How do you know you have a world internal to your mind? — Corvus

When you look at a world containing a street with cars and buildings, if this world was not internal to your mind, how would you be able to think about it?
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Is it a real world? — Corvus

Pain is real yet only exists in the mind, so why cannot your thought of a street with cars and buildings be real even though the thought only exists in your mind?
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How do you know it is the real world or just a imagination? — Corvus

Exactly, how do you know whether the street with cars and building only exists as a thought in your mind or exists outside the mind, when you only know about it through the senses?

When you look at a world containing a street with cars and buildings, if this world was not internal to your mind, how would you be able to think about it? — RussellA

They are external. You can think about it, because you have the concepts in your mind.

Pain is real yet only exists in the mind, so why cannot your thought of a street with cars and buildings be real even though the thought only exists in your mind? — RussellA

How do you know your pain is real? What if it were just itchy skin, and you might have mistaken the itch sensation for pain?

Exactly, how do you know whether the street with cars and building only exists as a thought in your mind or exists outside the mind, when you only know about it through the senses? — RussellA

It is dead simple. Close your both eyes totally and decidedly for 10 minutes, you will see nothing, but a total darkness. You are no longer perceiving the external world outside you. Therefore you have no perception of the external world. What you have at that moment is just total darkness. That is not a world. It is an empty mental space. It follows there is no such a thing as a world internal to yourself.

This isn't even a problem for Kant, it's a problem for you. — AmadeusD

I’m sorry for not presenting an argument sufficient enough to prevent being so badly misunderstood.

“…. In order to prevent any misunderstanding, it will be requisite, in the first place, to recapitulate, as clearly as possible, what our opinion is with respect to the fundamental nature of our sensuous cognition in general. We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomena; that the things which we intuite, are not in themselves the same as our representations of them in intuition, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.

What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize à priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition à posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. The former appertain absolutely and necessarily to our sensibility, of whatsoever kind our sensations may be; the latter may be of very diversified character.

Supposing that we should carry our empirical intuition even to the very highest degree of clearness, we should not thereby advance one step nearer to a knowledge of the constitution of objects as things in themselves. For we could only, at best, arrive at a complete cognition of our own mode of intuition, that is of our sensibility, and this always under the conditions originally attaching to the subject, namely, the conditions of space and time; while the question: “What are objects considered as things in themselves?” remains unanswerable even after the most thorough examination of the phenomenal world.

To say, then, that all our sensibility is nothing but the confused representation of things containing exclusively that which belongs to them as things in themselves, and this under an accumulation of characteristic marks and partial representations which we cannot distinguish in consciousness, is a falsification of the conception of sensibility and phenomenization, which renders our whole doctrine thereof empty and useless…”

They are external. You can think about it, because you have the concepts in your mind. — Corvus

Yes, this is what Kant is saying, that the pure concepts of understanding is a prior condition for experience.

IE, without these pure concepts of understanding I wouldn't be able to have the experience at all. For example, humans don't have a concept for the colour infrared as they don't have the innate ability to see infrared in the first place.

The street we see in our senses cannot be external to our senses, because the empirical concept of street is no more than the combination of pure concepts that are prior to any experience, and it is these pure concepts that determine the empirical concept of street, rather than anything external to the senses.
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How do you know your pain is real? What if it were just itchy skin, and you might have mistaken the itch sensation for pain? — Corvus

True, I may have misnamed my private sensation.

However, assuming I have correctly named my private sensation, my private sensation is real, even though it only exists in my mind.
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Close your both eyes totally and decidedly for 10 minutes, you will see nothing, but a total darkness. — Corvus

I agree that there must be something the other side of our senses, something that causes the sensations in our senses, because as you say, otherwise "we would see nothing".

I agree that we have the concept of street in our minds, because as you say "You can think about it, because you have the concepts in your mind."

The question is, what exactly is on the other side of our senses.

The Neutral Monist argues that on the other side of our senses there are no streets but only fundamental particles and fundamental forces in space and time.

The Direct Realist argues that on the other side of our senses are streets, cars and buildings.

