I rarely enjoy such wordy/lengthy posts but this one truly captivated me from the outset. It really was well and simply articulated.

Your musings are valid imo. It reminds me of the old adage "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound".

For me the answer "it causes vibration, but only makes a sound when an ear listens to it" is apt here. As for me I understand things to exist independent of minds (as you said), but there is a dimension to reality that can only be framed within the context of an observer (sound/noise vs simple vibrations).

"Last Thursdayism" strangely comes to mind here also. And it took me a moment to understand why my subsconscious was offering this association.

It has to do I guess with the capacity for precision, detailed and extensive memory that only complex conscious creatures like ourselves possess.

Without the temporality offered by the vast memory that the human mind exemplifies, Existence would merely be the blink of an eye. Began and finished in an instant.

So it seems the details: the minute-to-minute existence that we experience, is part due to our ability to record events and chronology as they happen at a certain pace, in a given "frame-rate" of the passage of time.

So indeed, the mind creates reality; "our reality" but not "thee" reality where time and space are less sure, as we are things that occupy a time frame, and a dimension of space that dictates how we perceive reality.

So perhaps many of the conundrums if human logic and philosophic contradiction whittle down to those very assumptions about our limited/restricted and predefined tempospatial perception

Interesting essay. Thanks for sharing.

(Caveat - so far I have only read the portion of the essay contained in your OP.)

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

I must confess that the way you are using 'Idealism' is somewhat foreign to me. I am trying to understand the general thrust of your position, and specifically the way in which it contradicts physicalism and naturalism.

Would I be correct if I said that the crux is the idea that <the objective domain has a mind-independent status>, and that you are rejecting this idea whereas physicalism and/or naturalism accept it? That this is your central claim over and against physicalism and naturalism?

On my view there is clearly a cleavage between the scientific paradigm and post-Kantian philosophy, and it does revolve around this question of realism, but I tend to see more problems with the post-Kantian approach than with the scientific approach. Granted, there are problems with both, as both seem to provide only a partial account. In any case, why think it is the scientific-physicalist-naturalist half that is especially problematic?

(It's curious and encouraging to me how strongly this forum focuses on metaphysics. I haven't seen that on other philosophy forums.)

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

Ironically, even on a philosophy webpage --- presumably a forum for ideas about ideas --- many posters seem to instinctively argue against any form of meta-physics -- especially Idealism -- on the basis of priority of the five senses -- common to most animals -- over our unique human rational faculty. Consequently, they bow only to Physical Science --- with its artificial sensory enhancements --- instead of Meta-Physical Philosophy --- and its cultural reasoning enhancements (e.g. Logic) --- to support their sense-able beliefs.

That's partly paradoxical because the Common-Sense Perspective led most humans to believe in a flat earth and an earth-centered cosmos. Among the sensible ancients though, a few Greek philosophers used un-common-sense (abstract reasoning) to realize that our un-aided senses are not capable of seeing the world "in the round", so to speak. So they used the mental imagery of mathematics to rise above their limited physical plane. Nevertheless, it's hard to argue against Common Sense, because it is literally sense-able, and people tend to implicitly "believe their eyes". It seems that abstract philosophy was developed specifically to work around our inherent materialistic biases. Which is what Kant warned about with his sense-transcending "ding an sich" proposal.

On the other hand, some people are inclined to believe in unseen things that appeal to their Feelings. That's because hormonal feelings are the motivators of actions, and of attractions. But those sentiments are also a form of inwardly-focused Common Sense. Hence, people typically believe what they feel. And it's that latter notion of common-sense that hard-nosed Rationalists strenuously reject. That's why your rational approach to Idealism must skirt the feeling element, because it incites knee-jerk negative feelings in dogmatic Realists. Yet even the sixth sense of Reason is questionable, if it has no material evidence to support it. In the realm of Ideas & Reasons though, philosophers tend to lean on immaterial analogies and imaginary metaphors for props.

