See how metaphysics leads one astray? — Banno

Is it "metaphysics" or just the lazy habit of reifying abstractions?

An obtuse reference to another of Bob's threads concerning the legitimacy of metaphysics.

I would have thought that, where a metaphysics leads you to count two cups where there is otherwise but one, that alone would be grounds for doubt.

I would have thought that, where a metaphysics leads you to count two cups where there is otherwise but one, that alone would be grounds for doubt. — Banno

:up:

See how metaphysics leads one astray? — Banno

I basically agree with your position vis-a-vis Kant, but I don't think it is right to associate metaphysics with Kant and dissociate it from Realism. If the claim that there are two cups is metaphysical, then so is the counterclaim that there is only one. As the tired truth goes: you cannot rebut a metaphysical claim without appealing to another metaphysical claim (generally speaking). If the question about cups is metaphysical, then so are the answers.

Edit:

An obtuse reference to another of Bob's threads concerning the legitimacy of metaphysics. — Banno

Perhaps your claim was more rhetorical, then?

aren't we getting a little over-simplistic here? — J

I like simple. I don't understand "bedrock Existence-with-a-Capital-E".

I did like your

The point is that, veridical or not, something is going on. — J

...except that I think what's going on is mostly veridical. There are true statements about the world. Lots of 'em.

(Edit: and I'll add that most of them are not just about my perceptions.)

If the claim that there are two cups is metaphysical, then so is the counterclaim that there is only one. — Leontiskos

I wasn't appealing to "another metaphysical claim", but to common usage.

I won't ask a Kantian to get a cup out for tea. Heaven knows what might happen.

I wasn't appealing to "another metaphysical claim", but to common usage.

I won't ask you to get a cup out for tea. Heaven knows what might happen. — Banno

Well you appealed to "realism and common usage," but the relevant question is whether you made a counterclaim in response to a metaphysical claim. Wittgensteinian hand-waving isn't a real response.

Wittgensteinian hand-waving isn't a real response. — Leontiskos

Probably not, given certain prejudices about what a "real" response might be.

But it might be the best we can achieve.

Perhaps the rest is just shite we make up. Maybe that's important, too. But I'll reserve judgement.

I won't ask a Kantian to get a cup out for tea. Heaven knows what might happen. — Banno

:smirk:

Perhaps the rest is just shite we make up. — Banno

All I am seeing are thin double-standards about what is shite and what is not, or what is metaphysical and what is not.

Ok. Now I'm not sure if I should ask you to grab a cup for tea.

I'll admit to a prejudice towards a relatively direct, common usage sort of realism. No apology.

Do you inhabit some metaphysics-free space?

The place the comment addressed was Bob's thread "Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge". Bob seems to have changed his mind.

I'll admit to a prejudice towards a relatively direct, common usage sort of realism. No apology. — Banno

So do I.

Do you inhabit some metaphysics-free space? — Banno

Of course not. Do you? You seem to claim the power to shoot down metaphysical claims from a metaphysics-free rooftop.

No; as I just said:

I'll admit to a prejudice towards a relatively direct, common usage sort of realism. No apology. — Banno

If you try to understand what your cup of coffee is, you will find that you always bring up uses and situations of cups of coffee, and also what others told you about it from when you experienced being young. What the cup is "to itself" is another question (Kant's question). So maybe people who are telling you the representation is all that's practically needed are the true idealist. All they need is what their thoughts "see" around them. This can come apart even further though when analyzing our own thoughts, the very structure of them, as we think of the parts of objects. What does it mean to say atoms exist? The word atom is said in the mind and images are brought up and combined with pure thoughts one has about research into atoms. The thoughts don't stand alone without the images. But if the images are wrong, completely not applicable to reality, how much reality is left when it's asserted atoms "exist". Hence Bohr as already been quoted in this thread. Some founders of QM were into idealism as well. To say we only know what we say about the world and not the world in itself is idealism. So who is the real idealist?

Eh, but my initial post to you asserted that Realism is not "metaphysics-free," to use your phrase. You responded by eschewing metaphysics and pointing to your appeal to common usage while ignoring your appeal to Realism. ()

Are you now accepting that Realism has metaphysical commitments?

