parochial — SophistiCat

Gorgeous

No, that would be theology, not philosophy. Explanation follows the explananda wherever it goes, it does not subordinate it to prior stipulations.

In any case, give me arguments, not aphorisms. The latter are not worth much. — StreetlightX

What’s theological about “Atoms and the void”?

Your “following the explananda wherever they lead” sounds like “following the Lord wherever He leads”. It’s your attitude—reverence and humility—that defines the object. All those nineteenth century scientists who were sons of pastors—but not just biological sons.

As to the aphoristic style (thanks for the compliment): I am reductionist about writing too.

It's not that I want to be confrontational, but I can't help but come at all this from the opposite direction from you.

I think the philosophical pursuit of truth is the drive for a single, all-encompassing explanation. I think to explain is to reduce. I almost feel—if each of the very last two explanations cannot be understood in terms of the other—then the whole project has been worthless. If there’s one mystery in the universe left—then nothing has been understood.

"The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a 'constructionist' one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the science, much less to those of societies". (Anderson, "More Is Different"). — StreetlightX

But that’s because the explanation is the wrong one. Reductionism is the claim that the one thing at the bottom can explain the upper layers. Saying a see-saw is “just” or “only” a fulcrum and a plank and a certain spatial relationship between them is saying: give me a fulcrum and a plank, specify their relationship, and I’ll make a see-saw for you. The right reductionist theory is the one that enables you to construct back up again.

One is that science itself does not - despite popular misconceptions, often spread by philosophically inept scientists themselves - sanction any kind of reductionist metaphysics. — StreetlightX

No, not consciously, but there is a form that science expresses, that every scientific endeavour reduces to, a form that is simple, and that the realist world is built from, namely: there is a scientist, and a world to be found out about—

In fact, the oddest thing about such reductionist programs is that, taken to their logical conclusion, the ability to reconstruct the universe from first principles is idealism in it's most extreme form; they literally 'vacate the world of its content' as it were, giving up empiricism - the very loadstone of science - for ideality. — StreetlightX

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

To say that everything is just 'atoms in motion' is an incredibly attractive thesis, a powerful-looking, parsimonious 'explanation' for things that absolves one from going out there and doing the hard work. — StreetlightX

Trying to get of out of doing hard work sounds like a good idea to me. (I'm serious.)

But both are idealist claptrap. — StreetlightX

Well... I know you feel this way. Still, I'd love to be able to communicate in some way with physicalists.

science is so very powerful — StreetlightX

Powerful, yes, but for what? It’s like a Weimar Republic bank-note printing press. Churning out worthlessness. Powerful for creating illusions, or things that cause as much harm as good. Utterly without power to produce happiness, peace, justice, beauty, etc.---or indeed, understanding.

The point is not to reconstruct the universe, it is to see it as it really is. — Caldwell

To a reductionist, or an idealist, these are the same thing.

As Deleuze says, philosophy lives and breathes not on truth, but on the Remarkable, the Interesting, and the Important: categories of sense, of significance. — StreetlightX

I think the Truth on the one hand and the Remarkable, Interesting and Important on the other—are the same thing.

It is simplicity bought at the price of simplification, in the most pejorative sense of that word. — StreetlightX

I think simplification is always good.

Reply to the OP:

For an ontological idealist (not a Kantian): not only is Space ideal, but substance/bodies/atoms/matter are too. So Space isn’t any less forceful, material, real, significant, etc. than those things. Not only is Time ideal, but its being a series of events is also ideal. So Time isn’t any less real than the series of events that constitute it.

I would agree with you: Space and Time are as important as their contents or constituents. I’m having a drink right now; it happens to be coffee—but it might have been tea; I wouldn’t have cared much. But I’m pouring it down my throat, not into my ear or my nose: that is important. Whether my parachute is made of silk or some synthetic fibre is unimportant; whether it is strapped to my back before or after I jump off the plane is. It seems to me that you could accord plenty of value to Space and Time even if you weren’t idealist in any way. Space and Time don’t have to be material or forceful in order to be important. Why isn’t the distribution of things and what is distributed of equal value?

Getting to grips with your post really requires getting to grips with what we mean by Space and Time and their contents or constituents.

I think there’s a lot of the whole/parts relationship between Space and what you’re calling material or forceful things—and between Time and what you might (perhaps?) call events. And I think there is an illegitimate bias towards the ontological priority of the parts. People—specially physicalists—think that atoms, or quanta or spatial points, or whatever it is, are ontologically fundamental—and that the wholes that result from their combination are illusory, or at most secondary. You start off with one, then you add one, then you get what they equal. I think you can just as easily go the other way. Start off with the whole and then divide it up. Think of creation myths.

Reply to your follow-up:

Isn’t there an echo of the Newton/Leibnitz argument about Space in your talk of spacing? You’re on the Leibnitz side. You think the relationships between material things, how they are configured—is Space. You think the Newtonian view—a fixed vessel, independent of its constituents—is wrong.
And you think those relationships—whether the objects/bodies/atoms/quanta/events are configured this way or that—has causal significance. One configuration would cause X, another (of the same things) would cause Y. Two events in a different order have different causal results (like the parachute example). For that reason you want to say that Space and Time are material and forceful.

I don’t like Kant’s halfway house either. But I’m on the far side of Kant from you.

(But I still enjoyed your posts.)

What the Realist (Realist about a World independent of Mind) believes is that the existence of the moon is independent of the mind or of consciousness: if you took away all consciousness of the moon whatsoever, all perceiving of it, feeling it, seeing its effects, feeling its effects, thinking of it, dreaming of it, remembering it, believing in its existence—there’d still be a moon. This means he believes the following postulates:

• There is something other than Consciousness or Mind; Consciousness is one of (at least) two things; Consciousness is finite; there are (at least) two things.
• There is such a thing as the Unknown; there are two types of thing: the Known and the Unknown, Consciousness is not the only type of thing.
• Consciousness is not Reality itself; Consciousness is part of Reality; Consciousness is mere Appearance.
• There is a greater reality than Consciousness; there is something that is both Consciousness and the Unknown; there is an Objective.
• There is such a thing as a Whole is made up of Parts. (There is Consciousness and the Unknown and the whole of Reality).

(He need not however believe these postulates are exhaustive, or that this individuation of them is definitive.)

—And from these basic postulates, the Realist constructs his world.

There are many ways in which these postulates may be realised or visualised. The big ones, the original ones, are Space and Time. According to the spatial realisation, Consciousness is conceived as in certain places (where brains are)—and it is also conceived that there are other places, where they are not. According to the temporal realisation, Consciousness is conceived as when sentient beings are—and it is also conceived that there are other times, when they are not (earlier than them and later than them).

Realism is the basis for Science: Unknown and Known become, respectively, Physical World and Scientist.

(There are also deeper sceptical questions: Is there anything at all other than this experience, my experience? That is, not just, “Is there anything physical outside Consciousness?” but “Are there even two things? Is there even another consciousness?” And one deeper still: “Is there anything other than this experience I am having now?” —But these are outside the scope of this thread.)

Even better for my theory. Useful info - thanks.

I think the answer to the question of the OP is—trees, houses, cars, animals, people, the stars, the planets, etc..

I mean I think this first answer, this prephilosophical answer, is the right answer.

Why?

Well, what do we mean by “trees, houses….the planets, etc.”?

I think we mean dividedness. Reality divided up into a number of discrete things. To say that you believe that Reality is physical is to say that you believe Reality is divided up into many discrete things.

To say that you believe that Reality is not physical is to say that you believe Reality is not divided up into many discrete things. (Experience for example (subjective experience) is not physical because it is not divided up into discrete things.)

That list, “trees, houses, etc.” is a list of material objects, or bodies, or substances. Physics doesn’t believe in the reality of these things anymore. It believes that Reality, physical reality, is waves and forces and energy in timespace (or something like that).

So believers in the reality of the Physical say that the physical reality they believe in is not discrete substances—but it is still physical.

I disagree. I think physics, howsoever sophisticated it is, still involves physicists pointing to different things, this and that, that is to say to at least two things. They believe (perhaps at bottom) that you can talk about different regions of Reality: that out there, this down here; that to the left, this to the right, etc.. (In so far as physics becomes fuzzier, equivocates about its independence from the mental, says that Time is subjective, that something can be in two places at once, etc., equivocates about dividedness, says that there is also a countervailing physical reality of oneness (such that all the fields and waves of the physical universe are felt, if to an infinitesimally small degree—everywhere)—then it is no longer the Physical.)

Left and Right, Up and Down, In Front and Behind: that’s all you need for dividedness. You just need two things, of which you can say, “This is different from (non-identical to) that”. Doesn’t even matter that they can talk about infinitesimally graded continua (of forces or fields or something), they still have to say “from here to there”. —And there you have it again, two discrete things, two timespace points.

Doesn’t matter how clever they get, how they equivocate, how their answers are lost in impenetrable hieroglyphics or paradox—you will always find this, this division into at least two, right at the base of things.

