And who claims that anything interacts with nothing? — Terrapin Station

I didn't claim someone did. Relevant quote:

You're reading it Aspie-like so that it's suggesting that to you. That's not the idea. — Terrapin Station

It would be nice if you took the habit of clarifying the point you want to make, rather than letting your interlocutors attempt to guess it through your isolated questions. Personally I don't like discussions going that way, and I have noticed others who don't either. I used to think you were a man of few words, but then you lectured me extensively above on how you didn't like my use of the word "independent", so I'm thinking you can do better than single-question posts to make your point clearer. You seemed to suggest in your first post that my use of the word "independent" led to a straw man, it would be nice if you could clarify that, because I don't want to make another detailed reply only to be met with another short question that ignores the substance of what I develop.

That being said, to address what I think you're going to suggest next (I could be wrong about that since I'm just guessing what your point is), many people see the world as being made of things, take out all humans and the Earth is still there, take out everything except a rock and the rock is still there, take out everything except one atom and that atom is still there, take out everything except an electron and that electron is still there, with its properties of charge and mass, things would still exist the way they do, the laws of the universe would remain the same, and so on. I explained why I see that view as mistaken. A related view I see as mistaken is the idea that we can predict the far future of the universe from the laws of physics we use, because again these "laws" are missing something essential about the whole.

"independent" isn't referring to "not influenced or controlled in any way" per the laws of physics, for example, because then there would obviously not be any independent thing. — Terrapin Station

That's how I choose to use the word "independent" in this context, several others have understood it, are we arguing over semantics again?

Call it however you want, my point is nothing interacts with nothing, rather a thing interacts with other things which themselves interact with other things and so on, so there is an interacting whole, and so if instead of considering the whole we single out a thing, and model how it appears to interact with some other things, and then say that the whole is governed by these interactions, then we're not actually modeling the whole, we're modeling a world we made up that matches the whole in some limited ways but not at all in some other ways, we're missing essential parts of the whole, and that's the issue I'm pointing out, fundamental physics does not model our world, it models a world physicists made up.

But the issue goes beyond fundamental physics, as soon as we generalize apparent interactions between some things to the whole world, we're not modeling the world. A rock is not just some thing lying there on the ground, the interaction between the rock and some being can provoke thoughts, perception, feeling, imagination, depending on the rock's position relative to the rest of the world, and depending on how the being relates to the rest of the world, there is much more there than an independent thing. And if you fail to take the whole into account, and just see a rock as a shape/color/density/composition, you're missing a lot of the picture, you're not seeing how it is connected to everything else.

However if you start looking at how thoughts/perception/feeling/imagination are connected with everything else, you might start noticing that they are not just influenced by everything else, they also influence it. And that's the essential part that you miss when you look at individual things as if they had independent existence, as if they were disconnected from the whole we belong to.

"Things" require thingers to thing them !
The apparent persistence and independence of 'things' is promoted by the abstract persistence and independence of the words we use to conceptualise aspects of what we call 'the world'. — fresco

I agree!

Also the idea that we belong to a world independent from us seems self-defeating, because our thoughts belong to that world, so what we think about that world is influenced by that world in some unknown way, we don't think about it from an independent outside vantage point, so we think about a world but we don't think about the supposed independent world that we belong to, so we don't know anything about it, and so we can't know that we belong to one.

I agree with your general thrust. However, the interaction of things does not in and of itself define whether they are "independent." And that is especially true when one contrasts independent with dependent. I may well interact with my television remote, but that does not make me dependent upon my television remote. And I could choose to never interact with it be independent of it. — Arne

You are not independent from it if you see it, or if you think about it, interaction doesn't reduce to the feeling of touch. What about a remote that you've never seen and never thought about? People somewhere designed it, others built it, others use it, which influences what they do, what they think about, which influences what others do and think about, which influences the world, which ends up having an influence on you.

"Independent" doesn't imply "incorrigibly isolated and not capable of interaction." — Terrapin Station

Dictionary definition of independent: "not influenced or controlled in any way by other people, events, or things"

So a rock is not an independent thing.

