I agree with this. Kastrup has taken an old song and is having a lot of success playing it to a new tune. His replacement ontology seems to want it both ways: everything is mental, but there's an "outside" world where evolution somehow still works. How are there any random events in an idealistic reality? — RogueAI

I'm not an expert on Kastrup's neo-idealism, but it makes sense to me --- because I don't interpret his position as contradictory Idealism versus Realism. Instead, I frame it as complementary Idealism within Realism or Realism within Idealism, depending on the context. Perhaps he does"want it both ways". But that's what philosophers do : look for orderly patterns in a disorderly world.

As non-empirical philosophers, it's hard to deny that there are both "inside" ideas (concepts) and "outside" objects (percepts). So there are indeed "random events" in physical reality, and "non-random" order in metaphysical mentality (i.e. Reason imposes static order on -- extracts orderly patterns from -- a mutating & evolving dynamic world). Reason takes statistical snapshots of constantly changing reality. Those "frozen" mental images are what we could call "Ideality". :smile:

Up until quite recently, 'realism' in philosophy meant 'realism with respect to universals' i.e. some form of Platonic or Aristotelian realism. Today's realism, 'realism with respect to mind-independent objects of perception', is a very recent arrival.

it's hard to deny that there are both "inside" ideas (concepts) and "outside" objects (percepts). — Gnomon

But consider that philosophers deny such a thing all the time. I'd even say that dualism is a default view, what people vaguely assume before they study philosophy seriously. I'm not denying that philosophers can engage in a sophisticated defense of dualism, but it's a tough position to play.

Up until quite recently, 'realism' in philosophy meant 'realism with respect to universals' i.e. some form of Platonic or Aristotelian realism. Today's realism, 'realism with respect to mind-independent objects of perception', is a very recent arrival. — Wayfarer

I'm beginning to see how they are the same thing.

We can drop 'mindindepent' as confusing. We can grasp language in terms of embodied enacted social norms which are out there in the world as patterns in our doings. Our brains evolved to play such games, so there are 'marks' also on our brain as we learn to enact community meanings (universals as 'material' or worldly patterns.) Talk of 'selves,' talk of 'minds,' is all part of a worldly enactment of semantic and other norms.

We drop 'mindindepent' as confusing. We grasp language in terms of embodied enacted social norms which are out there in the world as patterns in our doings. — plaque flag

Not only 'our doings'.

The fear of slipping into “vitalism” — the idea that living things are alive because of some non-physical vital force — arises only because we have so much difficulty reckoning with the presence of ideas in the world rather than merely in our heads. I mean potent, shaping ideas. After all, the mathematical relations we apprehend in the physical world are neither forces nor physical things; they are purely conceptual. Yet we can reasonably say that such relations — for example, those given by the equation F=Gm1m2/r2, representing Newton’s law of universal gravitation — in some sense govern material reality. The relations tell us, within the range of their practical applicability, something about the form of physical interactions. We do not try to make an additional, vital force out of the fact that a mathematical idea, as a principle of form, is “binding” upon an actual force. — Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Purposes of Life

This is why I convinced of the reality of universals. But no, comes the invariable response, they're the products of the mind, conventions of language - what is 'out there' is real existing independently of any act of thought on our part.'

Not only 'our doings'. — Wayfarer

Why not, if one includes talking and writing ?

in the world i.e. constituents of reality. 'The ligatures of reason', is how I put it.

in the world i.e. constituents of reality. 'The ligatures of reason', is how I put it. — Wayfarer

OK. Well I'm not so averse to that. Our lifeworld is conceptually articulated. We and our semantic and perceptive norms are 'one' with it. We see the waterfall (also) in terms of Newtonian physics. The waterfall 'is' those physics (and other stuff) in this sense.

Is it there like that without us ? Does that question even mean much ?

Perhaps we agree here : I don't think we can 'really' peel apart us from not-us. This is (I think) Hegelian idealism. This is idealism as holism, a denial of isolated entities (those which can make sense when yanked out of the total context.) All abstraction (extraction, yankingout) does a certain 'violence' or methodical forgetting or ignoring or deworlding --- which may be convenient and practically justified.