That’s because, in a Kantian sort of way, it is the form of their supposition. And that supposition is this, at base: there is a scientist and there is a thing he is looking at. That is to say—before any sort of thought about minds or representation or looking or knowing—there are two things, this (whether a mind or an eye or whether just a lump of some kind) — and that.

I am not saying that the basis of dividedness is Subject and Object. I am saying that the basis of dividedness is that there is a thing in a certain place, not a mind, but a brain (or a particular location, if you like, such as say, Paris, or London) and another thing in another place. (That after all is the most significant corollary of the physicalist principle: thoughts happen in places, they are in brains, or they are the whirrings and grindings of brains.)

Substances in space, atoms and the void—that was Materialism. But it wasn’t that people saw material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered weren’t there) and failed to see the forces, waves and fields between those material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered were there): it was all the time merely a representation of a concept of dividedness. You think there are many things. So you make a picture of coloured-in bits and non-coloured in bits.

Why does the physicist think there are two things, Earth, if you like, and a galaxy he is looking at? —Because the ground of everything he is doing is—say—his hope of getting a Nobel prize. That hope he has of getting the Nobel prize, contrasted with his current Reality, of not having the Nobel prize—is the form of Reality that is his heart and blood. And he sees it in every thing he looks at.

It needn’t be the Nobel prize; any hope will do—or any dread. But he always has one or the other. We all do. Hope or Desire contrasted with Dread or Hatred. That is the basis of Dividedness. That is the basis of the Physical: Will.

We are all hoping and dreading all the time, to a greater or lesser degree. That is why we are all incorrigibly, prephilosophically, Physicalists. That is why the casual language of the everyday is physicalist.

Amen

The mystery is not: How is there Consciousness? but How is there Unconsciousness? That's the thing that's unprovable, unreachable, unimaginable.

As regards Philosophy vs. Science, I’m on your side, but lunatic fringe hawkish.

It’s a love triangle to be sure. It hadn’t occurred to me that Science might be jealous of Philosophy, and doubtless it’s true. But it’s the jealousy that runs the other way—which is surely also real—that I want to talk about. I think the public did run off with Science, and I think Philosophy is jealous. But the public rejected Philosophy for good reason: Philosophy—analytical philosophy—ran up the white flag a hundred years ago—when it conceded the fundamental propositions behind Science. Just look at a couple of examples from this thread:

The theory of evolution is hugely relevant to how we perceive ourselves. — darthbarracuda

It’s true. We think of ourselves as fancy chimpanzees. What’s behind the theory of evolution is the assertion: Man is Ape. I.e. mind is matter.

The size of the universe puts our significance into doubt. — darthbarracuda

So we—are spatial things. We are the earth, or the humans living on the earth, or the brains living on the earth. I.e.: mind is matter.

philosophy examines how we make sense of the world — StreetlightX

So there’s a “we” and there’s a “world”—and we are “making sense” of it. That’s saying: we are scientists finding out about a world. You’ve conceded the fundamental proposition of science right there. Philosophy’s left with just making sense of it.

Science is only inflexible in demanding the constraint of measurable testing. — apokrisis

“Only”. So there is something that is proposed (a model or a picture), something against which it is measured (Reality), and a proposing, measuring and judging thing (us). —You’ve already decided what Reality is. Philosophy’s just left with crumbs.

It's about asking questions. — Wosret

You’ve decided in advance of doing any philosophy that Philosophy is questioning. This apotheosis of Questioning: that’s Science speaking again. Why isn’t Philosophy just as much—accepting that there are no answers. Or just as much—stopping questioning? Or coming up with conclusive answers? Why isn’t there a religious element in philosophy? (see OP).

Analytical philosophy doesn’t really itself believe it has much to add to the truth that has already been established: there is a world, of Substances, moving around and bumping into each other. We are some of those Substances. We have inside us pictures of those Substances moving around. —Also: we paint better and better pictures of the physical world as time moves forward. That is: not only are we picturing things, Time too is real, and Progress (upward movement) too.

What’s left for Philosophy? Details. And puzzles that are completely insoluble. Several million papers and still these questions utterly unresolved:

1. How is Mind identified with Brain. 2 How is Brain about the (rest of the) world 3. What is Knowledge? 4. How is there Consciousness. Etc.. —It’s a fly against a window-pane.

I think the public know more about analytical philosophy than is realised. No they don’t follow the arguments. But somehow they’ve got a feeling about what’s going on. It seeps out; they smell it—and they don’t want to get any closer.

The public have drifted away from Philosophy because Philosophy capitulated to Science (and subsequently became its amanuensis). You told them Science had the answers. So either they accepted your recommendation or they went off elsewhere, into religion, eastern religion, literature, continental philosophy, “spirituality”—or quackeries of one kind or another…

(If you tu quoque me, all I say is “touché”. I pander to the illusion too: I think there is a me putting out this post, and a few (a very few) others “out there”, looking at it. I am fighting the physicalist and the dualist (who stubbornly resist enlightenment) in me.

Thanks a lot. I'm sure you're right about Platonism. I was thinking of that strain of Idealism that says there are only such things as abstract ideas. I thought that was what Platonism was. But I stand by my remark about Christ - though without justifying it for the minute.

Physicalism and Idealism are really to be understood as traditions.

Physicalism is the inheritor of Materialism.

Materialism is the man-in-the-street view of Reality. “There are houses, cars, trees, the world, the sun, the moon, the other planets, and many other things—and I am one of these. These things are finite (because limited by one another and by me) and I am finite (because limited by them).”

Physicalism is Materialism refined: where once there were bits of matter floating about in space, now there are fields and forces and waves and equations. But the essence hasn’t changed: there is stuff out there that is being looked at (and so separate from something that looks)—and it is divided up into different parts: some to the left of me, some to the right.

Society is a mirror of the man in the street. Just as the man in the street (and all of us) is greedy, lustful, fearful, angry etc., and so thinks there is something he is greedy for, lusts after, is fearful of, angry about, etc.—the engine of the view that there is an Objective Reality “out there”—so too society is greedy, lustful, fearful, angry, etc.—and so too society thinks there is a world “out there”.

It thus thinks that there is something to find out about—and something that does the finding out. It thinks that there is something that is unknown and something that is known. Society is thus fundamentally scientific.

And accordingly honours—and indeed pays—that part of itself that attempts to read the nature of that “Objective Reality”. In this way—so it believes—it can better get what it wants and avoid what it hates. Universities, those organs of society and of the establishment, are thus inevitably physicalist.

Physicalism and Science are winning: think of the honour in which Science is held—even when it “discovers” that Time is relative, that Space is not different from Time, that the observer conditions the observed, that we are mixed up with the universe (!) Think of how it has successfully sold the holiness of its project: (voiceover in poetry mode, shaking with emotion): “We must never stop asking ‘Why?’”. We must gawp at the “majesty” of the universe. What is the best emotion we can have? —“A sense of wonder”. And what must we think of ourselves? —We must be gleefully tiny. (See OP: we exchanged God for the Physical Universe.)

Idealism is the argument against the man in the street. Idealism is the view of the contemplative, the cloistered, the hermit, the otherworldly.

Idealism says: Those things that you think are out there—are really you. You are not distinct from the other things of the world, you are not your body, Reality is undivided. Vedanta: Atman is Braham (individual soul and world soul are one); Christ: Love thy Neighbour (I am not separate from others), I shall rise again (I am not temporally finite); Berkeley: an Immaterialist in his words; Hegel: a Neutral Monist.

Idealism stands outside society and outside the establishment. It scrapes out a living in religion, in “spirituality”, in literature, in a few as-yet-uncorrupted students starting out on their philosophy degrees, as devil’s advocate in philosophical debate. —Of course society is not going to honour and pay for something that rejects its idea of what is real.

So Physicalism is the philosophy of the worldly, the secular; Idealism that of the otherworldly, the religious.

Those who are persuaded by the Idealist argument that if there is an Objective, there must be a Subjective (such that Physicalism implies Dualism) and who also misrepresent Idealism either as platonic Idealism—the view that Reality is abstract ideas, a view that is as far from mainstream Idealism as Physicalism—or as the view that there is only the Subjective (which succumbs to the kantian argument that if there is a Subjective, there must be an Objective too) —call themselves Neutral Monists. —Yes it is true that Reality is neither physical nor mental, but that view belongs to the (non-platonic) Idealist tradition.

I missed out a lot more than that…

But thanks for introducing me to Bergson. I’ve just read the Wikipedia article, and yes, there are a lot of resonances. But—and feel free to correct me—it seems Bergson is more dualistic than me. Yes, he thinks there are things insusceptible of scientific description: Time, Intuition, Creativity, Will, etc., but he also thinks that this stuff is situated within a physical, spatial world—or alongside it.

I myself am a more thoroughgoing idealist. My notion of Time is very similar to Bergson’s—a continuum, which is neither many different things nor a single thing—and my notion of Consciousness is (probably) similar too, but I think Bergson has a different idea about Space. He thinks Space (and perhaps Matter) is something opposed to Time, Consciousness, Will, etc..