But the truly sad thing is that even if these phenomena are real, they are merely assuming that it would go against current science. It could simply be forces, phenomena, realms, whatever, that haven't been detectable, so far, by scientific measuring, and which do not contradict what we know about other phenomema they have been able to track.

Some says ghosts are real. Scientists immediately make assumptions about the necessary ontology of ghosts, then conclude that it goes against current science. But within there own history, changes have come that put earlier models into more restricted frames (but do not eliminate them) or change some of the metaphysics of the science but not the use of the former knowledge - say in the example of Einstein demonstrating false assumptions in Newton, but not at all reducing the effectiveness of Newtons theorums in their contexts. And their assumption that it must be a binary winner take all clash is as radically speculative as they accuse their opponents of being. — Coben

Yes, I think this is a consequence of the materialist mindset that permeates the scientific community. And of the implicit belief that the important things are already known and we just have to work out the details, measure the variables in the models with more precision and so on. As you point out these beliefs are not treated as scientific hypotheses that can be tested or challenged, which is one example of the non-objectivity of scientific practice. So where do ghosts fit in that view? Since they don't have evidence of them with their usual instruments, and they try to explain them within a materialist mindset, then they immediately conclude that ghosts are imagination, or hallucinations, or delusions, in other words a specific pattern of brain activity. Without assuming materialism and without assuming that we already know the important things, there is a lot more room for inquiry.

Scientific theories are basically algorithms that allow to compute predictions from observations. To say that ghosts are inconsistent with these algorithms would be to assume that these algorithms are valid everywhere and at all times and for everyone, whereas an open-minded scientific inquiry would make no such assumption. The science of our era looks more like religion to me. I believe, or at least I hope, that people will wake up to this, if we don't we'll just keep repeating the mistakes of the past, with people attempting to impose their religion onto others, waging ideological wars, except next time we'll have more powerful technology to destroy one another.

Perhaps your writings made while under the influence of hallucinatory substances do not make sense now because they did not make sense then. Altering your mind does not allow you to see things that you cannot see without the altering, or make sense of writings that you cannot makes sense of any other way.

Rather, you are seeing things that are not there, and making sense of nonsensical language use. — creativesoul

Talking past each other. Calling these substances "hallucinatory" is a point of view. You can choose to believe they are hallucinations, or you can believe they are more real than what we usually call reality, which is the feeling that many people get when they try them. I think there is no way you can understand what it's like if you have never tried. You call it altering, I call it seeing through.

What I have written while on them is not nonsensical at all, it is the kind of stuff that some spiritual people say, on the surface it doesn't sound deep, but there is much more to it than the surface. Except we usually only see the surface.

It is quite sad to get this sort of reaction, considering that I am talking about a substance (psilocybin) that is not addictive, not dangerous, and that has improved the lives of many people who have taken it.

Here's a peer-reviewed study published in Nature, on the effect of this substance for treatment-resistant depression: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13282-7

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after treatment with psilocybin (serotonin agonist) for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Quality pre and post treatment fMRI data were collected from 16 of 19 patients. Decreased depressive symptoms were observed in all 19 patients at 1-week post-treatment and 47% met criteria for response at 5 weeks

Read that again: out of 19 patients who had depression that resisted treatment, all of them had decreased depressive symptoms one week after taking that substance. Would you really expect nonsensical hallucinations to have that kind of effect, or might it be the sign that there is something more profound going on?

You want to be a good scientist? Give it a try and report your results. It is not addictive, it is not dangerous for your health (as long as you do it in a safe place), and you might come to realize things that you can't even imagine now.

Just curious what those experiences and observations were. — Terrapin Station

I can try talking about some of them, but I can't guarantee they will have the same effect on you, considering they were fundamentally personal experiences, and words only give a vague idea.

