A world. There's a difference. — Wayfarer

The title of the OP says "The Mind-Created World" :chin: :roll:

It's true, but nothing of what you've said so far indicates that you've taken any of it in. If you can find a question about the actual content, rather than simply general observations about your view of what idealism means, I would be happy to try and respond.

Isn't the created world in your mind more prone to be illusive than the perceived world? — Corvus

I think you're missing the point. There is no such thing as the perceived world. A world, or the world, is something created by the mind. As such it doesn't make any sense to talk about "the perceived world". To assume that what is out there as the object of perception is even remotely similar to the world which is what is created within the mind, is to make a big mistake. So when you start off by calling it "the perceived world" you are already on the road of misunderstanding.

Yes, I feel the OP is a large topic, and I must admit I haven't gone into the core yet. I was asking questions from the elementary epistemological point of view. Maybe the topic itself seems Philosophy of Mind problem rather than Epistemology.

Anyway, this is a very interesting topic, and I would like to investigate deeper for the further discussions.

My idea about the world is Evolutionary nature rather than either Physicalism or Idealism. I will think, build my points on that idea, and return to compare with your views.

My idea about the world is Evolutionary nature rather than either Physicalism or Idealism. I will think, build my points on that idea, and return to compare with your views. — Corvus

:up: Indeed the essay is tagged 'Philosophy of Mind'. (Note that I myself never dispute the empirical facts of (for example) evolution, but will often call into question the supposed implications.)

There are imagined world, perceived world and the world itself. If you are an idealist, you would be believing the perceived world as the real world? If you say, the world is created by your mind, I feel your world is likely to be very much in illusion. A perceived world sounds more accurate.

:cool: :ok:

There is no such thing as the perceived world. A world, or the world, is something created by the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ouch. Philosophical idealism is saying something like that, but it has to be worded carefully, lest it fall into mere fictionalism or fantasy. I'm not denying the reality of the sensory domain, but drawing attention to the role of the mind/brain in weaving it into a coherent whole.

Even Berkeley said "esse ist percipi", not "esse ist
creatus"

Agree, the implications of the term 'create' are especially significant in this context. I could have equally called the essay 'the mind-made world', I guess.

Agree, the implications of the term 'create' are especially significant in this context. I could have equally called the essay 'the mind-made world', I guess. — Wayfarer

:100: :up:

There are imagined world, perceived world and the world itself. If you are an idealist, you would be believing the perceived world as the real world? If you say, the world is created by your mind, I feel your world is likely to be very much in illusion. A perceived world sounds more accurate. — Corvus

I think you have this backward. What the ancients, like Plato, demonstrated is that the senses deceive, and we ought to trust the mind with logic, over the senses, as capable of producing a more reliable and accurate "world". The evidence of this reality is that the senses show us the sun rising and setting, when logic has demonstrated that in reality the earth is spinning. And modern science has demonstrated that substance in general is not at all like it appears to us through sensation.

So if you propose a separation between the perceived world (world created by sensation), and a mind created world, the perceived world is demonstrably less accurate.

But the problem is, how do you distinguish the model from the world? How can you, on the one hand, look at 'the model', and, on the other 'the real world'? That already assumes a perspective outside the model - that you're able to compare one with the other. But if your experience-of-the-world IS the model, and you're inside it, then how do you step outside it to compare it with the world itself? — Wayfarer

A very important question. The answer is that we have at some point in our lives, attempted to apply our model of reality to reality, and failed. At its most simple, its the contradiction of reality to our beliefs. The fact that contradictions exist to our model, show us that there is a model, or viewpoint of the world that we have, and something else that we have to model around. For it doesn't matter if I believe that a eating a rotten apple is healthy, the reality of illness will follow. If it were the case that there was nothing underlying to model on, then there would never be any contradictions to the models we create.

The solution then is to create models that are not contradicted by the "the world itself" or "reality'. If you can create as the foundation of your model, something which cannot be contradicted by reality, then you can use that as a base to build a structure of identities and applications that gives us the best models possible with which to apply to reality. Of course, none of those models can ever claim anything more than that they are not contradicted by reality, and cannot point to the "thing in itself" specifically apart from the model. This is because this is the way we function and know. To say we can know something outside of the very means we use to have knowledge, is impossible.