I however think Space is inseparable from these things, that it is an (infinite) continuum, like Time and Consciousness, and that it is indivisible, even in thought: you can’t even point to one bit and point to another, and say, This bit is different from that bit. It doesn’t exist independently of thought or consciousness, but exists only inasmuch as it is Consciousness. You aren’t in it, you are it.
So I don’t think there are two things, the Physical—and Consciousness; I think there is only one, and that it is neither physical nor mental.

I don’t suppose that is very clear, but maybe you get the gist.

Thank you for your comments and I am very sorry to be so long in replying.

If it's because they're Catholic, then I should let you know, I am not. It's because I believe the idea of an 'hierarchical order' is essential, and they're one of the culturally Western sources of such ideas. — Wayfarer

I am not repelled because of the Catholic origin. But tell me what you mean about a hierachical order.

'The world is not as it appears, nor is it otherwise' ~ Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. — Wayfarer

Ravishing.

Your Theory:
So you think, presumably, Reality proceeds (conceptually) from Apeiron, via a process of dichotomy, into Multiplicity. Is that right? Is it the case that the first dichotomy is self and world? Does the world then divide into two? Does the self then divide into two? How does it work?

Is the structure of Reality, in so far as there is one, the same as the structure of our categorisation of it? That is, is its structure just how we (the Mind) categorise it? Or does the world have a hand in how we caterorise it? Does it constrain our choices of how it is to be categorised? That is: is Reality the interplay between Mind and World, and is the structure of Reality the consequence of a collaboration between Mind and World?

In a previous post you said,

“You have the apeiron. And it divides in logical fashion. Part of it, by concentrating the possibility of warmness, leaves another part that is subsequently a concentration of the cooler. And if such a separation is possible, what is to stop it proceeding to its limits. Coupled to a further consequent separation - the dry and the damp - you then get all four basic elemental categories, fire, air, water and earth. Or in modern physical parlance, plasma, gas, liquid and solid.

Thus systems thinking supports an ontology that is triadically developmental. You start with an unformed potential (that is no kind of substantial state - mental or material). And then all you need is the rational possibility of some "this" which then, in its very becoming, must produce its matching "that"."

I don’t know whether you saw my questions about this. I understand very well that you see things as developing triadically. But what is it that is developing triadically? Is this a natural process? Is this the process by which the natural world becomes as it is (developing first into plasma, gas, liquid and solid)? Or is it the process of thought? Or is it both of these together, somehow?

I understand than an act of categorisation, a mental act, is one in which a mother divides into two daughters. For example, if nothing is said, then nothing is determined: there is only Apeiron. If I then say, “That is the world”, I imply a “This” and a self. So Apeiron, the mother, gives birth to two daughters (variously named, “This” and “That” and “Self” and “World”).

But what I want to know is:

Why is that which is the case determined by my saying “This” and “That”? Labelling things doesn’t alter their natures. Why aren’t we still at the stage of there being only Apeiron?

Why is the change unidirectional? Why doesn’t any dichotomous development not immediately go into reverse, as soon as it happens?

What is the cause of the dichotomous, triadic development? Why does it happen? How does it happen? I really don’t understand what you mean here:

“Part of it, by concentrating the possibility of warmness, leaves another part that is subsequently a concentration of the cooler.”

So a part of Apeiron “concentrates the possibility of warmness”. It sounds like you’re saying something like “Things divide”. Why “possibility” of warmness? Why do you phrase it in this peculiar way? Why don’t you just say, “Part of Apeiron is warm; part is cool”? Or are you quoting from Anaximander?

Nor do I understand what you mean here:

“It is a dichotomy - a division that is self-defining in that each half defines its "other".”
Either two things are distinct from one another, in nature, like night and day, or an arbitrary line is drawn across Apeiron, dividing it into two. I can’t understand this “self-defining”.

I can’t see how the dichotomous development that you are talking about is not just a linguistic or conceptual thing.

My Theory:

I know that everyone thinks there is a triadic structure at the base of things: Experience, Self and World. My claim however is that it is developed from an earlier or more basic division. My claim is that it is you who has leapt from the monadic position to the triadic.

You halve an orange. You are saying that there are three things because there is 1. The whole orange, 2. The right half and 3. The left half. But it can also be said that at no point either in time or in space are there three things. Either there is the whole orange or there are the two halves. That’s what I mean when I say that the division can be seen as dualistic.

I think there is first a division into Experience and Not Experience. (This first division may also be seen as the division of Experience into two, one of which is conceived as Experience and the other as Not Experience.) Then there is a division of Not Experience into Self and World.

What I am saying is that you either conceive Experience and the World (in which case Experience is conceived as the Self) or you conceive Experience and the Self (in which case Experience is conceived as the World). You don’t conceive three things all at once. You either imagine (falsely) that there is world beyond and outside your experience (in which case you conceive experience as your self (perhaps you think of it as your mind) or you imagine (falsely) that there is a self beyond or outside your experience (in which case you conceive experience as the world). Neither of these dualities (Experience-and-World and Experience-and-Self) implies the other. Each can stand on its own. You could go around thinking, “Everything that makes up my experience is just my mind. There is however a World outside it”. Or you could go around thinking, “Everything that makes up my experience is the World. There is however a Self that is doing the experiencing that can never itself be experienced”. You (Apokrisis) build your triadic structure from these dualistic elements.

As I said in the OP, this dualistic structure, (which is at the base of false picture that we have of Reality) is related to Value in the following way. We desire or we are repelled. In so doing it seems to us (without the closest analysis) that there are three things: Experience, that which we desire (or are repelled by) and––ourselves. These things however, that which we desire (or that which we are repelled by) and that which desires––and of course this seems to be the exact opposite of the truth––are one and the same thing.

I think that whatever is not Apeiron has no existence whatsoever. Since neither the world (conceived as something distinct from Apeiron) nor the self (likewise conceived) has any existence at all, they are identical. In just the same way I might say that, for example, a round square and a triangular pentagon are identical.

You will perhaps agree with this, at least: your triadic Reality of Self (or that which interprets symbols), play of symbols, and possible Noumenon says that there is such a thing as Ignorance, that there is such a thing as the Unknown. That there is such a thing is that there is also such a thing as a Knower and a Known. Therefore my denying there is such a thing as Ignorance is also my denying your (and everyone else’s) triadic structure. My arguing that there is only Apeiron and your arguing that there is a triadic structure is the same argument as this argument: you think there is such a thing as the Unknown; I don’t.

Of course, I am aware that this claim (that there is no Unknown) is a grand one. And that it overturns everything.

You think the identification of experience (or indeed of anything) necessarily begins the dichotomous development of everything. I too think that the identification of experience (or of anything) is to allow that there are two things. But here is where yours and my conceptions of reality differ, and indeed, are opposites: You think this dichotomous process is real; you think the daughters of this dichotomous process are real; you think the dichotomous development continues to proceed: once begun, it continues. You think the dichotomous branching is legitimate; you think it is to be accepted. I for my part reject the entire process, right at the beginning. I think we begin with Apeiron and end with Apeiron. I think everything that is built on it is false.

You think that––because the dichotomous beginning is real––I can only get to my claim that there is only Experience by having the daughters of that dichotomous process fall away or wither. I say I can get there because the dichotomous beginning is false in the first place.

I'm not sure on what basis you are claiming to say these things. It doesn't seem to be on the basis of either rational argument or probable evidence. — apokrisis

The remarks that you are referring to here assume Experience is Reality. If Experience is Indeterminacy, Vagueness, then so is Reality.

There are no breaks in experience. There is nothing that it is not. I have never experienced a break nor have I every experienced anything beyond it. That is my evidential base. Not probable evidence incidentally, but absolute evidence.

There can only be a number of things if there is nothingness between those things. Nothingness is an incoherent notion. That is my rational base.

Experience is infinite and unbroken. There is nothing that it is not. Therefore there is nothing that it is either. Hence it is Indeterminacy, Vagueness.

If they are so non-dual, why do you call Knowledge and Being by different names? — apokrisis

I agree that these identity propositions are problematical. This strikes me as a question that goes down a Phosphorous and Hesperus path. I don’t know whether we want to take it.

(Yes, I realise you will now call them two aspects of experience - and so we circle back to the necessarily triadic structure that betrays the discursive nature of idealism.) — apokrisis

I am aware of the obfuscatory nature of words like “aspect”. “X has two aspects, a and b” really means, when you dissect it down to its bones: X is one thing and X is two things.

For an absurdity, it is unreasonably effective wouldn't you say. Science is founded on it for a start. — apokrisis

Effective for what? Certainly not for Redemption. Certainly indeed for carrying on as before. Science is certainly founded on it. And, of course, my claims are also the claims that science is nonsense. You think Science is, at base, a man finding out about the world. I think Science is at base the proposition: there is a man finding out about the world.

Something else:

I have said that Reality is unspeakable. I think that all we can do, in philosophy, to describe its nature, is to say what it is not. But perhaps we can express it in the same way that we can express numerical infinity: Whatever number you have, add one to it. So you can say: Reality is at the end of a certain process. Not this, not that, not that, not that … It is down that road there. (Isn’t this like one of the proofs for the existence of God? That which is greater than whatever you conceive. Can’t remember what it’s called.)