A recent scientific metaphor along these lines was Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception*1. That proposal was described in a book entitled The Case Against Reality. It postulated that natural evolution created big-brained animals with the latent ability to "see" what is not before their eyes, by means of imagination. Thereby, viewing a "mind created world". Even some small-brained birds seem to imagine other minds*2. So, it's not a super-natural power. Some of the non-things seen in the Mind's Eye are symbols & icons & gestalts. The latter are imaginary whole systems composed of bits & pieces of sensory perception. Although he makes a good case for Ideality, Hoffman's notion that our physical eyes see only superficial "appearances", has not been well-received among Philosophical physicalists. Was cognitive psychologist Hoffman presenting evidence in favor of Ideality, as an evolutionary offspring of Reality? :smile:

*1. The Interface Theory of Perception :
For the perceptions of H. sapiens, space-time is the desktop and physical objects are the icons. Our perceptions of space-time and objects have been shaped by natural selection to hide the truth and guide adaptive behaviors. Perception is an adaptive interface.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26384988/

*2. Ravens can imagine other minds :
Ravens display a human ability to imagine how others are thinking, a study has shown
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/ravens-can-imagine-how-others-are-thinking.601117

For me the answer "it causes vibration, but only makes a sound when an ear listens to it" is apt here. As for me I understand things to exist independent of minds (as you said), but there is a dimension to reality that can only be framed within the context of an observer (sound/noise vs simple vibrations). — Benj96

Thanks! My thoughts also.

On my view there is clearly a cleavage between the scientific paradigm and post-Kantian philosophy, and it does revolve around this question of realism, but I tend to see more problems with the post-Kantian approach than with the scientific approach. Granted, there are problems with both, as both seem to provide only a partial account. In any case, why think it is the scientific-physicalist-naturalist half that is especially problematic? — Leontiskos

To put it in blunt vernacular terms, it is the assessment of life in general, and human life in particular, as being basically the product of mindless laws and forces. Bertrand Russell's 'man is but the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms'. Jaques Monod's 'Chance and Necessity'. The instrumentalisation of reason. As you can see, I'm not seeking a theistic alternative but questioning it along more Berkeleyian lines (although, unlike Berkeley, I am a Platonic realist, as laid out in another essay, The Ligatures of Reason.)

A recent scientific metaphor along these lines was Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception*1. That proposal was described in a book entitled The Case Against Reality. It postulated that natural evolution created big-brained animals with the latent ability to "see" what is not before their eyes, by means of imagination. — Gnomon

We had a long thread on Hoffman recently. The question I always have for Hoffman is how science escapes the apparently illusory nature of perception. I think his book, The Case Against Reality, is misnamed - it should be called The Case Against Empirical Realism. Because then it provides an escape hatch for rational insight.

Thanks for your feedback! — Wayfarer

:up:

First point - when you say 'the world' here you refer to 'the totality of experience', right?

Incorrect. By the world I'm referring to 'the totality of facts' (re: TLP, 1.1-1.21).

... this is an argument that the mind is both unitary and transcendental.

Then why not instead title the thread

"The transcendental mind-created common experience of the world"?

... the reality of first-person consciousness is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied.

If X is true by definition (i.e. apodictic), then X is merely abstract and not concrete, or factual. Given ubiquitious and continuous (i.e. embodied) multi-modal stimuli from environmental imbedding, sufficiently complex, functioning, brains generate recursively narrative, phenomenal self models (PSM)¹ via tangled hierarchical (SL)² processing of which "first-person consciousness" consists. That these processes are also voluntarily as well as involuntarily interruptable, Wayfarer, demonstrates that the "reality (that) cannot be plausibly denied" is primarily virtual. :sparkle:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model#Overview_of_the_PSM [1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop [2]

That these processes are also voluntarily as well as involuntarily interruptable, Wayfarer, demonstrates that the "reality (that) cannot be plausibly denied" is primarily virtual. :sparkle: — 180 Proof

Indeed. ‘Mind-created’, one might say.

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". — baker

I disagree. The one that uses the heart also uses the intellect.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, this is a misrepresentation of metaphysics such as Descartes's meditation. It's not the senses that mislead you, it's the thought that ideas come out of nothing. No one is deceiving us. The world out there does not deceive.

