not just any convention will do. Only some of what one might say actually works. There is a way in which reality does not care what you say about it. Believe what you will, you cannot walk through walls.
I suspect you do not disagree with this. — Banno
You're trying to have your cake and eat it, presenting, as true, a theory about how the world is which within it claims that there are no absolutely true theories about how the world is. — Isaac
Do you apply that to mathematical and logical statements as well?
— Andrew M
... But none of that undermines the ability of the rational mind to plumb the depths of reality through mathematical reasoning. ... — Wayfarer
The article doesn't explain why idealism entails that there are no unknowable truths, it just asserts that it does. — Michael
Fitch's Paradox
There's a thread elsewhere about this, but it's a dog's breakfast. Since the topic is directly relevant to anti-realism it is worth mentioning here.
Anti-realism holds that stuff is dependent in some way on us, that thinking makes it so. That is, some statement p is true only if it is believed or known to be true.
For anti-realism, something's being true is the same as it's being known to be true.
Now a direct implication of this is that if something is true, then it is known - that we know everything.
Anti-realism is apparently committed to omniscience.
The problem does not occur in realism, which happily admits to there being unknown truths. — Banno
OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements? — Andrew M
Then introduce Cartesian dualism and you have fundamental elements of the framework of the early modern worldview which was thought to be theoretically infinite and potentially all-knowing. But the problem with it is, there's no actual place in it for humans, as the observing mind has already been tacitly excluded from consideration. — Wayfarer
we can say whatever we like, yet not just anything we say will do. The world places strictures on our narratives.
And again, I don't think you disagree with this.
So what is it you want here? — Banno
OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements?
— Andrew M
Interesting question! — Wayfarer
The role of the subject is was rediscovered in late modernity and the early 20th Century. You in particular would appreciate how that reared its head in respect of the 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which had to consider the observing subject in its reckonings. — Wayfarer
Even if that's an extreme form, the objectivist framework is still highly influential in modern culture. And in that framework, the role of the subject is always bracketed out or neglected. That is the subject of the essay The Blind Spot of Science in the Neglect of Lived Experience. — Wayfarer
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is of little use in iPhone design. Sure, some engineer might find it enlightening in such a way that they are able to produce a smaller antenna, or some such; but the Book of the Dead will not replace Maxwell's equations in antenna design. — Banno
- if anything goes then everything stays. If all narratives are to be treated the same, then the conservatives in the U.S. liking to say that the facts of nature don't care about our feelings is as valid as your own account of feelings. Your account suits the right as well as it suits the left. You will be aware of the discussion as to the extent that PoMo underpins some of the intellectual defences of Trump's lies. — Banno
OK, but I still didn't get a clear "yes" or "no". — Andrew M
It seems to me that the way forward is to reject the Cartesian framework in its entirety, not emphasize the subject horn of its spurious subject/object antithesis. — Andrew M
I've absolutely no interest in a God-of-the-gaps argument. Even if there were an uncertainty to resolve around the means by which potential states become actual states it would a) be best resolved by experts in that field, and b) have absolutely nothing to do with a character from some 2000 year old folk story. — Isaac
Of course the future is unknowable. But that is the case for both the realist and the idealist. — Real Gone Cat
If not, then I don't see how you avoid the charge of solipsism — Real Gone Cat
Does p come into being at the moment it is experienced? Or is it lurking in some uber-mind? — Real Gone Cat
If not, then I don't see how you avoid the charge of solipsism. If so, then you are just giving another name (i.e., mind stuff) to what makes up the external world. — Real Gone Cat
The idealists I know argue that the world is objectively the case, it just isn't made of matter. It is mind when seen from a particular perspective. What holds reality together is consciousness at large - not your consciousness, or mine. — Tom Storm
Idealism argues that only minds and mental phenomena exist. It doesn’t argue that only my mind and mental phenomena exist. — Michael
Does p come into being at the moment it is experienced? Or is it lurking in some uber-mind?
— Real Gone Cat
That depends on the specific form of idealism. Some argue the former, others the latter. — Michael
Ah, the Hive Mind. — Real Gone Cat
The former is called solipsism. — Real Gone Cat
The latter is a form of materialism that just calls matter by another name. — Real Gone Cat
It seems that mental phenomena belong to minds. If not my mind, then a Hive Mind.
If p comes into existence at the moment of being experienced, it is only part of the mind experiencing it. I.e.,solipsism. — Real Gone Cat
So the uber-mind is indistinguishable from the material world. — Real Gone Cat
It's not solipsism because there are multiple minds, and it's not a hive mind because they're separate. — Michael
The postmodernist doesn’t tell the modernist their truths are untrue , they invite them to turn truths into theater, performance, to see the flow underneath the facts. — Joshs
Then you're arguments are missing an important detail. Why? If it's not that the way you see the world is true, then why would I want to see it that way, what's in it for me? — Isaac
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