Yes, you caught me out, I appealed to both metaphysical realism and to common usage. One does not generally ask for two cups of tea, the perceptual and the numinous. It's not a knock-down argument, and if Bob wants to think in terms of there being two cups, that's up to him, but it seems to me to be good reason to discount transcendental idealism, at least in its two-world form. You can decide as you will.

I get the impression you are not laughing at my jokes.

Yes, you caught me out, I appealed to both metaphysical realism and to common usage. — Banno

Good, that's all I wanted.

One does not generally ask for two cups of tea, the perceptual and the numinous. It's not a knock-down argument... — Banno

It's a fine argument, and I agree. It's just not non-metaphysical.

I get the impression you are not laughing at my jokes. — Banno

I just don't understand why this always has to be like pulling teeth.

Their your teeth...

Edit: Just to be sure,

See how metaphysics leads one astray? — Banno

...was a joke directed at Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge, another thread in which Bob questioned Metaphysics on the grounds that it was, at it's core, imaginary stories. The aim, roughly, was to draw attention to Bob's apparent change of heart, given his endorsement of the two-worlds view of Transcendental Realism. It was a crude attempt at asking how Bob might reconcile these apparently incongruous views.

Thank you for not recognising this, Leo, and putting me to the task of making explicit this vital aspect of the discussion.

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process. — E.B. White

Me as a representative faculty would, but me as a self-reflective cognition (i.e., reason) or psychological tip of the iceberg (‘ego’) would never know. Another way to put it, is that one epistemically would never have any justification to say their sensibility was 100% accurate, even if it turns out, ontologically, it was. — Bob Ross

Hello Bob

You seem to have forgotten to add your ESP, which can know the future, God and afterlife too. :)

It is just an ambiguity between our uses of indexical pronouns (e.g., ‘you’, ‘I’, etc.). — Bob Ross

What do you mean here? The only thing ambiguous is the statement. I used 'you' to denote you = Bob Ross, and 'I' to denote me = Corvus. But I don't think I used 'I' on my previous posts, did I? I used 'you' to denote you for sure.

You are deducing from, ontologically, one’s representative faculties being 100% accurate whereas I was starting from what one could epistemically justify with reason (and not the understanding). — Bob Ross

There seem misinterpretation going on even what I asked about. I did not deduce anything, but pointed out, and asked if what you have been saying about Transcendental Idealism could be a self-contradiction or possibly misunderstanding of T.I, or both.

So who is the real idealist? — Gregory

Everyone. At least, of a certain kind.

Not necessarily. All bodies are representations that I experience (including my own), but what they be in-themselves is cut off from me. This is not the same thing as claiming that all that exists is my mind.

That I can only transcendentally prove my own representative faculty exists is certainly true; but I can paradigmatically prove the existence myself (as a body) and other bodies in the same manner.

Although I am not convinced by that kind of argument (which I have spoken to 180 proof about), you are confusing ontological with epistemic idealism. Transcendental idealism is a form of the latter, not the former. Kant specifically denies knowledge of the things-in-themselves: so how could he possibly claim that things do or do not exist outside of minds? Honestly, if anything, Kant is an actual realist; insofar as he does try to argue for real objects outside of minds (which I am not convinced by as a transcendentally true proposition).

Yeah, I can see your lack of comprehension.

All you have said (that I can remember) is:

1. New scientific discoveries nullify transcendental idealism;
2. It is awkward to speak about things-in-themselves;
3. Things-in-themselves don’t matter if we can know nothing about them;
4. Two worlds argument; (which was after my post you are responding to here); and
5. 180 proof’s argument (which was also after this post).


Up to that post, you had only made the top 3, which I already responded to.

So you are happy that you have two cups, when realism and common usage says there is but one.

Realism doesn’t entail there is one cup in the sense that you outlined. If we sense objects, then it is meaningful and correct to say that there is a cup-in-itself and a cup-that-we-perceive because there is a gap between them. Ontologically (beyond our representative faculties), obviously there is one cup (or a mush of existent things).

Hello Gregory,

I appreciate your response!

If you try to understand what your cup of coffee is, you will find that you always bring up uses and situations of cups of coffee, and also what others told you about it from when you experienced being young.