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'. — Wayfarer

No. Read below:

And the longer and the more carefully that I investigate these
matters, the more clearly and distinctly do I recognize their truth. But
what am I to conclude from it all in the end? It is this, that if the
objective reality of any one of my ideas is of such a nature as clearly to
make me recognize that it is not in me either formally or eminently, and
that consequently I cannot myself be the cause of it, it follows of
necessity that I am not alone in the world, but that there is another being
which exists, or which is the cause of this idea. On the other hand, had
no such an idea existed in me, I should have had no sufficient argument
to convince me of the existence of any being beyond myself; for I have
made very careful investigation everywhere and up to the present time
have been able to find no other ground. — Descartes

He is arguing for causation! You are not the cause of your own ideas of the world -- meaning, you did not just "imagine" falsely that there are things out there that make you see colors, trees, and sky. There really are colors, trees, and sky.

why think it is the scientific-physicalist-naturalist half that is especially problematic? — Leontiskos

Galileo's distinction of 'primary and secondary qualities' of matter refers to the distinction between the attributes measurable by instruments (mass, volume, etc) with the 'affections' such as color, taste and smell existing only in the mind of 'the animal' (i.e. observing organism).

From the SEP entry on Primary and Secondary Qualities in Early Modern Philosophy:

it is not necessary to conceive that a body have a color, taste, aroma, or make a sound; if we lacked senses, intellect and imagination might never think of them.

Thus, from the point of view of the subject in which they seem to inhere [these attributes] are nothing but empty names, rather they inhere only in the sensitive body [i.e. of the observer] … f one removes the animal [observer], then all these qualities are … annihilated. (Galileo 1623 [2008: 185])

Compare this with Thomas Nagel's summary of the origin of the modern mind-body problem:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatio-temporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

So, when you ask, under this model, where in the world is the mind, the answer is obviously that it is within the observer. But also, as a corollary, it is nowhere to be found amongst those attributes which are taken to constitute the real objects of scientific analysis. So the mind is nowhere! In those terms, it is unreal or non-existent! All we can do is try to account for the way in which the primary objects of scientific analysis ( comprising matter-energy) must have combined in such a way as to account for the mind (which is of course subject to the 'facing up to the problem of consciousness' argument.) So this is where the axiom of 'the reality of mind-independent objects' has its origin, and it is precisely that which has been called into doubt by the 'observer problem' in quantum physics,

The point of my argument is that reality as experienced is obviously constituted in large part by the mind, which synthesises all of the data, including scientific data, and combines it into the unitified state of experience which is the referent of the term 'being'. It really isn't mysterious, but it's not objective. And, goes the reasoning, if it's not objective, then its not amenable to scientific method, so it can't be considered to be real in its own right. It has to be reducible to what can be explained by science. Hence:

Eliminative materialism (Dennett, Churchlands etc) claims that mind is illusory (notwithstanding the obvious self-contradiction that an illusion can only occur to a mind);
Panpsychism (Philip Goff et al) wants to imbue matter with mind, so as to maintain physicalism by giving it mental attributes.
Dualism of various kinds posits two separate kinds of substance, namely material and mental, although the whole notion of 'mental substance' seems oxymoronic.

I'm supporting a kind of hybrid of Kastrup's style of analytical idealism combined with enactive and phenomenological aspects.

(Descartes) is arguing for causation! — L'éléphant

That passage is taken from Meditations on First Philosophy, in the context of one of his proofs of the existence of God. It is associated with Descartes' 'ontological proof', that because we can conceive of a perfect being, then such a being must perforce be real. The passage I had in mind was the later one where he calls received wisdom into doubt:

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation..."

which is the passage immediately preceeding his famous Cogito.

That passage you quoted was the starting point. He was trying to make a case -- notice his use of the word "youth" -- of the way he understood things. The one I provided is him returning back to his point -- that God did not originate from his mind, but rather external to his mind. He was arguing for the existence of God, but first he must make a case that all the other things in his mind, too, are external to him.

Look at it this way, if you have a lot of ideas in your mind, one of them is the existence of god, and others are the existence of other humans, and rocks, and things, how are you going to argue that your idea of god is objective? By making a statement that god is external to you.

