts being unclear which makes them more universal than other concepts and as such more useful for understanding the universal, which, at least according to you, is the object of study of philosophy — Hello Human

As I said, philosophy wants to go to the roots, to the universal, but in this research philosophy cannot avoid to see that actually it is limited, because it is made by humans. This means that the very concept of universal is stupid: how can we, little microscopic, biased creatures of this universe pretend to get in our mind such a pretentious concept as “universal”? Whenever we think of the concept of universal, we are conditioned by our DNA, time, body, culture, epoch, geography, so, how can we think that what we are thinking is really universal? We humans are ridiculous in this pretence.

I have no idea at all. I don't think we can ever know for sure. — Hello Human

Do you mean that it might be that physical universe (external world) would not exist if you or I or the entire human species did not exist?

Within this quote is all that I fear about idealism.

Note how every instantiation of idealism is also a tool of power. — Isaac

So we might have social constructions around pots, clay, even atoms, but the the distributions of those constructs will be bound by the parameters of the data from outside the Markov Blanket — Isaac

The split between internal representation and external reality that free energy models depend on amounts to a particular sort of idealism. It seems to fit Kant's own definition of empirical idealism:

“Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294).

As Barrett writes “...concepts exist in your human mind that is conjured in your human brain, which is part of nature. The biological processes of categorization, which are rooted in physical reality ...are observable in the brain and body”.

“If you talk to a chemist, “real” is a molecule, an atom, a proton. To a physicist, “real” is a quark, a Higgs boson, or maybe a collection of little strings vibrating in eleven dimensions. They are supposed to exist in the natural world whether or not humans are present—that is, they are thought to be perceiver-independent categories. If all human life left this planet tomorrowsubatomic particles would still be here. But evolution has provided the human mind with the ability to create another kind of real, one that is completely dependent on human observers.”

“ Plants exist objectively in nature, but flowers and weeds require a perceiver in order to exist. Common sense leads us to believe that emotions are real in nature and exist independent of any observer, in the same manner as Higgs bosons and plants.”

I suppose what is happening here, Joshs, is the discussion where the idealist insists that it is words all the way down, while the realist points out that the words are about something that is not just words.

My own suspicion, in line with Davidson, is that both are roughly true. So my favourite quote from the very end of On the very idea of a conceptual scheme:

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth -quite the contrary — Banno

If you like Davidson you might be interested in the work of Joseph Rouse, a rising star in the Pittsburgh school of philosophy. He begins with the Sellarsian distinction between the manifest image ( subjective conceptualization) and the scientific image ( empirical data) , and shows them to be intertwined in a more radical way than seen by Davidson, McDowell and Haugeland. His most recent book is Articulating the World:

“In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mis­takenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expan­sive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual nor­mativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.”

“If you talk to a chemist, “real” is a molecule, an atom, a proton. To a physicist, “real” is a quark, a Higgs boson, or maybe a collection of little strings vibrating in eleven dimensions. — Joshs

They're all still gestalts - ordered wholes situated in a conceptual scheme. You never see an actual proton, and the experimental confirmation of their existence retains an element of ambiguity (manifesting as uncertainty or the wave-particle duality). The shattering insight of 20th c physics is that they too do not have absolute (i.e. context-independent) existence. The Copenhagen Interpretation is mainly about learning how to live with that.

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth - quite the contrary. — Davidson

Idealism in my interpretation does not undermine objectivity. It situates objectivity in a larger context - but with the understanding that objectivity does not reveal philosophical absolutes. But in practical matters, objectivity is of unquestionable importance - in judges, historians, scientists, and many other occupations. However objectivity is not absolute - there is not some final way that everything is, some ultimate, objective truth (supported again by recent science) . But that doesn't imply a collapse into complete relativism either. It's not an all-or-nothing affair. Scientific and logical laws still hold for all practical purposes. Even if the world is 'appearance only' it does not conform to my subjective whims and requirements.

I took you up on a previous previously recommendation:The Differend. Once bitten. Thanks, but perhaps not. :wink:

Especially if that is an example of the style.