What reasons are there to believe that the Direct Realist is right and the Neutral Monist wrong?

Just because you have a concept of something in your senses does not mean that the something you have a concept of exists on the other side of your senses. For example, when you see a stick bent in water, are you saying that on the other side of your senses there must be a bent stick in water?

Just because you have a concept of something in your senses does not mean that the something you have a concept of exists on the other side of your senses. For example, when you see a stick bent in water, are you saying that on the other side of your senses there must be a bent stick in water? — RussellA

You are still seeing an object external to you when you see the bend stick in the water jug.
There is no internal world. You have a mental space which is total darkness without your visual perception, as explained previously.

In the case of the bent stick, it is again a simple story. The light reflected from the stick in the water, passes through the water with the refraction, so it looks like double or bent in the water of the jug.

To reiterate, you are seeing the straight light from the stick in the water of the jug, and also the light refracted in the water of the jug. So it looks like a double or bent to your perception, but you were seeing the 2x different lights coming from 1x stick in the water of the jug - 1x straight reflected light from the stick, and 1x refracted light in the water from the same stick.

Clear water in a transparent glass jug has a character bending lights (refraction) and reflect into different angle from the object(s) inside it.

You have a mental space which is total darkness without your visual perception — Corvus

The light reflected from the stick in the water, passes through the water with the refraction, so it looks like double or bent in the water of the jug. — Corvus

For Kant, the pure intuition of space and time and the pure concepts of the understanding provide the possibility of experience, they don't provide the experience. As you say "You have a mental space which is total darkness without your visual perception".

For example, I may have the innate ability to perceive the colour red, but I cannot imagine the colour red in the absence of any faculty of sensibility, ie, the faculty of getting information through our senses about the world outside us.

You are correct to say that the stick that looks bent does not exist in any world outside me, but as I see a bent stick as clear as day, this means that if the bent stick doesn't exist in any world outside me, it must exist as a representation of a world that only exists inside me.

I agree that I cannot imagine any internal world in the absence of any faculty of sensibility, but because I do have the faculty of sensibility and do get information through my senses about the world outside me, the world I perceive is not directly of any world outside me but is a representation of any world outside me.

As the world I perceive is only a representation of any world outside me, the world I perceive is an internal world that is not necessarily the same as any world outside me.

I agree we cannot imagine a world in the absence of our faculty of sensibility. However, when we do perceive a world because of our faculty of sensibility, as it can only be a representation of any world outside us, the world we perceive cannot be directly of any world outside us, but can only be an internal world that is a representation of any world outside us.

:ok: :cool:

You are correct to say that the stick that looks bent does not exist in any world outside me, but as I see a bent stick as clear as day, this means that if the bent stick doesn't exist in any world outside me, it must exist as a representation of a world that only exists inside me. — RussellA

If X doesn't exist outside of RussellA, then X must exist inside of RussellA.
This sounds logically unsound. Groundless premise, and unsound conclusion.
If X doesn't exist outside of RA? Under what ground do you claim that premise?
What do you mean by "X exist"?

As the world I perceive is only a representation of any world outside me, the world I perceive is an internal world that is not necessarily the same as any world outside me. — RussellA

I find this difficult to follow. It is like saying that you used your camera, and took a photo of the mountain across the field in your town, and then the camera thinks that it has a mountain in its memory card, because it cannot understand why the mountain is out there outside the camera.

The camera concludes the mountain must exist in its memory card inside the camera, but not outside of the camera, because when you switch it on, and view the photo in the memory card inside the camera, it displays the image of the mountain it took. It is very similar story as your claim above. I am not sure if that is a sound argument or thinking.

When you look at a world containing a street with cars and buildings, if this world was not internal to your mind, how would you be able to think about it? — RussellA

By virtue of drawing meaningful correlations between different things, some of which are not "internal to your mind".