When I was a kid I used to be impressed that scientists have found laws of the universe. I was thinking, how did they do it? How did they get access to these laws? I struggled for a long time trying to understand how Newton found his laws of motion, how he found for instance that Force is equal to Mass times Acceleration, how did he find such a simple law relating these seemingly very different concepts, what does it mean that force is equal to mass times acceleration? And eventually I realized that Newton's laws weren't laws of the universe, they are definitions, mathematical definitions of the concepts of force and mass, in themselves they don't say anything about the universe. That realization really changed things for me, because then I started being really skeptical of what I was taught, since I had to struggle on my own to understand that teachers were the ones responsible for my confusion by calling a definition a law of the universe.

Several years later I had a similar experience, but this time with the concept of curved spacetime in Einstein's relativity, teachers would say for instance that gravitation is the curvature of spacetime, and that bodies are attracted gravitationally because they follow straight lines in curved spacetime, but again this was a misconception. Curved spacetime is not a cause of motion, it is a mental concept, that theory was formulated in a way that gravitational bodies follow straight lines in curved spacetime, but we could as well formulate a theory that is as accurate where there is no such thing as curved spacetime. And so curved spacetime cannot be an objective cause of what we observe, it is a mathematical model, a model in the mind, a tool of thought.

Then I started reading philosophy of science, in particular Feyerabend and Lakatos helped me understand that a theory can never be verified nor falsified: if an observation seems to contradict a theory, it is always possible to save the theory by saying that the discrepancy is due to an invisible phenomenon that wasn't taken into account (for instance like astrophysicists and cosmologists do nowadays to account for the difference between Einstein's relativity and observations, by invoking the unseen presence of dark matter and dark energy), or due to errors in the instruments of measurement. In other words, a set of observations can always be made consistent with any theory. Even the theory that the Earth is flat can be made consistent with observations and be considered as scientific, for instance by modeling the motion of light in such a way that Earth appears round to us even though it is flat, our fundamental theories of physics would have to be formulated differently but they could be made to have the same accuracy than the ones we have now. So fundamentally, any belief is compatible with observations, which undermines the idea that science can tell us anything about an objective reality.

I have noticed that what I believe shapes the way I see the world in a profound sense, it shapes what I perceive, what I focus on, how I interpret what I see. So I have stopped seeing what I perceive as the image of some objective reality, rather I see that I am involved in shaping what I experience. I have also noticed that what I experience is shaped by others, and what others experience is shaped by me to some extent, we're not just some passive beings seeing an outside world that doesn't depend on us, we are profoundly involved.

I have had experiences that I wouldn't classify as perception, or feeling, or thought, or imagination, it was just something else, something I wouldn't think existed if I hadn't experienced it. And it is pretty much impossible to communicate, because I cannot compare it to anything, so to others who haven't had this kind of experience it doesn't exist, but to me it exists. And so it is possible that some people have experiences that they couldn't communicate to me in a way I could understand, in a similar way that someone who has always been blind cannot understand colors. I can't say it doesn't exist just because I haven't experienced it.

And then I had psychedelic experiences, which opened myself up to the idea that there is much more than what we usually call the universe. The best way I could describe these experiences, is that while I was having them I could understand things that I am not able to understand the rest of the time, I could see things that I do not have the ability to see or even to imagine the rest of the time. If 10 years ago someone had told me what I am saying now, I would have thought they were just hallucinating. But these experiences weren't hallucinations, they were much more profound than anything else. I remember telling myself that by the time the effect wears down I would stop understanding what I understood then. And indeed, there are things I wrote down during these experiences that have lost their meaning and depth, if I read them now they just sound cheesy, because I am not able to understand them anymore, I only have a vague feeling that remains, but on psychedelics I do understand, and they are more profound than anything else, and science cannot even begin to grasp it, what we usually see with the eyes doesn't even scratch the surface. Which reminds me that I promised myself I would take some again, it's been a few years, it's long overdue. I remember it is worth it, in a way that cannot be overstated.

If we're talking past each other or living in different realities, then how can you say that we are disagreeing? Agreements and disagreements would be incoherent. Your view loses any distinction between delusions and any other kind of thought. And if we can only talk past each other, then what is the point of talking at all? Why should anyone care about your's or anyone else's subjective "truths"?

