But you offer some kind of Kantian indirect realism — plaque flag
But maybe saying mind is 'foundational' to existence is a little misleading ? — plaque flag
Kant took pains to distinguish himself from Berkeley, because critics accused him of being like Berkeley, whom Kant described as a 'problematic idealist' on account of Berkeley saying that a world outside himself is dubious or impossible to know. — Wayfarer
But Kant described himself as transcendental idealist, and differentiated that from what he described as 'problematical idealism'. — Wayfarer
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. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. — CPR, A369
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. — A370
To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think the phrase 'indirect realism' was invented yet. But let's just look.Which 'primary source' describes Kant as an 'indirect realist'? Is it something Kant says about himself? — Wayfarer
But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'. — Wayfarer
The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself ~ Kant — plaque flag
Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations. — wonderer1
I don't agree with 'indirect realism' because it posits two separate things - the reality and its representation. As if we could compare them — Wayfarer
But you seem (to me) to be flitting from position to position. — plaque flag
In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed*. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.
A fact does not exist if it has not been articulated, that is, if it does not exist explicitly as a verbal entity sufficiently detailed that it can be made to correspond (approximately) to something in the external world. Facts don’t exist in the absence of their statement (because a statement cuts the fact out of the background), and the statement cannot exist apart from an agent with a purpose. When an intentional agent sets out to carve a specific object from the background world, he has a Gestalt concept of the object—and from the latter, he acts to carve the object out. Thus, a fact cannot exist in a universe without living observers.
A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition
What do you make of this? — Wayfarer
But aren't you explicitly positing two things ? The representing and the represented ? — plaque flag
Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition
Yes, commonsense tends to forget or not notice the transparent subject, which I equate with the very being of the world. — plaque flag
Perhaps your view is changing as the discussion proceeds. But here you said :No. If the world as it is in itself is unknown to us, then it's not a thing. It neither exists nor does not exist. — Wayfarer
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brainreceives, organises 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
If I believe that the Jones is guilty, while you believe he is innocent, aren't we both believing about the same Jones ? — plaque flag
There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones. — Angelo Cannata
The form of experience is temporality, which is to say that whatever is directly experienced occurs “now”, or at the moment in time to which we refer as “the present”. Experience, in other words, is essentially transitory, and its contents are incommunicable. What we experience are the perceivable features of individual objects. It is through the act of thinking that we are able to identify those features through the possession of which different individuals belong to the same species, with the other members of which they share these essential features in common.
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent.
There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones. — Angelo Cannata
If the brain is itself mere appearance, then of course the brain-created world no longer makes sense. — plaque flag
perspective can't really be avoided — Wayfarer
The brain doesn't appear at all. Not unless you're someone who is studying brains. — Wayfarer
I agree, but we should be careful not to turn perspectives into objective realities. This mistake can be avoided by considering that, by talking about perspectives, we, as a consequence, need to apply the relativity of everything to the idea of perspectives as well, so that, at the end, we need to admit that, ultimately, we don't know what we are talking about. — Angelo Cannata
Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. — plaque flag
Of course you can compare a photograph or a painting with the actual subject that it's supposed to represent, but that is not at issue. — Wayfarer
The brain doesn't appear at all. Not unless you're someone who is studying brains. — Wayfarer
What Berkeley actually denied was the existence of material substance that exists independently of being perceived. — Wayfarer
But it is basically the same argument, with the difference that instead of appealing to the stone's hardness, you're appealing to its shape. — Wayfarer
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