If X doesn't exist outside of RussellA, then X must exist inside of RussellA.
This sounds logically unsound. Groundless premise, and unsound conclusion. — Corvus

True. There is no reason to think that if something doesn't exist outside me then it must exist inside me.
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If X doesn't exist outside of RA? Under what ground do you claim that premise? — Corvus

An expression starting with "if" is not a premise. The expressions "X does exist outside me" or "X doesn't exist outside me" have the form of a premise.
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What do you mean by "X exist"? — Corvus

I see a bent stick. Seeing a bent stick is not proof that bent sticks exist in the world. The bent stick exists as an object in appearance whether or not a bent stick exists as an object in the world.

Similarly, I may see two things. Seeing two things is not proof that there are two things existing in the world.

Similarly, I may see a statue. Seeing a statue is not proof that there is a statue existing in the world.

Kant proposed that we have pure concepts of understanding prior to any possible experience. It would follow that it is the a priori Categories acting on the sensibilities that determine what we experience rather than our sensibilities alone determining what we experience.

For Kant, the experience of seeing a bent stick, the number two or a statue has been determined by the a priori categories acting on the sensibilities rather than by the sensibilities alone.

It is like saying that you used your camera, and took a photo of the mountain across the field in your town, and then the camera thinks that it has a mountain in its memory card, because it cannot understand why the mountain is out there outside the camera. — Corvus

A mountain could weigh a billion tonnes, so it is hardly surprising that the camera doesn't think it has a mountain in its memory card.

Even people only have a representation of a mountain in the minds, not the real thing. That really would be a load on their mind.

By virtue of drawing meaningful correlations between different things, some of which are not "internal to your mind". — creativesoul

There is a world outside the mind, and there is a world inside the mind, of streets with cars and building. The same word "world" is being used to refer to two very different things. The world inside the mind can only be a representation of the world outside the mind.

Kant in his Realism believed that there is a world outside the senses, and information from this world can only get into the mind through the senses, meaning that our only knowledge about an outside world comes through our senses.

The problem is, how can we correlate our thoughts about an outside world with the outside world, when we only know about an outside world by what has been given to us by our senses.

Our knowledge of an outside world stops at our senses. We may perceive the colour red through our senses, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the colour red actually exists in an outside world.

Is the issue with my use of 'appear'? I got through a passage this morning around A193 "Possibility of Causality through Freedom, in Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity" that made it quite clear my use of 'appear' is both incorrect and misleading in terms of what i'm trying to get across - and this section of CPR outlines it in a few ways..

Kant makes it clear here that we are free to infer, with some certainty, that objects in themselves exist and exert some 'causal lineage' with out phenomena insofar as, as in themselves, they cause something to undergo appearing to our senses.

Kant proposed that we have pure concepts of understanding prior to any possible experience. It would follow that it is the a priori Categories acting on the sensibilities that determine what we experience rather than our sensibilities alone determining what we experience.

For Kant, the experience of seeing a bent stick, the number two or a statue has been determined by the a priori categories acting on the sensibilities rather than by the sensibilities alone. — RussellA

Kant wouldn't have said that.   What Kant would have said is, that even if your sensibility sees a bent stick in the water jug, your category of concepts and understanding (followed by reading the scientific explanation on why the stick looks bent), would come to a proper reasoning on the experience, and judge the stick is straight in actuality, even if it looks bent.

A mountain could weigh a billion tonnes, so it is hardly surprising that the camera doesn't think it has a mountain in its memory card.

Even people only have a representation of a mountain in the minds, not the real thing. That really would be a load on their mind. — RussellA

Your claim that the external world is caused by your internal world is wrong then. You don't have an internal world which weighs a few trillion tons. What you have been calling as your internal world is nothing more than a figment of representation of the world in your mind via your sensibility from the external world.

What do you mean by "X exist"?
— Corvus

I see a bent stick. Seeing a bent stick is not proof that bent sticks exist in the world. The bent stick exists as an object in appearance whether or not a bent stick exists as an object in the world. — RussellA

Why is it not? What else do you need for proof that bent sticks exist in the world?

Your claim that the external world is caused by your internal world is wrong then — Corvus

I think the point, and I completely missed this with Mww, is that what you are capable or conceiving, is a result of your perceptions in aggregate. Therefore, you are actually entirely unable to access anything about hte 'external' world at all - so all conceptions of it are in fact, internal representations. Maybe that's not the case - but this solves the issue for me.