But the question we're considering is a question of a different order, because it concerns the nature of experience itself, not a specific question about a particular subject. That's what distinguishes it as a philosophical question, not a scientific one. — Wayfarer

Correct. I give the full answer to this question in the OP I linked. It all starts with coming to the realization that people can discretely experience, and what people can discretely experience is known. Demonstrating how this is known, I then show how we can apply this discrete experience to reality to see if our application can stand without contradiction. I think you'll really like it Wayfarer.

The fact that contradictions exist to our model, show us that there is a model, or viewpoint of the world that we have, and something else that we have to model around. — Philosophim

As I acknowledged, the process of creating models and testing them is already well-known - it's the scientific method. In such cases, you do have an hypothesis or theoretical model which accounts for some aspect of the whole, and you frame an explanatory hypothesis which does or doesn't not account for the observed or experimental facts. Your example of reaction to a bad apple is a simple illustration. In this way we progressively refine our models, hopefully converging on a more and more general and truthful understanding. On a higher level, it's the kind of process described in Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But I don't think that is what I'm driving at.

To say we can know something outside of the very means we use to have knowledge, is impossible. — Philosophim

That's actually closer to the point. One of the sources I draw on is Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. There is a word in that tradition that describes 'the ability to discern reality' or to 'see things as they truly are' (yathābhūtaṃ). But this kind of insight is also understood to be unusual - it is not possessed by ordinary people (in which category I include myself.) But the key point I take to be insight into the nature of knowing and of existence. It is different to scientific knowledge (although not incompatible with it) because it is existential - it is concerned with questions of meaning and value right at the outset.

The principle at stake is scientific but philosophical as I say at the outset:

Physicalism and naturalism are the assumed consensus of modern culture, very much the product of the European Enlightenment with its emphasis on pragmatic science and instrumental reason. Accordingly this essay will go against the grain of the mainstream consensus and even against what many will presume to be common sense. — Wayfarer

So it's probably best to try articulate the differences between us based on this argument - what you agree or disagree with about that, and why I might put up an idealist argument against it.

The evidence of this reality is that the senses show us the sun rising and setting, when logic has demonstrated that in reality the earth is spinning. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hate to butt in but it wasn't logic that demonstrated it, so much as the empirical science of Kepler and Galileo et al. And it wasn't until scientists broke with the Grand Tradition represented by Aristotelian science, that they were able to discover this (and it was a hell of a fight when they did, as you may recall.)

It's a fact that the term 'idealism' is itself a product of the modern period - first came into use with Leibniz, I think. Plato would not have known the word. We can retrospectively assess Platonism as idealist but it needs careful interpretation.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene. — Wayfarer

First of all, thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. I was trying to get comments in this thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14673/is-maths-embedded-in-the-universe-/p2
because of the reality sans observer that was brought up in yet another thread. But it seems no one wanted to respond to that problem.
As I have said previously, and before I even read your essay, it is a much different reality because now there's no more privileged vantage point from which everything is seen or experience. But of course someone here, and in other threads, had raised the problem of "we can't or shouldn't even be discussing such problem because we are the observers!"
And to that I say, we come up with a hypothesis. With hypothesis, we enjoy the freedom of the imagination -- we're not making a conclusion yet, but we're exploring the what-if. Like the quantum physics -- I hope they have not made that final analysis.

To me, how would the world be without the sentient observers? The world on a coordinate plane, a flat two-dimensional reality.

This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. — Wayfarer

With this I disagree. I object to the cognitive disorientation and I object to the following comment as well:

What the ancients, like Plato, demonstrated is that the senses deceive, and we ought to trust the mind with logic, over the senses, as capable of producing a more reliable and accurate "world". — Metaphysician Undercover

What does that even mean?

With our sense-perception, we can't help but view the world the way we do. Only the silly observers would not use the mind, the common sense, and logic to think about the world. How does one perceive without logic?
Descartes, for one, never claimed that humans are being deceived. He brought it up as a thought experiment. (You can correct me here if you like).