Sorry for the delay.

I think you've misinterpreted the idea. Also I think the way you're conflating Kant and Pierce means you're probably reading things into them that aren't there; they're worlds apart in most ways. (Mind you I'm no expert.) — Wayfarer

Having read through some of that thread “Living with the Noumenon” I shall give that word a wide berth from now on.

Is this a conscious allusion to a phrase from Indian philosophy? If it is, you will know the phrase I mean. — Wayfarer

No it’s not. And no I don’t know the phrase you mean. Unless you’re talking about something the sense of which is, roughly: Reality is not appearance, but nor is Reality what is behind Appearance.

You seem to be trying to bridge that gap, but I can't tell whether you know that is what you're doing, or whether you're simply 'feeling your way into it'. I suspect it's the latter. — Wayfarer

I suppose what I was unaware of was that what I was doing would be seen as something unfamiliar or even peculiar, or eccentric. I’m repeating myself here––but it seems to me the obvious thing to do. Wouldn’t every philosopher have as his ultimate aim to work out a self-consistent and exhaustive explanation of things? And wouldn’t that then be a religion? And wouldn’t the quest to live life in the right way inevitably presuppose, or be founded on, or generate––an ontology, a description of things, an account of how things are and why they are as they are, etc.?

The vital thing about Thomism, generally, and Maritain, in particular, is that it still has a conception of the hierarchy of being (a.k.a. 'the great chain of being'). This understanding is that there are higher and lower levels of reality, being and knowing. Materialist philosophy (an oxymoron) is based on the lowest level, and denies the others (parodied as 'the flatland' or by Marcuse as 'the one-dimensional man'.) Thomistic philosophy is almost the last outpost of an hierarchical ontology in Western culture, and Maritain one of it's spokesmen (others being Etienne Gilson and the contemporary philosopher Edward Feser.) — Wayfarer

Materialism is anathema to me, so I like that bit, but otherwise I am––initially––repelled by these ideas. That doesn’t mean I shan’t have look at them.

Spiritual enlightenment and arguing about the nature of Reality seem to be, for me, different worlds. That of course shouldn’t be. My life should inform my philosophy and my philosophy should inform my life: of course.

How do I bring these things together? It’s something I should work on: you’re right. I say that, and I say it periodically to myself, but nothing ever happens.

I shall definitely look at the links you posted. And I like that big quote you posted. Maritain: not a name I know, but I shall find out about him.

I concede that many of the things I say are mere statements of position. You are interpreting them through a Peircian (or Kantian) lens, and are in the process revealing the Peircian structure of your world-picture. At this stage I think we are two separate and unengaged gears whirring around. I can’t see that my armour is yet Peirced, and I am certainly not getting through to you. There may have to be some more to-ing and fro-ing before we reach a biting point.

That is, it is now logically entailed that there is something which experiencing is not. And how can we be sure that absolutely is the case - except pragmatically, as a belief supported by adequate doubting and testing? — apokrisis

Not quite sure what you mean here. If it is “logically entailed that there is something which experiencing is not” why are we therefore not sure that that is absolutely the case? Where is the room for doubt? What is the point of testing?

Well really it supposes three things. It is not dualistic but triadic. So there is "you", your "experiences" and "the world". — apokrisis

I think it can be seen as triadic but it need not be seen so. The belief in a world beyond your experiences can be seen as ultimately the same belief as the belief that there is a self. Each (the world beyond your experience and the self “inside” your experience) is merely a different version of the Noumenon. The belief in a world beyond your experience is simultaneously the belief that your experience has the character of “I-ness” about it (and, as I have previously said, each of these beliefs is as false as the other). The belief in a self beyond your experience (or, as I suppose we all imagine it: the belief in a self inside experience or on this side of experience) is simultaneously the belief that your experience has the character of “world-ness” about it. (Apologies for these awkward expressions.) There are two versions of duality here, not three things.

I don't accept that characterisation. — apokrisis

[of the debate between pragmatism and skepticism].

Point taken. I should have said not, “The debate between pragmatism and scepticism seems to presuppose: …” but simply, “The debate about scepticism seems to presuppose: … ”

I do understand that everything we apprehend is––ultimately––the form of our apprehension. That is Kant’s and Peirce’s point. What you think I am saying is, roughly: Either a) Reality has a certain character or b) Indeterminacy, Vagueness––is without qualities. The first you will say, correctly, is untrue, and the second you will say, correctly, is a tautology. What I think I am saying is that Reality is Indeterminacy, Vagueness. Or, what I am saying, to put it another way, is: you can’t say anything about Reality. I then go on to say that all you can say is what Reality is not. So I then say, Reality is not many things, Reality is not one thing; Reality is not the Physical World; Reality is not the Mind; Reality is not this, Reality is not that, etc..

I don’t think Knowledge is inherently dualistic. I think being “lost in the flow of events or actions in unselfconscious fashion” is knowledge (of those events or actions). I don’t consider Knowledge and Being to be separate. I think your definition of Knowledge mirrors your (dualistic) conception of existence: an existence essentially consisting of a knower and a known, a self and its experience (with the possibility of a third thing too, the Noumenon). I think Knowledge is non-dual and Being is non-dual.

What is inherently dualistic is saying. And this extends to thinking too, in the sense of talking to oneself (without moving one’s lips). If you say something: 1. There is something that that says and something that is said, 2. There is something that is said and something that is the meaning of what is said.

You think the situation is like this: there is a Reality that we are familiar with. This Reality may or may not exhaust existence. There may or may not be something other than this Reality. You, and Kant, and Peirce, and many others, think this is––almost beyond argument. I think you, and Kant, and Peirce have swallowed an absurdity, an absurdity however that is so widely and deeply felt and held that it almost passed into the realm of fact.

The positing of a Noumenon is an absurdity: something that exists but is not felt. If whether something is perceived or not has no bearing on whether or not it exists, why are there not not spooks and pixies dancing on my desk here? The positing of the Noumenon is the conceiving of Ignorance. But the conceiving of two realms, the Known and the Unknown simply proposes Duality again. Why do you accept the notion of "Ignorance" uncritically?

The positing of the Noumenon is the conceiving of possibility. This that I am experiencing definitely exists. What I am not experiencing possibly exists. The conceiving of the Definite and the Possible simply proposes Duality again. Why do you accept the notion of "Possibility" uncritically?

If there is a Noumenon (and we don’t believe there is anything that is experiencing it), Esse ist percipe (a principle I accept) is contravened.

If there is a Noumenon, the Identity of Indiscernables (another principle I accept) is contravened. I am talking about this bit: “The world could be real, the world could be an idealistic illusion. But if you carry on regardless, that proves the distinction is moot and lacking in meaning.” What I am saying is that if it looks the same then it is the same. It can’t be the case that there are two different things, an existence in which the world is real and an existence in which the world is idealistic illusion, but each looks the same to me.

Duality divides the Noumenon into two parts: the part that is its name and the part that is named. The name is within consciousness and the named is is outside it. The Noumenon may be thus conceived (named) and not conceived, in the sense that what is named is not itself conceived. (Another trick, that is to say: “conceive” has two meanings.)

There’s another reason I don’t think there is a Noumenon.

Either the two parts (Phenomenon and Noumenon) are in some way joined, in which case they are not really two after all, or they are not joined, in which case there must be a thing, nothingness, between them, which is at once an existing thing, and must be, in order to hold the two things apart, and also a non-existing thing because, were it to exist, it would join the two things up. But there cannot be a thing that both exists and does not exist.

Apokrisis and Wayfarer: might take a few days to come back to you --- something wrong with my computer --- don't go away.

You have genuine insight into my philosophical stance and into what has been my philosophical project. Perhaps you can advise me further.

“The difficulty is that such expressions are situated within a particular 'domain of discourse', …”

“…that kind of non-dualist perspective is generally articulated by the archetypical sage …”

“the issue with your post is that you are attempting to articulate that transpersonal perspective, as a philosophical argument, …”

“[To] articulate it in the terms of the Western philosophical tradition itself […] would be quite a challenging undertaking.”

There is a common point across each of these excepts from your post: that my philosophical stance needs to be articulated in a particular form. Why is this so? This is not a rhetorical question.

Also, I am not clear on why I am not articulating my philosophical stance in terms of the Western philosophical tradition. Again, this is not a rhetorical question.

If indeed, as you say, I am not articulating in terms of the Western philosophical tradition, what would such an articulation (in broad outline) look like?

So I think the issue with your post is that you are attempting to articulate that transpersonal perspective, as a philosophical argument, but it's not really conveying the point, possibly because you have not yet realised it yourself, in that you're not really seeing it from such a perspective. — Wayfarer

You may very well be right that this post comes across as solipsist rather than anti-self, even though it tries to explicitly state that it is against solipsism, for the reason that I am (so deeply) spiritually unenlightened.

Thanks for pointing out that blog to me: very useful indeed and very interesting.

I feel that this thread––if it is my input that determines it––is either coming to an end or is changing direction. You and Wayfarer both have a hand in this.

