I agree that when sleeping and dreaming, appearances have not been directly caused by things external to the mind.
The question is that when awake, is it also the case that appearances have not been caused by things external to the mind. An Idealist would say yes, a Realist would say no.
If it is possible for there to be an external world without things in themselves, what would make up this world ?
I think a Direct Realist would say that things in themselves are directly accessible, whereas an Indirect Realist would say that they are only indirectly accessible.
Berkeley's bold assertion, "esse est percipi", did not make sense, without some qualification. For example, as someone noted above : "the universe appears to have existed for 10 million years before the emergence of any perceiving creature". If so, in what sense can we say that anything --- say a 20 million year old rock on an uninhabited planet in a distant galaxy --- exists? Who or what is the percipient?And without that observing self, which is never amongst the objects being observed, nothing whatsoever exists. — Quixodian
If we want to attribute only what is strictly necessary to such an idea as the negative noumenon, then it is simpler to assume the existence of a single "thing" — Manuel
Science tells us the Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, and life began on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. — RussellA
Berkeley's bold assertion, "esse est percipi", did not make sense, without some qualification. — Gnomon
Things don't exist from no point of view, they exist within a context, and the mind provides that context. — Quixodian
the fossil record tells us they did — Janus
'(Philosopher Edmund) Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place.' — Quixodian
How could we possibly know whether they exist absent us? Well, the fossil record tells us they did, and if the Universe is older than the human race then it follows that it existed prioir to us and our points of view. — Janus
Everyone knows that the earth, anda 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
I don't understand Kant to say that time and space are only the perfect forms of intuition, but that we cannot impute time and space, in the way that we understand them in relation to our perception beyond that context. — Janus
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. — CPR, A369
If we say that the organisms and animals that have been preserved as fossils ... in fact did not exist at all, then we are simply contradicting ourselves. — Janus
the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration — Bryan Magee
Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the former (subject) no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the latter (object). In short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. Again, then, and for a reason that goes deeper than those which had been given the last time this point was made, transcendental realism cannot be stated*. It is 'the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself'. But 'just as there can be no object without a subject, so there can be no subject without an object, in other words, no knower without something different from this that is known.... For consciousness consists in knowing, but knowing requires a knower and a known. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy
If you have no need for the God hypothesis, how do you explain the contingent existence of the space-time world, that appears to have a singular point of beginning into being? The cosmic clock seems to be ticking down to the ultimate Entropy of non-existence. Do you assume that the physical universe --- which we temporal humans perceive into conceptual being --- is actually self existent : requiring no external percipient (creator) to begin & sustain its beingness?In Berkeley's case, the only qualification required is that God sustains the Universe in existence, although personally I have no need of that hypothesis. — Quixodian
how do you explain the contingent existence of the space-time world, that appears to have a singular point of beginning into being? — Gnomon
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. — CPR, A369
Transcendental realism, according to this passage, is the view that objects in space and time exist independently of our experience of them, while transcendental idealism denies this. — Quixodian
Ever since 1781, the meaning and significance of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” has been a subject of controversy. — Janus
I say it's controversial because it challenges realism, which is the ingrained tendency of the natural outlook. Plenty of people dispute the interpretation of that passage in Kant. — Quixodian
You seem to me more in the business of looking for support for how you want things to be than you are coming to these questions with an open mind. — Janus
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