What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. — Wayfarer

Of course. And where would we be without such taking for granted?
Can you imagine yourself functioning as a human without such taking for granted?

How does one perceive without logic? — L'éléphant

With the proverbial "heart". It seems to be perfectly possible to live a good life without any self-reflection or philosophical contemplation. You just "follow your heart".

But the problem is, how do you distinguish the model from the world?
How can you, on the one hand, look at 'the model', and, on the other 'the real world'?
That already assumes a perspective outside the model - that you're able to compare one with the other.
But if your experience-of-the-world IS the model, and you're inside it, then how do you step outside it to compare it with the world itself? — Wayfarer

You don't, you follow your guru.

And I don't mean to be uselessly confrontational. It's that you're introducing conceptualizations from a philosophical-spiritual tradition in which formally joining a lineage of teachers and submitting to one in particular is essential. You're trying to do on your own, individualistically what was never intended to be done that way (even as it is often advertised as such). The condition for the "Eastern" way of "knowing things for yourself" is to submit to a lineage.

So if you propose a separation between the perceived world (world created by sensation), and a mind created world, the perceived world is demonstrably less accurate. — Metaphysician Undercover

So if you block out and disable all your senses, then what knowledge of the world would you get?

I think Wayfarer's idea of extended naturalism does offer potential insights into how we co-create the reality we experience and how it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions. — Tom Storm

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms?

For many people, "realizing the tentative nature of many of one's positions" amounts to plain old self-doubt and lack of confidence. Which are, of course, generally, bad and undesirable.

Look, I'm not disagreeing, I'm the first to point out the complex nature of what is called "experience." It's just that in day-to-day terms, such insights appear to be more burdensome than they are useful.

In Theravada Buddhism, they even say that the existence of an enlightened being (that is, one who, among other things, "sees how things really are") is too weak to support itself (ie. too weak to earn a living etc.), and that if a lay person attains enlightenment, they have to ordain as a monastic or die within days.

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms? — baker

I doubt it. I have yet to see how philosophy of this kind is of use in my daily life - except as a general belief that I might have larger models of speculative reality to play with when I have spare time. And I suspect that one of the consolations of philosophy is that it's often the conceptual version of getting a new toy. Does this suggest decadence or futility? I'm not one to say. I think others take the pursuit more seriously.

As I have said elsewhere - if we are living in a simulation, or if idealism (however this is understood) is true, I don't think it makes any difference to how I go about my business in life.

At a deeper more optimistic level, I think it is quite enough to arrive at a point where you are aware that potentially all of your assumptions and values, your world are constructed and not an immutable, transcendent reality. It might well help us to be less dogmatic in our thinking and actions.

‘Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.’

- Dan Zahavi

This quote does resonate. And it leaves me with the helpful perspective that I am not going to solve any of the big questions of philosophy - the nature of reality, what is consciousness, is moral realism true, etc. These questions are too difficult to unpack (certainly for the non-specialist) and there's reason to think that we are all caught up in traps of language, perception and cognition which may well be difficult or impossible to escape from. But I am happy to hear the arguments against this.

Well written and clear OP, but I'm not persuaded by the case you're trying to make, sir. To my mind:

(1) In order for Mind to "create the world", Mind must be unitary and transcend – be independent of – the world;
and (2) by independent what is implied is alien to individual minds which are immanent to – entangled with, inseparable from – the world;
and (3), though the world populated by individual minds (subjects) exists, only Mind is real – exists even when the world of individual minds (subjects) does not exist (i.e. before the world was created and after the world dissipates);
and (4), because Mind transcends the world, individual minds (subjects) in the world cannot have corroborable evidence of Mind – including that the world is/was created by Mind ...

... therefore (5) Mind functions only as a creator(god)-of-the-gaps placeholder, or implicit appeal to ignorance, such that the thesis "Mind creates the world" amounts to nothing but an unparsimonious just-so story.

So tell me, Wayfarer, what I get wrong here and/or why my objection fails.

addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841677 :eyes:

NB: Maybe someone has already pointed this out, but the definitions of "physicalism" and "naturalism" in the OP do not correspond, IMO, to how most physicalists and naturalists use the terms.

thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. — L'éléphant

You're welcome and thank you.