I read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy piece on Pragmatism and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy piece on Contemporary Skepticism. Not all of either piece I could understand, but I understood enough to recognise that you are taking the pragmatist side of the argument and I am taking the scepticist side, and that further debate would necessitate further reading on my part, something that I might not be inclined to do. If however I were to make the effort, it would a) take some time and b) shift the focus of discussion away from the Theory of Everything theme of the OP, meaning that further discussion might more appropriately take place in a new thread.

Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, I might mention a couple of things that you said that I didn’t agree with.

You are reverting to a demand for absolute knowledge — apokrisis

Trivial point, but this suggests I previously moved to a position of requiring less than absolute knowledge. I don’t remember moving to such a position.

Incidentally I do––yes––“demand absolute knowledge” though to put in this way makes me sound hysterically unreasonable (!) All it really means is that I don’t think there are two realms, a realm of knowledge, here perhaps, and a realm of the Unknown, elsewhere.

Even "stuck inside experience", we can divide our experience into the ideas we hold and the impressions that result. — apokrisis

I don’t believe––as I have said––that experience is something that may be introspected on, let alone then divided up into different categories. I shan’t defend this assertion here. I tried earlier in this thread and I would only be repeating myself.

You see the self-defeating paradox in what you argue? The noumenon is required to get you to the point that it is sufficiently established that you can then "meaningfully" reject it. — apokrisis

Yes, in order to reject something, there has to be something to reject. I see the point. But then you are asserting that in rejecting something you are accepting it, which is just as absurd, indeed less subtly so. I think it depends on what is meant by “rejection”. When I say “I reject the noumenon”, it indeed suggests that I have turned the thing over in my mind, and so have at least provisionally acceded to its having a kind of reality, but what I really mean (and now I tread more circumspectly) is that I do not accept the noumenon. Do I in this way avoid the self-contradiction?

The debate between pragmatism and skepticism seems to presuppose:

1. The sceptical position is a kind of hellish prison which must be found a way out of.

2. We know that the sceptical position is false, in advance of the discussion of it; it is just that we can’t quite find the conclusive argument with which to dispatch it.

What do you think of this comparison of Pragmatism and my philosophical stance (which has a strong sceptical bent)?

Pragmatism is explicitly allied with scientific thinking and methods. This thinking presupposes something that you know (your experience) and something that you don’t (what is outside it). It presupposes a scientist and a world that that scientist finds out about. It says that how we prephilosophically think about things is more or less how things are: we are subjects inside a world of objects, knowing bits and pieces about those objects but with much more to find out, etc..

Pragmatism belongs to that perennial strain in philosophy: the back to common sense strain. It seeks not to overturn the conceptions that we have about Reality or about things in general, or to radically alter them, but to sharpen them, refine them, clarify them, etc..

Pragmatism is on the side of the status quo. It is non-extremist. It wants to bolster the society that we already have rather than to overturn that society. It wishes to help society to continue doing what it does, but with more circumspection.

Pragmatism, perhaps more so than many other “-isms”, sits particularly comfortably within contemporary Western philosophy. It is measured, moderate and reasonable, and it has modest ambitions. It does not seek out the edges of philosophy, or at least these edges: literature, religion, action. Why would it? ––It thinks philosophy is virtuous.

I am really wholly on the other side. (This is just a declaration of allegiance, for what it’s worth. I shan’t here justify anything.)

I think that we are all (including myself) habituated (as I say) to dualistic thinking (in so many ways) but that Reality is not two things or many things.

I think common sense is really common ignorance. I think Reality is more wild and more strange than we can even imagine.

I am as it were instinctively hostile towards the world and towards our society (though also, fortunately for everyone else, completely powerless).

I am at the religious pole of philosophy rather than the scientific. I think philosophy is virtuous in so far as it seeks an end to debate rather than a perpetuation of it, in so far as it seeks to translate words into practise, in so far as it recognises that Reality is ultimately unspeakable.

I readily and absolutely concede that.

I have been trying in vain to explain this but people don't realize that they are being inconsistent and contradictory. — m-theory

I enjoyed that link you posted.

I think you have much more support than you realise. I certainly agree with you. Other replies on this thread have too.

But:

1. You are using the word “self” to mean what I am meaning by “my experience”. So what you are saying is that I cannot assert that only my experience exists (a statement I agree with).

2. Is it unquestionably the case that in order that something be true it must be uttered?

3. The charge against solipsism hits home. But why does the Berkeleyan argument (I am unable to express a belief in anything outside my experience, without its becoming part of my experience) not also hit home? Why are you preferring one of these killer arguments over the other?

So why is everyone so deluded? Why do people think that there is a world beyond their experience?

Likely it’s so everyone can use the experiences of others to predict personal consequences, without getting nose to nose with a rattlesnake, a rabid racoon or personally view the results of philosophers leaping off mountaintops to "prove" there is no world beyond their own experiences. — JayAre

I agree with this. People think there is a world beyond their experience 1. Because they fear that there is and 2. Because they hope that there is. That is: what makes people believe that there is something other than experience is their will that there is. (This is what I say towards the end of the OP in the paragraph beginnning “Because of Desire.”)

I would argue that––if we only had the courage––we would be able to accept death without fear. We would recognise that being dead is no worse than being alive. I know that that is an extreme view, but I still hold it.

If you have nothing but your own experiences to predict the consequences of your encounters with reality than how did you survive your encounters with such things as traffic, poisonous plants, snakes, rabid animals, disease, cold weather, deep water, etc., to write this question. You must be an amazingly lucky person. — JayAre

I ought to explain; I did explain; but perhaps I should explain again. My philosophical stance is one that, in my ordinary, everyday life, I aspire to. I behave (more or less) just like everyone else. I have the same fears and the same hopes. I believe, in my everyday life, prephilosophically, that there are other people, and other minds. I strive however (though I always fail) to recognise that these hopes and these fears are without objects. I strive to recognise that these objects are delusionary. I have managed to escape death on the roads so far because it is this everyday self that is in charge.

I strive also to recognise that my self is illusory. (It has been (incidentically) instructional for me to note that of the two pillars that form the basis of my thinking (no world independent of experience and no self independent of experience) the first of these pillars is the only one that anyone has had any interest in. It reveals the physicalist bias of these forums (fora?).

The reason I say it's not an argument, but an assertion, is because it doesn't strike me at all as being self-evident or even arguable, that there are not many things that exist, that are of much greater age than oneself. Anything which you know existed before you were born - your parents would constitute an excellent example - certainly constitutes 'evidence'. If you say 'that's not evidence', then first you have to make the case for why it doesn't, or what would constitute 'evidence', or what, in fact, you are trying to say. — Wayfarer

Fair point. I should have warned the reader that I begin from a place of extreme scepticism. This tendency is not common out there in the world, but amongst philosophers it is at least familiar. I, like Descartes, like Berkeley, like Hume and like Kant, think that––in trying to ascertain the ultimate nature of Reality, or perhaps in trying merely to ascertain the limits of what can be known about it––that is the proper place to begin.

This is that place: Everything that I experience must pass through the bottleneck of my consciousness. All I really directly know are the contents of my mind. I can make no assumptions about the nature of the things that are responsible for these contents. Nor even can I assume that there is anything at all outside my mind. My parents do indeed seem older than me, but how do I know that they are even there when I turn my back on them? (etc. etc.).

This is not however the end point of the discussion, but the beginning. This sceptical position can of course can be criticised, in the way that, for example, Apokrisis and others have criticised it.

"As for there being 'only experience', as i have said, 'experience' is a transitive verb, i.e. 'I experience it'. It presupposes a subject of experience in a domain of objects."

Absolutely. The word “experience” presupposes something that experiences and something that is experienced. It might have been an unfortunate choice of word. What I wanted to express, by choosing that particular word, was that there was no part of existence that was outside the ambit of my experience. That is the idealist side of my thinking. And this is the side that you object too. What I also wanted to express, but this did not come through strongly (judging by the responses) was that there was nothing that was having that experience. That is the physicalist side of my thinking.

So, what I am saying is that there is nothing on the far side of experience (no world independent of it) and nothing on the near side of experience either (no self independent of it). If the word “experience” cannot be understood without implying these things, then I shouldn’t have chosen it. Should I have chosen the word “apeiron” (from Anaximander)? “Dasein”?

“I think the way that non-dualist philosophies transcend that is indeed by de-constructing that sense of self-and-other, or self-and-world as separate realities.”

I believe, as these non-dualist philosophies believe, that there aren’t these separate realities: self and other, or self and world. I don’t believe that the “plight of existence” is “a subject of experience in a domain of objects”.

I am not familiar with Putnam and I am not sure that I understand what you are saying (not that that is your fault).

Perhaps if I, rather boringly, restate my philosophical stance, you’ll be able to identify for me what I am not understanding.