What Kant would have said is, that even if your sensibility sees a bent stick in the water jug, your category of concepts and understanding (followed by reading the scientific explanation on why the stick looks bent), would come to a proper reasoning on the experience, and judge the stick is straight in actuality, even if it looks bent. — Corvus

For Kant, a stick in the world outside us is a Thing-in-Itself and therefore unknowable. Being unknowable, it is impossible to judge whether bent or straight.

From the Wikipedia article on Thing-in-Itself.

In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued the sum of all objects, the empirical world, is a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our representations.

Kant introduces the thing-in-itself as follows: And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.  Prolegomena, § 32

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What you have been calling as your internal world is nothing more than a figment of representation of the world in your mind via your sensibility from the external world. — Corvus

:100:
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What else do you need for proof that bent sticks exist in the world? — Corvus

First it has to be proved that sticks exist in the world.

There is the world inside the mind and there is the world outside the mind. The word "world" refers to two very different things

We know "sticks" exist in the mind as concepts, as we are discussing them

The question is, do "sticks" exist outside the mind and independently of any mind

Humans can judge when something is a stick and when something is no longer a stick, but in the absence of humans, in the absence of any definition of stick, in the absence of anyone to judge when something is a stick or no longer a stick, what determines when something in the world outside us is a stick or no longer a stick. A god or nature itself?

How can you prove that "sticks" exist in the absence of human thought without using human thought?

what you are capable or conceiving, is a result of your perceptions in aggregate. Therefore, you are actually entirely unable to access anything about hte 'external' world at all — AmadeusD

It would be better if you could define "capable of conceiving" and "to access anything about the external world". What do you mean by these expressions and ideas? What is it for you to conceive something and access the external world?

For you to suggest that we are unable to access anything in the external world, there must be reason for that, and it seems your definition of "conceiving" and "accessing" might be something different from the ordinary definition of them.

For Kant, a stick in the world outside us is a Thing-in-Itself and therefore unknowable. Being unknowable, it is impossible to judge whether bent or straight. — RussellA

I understand Kant's Thing-in-itself, is not everything outside us in the world. If that was the case, Kant would be an extreme sceptic, who professes everything outside us is unknowable. That would render all our knowledge of external world impossible. In that case, Kant would have been rejected for being an extreme scpetic, and nobody would take him as a serious epistemologist or philosopher. To even suggest that would be a gross misunderstanding of Kant and his philosophy.

First it has to be proved that sticks exist in the world. — RussellA

Isn't your perception of the sticks enough evidence they exist? Do you not trust your own visual perception?

what determines when something in the world outside us is a stick or no longer a stick. A god or nature itself?

How can you prove that "sticks" exist in the absence of human thought without using human thought? — RussellA

When absence of human thought, the concept of proof cannot be an agenda. The fact that you have been mentioning about the word "proof" proves that you have been thinking about it, and also the object of your thought. The case that "even if no humans exist" also an idea in your mind, which proves that your thought was engaging in the thought.

Even when no humans exist, all the material things must exist as they have been, and we can say this quite assuredly because we still can think on the case that no humans exist, and all the material things must exist as they do. Because there is no reason why the things and the world stop existing. That is all there is our thought can think of.

The brute fact is that, you know that you exist, think and perceive the objects outside of you. You must trust what you perceive, or you commit yourself to an extreme sceptic and contradiction.

Humans can judge when something is a stick and when something is no longer a stick, but in the absence of humans, in the absence of any definition of stick, in the absence of anyone to judge when something is a stick or no longer a stick, what determines when something in the world outside us is a stick or no longer a stick. A god or nature itself? — RussellA

Where humans don't exist, of course, there is no perception, no thoughts. But we can still make logical inference (from the human world), that things keep exist as they have done.

Even in Science, there are cases, when the direct observation and experiments are impossible due to the astronomical distance, impossibility of the physical access (such as the core of the earth) etc. In these circumstances, Scientists can still make their conclusions and theories via logical inferences from the available data and evidence.