Excellent OP.

Interesting in puzzling ways.

SO let's go back to your meadow. I stand facing you. A butterfly flutters between us. You say "See the butterfly flutter from left to right!" I reply "Beautiful! But it went from right to left!"

"Ah," says you, "and from this we see that what is happening in this world is true or false only with reference to the perspective of some observer! For you, it is true that the butterfly went right to left, but for me it is that the butterfly flew left to right!"

But me being Banno, you know I'm going to disagree. "How can something be true for one of us and not for the other?" I ask, scratching my nose. You carefully explain again how truth, the way things are, is dependent on perspective, and that as a result mind is integral to the whole of reality; how we cannot have the "view from nowhere" required for truth to be independent of some point of view.

"Oh." says I. Then I sit quietly for a while, arms folded, staring at the ground, while you glory in the vista.

"If we swapped places, it would be you who says that the butterfly flew right to left, while I would say it flew left to right"

"Yes", you explain patiently, "The truth is dependent on one's perspective, so if we swap perspectives, we swap truths".

"But we agree that the butterfly was flying away from the river and toward the mountain", I finally offer.

"S'pose so", says you, in the hope of shutting me up.

So on we traipse, over the foothills, through the pass to the valley beyond the mountain; all the while, butterflies flitting past us, heading in the same direction.

Over a cup of coffee, I return to the topic. "Yesterday, the butterflies were going towards the mountain. Now, they are going away from the mountain. And yet they are going in the same direction. How can that be?"

"Well," you patiently begin, "both the butterflies and we are heading East, towards the rising sun. Yesterday the mountain was before us, and now it is behind us".

"Oh. So yesterday the butterfly was heading East, and today it is still heading East, and this is a way of saying which way the butterfly is heading?"

"Yes", you agree, thinking to yourself that next time you might choose a different companion.

"Yesterday we disagreed that the butterfly was heading left to right or right to left, and that this was because we each have a different perspective. But even though we had different perspectives, we agreed that for you it was left to right, while for me it was right to left - that if we swapped places, we would also swap perspectives. We agreed that the butterfly was heading towards the mountain. And now, even though the butterfly is heading away from the mountain, we agree that it is heading East. Is that right?" I puzzle.

"Yes!", your disinterest starting to show.

"So hasn't it been the case that the Butterfly was always heading East, regardless of our perspective? Isn't this a way of describing the situation that removes the need to give the perspective of the observer? And if that is so, then perspective is not an attribute of the world, but of how we say things about the world. We can rephrase things in ways that do not depend on where we are standing...."

Taking a breath, I continue "We started with butterflies moving left and right, but found ourselves disagreeing; then we said the butterflies were flying towards the mountain, but after we crossed the pass found that they are flying away from the mountain. Then we said that they are flying East. Each time, our view became broader, and where we were standing became less important. Sure, I can't talk about taking a point of view from nowhere, but it makes sense to try to talk about things in such a way that it doesn't matter were I am standing. Not a point of view from nowhere, but a point of view from anywhere. We can set out some truths in such a general way that we can agree, and it doesn't matter where we are standing. And if we do that, our personal perspective becomes irrelevant."

How do you respond?

Certainly written in the right spirit! And, by the way, I did include a nice graphic of the hypothetical meadow in the original:



But don't forget, the hypothetical thought-experiment was:

Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.

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.

To which my hypothetical antagonist replies 'impossible, can't be done!' So had either one of us or both of us been there, then the thought-experiment would have been obviated (because the perspective would have been supplied). I suppose to make the same point rather tritely, had neither of us been there, then we would have no idea of whether a butterfly had, in fact, fluttered by.

So the point of the hypothetical is not that there are different perspectives, but that there must always be a perspective, even if we're contemplating a meadow (or anything else) unseen by human eye. I re-inforce the point a little further along, where I said:

But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Actually, I had many of the objections you have previously raised in mind when I wrote that.

"♪♫The hills are alive...♪" echoes around the valley...

"Yes, we know we have a perspective, that our view may be different from that of someone else, so we can take this into account; we can change how we talk about the butterflies and the meadow and the mountains in such a way that we agree as to what is the case; that you, I and Maria von Trap over there see things differently, and yet overwhelmingly we agree, the butterflies are flying East..."