I have been calling Reality “experience”. That might not be a good word. As I say, it implies something that is experienced and something that experiences, a world and a self, both of which (I am asserting) are illusory. A better word might be Anaximander’s “apeiron”, which means, roughly, that which is not determined, that which (as it were) has all qualities and no qualities. Apeiron or experience, according to my philosophical stance, is all that there is. Apeiron is not about anything and neither is there anything that is about apeiron. Apeiron does not mean anything and neither does anything mean apeiron. Indeed, according to this admittedly absolutist stance, there isn’t such a thing as meaning. For there to be such a thing as meaning there have to things that mean and things that are meant, words and objects, or thoughts and objects. Any theory about meaning, whilst the purveyor of it might not be a traditional Cartesian dualist, presupposes this sort of duality.

I have been so busy answering Apokrisis that I haven't got to the other posts yet. Thank you for your replies: I shall get to them.

I am grateful for your analysis of my thinking. Your thoughts are well-articulated, educational and clear. And they gave me a lot to think about.


1. “There’s no getting outside my own mental creations”.

Why aren’t you just saying this:? My experience is about something else. (Our mentality is pure symbolism.) Therefore there must be something else.

And why isn’t this just an assertion of duality? You’re saying, simply, that that there are two things, I, or mentality, or the play of symbols, on one side, and something that they are about, perhaps a material world, on the other.


2. “I 'know' – as a reasonable belief derived from scientific investigation – that even when I see
colours, or shapes, or motions, such perceptions are indirect constructions.”

Why do you believe that experience is “pure symbolism”? Why do you “know” that colours, etc. are indirect constructions? Why can’t my seeing green or my seeing blue, the action of seeing, be Reality itself?

I don’t think “scientific investigation” will help you. That is: how do you know, when the scientist is explaining to you that red is in fact light waves of such and such a frequency, how do you know the observation was really made? How do you know he is talking about something? Why isn’t it just another load of shapes and sounds, without reference? However reasonable the explanations sound, however habituated we are to accepting them, how do we in fact justify our faith in an elaborate structure very different in nature from the play of shapes and sounds that make up our experience?

“But we know that if you run the frames of a strip of film through a projector then - at the right rate - you experience an unbroken flow of imagery. Or if we introspect on dreams with accuracy, we discover each is in fact a "still", just a still with a psychological sense of swirling, camera-tracking, motion in which nothing actually changes in the momentary snapshot "view".

So there is abundant evidence - both empirical and even phenomenological - that we can be fooled by the general assumption experience has no composite structure, no "bitty" complexity”

Again, how do you know that a strip of film through a projector is an analogue of experience? How do we “introspect on dreams with accuracy”? Even if it appeared to me that I had this skill, how would I be able to depend on the accuracy of my introspection? How too do I know that when I am introspecting on some aspect of my experience that there is any identity between that which I am introspecting on, in the present, and that which I did experience, in the past?


3. Are you ruthlessly sceptical, like Kant, knowing nothing beyond the play of symbols except that there is something there? Do you indeed apply your epistemic solipsism to primary as well as secondary qualities? Do you indeed go into pansemiotic metaphysics?

Or do you in fact claim to know a lot about what is beyond your experience? You say, “as a reasonable belief derived from scientific investigation”. You say experience is like frames of a film.


4. You are calling Experience Mind or the Play of Symbols. I am calling Experience Reality. Aren’t we just getting our signals crossed here?

This is my position.

I am asserting that the “play of symbols” is Reality itself. That it is not about anything, that it is not in fact a play of symbols at all, that it is an illusion that it is about anything, and an illusion that there is something that it is about.

This assertion is a rejection of the noumenon. It is a rejection of the material world. It is a rejection of anything outside my mind.

The slightly less obvious point, but a point of exactly equal importance, and asserted with equal force––is that it is a rejection of the self too. It is a rejection of the mind, conceived as something distinct from the world. It is saying, “There is no play of symbols. Your imagining that there was a world out there was equally an imagining that this was a play of symbols, that this was in here.”

To put it metaphorically, though in a bit of a pen-proud way: the play of symbols (what you are calling “the play of symbols”) is the world, though there is nothing looking at it; the play of symbols is the self, though it is not looking at anything.

It is the invention of a not-directly-known world beyond the self which is in fact the invention of the self. "There is a world beyond your experience” says: your experience is confined, local, distinct from something else.

But your experience is Apeiron; your experience is undefined and indefinable. It is not different from anything because it isn’t anything, or rather isn’t anything determined. My experience is all there is because it is the same as your experience.

“...an actual traditional solipsist - as an end game idealist."

OK. Traditional solipsism is idealist. I am not an idealist and I am not a solipsist. I am a neutral monist. It is true that in a previous post (on the other, defunct website) I said I was sympathetic towards idealism, and I am, but that is only because the mental world, in its ungraspability, seems closer to Reality that most material conceptions of Reality––not because I believe Reality is mental.

What should I call what I am calling “experience”? Would Dasein be a better word? Would apeiron?


5. What is right about solipsism?

We know that the solipsist can’t (without involving himself in contradiction) point to his experience and say, “This is the only thing that there is” because “This” can only be meaningful if contrasted with something, because there must be something that is different from “this” that is doing the pointing or the saying, because in speaking at all he is accepting that there is an ear somewhere.

So we know there is something wrong with solipsism.

But there is something right with it too: that is what I am saying. And the thing that is right about it is the following. How can anyone affirm the existence of something beyond their experience? In gesturing towards such a thing in any way at all, in pointing to it, referencing it, conceiving it––they bring it into the realm of their experience.

Solipsism can’t be expressed but neither can the opposite of solipsism.


6. It’s not just solipsism and non-solipsism that can’t be expressed, but Reality that can’t be expressed.

I think I completely agree with you when you say that in an important technical way, what I am calling Experience can’t be talked about, or indeed even identified. If it were the only thing, what would identify it? What would the finger that pointed towards it, even if there were one, be pointing away from? It seems my only resource in trying to identify it is to point to something else and say “It is not that”, but then my pointing is only meaningful if there is something I am pointing to. So I am also asserting that “that” exists.

I agree. I don’t think I can talk about what I called “experience”. In so doing either I have to admit to the existence of other things to contrast it with, or I talk in tautologies: “Experience is infinite. Experience is without characteristics.” Etc..

You say that I try––and succeed (“That’s fine. It’s good logic”)––in sidesteppping this difficulty. I disagree. I think, technically, I fail. There is the same sort of problem. In order that I be able to assert the dissolving together of two things (self and world) I must first of all assert their difference. But then, am I not contradicting myself? The conclusion of my argument is that self and world do not exist as separate entities, but my premise is that they do exist as separate entities.

Why does it “make(s) dialectical sense that such a mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive pair such as self and world could exist” ? Why does that make sense any more than, say, an undivided existence? It’s not that it necessarily makes any sense, it’s just that we are all––prephilosophically ––dualists.

The best we can do in philosophy, in trying to get at the the ultimate nature of Reality, is to identify the inevitably-present either contradictory or tautologous nature of any characterisation of it.

The structure of communication is the structure of Dualism. In communicating at all, Duality appears in all these forms: Mouth and Ear (mind and mind); Thought and Word; Subject and Predicate (within each proposition).

There can’t even be a notion of Reality, for surely “Reality” is only meaningful if it is possible to contrast it with something else, such as, say, illusion. But then you are conceding that there is something other than Reality.

I think this communication problem, and even communication with oneself––thinking––is a fundamental characteristic of philosophy as, say, it is practised on this forum. (What is the way forward? Not talking? Religion (though not necessarily with a god)? Endless attempts at clarification, endless disputation? I love talking about this stuff, but I am not convinced I am being virtuous in doing so.)


7. “Or if we introspect on dreams with accuracy, …”

As I said earlier, I don’t think you can introspect on your dreams. Indeed, given my understanding of experience, as expressed above (as Reality itself) and even possibly your notion of experience (the play of symbols), I don’t think you can introspect on experience of whatever kind.

Experience (according to my understanding) is seeing itself. It is not something that is seen. If something is able to be seen, or introspected on, or known, in the classic sense, then there must be something that sees, that intropects, that knows. If you think that experience can be introspected on, you are accepting dualism. If Experience is something that is seen, then there is something, a self, inside experience, looking at it. Or, if something is seen, then it is the world, and experience is the play of symbols about that world.

“So there is abundant evidence - both empirical and even phenomenological - that we can be fooled by the general assumption experience has no composite structure, no "bitty" complexity.”

Experience, subjective experience, is not something that is susceptible of empirical examination. You can’t see your seeing, and no-one else can either (a subject can’t see into the subjective experience of another subject).


8. “That makes no sense to me. If I am deaf and blind, …?”

I am not going to address here your particular counter-example. Though I know that it does indeed need addressing.

Here is a better analogy (I think): any experience is like a spatial coordinate. It is at once distinct from all other spatial coordinates but implies them too. This is like Buddhist dependent arising. Each part of experience is not excisable from the rest of it. It is not independent of the rest. But it is not identical to any other experience either. (And, if I can here appeal to your agreeing with me about parts and wholes: two experiences of the same person are not related to one another as two parts are related to one another in a whole.)

