It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara. — Banno

So then, @Michael, it looks like Banno does subscribe to something very near to the strained version of realism that you outline. That's at least one person. Presumably this sort of approach was born in the modern period. If Banno were more forthcoming one would be tempted to ask about his view of what truth is, but we all know how fast that conversation would go Nowhere.

Presumably this sort of approach was born in the modern period. — Leontiskos

The passage that is being commented on was from the abstract of a book I mentioned, Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order. It is of course difficult to convey the thrust of an entire book on the basis of an abstract of the introduction. The book's general abstract says 'tracing philosophical thought from Descartes through Kant to 20th-century physics, Pinter examines how cognition shapes our understanding of reality. He argues that the mind constructs the form and features of objects, suggesting that shape and structure arise in the observer rather than being inherent in objects themselves. Drawing on Gestalt psychology, Pinter contends that the meaningful connections we perceive are products of the mind's organizational processes.'

So the sense in which I question the reality of 'mind-independence' is that whatever we assert, about gold in Boorara or whatever, relies on this cognitive framework - that we can't stand outside of that faculty to see what is outside of or apart from it. So the world is not 'mind-independent' in that sense, but this doesn't mean, as Banno seems to think it must, that there can be no unknown facts.

And the reason I'm impressed with that book is that I think it is one of the many in that emerging area of cognitivism and cognitive science, which provides support for a kind of scientifically-informed idealism, as distinct from the materialism which has hitherto tended to characterise scientific philosophy.

So the sense in which I question the reality of 'mind-independence' is that whatever we assert, about gold in Boorara or whatever, relies on this cognitive framework - that we can't stand outside of that faculty to see what is outside of or apart from it. — Wayfarer

Sure, whatever we assert relies on our cognitive framework. But the gold in Boorara doesn't. It'll be there, asserted or not.

a book I mentioned, Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order — Wayfarer

Yes. Do you remember when in one of your threads I disagreed with Pinter's idea that shape is not inherent to objects?

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. There is some overlap with Pinter, here. To disagree with Pinter as strongly as Banno has is to run afoul also of this broader school which associates truth with mind.

And the reason I'm impressed with that book is that I think it is one of the many in that emerging area of cognitivism and cognitive science, which provides support for a kind of scientifically-informed idealism, as distinct from the materialism which has hitherto tended to characterise scientific philosophy. — Wayfarer

Yes, well we certainly don't want to crash into the mountain of materialism, but I would want to pull up on the stick gently rather than too abruptly, lest we create an opposite problem for ourselves.

Do you remember when in one of your threads I disagreed with Pinter's idea that shape is not inherent to objects? — Leontiskos

I do now. Thanks for the reminder, I will re-visit it.

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. — Leontiskos

It's not clear to me that is what @Banno is claiming. We can make truth-apt statements about what would be the case in the absence of any percipients. It is that which is really the point at issue as I see it.

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. — Leontiskos

Yep. Oddly phrased. It's unclear what it would mean for a truth to "exist" - it's not going to be the value of a bound variable. Nor is truth the sort of thing that occurs at a particular place, although particular things might be true at a particular place.

Given Leon's history of misrepresenting folk and his incapacity with logic, I'm not too hopeful here.

It's not clear to me that is what Banno is claiming. We can make truth-apt statements about what would be the case in the absence of any percipients. It is that which is really the point at issue as I see it. — Janus

Well he literally said, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara." This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do.

But apparently you hold a different view, namely the view that we can make truth-apt statements about unperceived events?

This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do. — Leontiskos

There it is.

- Does the Geriatric Troll say that there are minds where there is no life?

Love you too. If you are going start by misrepresenting what was said, there's not much point in chatting with you. Of course, it is entirely possible that you do think that a reasonable interpretation of what was said... if so, explain what it means for truth to exist. Do you just mean that there are truths?

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara."

I concluded, "This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do."

Why? Because if all life disappears from the universe, then all minds disappear from the universe. You say that even then, "it would still be true that...," and therefore you think there would still be truth even if there were no minds. Or do you say that there are still minds where there is no life?

I concluded... — Leontiskos

That's you, not I. You have misunderstood - again - the logic of the argument.

That's you, not I. — Banno

Put on your spectacles and discern where the quotation marks start and end.

Oh, yes, I noticed your selective quote.

If you are really interested, as opposed to just a poor attempt at baiting, set out for us what it is you think 's argument was, and my reply.