Descartes, for one, never claimed that humans are being deceived. — L'éléphant

Well, he kinda did. At the beginning of his meditations, he said something along the lines that he had hitherto held many false opinions purely because he'd swallowed the accepted wisdom. This is why he had to go back to square one, as it were, and put aside everything he thought he had known, starting with the self-evident 'cogito ergo sum'.

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms? — baker

I've never experienced any material benefit from my study of the subject. And I envy those who do - I'm aware of freelance writers and academics who've made a career out of these subjects. There are plenty who would tell me I've wasted a lot of my life chasing rainbows. I hope they're not right, but then, look at the icon I've picked. I might have succeeded at it, had the circumstances been different, but as it is, whatever I do here and on Medium is about it.

But I will say that I have experienced a definite shift in my overall orientation and equanamity in life. It's not as my younger self would have hoped a kind of be-all and end-all state but it's still something.

I said earlier on in this thread, that I often feel that what is taken as normality in our culture is actually a kind of false consciousness. I looked into that saying, 'false consciousness', it originated with Marx, about workers who falsely allow themselves to be lulled into a sense of security by identifying with their work, although I think it has also been adopted by existentialism. So a big part of what I've learned through this discipline is to be less bogus (or more 'fair dinkum' in the local vernacular), so as not to be so immersed in the false consciousness of materialist culture.

Mind must be unitary and transcend – be independent of – the world; — 180 Proof

Thanks for your feedback!

First point - when you say 'the world' here you refer to 'the totality of experience', right? It's not as if any of us 'experience the world' as ' experiencing the entire world'. 'The world' is really shorthand for the sum total of sensory experience, apperception, feeling, knowing and so forth

A point that has bearing on this is the subjective unity of consciousness. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single moment of being. That, I think, is at the basis of Kant's 'transcendental unity of apperception', the faculty which draws together and synthesises all the disparate elements of experience into a unified whole. Kant's "transcendental unity of apperception" refers to that unifying self-awareness that underlies all experience. All our representations (sensations, perceptions, concepts, etc.) must be brought together and unified by a single self-awareness. This isn't simply the empirical consciousness of any particular experience (e.g., seeing a tree, feeling pain, thinking about an abstract idea), but a more fundamental, a priori consciousness that makes any coherent experience possible in the first place.

The unity of apperception is "transcendental" because it's a precondition for our knowledge of objects. Without this unifying self-awareness, we'd have a jumble of unrelated perceptions and not the coherent experience of an objective world. In essence, for us to recognize diverse representations as belonging to one and the same object, there must be a unity in the consciousness of these representations. (But Kant couldn’t say, and we can’t say, what that is, as it’s not anything objectively perceptible
see this paper about the 'neural binding problem' which is intimately associated with the 'subjective unity of perception'.)

So, yes, so this is an argument that the mind is both unitary and transcendental.

what is implied is alien to individual minds which are immanent to – entangled with, inseparable from – the world; — 180 Proof

You really think so? Even in The Phaedo, there is a section on disentangling the mind - actually the soul - from the world, from outward stimuli, from entanglements. This is where philosophy is said to be 'practising for death'. That is the meaning of detachment, of purity of heart. There are volumes of literature on this theme from across different cultures and historical periods.

(3), though the world populated by individual minds (subjects) exists, only Mind is real – exists even when the world of individual minds (subjects) does not exist (i.e. before the world was created and after the world dissipates); — 180 Proof

I haven't asserted that 'the mind exists' when 'the world of subjects does not exist'. What I said was 'The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.' This is why it's not necessary for me to assert the kind of God that Berkeley appeals to, in order to account for the world in the absence of observers. It is more in line with Buddhist philosophy (hence the quotation from the Buddhist texts in this earlier post.)

'Corrobarable evidence' of mind is not required as, in line with Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum', the reality of first-person consciousness is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied.