As a matter of fact I remain very puzzled about the complexity and non-complexity of experience. I think it is (metaphorically) between the two. I don’t think it is many things. If it were many things it would have to have breaks in it (according to my philosophical position). On the other hand I don’t think it is simple either; I don’t think it is one thing. The Buddhist notion of “dependent arising” expresses this ambivalence, though it too is opaque. Somehow––and I wish I could be clearer––each experience is at once separate from every other experience and implies it (every other) too. Or somehow each experience is at once distinguished from all others but, because at its heart it is nothing at all, or everything, it is also not distinguished from all others. Look at something for a long enough time, or say a word over and over again, and it melts away, or morphs into other things.

Experience is the name I am giving Reality, for the minute, and so my struggle to characterise experience is my struggle to characterise Reality. I can’t characterise it, and nor, I believe, can anyone. I can only say what it is not. And I say that it is not many things and that it is not one thing. I say it is neither complex nor simple.


9. “But what warrants you treating the pain as real, the rock as illusion?”

Didn’t understand your question here.

I think the pain is real and the seeing of the rock is real. I don’t think there is a rock independent of me. That is the illusion. We, as incorrigible though misguided believers in the complexity of our experience, believe in the complexity of our experience because we believe that our experience is of something (the world) and because we believe that that something is complex. I believe (falsely) that my seeing of the rock and my seeing of the tree are distinct experiences because I believe (falsely) that there is such a thing as the rock, independent of me, and such a thing as the tree, independent of me, and that the rock and the tree are independent of one another. With your example it goes like this: I believe (falsely) that my having the pain and my seeing the rock are experiences that are distinct from one another because I believe (falsely) that the pain is of the foot and the seeing is of the rock and that the foot and the rock are distinct from one another.


10. Your second post (of that day) I really have no understanding of. If you can be bothered I would be interested in hearing more.

I suppose you are not claiming that you are here precisely demonstrating how a complex world gets started; you are just trying to give me an idea of how it gets started, but I still don’t understand at all.

How was the world formed?

God divided the heavens from the earth, then he divided the earth up into sea and land, etc..

Yes but how did God get separated from His creation in the first place, in order to start making those divisions? I can understand how the cake gets cut up if you have a cake and a knife to begin with, but what I want to know is how did the knife get separated from the cake?

That’s what I am asking Aristotle, Hegel, Peirce and you.

“you have the division”

Why? How?

“…[a] thing moving apart from itself…”

How?

Thrilled to be examined in this way, but it's going to take me a week or so to respond.

On purely semantic grounds, you can know that there is something other than your experience.
Meanings just ain't in the head
— Putnam — jkop

Not quite sure of the connection between your remark and your quote. To take them separately:

Do you mean that because I use the word “experience” and because the word “experience” presupposes that there is something that it is of, I acquiesce in the proposition that there is an external world? As I say, the incommunicability of solipsism is a central and defining feature of it.

Putnam’s remark is (obviously) to do with the philosophical subject of meaning. This thread really isn’t (though there is no reason why it should not change its subject matter.) Putnam’s understanding of meaning assumes dualism: there are internal experiences, and external things that they mean. I reject dualism and so, I suppose, I reject Putnam’s understanding of meaning.

But that cuts both ways, doesn't it? If you want to make that argument, you're essentially saying that nothing can be said of experience, yet you're apparently saying quite a lot about it. If you think that, when you try to say something about experience, that of which you are talking about isn't experience, you're speaking nonsense. No? — Πετροκότσυφας

This remark is very much to the point.

You might think that I’m trying to have it both ways: I am saying both that you can’t say anything about experience and that you can.

Yes I do believe experience, or Reality, or the Truth––is unfathomable and unspeakable and indescribable. And that indeed there is a sense in which there is nothing you can say about it. But the position is not entirely hopeless: you can say what it is not. So I say, for example, that Experience is not divided, that it is not many things. Note that this does not say that Experience is one thing. (I also say that Experience is not one thing; it is not unified.)

All anyone who understands Reality as I understand it can do (in philosophy) to point people (including myself) towards the truth of things is to identify the self-contradictory natures of other conceptions of Reality.

You can also make tautological remarks about Experience. You can say things like, Experience is infinite. Experience is Reality. These remarks, though ultimately revealed as tautological, somehow have some explanatory value.

I think you answered that above. Experience is divided into bits by reflection and judgement. Or maybe it's something like a system? Interconnected parts forming a whole. — Πετροκότσυφας

I don’t think there are two things, an internal world, experience, and an external world. Nor do I think there are two things, an internal world and a self, something that “reflects” and “judges”. As soon as you posit a self, as it were further inside experience, you simultaneously (as it were to make room for it) push experience further out, making it external to the self, making it the world. (Forgive me if this paragraph is too metaphorical or too cryptic: I can try to elucidate it a bit if you want.)

Nor do I think Experience is a system. I don’t believe in parts and wholes. It seems to me that either two things are entirely separate, distinct and independent, in which case they do not form a whole. Or two things do form a whole, in which case they are not separate, distinct and independent. I think the notion of “part” is intrinsically contradictory. (Another unsupported, controversial assertion. But I am here just stating my beliefs, for what it's worth.)

Or one has to remain silent, maybe. — Πετροκότσυφας

A solipsist’s conception of Reality is indeed incommunicable, but so is a (true) non-solipsist conception of Reality. It is not just the solipsist that has this problem, but everyone.

Just to be Clear:

People’s responses have prompted me to try to defend solipsism. I am not however a solipsist. A solipsist is someone who believes only in himself (or herself) (sol: only + ipse: self). My philosophical position, as outlined in the OP, was that there was nothing other than experience, neither an external world nor a self, nor, indeed, in any selves. We usually picture experience (in a prephilosophical way) as something between a world and a self: there is me on the near side of it, practically a point, and a world on the far side of. My contention is that there is nothing that is experienced and nothing that experiences: there is only experience. (Of course the word “experience” suggests both a self and a world, but that is a trivial objection: it could be obviated by another choice of word.)

Nor do I contend that there is only my experience for the reason that I cannot experience anything other than my experience. I contend only (following others) that solipsism is not falsifiable: I cannot know that there is something other than my experience.

Barry Etheridge: I don’t know whether I have made this sufficiently clear. There is me, the ordinary person, who cannot help believing in a world outside himself, other minds, his own mind, etc.. He is the one who writes these posts and who seeks the approbation of others. Quite another thing is my philosophical stance. I wish I could believe, with my heart, and with everything I did, in the truth of the philosophical stance that I here lay out, but try as I might, I can’t. Don’t physicalists have the same problem? Don’t they, in spite of their philosophical beliefs, find themselves talking and acting as if there were such things as mental things?

I think solipsism is something that you have to come upon yourself. If you were a solipsist, you would look at these lines in front of you and think, “These lines have no authorship; they just appeared in front of me, causelessly.” (The “in front of me” bit of that is just a figure of speech.)

Solipsism is an extreme philosophical position. It is as far removed from everyone’s everyday working picture of existence as a philosophical position can be. Any understanding that we have of how things are, whether it is expressed in the sciences, in literature, in religion––in language itself––is in direct contradiction with solipsism. There are thus those who seem to think (quite understandably) that the solipsist position is simply completely insane. Terrapin Station and Barry Etheridge, in their first posts, seem to be two of these. Most non-philosophers, of course, come into this category too.

I don’t know whether Terrapin Station and Barrye Etheridge really don’t (as it were) instinctively feel the force of solipsism, or whether they are just testing me, but I’ll assume the former. For want of something better, I’ll try an argument from authority. Think of those big names of the past, who, although not lost into the black hole of solipsism, nevertheless felt themselves sucked towards it, who at least expressed some distrust in the certainty of the existence of the external world, who expressed some version of the thought: What seems to be independent of me, a given, a fact turns out to have a great deal of me in it. Think of Descartes’ brain in a vat, Berkeley, Hume (all I know are my sensations), Kant (everything I experience is stamped with my mode of understanding), Schopenhauer (“‘The world is my representation’: this is a truth valid with reference to every living and knowing being, although man alone can bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness. If he really does so, philosophical discernment has dawned on him.” Early Wittgenstein (“What the solipsist means is quite correct, only he cannot say it.”). Feeling dubious about the existence of a world independent of the subject, feeling that you are trapped within your own mode of understanding is not the same as solipsism. But if you can understand something of what these philosophers were saying, it is perhaps not such a great leap to understand what the solipsist is saying.

Then there are those (sometimes the same people) who pick up on the contradiction inherent in the solipsist communicating his position. In order that there be communication, there must be something that speaks, something that is spoken and something that is heard. Mcdoodle, Metaphysician Undercover and bassplayer come into this category. They ask questions like, “How did I just get this post of yours then?” “Who are you talking to?”

Others pick up on the impossibility of solipsistic statements conveying information. They notice that all statements of the solipsistic position seem to be ultimately revealed either as tautologies or contradictions. Wosret picks up on a tautology. Barry Etheridge picks up on two contradictions.