Becasue I do not think you have understood it.

Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. There is some overlap with Pinter, here. To disagree with Pinter as strongly as Banno has is to run afoul also of this broader school which associates truth with mind. — Leontiskos

You are free to retract your statement if you think it is false. I will not hold you to it.

...you do understand that what you have there is not my argument... it's yours.

No, perhaps not.

I am questioning that 'x can be the case even if nobody knows it'. It doesn't mean that in the absence of any knowledge of it, 'x' does not exist or ceases to exist. We discover facts about the Universe that obviously pre-date the arrival of h.sapiens, as has already been cited. Likewise the gold of Borowa, or wherever.

Objection: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ('if I take away the thinking subject') that is impossible'.

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper (or for that matter the screen this is being read from.)

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares .... Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding...which is untainted by them. — Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Also - I noted that you mentioned Aquinas' realist epistemology in our previous discussions of these matters. However, a vital distinction between today's realism, and his form of realism, is that Aquinas was an Aristotelian realist, one for whom universals are real. This is not the thread for the discussion of that hoary topic but it's part of the background to the whole debate of the relationship of mind and nature, which is very different for the Aristotelian than for today's naturalism.

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara."

Now either you agree with that or you don't. It seems like you want to retract your statement without retracting your statement.

The point <here> is that while I also disagree with Pinter, you have disagreed with him so strongly so as to fall into the opposite pit. Probably what you want to do is retract your statement and replace it with something more measured and less extreme.

Also - I noted that you mentioned Aquinas' realist epistemology in our previous discussions of these matters. However, a vital distinction between today's realism, and his form of realism, is that Aquinas was an Aristotelian realist, one for whom universals are real. This is not the thread for the discussion of that hoary topic but it's part of the background to the whole debate of the relationship of mind and nature, which is very different for the Aristotelian than for today's naturalism. — Wayfarer

Yes. I will come back to this, but let me just say that realism is the view that something is real. If one thinks that universals are real then they are a realist with respect to universals; if someone thinks the external world is real then they are a realist with respect to the external world; if someone thinks objects of perception are real then they are a realist with respect to objects of perception, etc. Often in these discussions we would do well to remind ourselves what kind of "realism" we are talking about. For example, in discussing Pinter one might want to hone in on the question of realism with respect to the shape of objects of perception. The OP was interested in realism with respect to, "objects external to our mind," or, "Mind-independent objects." Ideally in any of these arguments we want to argue our position such that it is contentious yet not vacuously true, such that the opposing view retains a level of plausibility.

A shame that you need Kant's analysis of time here, which is wanting. Regardless, the argument does not depend on time. We can posit instead a space with no folk in it to know stuff, and get similar results. There may be a planet in orbit around the pulsar described here. That there is such a planet is either true, or it is false, and this is so regardless of what we know.

This by way of separating what is true from what is known to be true. Again, that a proposition is true is a single-places predicate, "P is true"; but that we know it is true is a relation, "We know P is true". Same for what are commonly called "propositional attitudes"; a name that marks this relational aspect.

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara." — Leontiskos

Indeed, the bit "everything else is undisturbed" kinda makes the point. One of the things that remains undisturbed is the gold at Boorara.

If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else remained undisturbed, would there still be foxes? Whether truth remains undisturbed turns on whether truth depends on life/mind, and that is the question you have been avoiding. It looks like you're trying to run a theistic or deistic vehicle that is all out of gas. In the history of philosophy the existence of truth has not been taken for granted in the way you take it for granted.

That's an odd post. No, if all life disappeared, so would foxes. Foxes are (usually) alive.

I haven't avoided the question - I answered it quite directly by presenting a truth about what things would be like, given that "all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else remained undisturbed".

Regardless, the argument does not depend on time. We can posit instead a space with no folk in it to know stuff, and get similar results. There may be a planet in orbit around the pulsar described here. That there is such a planet is either true, or it is false, and this is so regardless of what we know. — Banno

Time comes into existence with minds. Outside minds there is no time. You and I understand what pulsars are, and remote stars, and planets, because we have a shared language and culture within which they are meaningful.