Quick question about Kant. His Transcendental Idealism seems to be based on epistemological grounds, right? In other words, he says there is a reality out there (noumena) but we do not know it, or have access to it and we perceive a world constructed by mentation, that is generated through noumena, but not necessarily like it at all (clumsy wording, I know)

Does this make Kant an indirect realist? And does this mean that Kant is not an ontological or metaphysical idealist, but an epistemological idealist? Setting aside the history of idealism elsewhere, seems to me Kant opened the door to epistemological doubts about reality and then others - Schopenhauer, for instance, completed the job.

“Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294). — Joshs

But you are experiencing the text of this sentence directly.

But you are experiencing the text of this sentence directly. — Banno

We contact statements directly? How do you know that?

What could it mean to read a statement indirectly?

To have it reported, second or third person?

To read it in a mirror?

Those make some sense. But reading this, here, now, on this screen - how is that "indirect"?

Your argument is that we encounter statements directly because it's nonsense to say it's indirect.

I don't know what it means to say it's direct, so it may be a category error.

You and I contemplate the same statement. We both do so directly.

Are you familiar with Feuerbach? 'I think, therefore I am you'

Your argument is that we encounter statements directly because it's nonsense to say it's indirect. — Tate

Yep. You got it.

Now apply that to the rest of the things around you. What can we make of "we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things"?

As if you sat there ratiocinating that the thing under you is a chair. As if that were a deduction...

Now apply that to the rest of the things around you. What can we make of "we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things"?

As if you sat there ratiocinating that the thing under you is a chair. As if that were a deduction... — Banno

This is a kind of idealism: one inhabits a realm of mental objects.

This is a kind of idealism: one inhabits a realm of mental objects. — Tate

Not sure I follow you. What is an idealism - that one deduces chairs?

Not sure I follow you. What is an idealism - that one deduces chairs? — Banno

No. I don't know what ontology that is. It's not indirect realism.

If you insist that the real world consists of what you're most directly aware of, that is a kind of idealism.

If you insist that the real world consists of what you're most directly aware of, that is a kind of idealism. — Tate

Consider, for a bit, the alternative sentence "the world consists of what you're most directly aware of".

What does the word "real" do? What's an "unreal world"?

The purpose here is to attempt to make clear what is being claimed with

“Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294). — Joshs

Are you inferring this sentence, or experiencing it, directly or indirectly? Moreover, what could that mean? And finally, perhaps neither is quite right, and what you are doing would best be described as reading it... Reading is far more active than experiencing, and involves a broader cognition than just inferring.

Quick question about Kant. His Transcendental Idealism seems to be based on epistemological grounds, right? In other words, he says there is a reality out there (noumena) but we do not know it, or have access to it and we perceive a world constructed by mentation, that is generated through noumena, but not necessarily like it at all (clumsy wording, I know) — Tom Storm

Very perceptive question. His Critique was, after all, the critique of reason, pure and practical, so the concern was primarily with what we can know. (Do note the implied dichotomy or division between 'in the mind' and 'really existing'. It haunts all of these debates.)

Kant has been criticized heavily for the 'ding an sich' (thing in itself) and noumena - the terms are not actually the same although they overlap considerably. I understand the argument about ding an sich to be saying, we can only know things as they appear to us, our knowledge of them is conditional upon that. As Emarys Westacott says, quite rightly in my view, 'a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.' And I think that sense of the unknown, and the corollary of the inherently limited nature of what we know, is fundamental to understanding Kant. It's not exactly scepticism, but it's also not unqualified realism.

I don't see Kant as an indirect realist, because (unlike Locke) he doesn't posit ideas as representations. But his transcendental idealism is very elusive, hardly anyone seems to grasp it - the usual response is nearly always that he (and all idealists) are saying that the world is 'merely' or 'only' 'in the mind'. The whole problem with that analysis, is that it imagines it is seeing the whole panorama from an external viewpoint, or imagining what the world would be, without any perspective or point of view. Whereas that is precisely what can't be done.

The reading bit is about raising the point that perhaps distinctions such as direct, indirect, internal, external, subjective, objective, realist and idealist are inadequate to the task set in the OP. Perhaps they misdirect us.

The reading bit is about raising the point that perhaps distinctions such as direct, indirect, internal, external, subjective, objective, realist and idealist are inadequate to the task set in the OP. Perhaps they misdirect us. — Banno

I agree. Those categories assume a Cartesian framework which is so embedded in our culture that we forget that it's problematic.