I really don’t know how to answer these objections. I’ll try the following. (If Wayfarer and others thought my first post just stated provocative ideas as if they amounted to arguments, they’re not going to like it.) A world beyond, other than and independent of my experience is inconceivable, practically inconceivable, just as a round square is inconceivable. The notions of Ignorance and Knowledge are just other terms for a dualistic existence of––my experience––and what is not my experience. The idea that there are two kinds of inconceivability, practical inconceivability (like experiencing something outside my experience) and inconceivable because internally contradictory (like a round square). The subject of Epistemology assumes Dualism.

There are also those who think whilst it might be possible to not believe in things, it would be harder to not believe in people or experiences other than your own. Terrapin Station says, “But what you experience includes things like other people.” Metaphysician Undercover says “…do you not think that there are others beside you, such as me, who have experience as well as you? Doesn't your experience of communicating with others convince you that there are others? And doesn't this experience of communicating convince you that others have experience, similar to you having experience, but not the same as your experience?” I think I understand where you are coming from here. You are saying “Whilst I do not agree with you that there is nothing other than your experience, I concede that it might be difficult for you to believe in something utterly distinct from experience, such as a physical body, but it is surely less difficult for you to believe in another experience (another mind): something that is the same kind of stuff as your experience.” Of course I, as a ordinary person (not a philosopher) can’t help believing that there are other minds. The solipsist position however is rigorously sceptical: there is nothing other than my experience, of any kind, not even something that is like my experience.

But now to Apokrisis. Apokrisis (I think) feels the force of solipsism, as I do. He (or she?) says: “Note that I accept when it comes to an inquiry after the true nature of this reality, we are indeed epistemically stuck on the solipsistic side of the fence.”

Since he (or she?) is giving me the time of day, I shall expand a little on this stuff I am talking about: Experience.

“Experience” is the name I have been giving to Reality. I don’t like the word because it implies something that is experienced and something that experiences, things that I don’t think exist, but I have to have some word for it: “Experience” will have to do for the minute.

You take it as a given that Experience is complex. And why shouldn’t you? It certainly seems that way. And yet I don’t believe that it is complex.

To begin with, an epistemological argument. How do I know that there is any experience other than the experience I am having? What’s the way out of this extreme version of solipsism?

A second argument is the following. The apparent complexity of experience is accounted for by an external world which is complex, which is many things. That is to say that it is my mistaken belief in an external world (of many things) and my mistaken belief that my experience is of that external world, that makes me think that my experience is many things too. That is to say that I only think that there are two things, the experience of the seeing the rock and the experience of having the pain after kicking it, because I mistakenly believe that there is such a thing as the rock (independent of my experience) and such a thing as a foot (independent of my experience), each of which is independent of the other. I interpret my experience as many things on the back of my belief that there is a world of many things.

A related argument. I think (mistakenly) my experience is many things because I mistake an external world for my experience. My experience is not something that I can look at, that I can stand back from and assess, something bits of which I stand back from and compare with one another. My experience is not something I can leaf through, like the pages of a book, or something I can hold up to the light, like a film, and look up and down, at the various frames. As soon as I have that sort of relationship to something, that something is not experience, it is the external world. To put it metaphorically: the self that might assess the nature of an experience, as it is having the experience, is swallowed up in that experience, and is unable to characterise it. It’s only a moment later that the self can make some judgement of what that experience was like, but then that which is being judged is now in the past, and is no longer Experience: the mantle of what is actually experience has passed on to that act of judging. That which I might think to be my experience is actually something my experience is of.

Another argument. If experience is complex, then it is many things. If it is many things, where are the gaps in experience? Experience is one unbroken flow. How is it divided into different bits?

Another, which I shan’t flesh out. (You might find the presentation of this argument too perfunctory to bother with.) Each part of my experience implies all of it. Red implies blue and the whole colour spectrum. Colour implies texture, form, etc., the other components of the Visual. The Visual implies the Aural, the Olfactory, etc.. Each tiniest sensation implies the whole experiential panorama.

You also say this: “There is the experience that seems constrained by "reality" in a reliable fashion, and yet then also another set of experiences which are not (like dreams, imaginings, hallucinations). So you are positing a state of experiencing which is intrinsically complex.”

Of course Experience seems divided into inner stuff and outer stuff, between dreams, hallucinations, thoughts, etc., and perceptions and physical sensations, etc.. But really there is no division between the two. You can’t know if this is a dream, and when you are dreaming, you can’t know that it is dreaming. Again, to merely assert the point again, though in a non-epistemic way: what I dream is just as real as the waking world. When I am awake it is just as much a dream as when I am asleep. This belief in an inner and outer world is completely at odds with the monistically neutral ontology expressed in the OP.

“It would be simpler to have just the one and still simpler to have neither.”

I don’t think “neither” is more simple than one. More about my notion of Experience (and Reality): I think Experience is, in a way, nothingness. But not nothingness in the sense of absence, or in the sense of blackness, or silence, or air, but in the sense of––nothing determined, in the sense of everything piled on top of everything else (a metaphor), in the sense of having no characteristics because having all characteristics, in the sense of being identical to everythingness. I think Experience is like what Anaximander called apeiron. I think Experience is like chaos, what there was before Jehovah started dividing this from that.

A last thing about Experience: As I say, people think a major problem for solipsism (and it is certainly a defining feature of it) is its incommunicability. I don’t think that is an argument against it. Indeed, it persuades me of its truthfulness. The truth, the ultimate nature of Reality, as has been said, from Taoism to Wittgenstein––is indescribable, unknowable (in the ordinary sense, and so not even a candidate for communication), ineffable, etc..

But as you say, your experience is a very complex state. — apokrisis

The point you make is a good one, and one I hadn't thought of. But I don't say experience is a complex state. I say it is not many things, and so not complex. (I don't say it is simple either, that is to say one thing.) These assertions of course require their own defence, which I shan't do now, but if I say that experience is not complex, am I then entitled to invoke Ockham (or Occam)?

Occam's razor in particular is a principle that could only apply if we believe already in the kind of physical reality in which the complex is grounded in something simpler. — apokrisis

Why only if we believe already in a physical reality? Why can't it apply if we believe already in any kind of reality in which the complex is grounded in something simpler?

People asking about solipsism: mcdoodle, Bassplayer, Terrapin Station and Barry Etheridge:

You’ve taken me by surprise: you ask about solipsism as if you had never encountered it before. I thought the arguments for and against solipsism were rehearsed in these fora to the point of tedium. Maybe you ask me just out of politeness. The argument of the solipsist is simply: I can’t know if there is anything other than my experience, because all I ever encounter is my experience. But I’ll mount a proper defence of solipsism in a couple of days. I need to do a bit of research; I’ve only got as far as Wikipedia so far. In the meantime: I thought the main problems with solipsism were 1. that it was neither verifiable nor falsifiable. I can prove neither that thereis something outside my experience nor that there isn’t: in either case, in order to do I so, I should have to step outside my experience and ascertain whether or not there were anything there, something that of course I cannot do, 2. There is no reason to suppose that my experience has anything to do with a self, 3. Even if what the solipsist believes is true, he can’t proselytise about it. 4. Solipsism and Material Realism somehow coincide. I’ll have to explain what I mean about this later.

Bassplayer:

As to your remark about “one big consciouness”: I certainly believe there is only one consciouness. I don’t think it has anything to do with this body typing now at its computer. That is just a part of it, just as this cup is, this table is, these shapes on the screen in front of me (what you said to me):

“If you believe there is no world beyond your experience then why have I just experienced your post? Unless I am just a figment of your imagination, or maybe you are a figment of mine. :)

Having said that, I am starting to believe we all might be part of one big consciousness. So it's possible our experiences are connected in some way.”

Wuliheron:

I think Materialists and all other philosophers are just as subject to vanity, self-obsession, self-love, etc. as solipsists are.

Look at this (from the Solipsism entry on Wikipedia):

“Solipsists may view their own pro-social behaviors as having a more solid foundation than the incoherent pro-sociality of other philosophies. Indeed, they may be more pro-social because they view other individuals as actually being a part of themselves. Furthermore, the joy and suffering arising from empathy is just as real as the joy and suffering arising from physical sensation. They view their own existence as human beings to be just as speculative as the existence of anyone else as a human being.”

Wayfarer:

You’re right, I am fairly philosophically uninformed. ––So inform me. You say there are no arguments in my post. Prima facie there are three of them (The epistemological one, Ockham’s Razor, and the one about Number.) Why aren’t they arguments? Inform me.

Thanks for the compliment on my writing but I am chagrined to be on the receiving end of that good Truman Capote quote.

You ought to like the implications of my thinking (I’ll call it that if it doesn’t merit the title of “theory”). I looked at your profile and saw that Zen is something you like. This is from the Solipsism article on Wikipedia:

"Some solipsists believe that some tenets of eastern philosophies are similar to solipsism. Taoism and several interpretations of Buddhism, especially Zen, teach that the distinction between self and universe is arbitrary, merely a habit of perception and an artifact of language. This view identifies the unity of self and universe as the ultimate reality. Zen holds that each individual has 'Buddha Mind': an all-pervading awareness that fills their entire existence, including the 'external' world."