Fair enough. Our understanding of the world is constrained to language (or at least initially). I do, however, think we can use language in a way to avoid linguistic dependencies. So I don’t find this very compelling.

So maybe people who are telling you the representation is all that's practically needed are the true idealist.

Depends on what you mean by “true idealist”. They would not, all else being equal, be an ontological nor epistemic idealist by merely asserting that.

. This can come apart even further though when analyzing our own thoughts, the very structure of them, as we think of the parts of objects. What does it mean to say atoms exist? The word atom is said in the mind and images are brought up and combined with pure thoughts one has about research into atoms. The thoughts don't stand alone without the images. But if the images are wrong, completely not applicable to reality, how much reality is left when it's asserted atoms "exist".

I think a lot of what an atom is is independent of language. It’s properties are particularly dependent on the language I speak, nor whatever someone else speaks: it references something independent of language.

To say we only know what we say about the world and not the world in itself is idealism

Not under my understanding. That would just be a form of postmodernism, but it doesn’t entail in-itself that the (1) world is fundamentally mind-dependent ontologically nor (2) all one can know is the ideas from minds. I could see maybe how #2 could be misconstrued to count as that assertion, but it doesn’t really refer to language, which is a meta-conscious higher-order operation (like reason) and not deeper mind operations: it could be that we cannot escape language but also that our experiences are not mind-generated (technically).

Hello Corvus,

What do you mean here? The only thing ambiguous is the statement. I used 'you' to denote you = Bob Ross, and 'I' to denote me = Corvus. But I don't think I used 'I' on my previous posts, did I? I used 'you' to denote you for sure.

You are deducing from, ontologically, one’s representative faculties being 100% accurate whereas I was starting from what one could epistemically justify with reason (and not the understanding). — Bob Ross

There seem misinterpretation going on even what I asked about. I did not deduce anything, but pointed out, and asked if what you have been saying about Transcendental Idealism could be a self-contradiction or possibly misunderstanding of T.I, or both.

I am just saying that using “you = Bob Ross” is ambiguous. Is bob ross my reprsentative faculties? Whatever exists in-itself that that faculty is representing? Etc…
I am pointing out that that ambiguity is the source of our dispute (or your question) here: if my representative faculties were 100% accurate, I would never being about to know it with my faculty of reason. This doesn’t negate your point that yes, the representations, minus our a priori means of intuiting and cognizing them, would be 100% accurate but, rather, that, even in that case, I wouldn’t be able to epistemically (with reason) acquire such knowledge: so I would be forced yet to formulate the ‘thing-in-itself’ conceptually.

Also, something I forgot to mention, even if the sensibility was 100% accurate, it does not follow that the representation is 100% accurate; because the sensations are intuited and cognized, which is synthetic.

I like simple. I don't understand "bedrock Existence-with-a-Capital-E". — Banno

I like simple too. "Simplistic," the word I used, means something different. What I meant, more or less, was that Kant's impressive philosophical system can hardly be reduced to "denying that things exist outside my mind." That would be simplistic -- because it misses all the nuances that Kant tried to explore about concepts like "thing" and "existence."

As for capital-E Existence, this was my whimsical way of referring to Kant's noumena. You can substitute "noumena" for my Capitalized Phrase if that helps.

@Bob Ross @J

For every effect there is a cause
We know that one of Kant's Categories was the Category of Cause. There are many passages in the Fourth Paralogism, where the thing-in-itself is declared to be the cause of appearances. For Kant, Knowledge is both formal, a priori through the Category of Cause, and material, a posteriori given empirically through sensations.

I agree with @J who wrote "surely Kant didn't "deny that things exist outside the mind" -- he merely sought to discover the limits of our knowledge of them".

Common sense tells us for every effect there has been a prior cause. EG, a snooker ball on a snooker table doesn't spontaneously move until hit by either a snooker cue or another snooker ball.

Reason tells us that the same effect may have different causes, eg, a broken window could have been caused by either a ball or a bird. Reason also tells us that two different effects have two different causes, eg, perceiving the colour red may be caused by an object emitting a wavelength of 700nm and perceiving the colour green may be caused by an object emitting a wavelength of 530nm.

The perception of the colour of objects in the world
Science tells us if an object emits a wavelength between 620nm and 750nm, all things being equal, we perceive the colour red, and if an object emits a wavelength of between 495nm and 570nm, all things being equal, we perceive the colour green.

