Indeed. I think it might be a mistake to think perspective emerges at life in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus
From the map, if it is a contour map, one can construct elevations along a sightline and thus reconstruct the perspective at any point in any direction.
I therefore conclude that perspective is not personal (as Banno points out if we swap places, we swap perspectives), but a feature of topography. — unenlightened
We don't think corporations and states have their own mental life, but they do seem able to posses knowledge and priorities that differ from the sum of their members' knowledge and desires (e.g. when the US security apparatus "didn't know what it knew" re: 9/11, but later uncovered this through intentional reflection). And the existence of such knowledge/priorities entails perspective and a form of aboutness, even though the first person "aboutness" appears to be absent. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I take consciousness to be the awareness of awareness, and perhaps awareness is the judgement of judgement, and judgement is the first responsive action, and the first judgement is the distinguishing of the organism from the environment by the organism itself. — unenlightened
Are the contents of experience just what we experience? — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is clearly a physicalist/materialist view. It belongs to Science and its materialist view of the world.By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organizes and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. — Wayfarer
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. — Wayfarer
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, — Wayfarer
The subject-object relationship is a fact of life, even in simple life-forms. — Wayfarer
You define it as "inherent in the object". But according to the article of the op, the human mind has no access to what is "inherent in the object". — Metaphysician Undercover
I like to read this in terms of the famous ontological difference, in terms of being itself not being an entity ---though of course the concept of being itself is indeed an entity. — plaque flag
It's a bit like moving from the extreme of nominalism to the extreme of Platonic idealism — Leontiskos
I don’t think of myself as a subject or the world as an object when a I’m cooking dinner. — Mikie
I'm surprised that consciousness is totally absent in your description of the topic — Alkis Piskas
This is clearly a physicalist/materialist view. It belongs to Science and its materialist view of the world. — Alkis Piskas
And this sort of thinking seems to make it easy to fall into circles asking about what things are maps and what things are territories. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Are the contents of experience just what we experience? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Oh, I don’t know. If you read on to the section about Pinter’s book Mind and the Cosmic Order, he says there are quite valid scientific grounds for his proposals, which I hope my arguments conform with.
I’m not saying that everything is a matter of perspective, but that no judgement about what exists can be made outside a perspective. If you try and imagine what exists outside perspective, then you’re already positing an intentional object. — Wayfarer
I don’t know if I said ‘there are no mind-independent objects’ — Wayfarer
I feel as though your response is made on the basis of a step after the suppositions that inform mine. You’re saying that given that objects exist - boulders, canyons, and so on - then we can say…. — Wayfarer
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.’ — Wayfarer
Presupposing naturalism for the moment. — Leontiskos
But is my claim about the boulder meaningless and unintelligible outside of any perspective? Does not the idea that a boulder has a shape transcend perspective? — Leontiskos
Yes and no respectively. — Wayfarer
The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape. — Leontiskos
Is ‘shape’ meaningful outside any reference to visual perception? — Wayfarer
So you are saying that boulders will only treat cracks differently than canyons when a mind is involved? — Leontiskos
It’s safe to assume not, but then it is an empirical matter isn’t it? — Wayfarer
I suppose ‘smaller’ and ‘larger’ are a priori categories, though — Wayfarer
It's often helpful to place the two things side by side and assess our certainty:
Boulders will treat cracks differently than canyons whether or not a mind is involved.
Boulders will only treat cracks differently than canyons when a mind is involved.
I'd say we have a great deal more certainty of (1) than (2), and you seem to agree. — Leontiskos
So, let's take the neutral "thing" or "stuff", whatever it out-there is, in part, responsible for how we take these objects to be, they stimulate us into reacting as-if, external objects existed. — Manuel
I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes.
— Wayfarer
…..which, of course, presupposes knowing what they are, by the subject, or self, effected by them. — Mww
But is my claim about the boulder meaningless and unintelligible outside of any perspective? Does not the idea that a boulder has a shape transcend perspective? — Leontiskos
So you are saying that boulders will only treat cracks differently than canyons when a mind is involved? — Leontiskos
Yet your 'perspectivalism' seems to be a quasi-rejection of mind-independent objects, and that strikes me as an overcorrection, like falling off the other side of the horse instead of regaining balance. — Leontiskos
And this sort of thinking seems to make it easy to fall into circles asking about what things are maps and what things are territories. — Count Timothy von Icarus
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4723/pg4723-images.htmlIt is indeed an opinion STRANGELY prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But...what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we PERCEIVE BESIDES OUR OWN IDEAS OR SENSATIONS? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? — B
He goes on to drag in God, and he problematically takes spirits in the same naive way his opponents take independent objects. @Leontiskos mentions overcorrection. I think Berkeley overcorrects. The 'pure' subjectivity of the spirit is the 'same' error as the 'pure' aperspectival object on the other side.Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their BEING (ESSE) is to be perceived or known... — B
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100322668The philosophy of perception that elaborates the idea that, in the words of J. S. Mill, ‘objects are the permanent possibilities of sensation’. To inhabit a world of independent, external objects is, on this view, to be the subject of actual and possible orderly experiences. Espoused by Russell, the view issued in a programme of translating talk about physical objects and their locations into talk about possible experiences (see logical construction). The attempt is widely supposed to have failed, and the priority the approach gives to experience has been much criticized. — link
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap77That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience. — Kant
I know, some philosophers do that. But it is certainly wrong. These two things are ralated but they are of a different kind and nature, so it's a bad habit to equate them, even for just descrption purposes.[Re: Consciousness missing in the description] That’s because for my purposes I’m treating ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ as synonyms. — Wayfarer
I see that you refer to neuroscience. Indeed, from what I know, there are a few neurobiologists who admit e.g. that consciousness is not a product of the brain and accept the hard problem of conscioussnes. Thankgod. But the vast majority of scientists stick on the brain. This is their world. They can't work outside the material world.[Re: This is clearly a physicalist/materialist view. It belongs to Science and its materialist view of the world.] Not at all! I think many elements within science itself are actually starting to diverge from a materialist view of the world. — Wayfarer
I don't say 'the mind has no access to what is inherent in the object'. Plainly if my shower is too hot, I won't get in it, if my meal is cold, I won't eat it. They are objective judgements. — Wayfarer
Whatever is out there, strictly speaking, cannot be called "objects" - there no good neutral word for it that comes to mind, unfortunately. — Manuel
Being able to discern delusions and false hopes is not a tall order, is it? — Wayfarer
As I said in the OP ‘there is no need for me to deny that the Universe (or: any object) is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect…’ — Wayfarer
I was going to also add, that measurements of space and distance are also implicitly perspectival. You could, theoretically, conceive of the distance between two points from a cosmic perspective, against which it is infinitesimally small, and a subatomic perspective, against which it is infinitesimally large. As it happens, all of the units of measurement we utilise, such as years or hours, for time, and meters or parsecs, for space, ultimately derive from the human scale - a year being, for instance, the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun, and so on. Given those parameters, of course it is true that measures hold good independently of any mind, but there was a mind involved in making the measurement at the outset. — Wayfarer
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