Its so funny to watch you claim that truths are subjective while in the same post you go about telling how it is for all of us not just yourself. From my point of view you are simply maintaining your own delusion of having your cake and eating it too.

All you have done this entire thread is render your own posts and ideas as useless because they don't apply to anyone else's reality except yours. — Harry Hindu

There can be a limited common ground that gives a basis for disagreements, our use of the same language is a common ground, even if we often don't mean the same thing when we use the same word.

You talk of delusions, delusion is defined as a belief that contradicts reality, the concept of delusion presupposes a mind-independent reality, right now I don't believe in a mind-independent reality so to me the concept of delusion is meaningless, see the problem? That's just one example out of many. There is not only talking past each other, but there is a lot of it.

I'm not saying how it is for everyone in an objective sense, I am saying how it is for everyone from my point of view. In my point of view, some people agree with me because their reality is similar to mine, and some disagree because their reality has a lot of differences. Others may agree with that, or they may disagree.

That doesn't make talking with one another and sharing ideas pointless. Precisely because in my view, our realities are not disconnected, they can influence one another, and through speech we can get an idea of the commonalities and the differences. But when there are too many differences discussion becomes difficult, because one side uses concepts that the other finds meaningless, because I feel misunderstood and I see that my attempts to make myself understood do not work, and when that's the case it usually doesn't lead anywhere to keep trying, it ends up being an endless debate on semantics and at the end it doesn't feel like we understand one another any better, the kind of debate that ends in "let's agree to disagree" or in some heated exchange because of the frustration in not being understood.

I don't have any hard feelings against anyone who may disagree with me, I'm just hoping I can offer thoughts that some people find interesting. I know some people will find what I say useless, whatever we do or say there will always be some who find it useless, but I believe and hope that some people can get something out of it. If I didn't see a point I wouldn't do it.

The idea of not weighing in on the possibility seems completely lost. It is as if they must draw a conclusion now. And that conclusion will be in the negative.. — Coben

Indeed, if they don't see how it could be integrated to their models then they find it more convenient to assume that the anomalous phenomena are hallucinations or delusions of those who experienced them, or to assume that eventually these phenomena will be explained in some mundane way that doesn't challenge their fundamental assumptions. People who spend their whole career working within a set of assumptions don't want to see these assumptions challenged, because their career depends on them, so they will fight to defend them no matter the evidence.

A quote from Max Planck comes to mind: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it".

Indeed. Or rather, usually there is some sort of evidence, but the scientific consensus chooses not to interpret it as evidence. It also used to be scientific consensus that continental drift doesn't exist, or that we would never reach the Moon. The naïve view is to say that now we know better, but the problem is throughout history the scientific consensus thought they knew better. Now there is the scientific consensus that dark matter exists, even though there is evidence that it isn't the case, but the consensus chooses to interpret that evidence as problems to solve, supposedly the fundamentals are settled and it's only a matter of working out the details. It's also a historical constant that those going against the consensus are ridiculed and ostracized: there is strong incentive to continue developing the consensus, and little incentive to question it.

If those who maintain the consensus refuse to challenge their fundamental assumptions, outside ideas do not get through to them. Evidence that the model doesn't fit some observations is seen as a sign that there are some variables to tweak in the model, or that those who made these observations are crazy or hallucinated, but not as a sign that the model needs to be fundamentally changed. In the end it is not some outside truth that determines the consensus, it is people.

Personally, I am convinced that we can deduce from the cogito - despite problems with "Who is this 'I'?", and so forth - that something has actual (Objective) existence. Therefore Objective Reality exists, and that something is all or part of it. — Pattern-chaser

I agree that I can say that something exists, but I wouldn't call that existence necessarily objective. Because to me, objective existence means existing independently of minds. Now, if there are only minds, there is nothing that exists independently of minds, so in this case nothing has objective existence (not even minds, which wouldn't exist independently of minds).