For the Indirect Realist, the effect, eg, the perception of the colour red, can have a different kind of existence to its cause, eg, an object emitting a wavelength of 700nm. For the Direct Realist, the effect, eg, the perception of the colour red, has the same kind of existence as its cause, eg, an object emitting the colour red.

For the Indirect Realist, in the absence of any observer, an object emits a wavelength of 700nm. For the Direct Realist, in the absence of any observer, an object emits the colour red.

Does colour exist outside a person's perception of it
When we look at one object emitting a wavelength of 640nm and another object emitting a wavelength of 730nm, all things being equal, we perceive that they are similar in some way, ie, both red. But when we look at one object emitting a wavelength of 640nm and another object emitting a wavelength of 530nm, we perceive that they are different in some way, ie, one is red and the other is green.

The Indirect Realist attributes this to how the wavelengths are perceived in the mind.

Question to Direct Realists
My question to the Direct Realist is, in the absence of anyone perceiving such objects, whilst agreeing that the wavelengths of 640nm and 530nm are different, in what way is it possible for the wavelengths of 640nm and 730nm to be similar?

I am just saying that using “you = Bob Ross” is ambiguous. Is bob ross my reprsentative faculties? Whatever exists in-itself that that faculty is representing? Etc…
I am pointing out that that ambiguity is the source of our dispute (or your question) here: if my representative faculties were 100% accurate, I would never being about to know it with my faculty of reason. This doesn’t negate your point that yes, the representations, minus our a priori means of intuiting and cognizing them, would be 100% accurate but, rather, that, even in that case, I wouldn’t be able to epistemically (with reason) acquire such knowledge: so I would be forced yet to formulate the ‘thing-in-itself’ conceptually. — Bob Ross

OK Bob
Thank you for your reply, and explanation. I am not sure if thing-in-itself is an entity that you are forced to formulate yourself conceptually. When you say, it is something that you formulate conceptually, it gives the impression that you know what thing-in-itself is.   That is what conceptually formatting implies. 

But I think Kant never said that. Thing-in-itself is something that you cannot conceptually formulate.  If you can, then it wouldn't be  thing-in-itself. Would you not agree?

Also, something I forgot to mention, even if the sensibility was 100% accurate, it does not follow that the representation is 100% accurate; because the sensations are intuited and cognized, which is synthetic. — Bob Ross

This statement seems to say that you have sensibility, representations, intuition and cognition in order to perceive an external object.  Suppose you made a cup of coffee, and placed it on the desk.  And you suddenly have a sensibility of the cup, a representation of the cup, an intuition of the cup, and then a cognition of the cup, and then if you are not 100% sure of all of them, you also have a thing-in-itself cup too.  Which one are you going to drink? :chin:

it is not a contention with transcendental idealism; as it is a necessary and perfectly anticipated consequence of it. — Bob Ross

Anticipated by whom? Not by Kant, I think, or whatever Kant-in-himself may have been.

For my part, I blame Descartes for this adventure in the preposterous, and much else for that matter. He started the ball rolling, and doomed otherwise fine minds to the remarkably silly task of determining whether they and all they regularly and continually interact with every moment really exist and are what they are shown to be while we interact with them. To Kant, though, is reserved the claim that there is, e.g., some thing which I call a chair and sit on all the time, which although it is in all respects a chair as I understand a chair to be and I use it as such, cannot be known.

...was a joke directed at Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge, another thread in which Bob questioned Metaphysics on the grounds that it was, at it's core, imaginary stories. The aim, roughly, was to draw attention to Bob's apparent change of heart, given his endorsement of the two-worlds view of Transcendental Realism. It was a crude attempt at asking how Bob might reconcile these apparently incongruous views.

Thank you for not recognising this, Leo, and putting me to the task of making explicit this vital aspect of the discussion. — Banno

That's fair enough. I did not see <this post> before I wrote my first post to you. As soon as I saw it, I edited my first post to ask about it, but you must have begun your reply before my edit went through. Thanks for the clarification. A misunderstanding, then. :up:

(My purpose is of course to try to restore metaphysics' reputation to a certain extent.)