A193 doesn’t relate to the paragraph title you gave, which is found at A538. And I couldn’t come up with a reasonable connection between A193, A538 and your hesitations for accepting the differences in things-in-themselves and the empirical representations which regulate human knowledge.
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Kant makes it clear here that we are free to infer, with some certainty, that objects in themselves exist and exert some 'causal lineage' with out phenomena….. — AmadeusD

He states for the record that things-in-themselves exist and from that we can infer the necessity of a causal lineage from such external existence, to appearance, through perception, sensation, intuition, ending in internal phenomenal representation. As such, for the entire range of faculties having to do with sensibility.
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Your claim that the external world is caused by your internal world is wrong….
— Corvus

I think the point, and I completely missed this with Mww, is that what you are capable or conceiving, is a result of your perceptions in aggregate. — AmadeusD

The claim that the external world is caused by the internal world is wrong, but that has nothing to do with the capacity for conception. The aggregate of perception, technically**, is how we come by objects of sensation, which just is the totality of intuition, not conception. The capacity of conception is unlimited, or, more correctly, is limited by productive imagination, which is itself unlimited. Remember “…..I can think whatever I wish…..”.

If you like, you could with justice say what you are capable of knowing is the result of your perceptions in aggregate, insofar as any and all empirical knowledge is of things perceived.

(** Kant didn’t need to know about the operational physiology of the human sensory devices, but he did know Newtonian conservation of matter. He knew whatever was outside us had to be converted to something inside us, so he just called it aggregates of perception to show the principle of cause and effect relative to time, such that the thing of appearance and its phenomenal representation related to each other necessarily. In that way, there is no reasonable conclusion which allows us to merely imagine we are being affected by the appearance of things to our senses on the one hand, and forbids, through temporal sequence, the causality of appearances from any internal constructions on the other. The nuance behind this way of reckoning, is that would be impossible to obtain an apodeictic logical conclusion, re: every experience is certain, if we started out with that by which its support is questionable.)

I understand Kant's Thing-in-itself, is not everything outside us in the world. If that was the case, Kant would be an extreme sceptic, who professes everything outside us is unknowable. That would render all our knowledge of external world impossible. In that case, Kant would have been rejected for being an extreme scpetic, and nobody would take him as a serious epistemologist or philosopher. To even suggest that would be a gross misunderstanding of Kant and his philosophy. — Corvus

On the one hand, Kant held that we can never know about Things in Themselves, we can never have knowledge of Things in Themselves. Things in Themselves include everything outside us in the world, meaning that there are not some Things in Themselves that we do have knowledge of whilst there are other Things in Themselves that we cannot have knowledge of.

In philosophy, scepticism is the theory that certain knowledge is impossible.

On the other hand, I agree that Kant was not a sceptic.

To explain why Kant was not a sceptic is the subject of many articles

As a start, the fact that we cannot have knowledge about Things in Themselves does not presuppose that we cannot have knowledge about the world.
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Isn't your perception of the sticks enough evidence they exist? — Corvus

Yes, my perception of a stick is evidence that it exists – evidence that it exists in my mind.

In the same way, my perception of pain is evidence that it exists – in my mind.
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Even when no humans exist, all the material things must exist as they have been...............................Where humans don't exist, of course, there is no perception, no thoughts. But we can still make logical inference (from the human world), that things keep exist as they have done. — Corvus

My belief is in Neutral Monism, in that what exists in the absence of humans are fundamental particles and fundamental forces in space and time.

If the fundamental particles are thought of as "material things", then I agree that "material things" exist in the absence of humans.

However, I don't agree that "sticks" if thought of as a material thing exists in the absence of humans. I agree that a human can judge whether or not something is a "stick", but in the absence of humans, who or what judges that something is or is not a "stick"?

And if something cannot be judged to be either a stick or a branch, then how is it possible to be either a stick or a branch?

The claim that the external world is caused by the internal world is wrong, but that has nothing to do with the capacity for conception. — Mww

Agreed. It sounds like an extreme subjectivism or solipsism.