The whole problem arises from the sense of 'otherness', the barely articulated sense of the separation of the self and the world. That is an inevitable consequence of the philosophy of the individual, the hallmark of modernity. It's interesting if you google the term 'the union of knower and known', which is generally considered a characteristic expression of mysticism - most of the top hits refer to Thomism, but there are some from Islamic philosophy, also.

I think something like that was probably also found in Hegel, and the other German idealists. Nowadays it is mainly only preserved in Aristotelian Thomism.

After all, the mathematical relations we apprehend in the physical world are neither forces nor physical things; they are purely conceptual.

What is form ? What is concept ?

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).

That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. — Ed Feser

That is an inevitable consequence of the philosophy of the individual, the hallmark of modernity. — Wayfarer

Yes. I focus on this issue, this apparently addictive prejudice that isolated subjectivity makes sense.

Hegel => Feuerbach => Heidegger / Wittgenstein

That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. — Ed Feser

:up:

Yes, of course. I'm a bit of a rationalist myself in Brandom's updated sense. I claim that we are deeply and fundamentally normative and discursive creatures and that philosophy is a particular kind of moralizing --a normative imposition, a push on our way of doing things from the inside.

'One, as a rational person, ought to think of concepts this way.'

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). — Ed Feser

:up:

Yes ! These are enacted semantic norms, patterns in our doings (marking and barking and parking) --patterns that bots can 'internalize' (encode as floating point parameters), generating novel and helpful sentences. Our brain must encode these norms somehow. We also create and adjust these norms. Time just is (human intellectual existence just is) the critical self-confrontation of semantic norms. Thus spake @plaque flag.

<smile>

Here's some hopefully helpful Hegel:
***
The proposition that the finite is ideal [ideell] constitutes idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognising that the finite has no veritable being. Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is actually carried out.[/i]
***


Now it's going to get muddy (I think I can tentatively paraphrase this, if that becomes relevant.)
...
everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well.
...
The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realised and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite.
...
The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development.
....
Reason is purposive activity.

Hegel always says too much.

:lol:

...Wittgenstein... — plaque flag

I think Wittgenstein was nominalist, through and through. In other words, universals could have, for him, no reality aside from their usage in language (which is exactly what nominalism means). The revisitionist perspective on realism that I'm trying to articulate is that universals can be interpreted more broadly as scientific principles, arithmetic proofs, and logical laws, and that these are not dependent on our conventions of speech. They are independent of your or my mind, but can only be discerned by the mind; they're intelligible objects, in the sense intended by objective idealism. (Note that in saying that, they're not actually "objects" at all, except for in a metaphorical sense; they're more like the constituents of reason, structures or ideas but they are invariant for different observers. The problem is, designating them as objects invariably leads to the question of where they are, as objects must be located somewhere. That culminates in the discussion of the 'ethereal platonic realm', which is a dead end, an analogy for Descartes 'thinking thing', another dead end. All of that arises from the tendency to objectify, to treat reality as if it comprises solely the interaction of objects.)

But Wittgenstein, of course, will reject all this on account of its proximity to classical metaphysics, 'language on holiday'. That is because, I say, there is a normative dimension that had collapsed in Western philosophy which provided for different levels of modes of being, other than the sensory, which was lost with the rejection of realism.

hat is because, I say, there is a normative dimension that had collapsed in Western philosophy — Wayfarer

That's just not true. If you mean philosophy isn't theology, I'd say just go for it. As I see it, what I consider mischaracterizing philosophy weakens your rhetorical position.

I think Wittgenstein was nominalist — Wayfarer

I don't think that's correct. Norms aren't names.

**********

In general, I think something (very) like what you are aiming at is already right there in the tradition. But it is presented without the trappings of traditional religion. So you don't see it / like it / greet it as a friend. (I am just reporting how it seems to me.)