"...so there is something more here than just perspective. Something explains this agreement. Sure, there are minds that make the sentences, and sing the songs, but there is more than just mind here".

"The simplest way to explain the smell of Poppies is to suppose that there are indeed poppies."

I start feeling around for a hatchet...

"...so there is something more here than just perspective. — Banno

But you will be completely at a loss to say what that 'something' is. (Whilst you're reaching for your hatchet, I sense the impending feeling of futility that invariably accompanies our exchanges.)

"Thats much quieter. Better for a reflective mood." I sit wiping the bright red stains from my hands.

"Of course I can say what it is - it's mountains and poppies and butterflies... we agree on this. The thing is, you started this walk by yourself, and forgot about other people. That's the trouble with idealists - they are all of them closet solipsists."

This last bit causes me to fall into silence, wondering how a solipsist could find themselves in a wardrobe...

Don't worry, Banno. Rest assured your crockery and cutlery is just as you left it.

Could I perhaps suggesting reading some more of the essay? There is rather more to it than meadows.

"Well, I hope so." I scoop up some more berries, and start to pop them in my mouth.

"But you've set me another puzzle: the cutlery might not be where I think I left it. I might turn out to be mistaken about it's location. That'd be a puzzle for someone who understood the word as being created by the mind. If mind creates the world, how could the world ever be different to what the mind supposes - how could one ever be wrong about how things are? In order to be mistaken, there must be a difference between how things are and how one thinks they are - but how could that happen, if everything is in the mind..."

I frown.

I sigh. "You know, we have followed this path each time, only to backtrack when the going gets tough. There are three problems - the puzzle of other people, the fact that we are sometimes wrong, and the inevitability of novelty - each of which points to there being meadows and butterflies and Maria, despite what you have in mind. I think you know that idealism won't cut it."

I think your objections are naive and that idealism as I construe it is not necessarily saying what you think it is saying. I note that you think that it’s saying that the world is all and only in the mind - the first objection I note. I’m not arguing that. So your objections are basically to straw man versions of the argument. And I’ll also add that you’re not even really making a serious effort. I think it’s all variations of ‘argument from the stone’.

I think you are claiming idealism but advocating antirealism. But more, for you, the ghost is still haunting the machine. I also think you do this in the most articulate and intelligent way, and that your posts are always worthy of consideration. Of all those here who try to say what cannot be said, you say it better.


Why are there Californian Poppies in the Alps?

:yikes: Why thanks, very kind of you. Do give it a read, though, it includes at least some support from cognitive science.

So Maria is lost?

A couple of articles of interest I noted during September:

Thomas Nagel reviews biography of J L Austin

Plus a very long interview with someone by the name of Aaron Preston, with discussion of the shortcomings of analytic philosophy, at least some of which made sense to me.

↪Banno I think your objections are naive... — Wayfarer

We are all born ignorant, and we are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant.

But that was funny.

No, this is a misrepresentation of metaphysics such as Descartes's meditation. It's not the senses that mislead you, it's the thought that ideas come out of nothing. No one is deceiving us. The world out there does not deceive. — L'éléphant

You use "the world out there does not deceive" to justify "it's not the senses that mislead you". But you have provided no premise to connect those two.

Do you agree with the following? The mind creates an idea of "the world out there". And it uses information received from the senses. The various different senses often provide the mind with inconsistent and even conflicting information. Therefore we can conclude that the senses can, and do, mislead the mind in its creation of an idea of "the world out there".

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. — Wayfarer

I've given this statement further consideration. The idealism presented by Plato (though it was not explicitly called "idealism") was the ontology held by the Pythagoreans. They believed that the cosmos was made up of ideals, as represented by mathematics and geometry. The Pythagoreans put forward the idea of eternal circular motions, an ideal, to represent the motions of the heavenly bodies, each being itself a sort of perfect unity, One. Further, it was assumed that each perfect circle was related to each other through a system of ratios, like musical notes are related through principles of division.