The aggregate of perception, technically**, is how we come by objects of sensation, which just is the totality of intuition, not conception. The capacity of conception is unlimited, or, more correctly, is limited by productive imagination, which is itself unlimited. Remember “…..I can think whatever I wish…..”.

If you like, you could with justice say what you are capable of knowing is the result of your perceptions in aggregate, insofar as any and all empirical knowledge is of things perceived. — Mww

As long as one's sensibility and understanding works with concept, categories and intuition, one must be perceiving the external world, and making sense of the them acquiring knowledge of the world.
There are various types and levels of knowledge. One can claim to know anything in fact until challenged and clarified what level of knowledge it was, and whether it was true or false knowledge.

On the one hand, Kant held that we can never know about Things in Themselves, we can never have knowledge of Things in Themselves. — RussellA

There are different interpretations on this point.

Things in Themselves include everything outside us in the world, meaning that there are not some Things in Themselves that we do have knowledge of whilst there are other Things in Themselves that we cannot have knowledge of. — RussellA

This part seems totally wrong interpretation. Things-in-themselves are for the objects we have concepts, but not the matching physical objects in the empirical world. We can think about it via concepts, but we don't see them in the phenomena. They belong to Thing-in-itself.

My belief is in Neutral Monism, in that what exists in the absence of humans are fundamental particles and fundamental forces in space and time. — RussellA

If you believe in the existence of invisible particles and forces in space and time, then why do you deny the existence of the physical objects such as the bent stick in the empirical world?

If the fundamental particles are thought of as "material things", then I agree that "material things" exist in the absence of humans. — RussellA

I am not sure what the fundamental particles actually means in the empirical world objects. It is another big issue for debating whether particles and atoms must be regarded as existence in Metaphysics, or are they just bunch of nonsense terms invented by the SciFi people.

If you had a single particle of the bent stick, would you say that is a part of the bent stick, and it is a stick?

However, I don't agree that "sticks" if thought of as a material thing exists in the absence of humans. I agree that a human can judge whether or not something is a "stick", but in the absence of humans, who or what judges that something is or is not a "stick"? — RussellA

In the absence of humans, sounds a condition that you must clarify before progressing further. Is it the case of humans never existed in history? Or are you talking about the case where humans existed, but one day they have all vanished and disappeared into non-existence? Depending on which case you are talking about, the arguments would go different ways. Which case did you mean?

And if something cannot be judged to be either a stick or a branch, then how is it possible to be either a stick or a branch? — RussellA

Where does "if something cannot be judged" come from? It cannot only be judged because you have brought a highly unlikely, suspicious and groundless condition "in the absence of humans", which you must clarify as to what exact the condition means, and your motive for brining the condition into your conclusion.

The claim that the external world is caused by the internal world is wrong….
— Mww

Agreed. It sounds like an extreme subjectivism or solipsism. — Corvus

It’s actually impossible, no matter what -ism is assigned to the idea. While it may be the case we alter the state of affairs in Nature with highrise buildings and forest destructions and whatnot, we just don’t have the capacity, nor should we, for creating natural things.

We strip the seas of fish, but can’t create roe. Although, I recall an article on 60 Minutes awhile ago, where we’ve eliminated almost every variety of banana, for purely economical reasons. It follows logically, that given enough time and a certain purpose, science will inevitably screw up our place in the world, compared to the philosopher who merely thinks about what might be.

But you’re right; those who would think it so, exhibit extreme subjectivism or solipsism.
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As long as one's sensibility and understanding works with concept, categories and intuition, one must be perceiving the external world, and making sense of the them acquiring knowledge of the world. — Corvus

That’s fine, with the caveat that knowledge is contingent on the sense derived from perceiving the world. We know now lightning is not the wrath of angry gods, and spacecraft don’t fall apart when they get far away, which indicates mathematical propositions are indeed universal.

There are various types and levels of knowledge. — Corvus

Various levels, yes, depending on each individual’s experience, but I’d draw the line at only two types, myself, re: a priori or a posteriori. So, I guess, yes, various, but very many of the one and very few of the other.