If instead we say that what is objective is what everyone agrees on, I agree with you that something exists, but I'm not even sure that everyone would agree on that. There are people who claim that consciousness doesn't exist, so it wouldn't be such a stretch for them to claim that nothing exists. Also, it is an experience in itself to have the realization (or reach the conclusion) that something exists: if someone hasn't had that experience, if they have never thought about it, then in a sense "something exists" doesn't exist to them. The concept of existence might not even have a meaning to some people, in a way that we couldn't understand without living in their reality. So even there I'm tempted to see "something exists" as subjective, it's probably not a popular point of view, but it's mine :)

Well, guys, I have found people who agree with me, and people who disagree with me in a way that it feels like we're living in different realities and talking past each other, so I rest my case :wink:

It seems different people have different ideas about truth, objectivity, reality, what can be known and what can't be known. There are statements I strongly disagree with, and I attempt to explain why I disagree, but then the back and forth shows me that my point doesn't get through. But I'm sure that on the other side it must feel like their point isn't getting through either.

Which leads me again to the idea that truth is personal, we all have our own world view, and when we don't understand each other we realize that we don't have the same world view. But I think it's fine to let world views coexist, rather than attempt to convert the other guys and say they are wrong or stupid if they don't agree with our own view.

My world view has changed profoundly over the years, I used to be a naïve realist, and back then probably no discussion could have shaken me out of that view, I would have seen idealists as a weird bunch who got lost in their mind, but then some experiences and observations made me realize I was mistaken. And sometimes words aren't enough to provoke these experiences in others. I wouldn't say that I'm right and they're wrong though, we just have a different reality.

This problem, of course, is due to the conflation of truth and meaning. The 'official' semantics of our shared language is too coarse and inflexible to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of every person's bespoke use and interpretation of their national language. One can imagine a futuristic society in which each person's private dialect of their national language is publicly translatable into every other person's private dialect. If in addition the causes of every person's utterances were also understood, then every utterance in the language could be publicly interpreted as being necessarily correct. — sime

You seem to implicitly assume an objective reality that can be somehow accessed, referring to 'causes' as something objective that everyone would agree on, to personal dialects as being objectively translatable into one another. How could we agree on causes of what we experience if we don't agree on what we experience? How could we agree on an objective translation if in the first place we don't have access to what other people experience?

We use language as a rough way to try to see what others experience, if we had direct access to what others experience then your idea would be practical, but we don't, and that's the problem. Seeing the problem as a mere limitation of our current language is masking the deeper issue, it isn't a limit of our language, it is a limit of our ability to know what others experience. Words do not convey what others experience, they convey what we believe they experience, from our first-person point of view, making our language more precise wouldn't change that.

If there are experiences some people have that other people don't, why would the people who don't have these experiences agree that these experiences exist? For all they know those who claim having such experiences could be lying, or they could interpret these experiences falsely in terms of other experiences they've had. And that's not a limitation of our current language, that's a fundamental limitation of us not being omniscient. It seems to me that if we have different experiences, then we can't find something that everyone agrees on, or maybe everyone could agree on something temporarily but later on some would realize that they didn't have the same thing in mind when they were agreeing.

Maybe you will come to agree with me on this, but if you don't then that would only serve to support the idea that truth is personal. Until we find an example of truth that everyone agrees on, the concept of truth that applies to everyone is merely an idea that some people have.

Don't forget to answer: "You'd say that you're more certain that the experiences stem from a world that doesn't exist aside from our minds?" — Terrapin Station

I don't have a third-person perspective to know for sure, but then the very idea of a third-person perspective stems from a mind. My view is everything is mind-dependent in some way. Your view is that there are mind-independent things. In my view you can't use the mind-dependent concept of mind-independent things to prove that there are mind-independent things.

What you see as objective facts, I see as ideas that some minds try to impose on others based on mind-dependent criteria.