Hegel seemed to see the lifeworld as an organism that was increasing in complexity and becoming able to understand its own nature. Forward, upward. Now we are building digital gods. Reality swells. Baby godworld is going to be a big boy. The timebinding Conversation we mostly are thickens on the climb to godhead. Any nostalgic philosophy is therefore suspect. As boundtime or fattened Zeitgeist, the past is always with us, and we are this past in the mode of transcending it. With that in mind, how do you address acknowledge appreciate our ascension ? Even if in some dimensions you count it a regressive, certainly we some kind of monster spreading its wings, some kind of tower being erected.

.

The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development.

...reason is purposive activity — plaque flag

The world, through us, comes to make its own nature or character more and more explicit. It comes to know itself. We are god's spies, god's eyes, god's authors.

Consider that Hegel was a Romantic rationalist. He wanted to heal his generation's sense of alienation. It was common at that time (as it is in ours) to bemoan our loss of the garden. We missed an immediacy that we probably never had to begin with. We are stardust, we are golden.

Hegel's problem (like Joyce's) was to wake people up to the divine in their own dirty little lives, embedded in a history of violence and superstition, but hopeful for utopia. Things were looking up back then. Maybe it'll help to share this key piece of his aesthetics again:
******************************************************************************************************************************
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom.

This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.

Yet absolute subjectivity as such would elude art and be accessible to thinking alone if, in order to be actual subjectivity in correspondence with its essence, it did not also proceed into external existence...

...the Absolute does not turn out to be the one jealous God who merely cancels nature and finite human existence without shaping himself there in appearance as actual divine subjectivity; on the contrary, the true Absolute reveals itself and thereby gains an aspect in virtue of which it can be apprehended and represented by art.

...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself.

God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.

I'm not denying that philosophers can engage in a sophisticated defense of dualism, but it's a tough position to play. — plaque flag

Are you aware that the future is radically different from the past? We might say that the past consists of what has actually occurred, and the future consists of what will possibly occur. And since there is no substance to the non-dimensional boundary which separates past from future, all substance is either of the past or of the future. Because the substance of the past is radically different from the substance of the future, substance dualism is justified, and it is the best option for understanding the nature of reality.

And like twenty different things to boot! I've seen:

Realist = time and change exists
Realist = substrate independent, diffuse entities like economies and states exist
Realist = countries always self-interestedly act to maximize their own security and power (big in international relations)
Realist = universals exist
Realist = propositions exist
Realist = abstract objects and mathematical entities exist
Realist = mind independent objects exist

Etc.

Total tangential point here: I don't even think it's a good label most of the time. Like, in IR, it seems somewhat fanciful, like the grand strategy video game view of how states act. If John Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism was true, it seems ridiculous that the USA wouldn't have annexed Canada and more of Mexico at any point after the Civil War, when its military would have easily defeated any force that could cross the Atlantic.

Values explanations make way more sense. Americans used to think of Canada as similar to themselves, just other British colonies. Thus, as soon as Massachusetts ended up at war with Britain, even before the other states joined, an army of Massachusetts and New York men immediately marched north and sacked Montreal. This ultimately failed due to Quebec City's walls and the fact that a winter offensive and siege in Canada with 1770s technology is, to put it bluntly, dumb. Then in 1812 the US invaded Canada again. But by 1860 there is a distinct difference in identity and moral sentiment is much different.

Just an example. I don't think you can divorce moral opinion from state action. The US did annex Texas, but it had to vote to ask for annexation first to motivate the actual action. /rant

I just hate that the "realist" position is so goofy.

↪Gnomon
Up until quite recently, 'realism' in philosophy meant 'realism with respect to universals' i.e. some form of Platonic or Aristotelian realism. Today's realism, 'realism with respect to mind-independent objects of perception', is a very recent arrival. — Wayfarer

Thanks, but. Since I'm not educated in the technicalities of academic philosophy, for me, "Realism" means naive realism. In the Enformationism thesis, I distinguish between Realism & Idealism in my own idiosyncratic ways, relative to the various roles of Information in the world. More specifically, the distinction is relative to, what Murray Gell-Mann labeled IGUSES (information gathering and utilizing systems). Humans being the exemplars of those knowledge gatherers. The contents of human minds are Ideal (in the sense of subjective concepts), and everything else is more or less Real. From that perspective Universals are merely memes in human minds. Whether they exist elsewhere is debatable. But we like to think that mathematical Principles and physical Laws are somehow Real, since evidence for them is found consistently in Nature. :smile:

Practically speaking, realists are those who believe realpolitik and scientific rationalism.