I don't mean to be uselessly confrontational. It's that you're introducing conceptualizations from a philosophical-spiritual tradition in which formally joining a lineage of teachers and submitting to one in particular is essential. — baker

Well, it is a bit confrontational. First you don't know that I don't recognize a guru. Secondly, I don't see any purpose to be served if I were to incorporate such an affiliation in this essay or in my further comments on the subject. Would I 'appeal to the authority of the Guru' in order to ground the argument? I frequently acknowledge that I draw on Buddhist philosophy, and I will sometimes say that I also have a Buddhist practice, and try to observe the appropriate demeanour. But the context is that we're living in is a secular, pluralist, modern culture, not in ancient culture, and we need to be able to absorb these ideas without overt reliance on a lineage in order to validate whatever it is we write or say. I would like to make a case that stands on its own merits, in philosophical terms.

//oh, and I’ll say something else. One of the books that had foundational influence on me was Alan Watts The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who you Are, when I was aged about 20. I don’t know how well it reads now - but I think his intuition of the kind of knowledge he was speaking of being ‘taboo’ is right on the mark. And I wonder if in saying what you’re saying, you’d rather see it observed.

I've always found the 'two truths' doctrine compelling, since I first encountered it in T R V Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. One of the footnotes to the Medium essay can be found in the Wikipedia link you provided: — Wayfarer

Thanks! :smile: :up:

Hate to butt in but it wasn't logic that demonstrated it, so much as the empirical science of Kepler and Galileo et al. — Wayfarer

Of course there is empirical evidence involved, but it is the application of logic to the discrepancies found in the empirical evidence, which produces the new theories. Empirical evidence shows the sun and all the planets appearing to orbit the earth. However, there were discrepancies in the observations like retrograde motions, which for the longest time could not be figured out.

Even mapping the planets as perfect circular orbits around the sun,(the idea passed on through Aristotle) did not render the correct results as Copernicus showed. That was the stumbling point of the ancient Greek scientists, they assumed the orbits to be eternal therefore they must be perfect circles. It was a simplistic principle which enabled much science, (very similar to today's "symmetries"), but a principle which is fundamentally wrong, because such "ideals" are not consistent with reality.

Aristotle pointed to the problem with this idea of eternal circular orbits. Copernicus laid out the model, perfect circular orbits, and the discrepancies between it and observations were clearly exposed. But further application of logic produced Kepler's elliptical orbits.

With our sense-perception, we can't help but view the world the way we do. Only the silly observers would not use the mind, the common sense, and logic to think about the world. How does one perceive without logic? — L'éléphant

The problem is that the senses often give us confusing and misleading information, i.e. they deceive us. For example, it looks to me, like there is nothing between me and the far wall of the room, but I know there is air in between. Logic has figured out that air is a substance even though it is unseen.

We do not see air, but we can feel the wind, and see its effects. So sight in this instance gives us confusing and misleading information. The mind acts to synthesize the information received from the various senses, and in doing this it must resolve such issues of misleading and confusing information.

So if you block out and disable all your senses, then what knowledge of the world would you get? — Corvus

I was not the one proposing the separation between mind produced world and sense produced world. To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. But we need to be aware of the cases where the senses mislead us. And I think your proposal to separate these two is not warranted. So the problem you present here with your question, is just an indication that your proposal is unacceptable.

I was not the one proposing the separation between mind produced world and sense produced world. To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. But we need to be aware of the cases where the senses mislead us. And I think your proposal to separate these two is not warranted. So the problem you present here with your question, is just an indication that your proposal is unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Aren't the senses part of your mind? Are the senses separate entities from the mind operating themselves disconnected from the mind? You say you were not proposing it, but it sounds like that is the point you are insisting on. I was not proposing anything, but saying what the traditional idealist was saying about the world and perception.

...it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions.
— Tom Storm

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms?

For many people, "realizing the tentative nature of many of one's positions" amounts to plain old self-doubt and lack of confidence. Which are, of course, generally, bad and undesirable. — baker

I suppose it would depend on one's job. For a guru, preacher, or used car salesman it might be detrimental to recognize the tentative nature of one's beliefs. For a scientist or engineer it can be extremely valuable to be willing and able to question one's assumptions.

To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think they are different. The world created by your minds is totally different from the perceived one. For example, the world depicted by an artist such as painters, novelists, poets would be the world created by mind.