Would it not be that humans see the world just fine for what we need to do in it. — Tom Storm
Now evolution and quantum mechanics and cosmology posit that events occur over time, and that they happen to discreet individuals. — Banno
So the world is intelligible only for those for whom it is intelligible.The idealism I defend, posits that the world we belong to, this world here, is only intelligible to creatures with the capacity to use cognitive faculties to make sense of that world. — Manuel
If idealism were simply the belief that 'the world exists in your or my mind' then that would be a valid criticism. — Wayfarer
So the world is intelligible only for those for whom it is intelligible.
Yep. Not exactly Berkeley, is it.
What is it that makes this a form of idealism, I wonder, since it seems to be something with which a realist would agree unproblematically? — Banno
"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass." — Manuel
It's a form of idealism because it is only through the way objects affect us, that we are able to form any picture of the world at all. As I quoted Hume before: — Manuel
'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. — Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107
If the world in itself were nothing at all like the world we perceive, then fitness (or anything else) would seem to be impossible to explain. — Janus
Idealism, one way or another, has it that there is nothing that is not related in some way to mind. Hence things only exist if they stand in some relation to mind. — Banno
there is a world that is not dependent on our understanding of it. — Banno
…..few have the courage to set out an argument. — Banno
It isn't as convincing as you suppose. — Banno
(probably to no avail) — Wayfarer
I don't get why this process isn't "direct". I take it that it is directly caused by the object, as we react to them given the brains we have. Why would I doubt the existence of the world and its objects? I have no reason to take skepticism too seriously, or otherwise I couldn't move.
No roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. — Art48
(Wittgenstein, Blue Book)We have been told by popular scientists that the floor on which we stand is not solid, as it appears to common sense, as it has been discovered that the wood consists of particles filling space so thinly that it can almost be called empty. This is liable to perplex us, for in a way of course we know that the floor is solid, or that, if it isn't solid, this may be due to the wood being rotten but not to its being composed of electrons. To say, on this later ground, that the floor is not solid is to misuse language.
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