We probably keep returning to it and trying to use it as a foundation because we really want to know what we are and it's all we've got.

Presuppositions! Recommended: Check/review your assumptions. Philosophizing is tough! Keeping track of the multitide of different lines of inquiry isn't easy. Soon, analysis paralysis sets in and then we stall, we get stuck so to speak. Aporia, the Greeks had figured this out 2.5k years ago! Amazing!

I don't see Kant as an indirect realist, because (unlike Locke) he doesn't posit ideas as representations. But his transcendental idealism is very elusive, hardly anyone seems to grasp it - the usual response is nearly always that he (and all idealists) are saying that the world is 'merely' or 'only' 'in the mind'. — Wayfarer

Interesting and thanks. I seem to recall a quote pulled from Critique wherein Kant seems to say that the noumenal was a physical, but I may be mistaken.

And I think that sense of the unknown, and the corollary of the inherently limited nature of what we know, is fundamental to understanding Kant. It's not exactly scepticism, but it's also not unqualified realism. — Wayfarer

That makes sense. Challenging stuff, especially for a layperson.

(I'm also a layman, I don't consider myself expert about Kant (or anything) but I acknowledge this is a difficult subject. )

I looked into the word 'noumenal' - it is derived from that seminal Greek word, nous, which I often remark, has fallen into disuse, and for which there is really no modern equivalent (outside specialised philosophy departments). So 'noumenal' means literally 'an object of nous', meaning, something that can be understood as a pure concept without reference to a physical instance. It's very close in meaning to the eidos of Platonism. However Kant seems to have overlooked that derivation, which is commented on by Schopenhauer:

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.

I think Schopenhauer is right about that, and that it's an unfortunate oversight or lack in Kant's writings. (It's also easily confused with another philosophical term, 'numinous', which means something like 'the idea of the holy' but has a completely separate etymology.)

(I say this because I'm trying to understand the subtleties of Aquinas' theory of knowledge, in which the intellect, nous, appropriates the forms of things by a process of assimilation as per this blog post. The idea that the soul/psyche/intellect 'becomes one' or is united with the object of knowledge has ancient provenance.)

Useful information. My mum used to say of economic rationalists and money obsessed people - "The fellow doesn't have any nous.' :cool:

I'm also led to understand that 'Transcendental' (Idealism) is used idiosyncratically by Kant - not a direct reference to a spiritual realm, but to 'not accessible through direct perception'.

The idea that the soul/psyche/intellect 'becomes one' or is united with the object of knowledge has ancient provenance.) — Wayfarer

This is an aspect of idealism that we don't hear much about but I am assuming this is consistent with notions of enlightenment.

I wrote a response to your comment which for some reason was queued for moderation, I'll wait and see if it appears in due course. (I have a feeling it was a software glitch.)

Yes, nous is preserved in the vernacular, but it had a deep and rich meaning in classical philosophy.

That idea of the union of knower and known is foundational to non-dualism. I have been reading Federico Faggini's biography, Silicon, in which he relates his experience of awakening:

The entire experience lasted perhaps one minute, and it changed me forever. My relationship with the world had always been as a separate observer perceiving the universe as outside myself and disconnected from me. What made this event astonishing was its impossible perspective because I was both the experiencer and the experience. I was simultaneously the observer of the world and the world. I was the world observing itself! I was concurrently knowing that the world is made of a substance that feels like love, and that I am that substance!

Faggin, Federico . Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness (p. 159). Waterside Productions. Kindle Edition.

That is a contemporary account - Faggin is still with us - but you find similar accounts going back to the Upaniṣads. If you google the union of knower and known, the returned pages are all connected to this theme.

The reading bit is about raising the point that perhaps distinctions such as direct, indirect, internal, external, subjective, objective, realist and idealist are inadequate to the task set in the OP. Perhaps they misdirect us. — Banno

I agree. When I look at a mirror I'm looking at a mirror and I'm also looking at my reflection and I'm also looking at myself. The painting might be of a woman but it's also just paint. We can describe things in a number of different ways, all of which can be correct. I think direct and indirect realists are just talking in different ways. There's not necessarily any conflict.