The world, through us, comes to make its own nature or character more and more explicit. It comes to know itself. We are god's spies, god's eyes, god's authors. — plaque flag

That's nearer to what I'm on about. Note the convergences with (neo)advaita and the like. There's an academic, Robert M. Wallace, who has written on Hegel's philosophy of religion, see this.

The contents of human minds are Ideal (in the sense of subjective concepts), and everything else is more or less Real. From that perspective Universals are merely memes in human minds. Whether they exist elsewhere is debatable. But we like to think that mathematical Principles and physical Laws are somehow Real, since evidence for them is found consistently in Nature. :smile: — Gnomon

To me, that is the major subject of philosophy. It is the domain of the a priori, but it's not as if there's evidence for them, so much as that we rely on them to decide what constitutes evidence.

Because the substance of the past is radically different from the substance of the future, substance dualism is justified, and it is the best option for understanding the nature of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Cats are different than roaches too. As I see it, anything we can make any sense of is for just that reason 'part' of the same inferential nexus. So I'm down with idealism understood as holism (as Hegel seems to have understood it.) But this kind of idealism does not think that mind is fundamental or prior to matter. The lifeworld and the self and others and language are all given in a primordial unity. Heidegger and the later Husserl talk about this. We can abstract (yank out) entities from their context. We can talk as if thought was weightless and disembodied. We can ignore its energetic cost, its dependence on a representative for its equivalence class. Such methodical ignorance may even be practically appropriate if metaphysically absurd.

As I see it, anything we can make any sense of is for just that reason 'part' of the same inferential nexus — plaque flag

A whole lot of reality we cannot make sense of, as physicists have found out.

The principles of modal logic fail to make a true separation between what is necessary and what is possible, leaving the necessary as a subcategory of the possible. This renders formal logic as inapplicable to a wide aspect of reality, what happens at the present time, when possibilities are actualized (become necessities). By designating the necessary as already a subcategory of the possible, there is no place in that structure of logic for that act which occurs in reality, which actualizes a possibility, rendering it as a necessity. This aspect of reality is not included within the "inferential nexus", meaning that the inferential nexus is not applicable to it.

Because we do have the capacity to, and we can actually make sense of this act, which mediates between the possible and the necessary, (the freely willed choice for example), yet we know not how to allow for it in the "inferential nexus", your statement is false. There are things we can makes sense of, acts of free will for example, which are not included in the "inferential nexus".

We can abstract (yank out) entities from their context. — plaque flag

The true context is temporal, therefore we must understand entities within that context, not yank them out of it. And, as I explained we cannot make an acceptable unity out of time because the actualities of the past are incommensurable with the possibilities of the future. The two cannot be measured by the same principles. Therefore the "unity" you refer to, is nothing but a false premise, a deficient metaphysics which results in a whole lot of reality ending up in the category of "what we cannot make sense of'. However, if we ditch that idea of unity, and accept a better metaphysics, we bring that part of reality into the fold of "what we can make sense of", by providing us the means to understand why such a unity is false.

Therefore the "unity" you refer to, is nothing but a false premise, — Metaphysician Undercover

You are appealing to inferential norms.

This renders formal logic as inapplicable to a wide aspect of reality, — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not talking about formal logic. I'm talking about largely tacit norms that govern what follows from what as a way to understand meaning.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf

Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning and conceptual content. The modern Western philosophical tradition has taken representation to be the key concept of semantics. To understand the sort of contentfulness characteristic of sapience, that tradition counsels us to focus on the relation between pictures and what they picture, between signs and what they are signs for. The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, “propositional” content, in the philosopher’s jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasons—that is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.

(the freely willed choice for example) — Metaphysician Undercover

That to me is an unclear and uncertain concept. Selves are normative entities. I'll give you that. We are held responsible. But that's all the 'freedom' I'm confident about at the moment.