For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. Nothing will ever lead me to understand what a nebula, which could not be seen by anyone, might be. Laplace’s nebula is not behind us, at our origin, but rather out in front of us in the cultural world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoted in The Blind Spot, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

The authors add:

Merleau-Ponty is not denying that there is a perfectly legitimate sense in which we can say that the world existed before human consciousness. Indeed, he refers to the “valid signification” of this statement. He is making a point at a different level, the level of meaning. The meanings of terms in scientific statements, including mathematical equations, depend on the life-world... Furthermore, the universe does not come ready-made and presorted into kinds of entities, such as nebulae, independent of investigating scientists who find it useful to conceptualize and categorize things that way given their perceptual capacities, observational tools, and explanatory purposes in the life-world and the scientific workshop. The very idea of a nebula, a distinct body of interstellar clouds, reflects our human and scientific way of perceptually and conceptually sorting astronomical phenomena. — ditto

//

realism is the view that something is real. If one thinks that universals are real then they are a realist with respect to universals — Leontiskos

But the significance here is that realism concerning universals is at odds with the naturalist conception of the mind-independent object.

Everything in the cosmic universe is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. ...if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality. — Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P

Elsewhere:

Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object. — Aquinas Online

These are references to Aquinas' epistemology of assimilation, which I have no doubt you know considerably better than I do. But the salient point is, it undercuts the idea of 'mind-independence' in the sense posited by naturalism. Why? Because the pre-moderns did not have our modern sense of otherness or separateness from the Cosmos. (I know this is very sketchy, but I think I am discerning something of significance here.)

Sure, something might be (as yet) unjustified and yet could be justified. In which case, since it could be justified, there is something which counts as it's justification. — Banno

What does it mean that something counts as its justification? Are you just repeating the claim "p can be justified"? What is the difference between (1) and (3)?

It woudl help considerably if you explained what you think a justification might be. I've already pointed out that mere logical entailment will not do. — Banno

It's whatever distinguishes knowledge from a mere true belief.

As a specific example, if "the cat is in the box" is true then perhaps the strongest justification is looking in the box and seeing the cat. That's an ordinary reason that we can be said to know that the cat is in the box.

Given that looking in the box and seeing the cat is always possible in principle, every case of "the cat is in the box" being true is justifiable, even if it hasn't yet been justified (i.e. we haven't yet looked in the box) – and even if it never is justified (i.e. we never look in the box).

So, at the very least, we should be antirealists about cats in boxes.

It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara. — Banno

Let's take mathematical antirealism; we might say that a mathematical proposition is true if it is provable from the axioms. The mathematical antirealist doesn't then claim that if everyone were to die then mathematical propositions are no longer true; they continue to be true because they continue to be provable – there's just nobody around to prove them anymore, which is irrelevant.

Then there would still be gold in Boorara. It would be true that there was gold in Boorara. — Banno

Berkeley would agree with you - God perceives the gold. Bradley would agree with you. Panpsychist idealists like Sprigge would agree with you. Not that I am an idealist, consciousness alone is insufficient for a universe it seems to me.

Or by 'life' do you mean consciousness?

I'm going to try to summarise the reasoning. I'm taking it for granted that knowledge is justified true belief.

Given that the proposition "the cat is in the box" is believed to be true, there are prima facie four possible scenarios:

1. "the cat is in the box" is true and justified (is known)
2. "the cat is in the box" is false and justified (is not known)
3. "the cat is in the box" is true and unjustified (is not known)
4. "the cat is in the box" is false and unjustified (is not known)

In more specific terms:

5. "the cat is in the box" is true and I have looked in the box and seen the cat
6. "the cat is in the box" is false and I have looked in the box and seen the cat
7. "the cat is in the box" is true and either I have not looked in the box or I have not seen the cat
8. "the cat is in the box" is false and either I have not looked in the box or I have not seen the cat

The anti-realist claims that (5) entails (1) and that if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is possible in principle to look in the box and see the cat. If both of these claims are true then if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is knowable.

Whereas, as explained here, "the realist believes that it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle."

Which means that the realist believes either that (5) does not entail (1) or that it if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is possibly not possible to look in the box and see the cat. Either entails that if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is unknowable¹.

¹ _{In S5, ◇¬◇p ⊢ □¬p. Technically the realist could reject S5, but as mentioned here, "this result suggests that S5 is the correct way to formulate a logic of necessity."}

Addendum: In fact, ◇¬◇p ⊢ □¬p can be applied to the very claim that "it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle": if it is possibly not possible to know the truth then the truth is necessarily unknown.

Therefore, one of these is true:

1. Realism is incorrect
2. S5 is incorrect
3. Nothing can be known