In interpreting Plato, I believe it is very important to understand that Plato was actually very skeptical and critical of the ontology of Pythagorean idealism, but these ideas were highly respected in the philosophical (scientific?) community, so Plato had to tread carefully. The issue is the relationship between the perfect and eternal Ideals (circular motions), which as observable (orbits of the heavenly bodies), must have a real connection with the mundane. (In modern terms this is the interaction problem). This relationship was understood within the precepts of idealism, as the theory of participation, demonstrated in principle in The Symposium. By the time Plato wrote dialogues like The Parmenides, The Sophist, and The Timaeus, he had greatly developed the logical problems with the theory of participation.

What Plato exposed is the need to assume an intermediary, a medium between the Ideas which are conceived as eternal, perfect ideals, and the real existence of particular things. The medium was called "matter", and proposed in The Timaeus as a sort of receptacle which would receive the ideal form. The particular thing could only participate in the Ideal Form (as per the theory of participation) through the intermediary "matter"; and the matter of the particular thing would be the reason for individual differences and deficiencies. "Participation" therefore was compromised as matter would necessarily come between.

The introduction of "matter", and its essential nature, as logically necessary to account for the interaction problem, greatly enhanced Aristotle's capacity to attack Pythagorean Idealism. He showed for example, in On the Heavens, how a supposedly "eternal circular motion" must consist of a material body which is moving, and therefore could not truly be "eternal". This completely collapsed Pythagorean idealism because it became clear that the cosmos was not composed of perfect, eternal Ideals, but was actually composed of material objects engaged in motions which were somewhat other than they were being represented through the perfect ideals of mathematics and geometry.

I believe we ought to recognize two very distinct sorts of relations between the ideals of mathematics and the reality of material objects. This distinction is based in a distinction of two sorts of material objects, natural and artificial. In the case of artificial material objects, we can produce such objects which very closely resemble the ideals of the mathematics which produces them. In the case of natural objects however, we use the same mathematical ideals to represent them, but there is great discrepancy, or difference between the ideal representation, and what actually exists naturally. The problem here is that since we can create artificial things, in a lab or in a factory, which very closely resemble the mathematical ideals which produce them, we tend to conclude that the mathematical ideals which are being employed are very accurate representations of what exists in nature. This conclusion of course, is the product of disrespect for the difference between artificial things and natural things. Recognition of this difference I believe is very important to understanding the activities of high energy physics and the production of so-called "elementary particles" in laboratories.

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. — Tom Storm

I think it depends on one's particular starting point. For me, it's the default to think of perception as an active, volitional process, my default is perspectivism*. I take for granted that my opinions are constructed and subject to change. But these defaults are actually hindrances in daily life, and I wish I could be (more) dogmatic.

(*This probably comes from having to function in several languages from an early age and from having to function as a mediator between people. It's not based on a study of philosophy.)

This quote does resonate.

To me, it's self-evident.

'The world' is really shorthand for the sum total of sensory experience, apperception, feeling, knowing and so forth — Wayfarer

Then how do you overcome the problem of solipsism?

How does Buddhism overcome the problem of solipsism?

First you don't know that I don't recognize a guru. — Wayfarer

Well, you don't start off your posts by paying humble obeisances to a guru. :wink:

My reference to following a guru is about bringing to the forefront one's membership in a particular epistemic community, as opposed to assuming one can be beyond such membership and somehow talk about things "as they really are", as if from a view from nowhere; or as if one's view/perspective would be only one's own, idiosyncratic, solipsistic even.

I would like to make a case that stands on its own merits, in philosophical terms.

I contend that it is not possible to make a case this way. Because perspective and membership in an epistemic community are inevitable.

//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.

I once googled "how to be a genuine fake". That was how I formulated my inquiry! And Google gave me Watts' book! I was quite disappointed by it, though.

And I wonder if in saying what you’re saying, you’d rather see it observed.

*tsk tsk*

:up:

@Wayfarer
Paticcasamuppada explains what you're getting at in this topic, including @180 Proof's objections and the problem of solipsism. It's just that going with paticcasamuppada makes you a member of a Buddhist epistemic community, at the exclusion of memberships in other epistemic communities.