Yes, as far as truth is concerned, perspectivism is unavoidable. But that isn't to say that I necessarily believe in the possibility of first-person centered epistemology. A far as epistemology is concerned, the 'third-person' subject seems unavoidable, in so far as knowledge is communicable representation. — sime

I think the third-person perspective gives rise to a lot of confusion though, because it gives the impression that what we say applies to everyone and everything, instead of simply to the people who share a given truth. And then people fight each other to prove that their truth is right and others are wrong, to make their truth prevail. If we stopped having that third-person perspective, I think there are a lot of things we could solve, a lot of problems that would disappear. We would listen more, and impose less.

I can enumerate for you an infinite number of objectively true propositions. I will start with one:

$(P∧(P→Q))→Q$

This is objectively true. It is objective because I can easily create a truth-table to show its relevant truth-conditions for any truth-value assignments for $P$ and $Q$. It is true because this sentence is true on any possible truth-value assignments. That is, it is a logical truth.

Now let $M1,M2,M3,…$ be an enumeration of infinitely many propositions with different contents. It is easy to see that:

$((P∧(P→Q))→Q)∨M1$

Is a logical truth and, so, both objective and true. Further,

$(((P∧(P→Q))→Q)∨M1)∨M2$

is also objective and true for the same reasons. — Kornelius

The issue I see with calling these objective truth is, I am sure this is true to you, and I am sure you think this is true in general, but what if I don't know what these symbols mean? What if these arrows, chevrons and parentheses do not evoke anything in me beyond shapes drawn on a screen? Then these statements wouldn't be true to me, they would be drawings, and while I could say it is true to me that I see these drawings, I couldn't say these drawings refer to some independent truth.

Now you may say that I would simply have to learn about propositional logic and what these symbols mean in it, and that once I do I too would see the truth of these propositions, but propositional logic was created by other people, and I too could create my own system in which I assign truth to such or such proposition, but that doesn't mean that the truth of these propositions would extend beyond the system they were formulated in.

Because the way I see it, such a system was created out of perceptions and thoughts, and it doesn't apply to people who have perceptions/thoughts incompatible with it, or who haven't created that system in their mind (I see learning as an act of creation in one's mind).

It seems inevitable to me that truth is personal, that we can't find a truth that applies to everyone, unless we force everyone to agree with our personal truth or silence in some way those who disagree, but then we wouldn't create objective truth, we would create the illusion of it. (by objective truth I refer to a truth that would apply to everyone)

I can equally generate many empirical sentences that are both objective and true. For example, "More than two lions exist in Africa at this moment", where we can qualify "this moment" with the precise time of my writing. There are so many propositions of this sort. — Kornelius

What if some great catastrophe occurred in Africa very recently and I am not yet aware of it and it turns out all lions are dead? Or what if I consider that it is meaningless to talk about what goes on in a place "at this moment" if I am not in that place? Or what if I have never seen a lion and I consider that what I haven't seen doesn't exist? People could very well disagree with that proposition in a reasonable way according to them, and with other propositions of this sort.

Wait, is that telling me why you'd pick one option over other options? — Terrapin Station

It's supposed to. I find that option no less plausible than believing the experiences we have in common stem from a world that exists independently of us. I am sure that I have experiences, I am confident that others have some experiences in common with me, I am less certain that these experiences stem from a world independent of us (as in a world that doesn't depend on minds).

I have evidence of mind (my own), I don't have evidence of something that doesn't depend on mind.

And the reason that you'd pick that option is? — Terrapin Station

Our concept of a material world stems from experiences we have in common. If you are willing to believe that your subjective experiences depend on you (in the sense they stop when you die), what prevents you from believing that your shared experiences depend on you and those you share them with?

From where are you getting the notion of someone positing "passive observers of a world that doesn't (in any way) depend on us"? — Terrapin Station

It doesn't matter. What we call the material world can also be interpreted as a shared imagination, under this interpretation the existence of a rock depends on us. That shared imagination doesn't stop if you die, but it would stop if we all die. Why would your imagination depend on you and our shared imagination not depend on us? Why would your personal experiences depend on you, and our shared experiences not depend on us?

An Objective statement is one that correctly describes some aspect of Objective Reality, i.e. that which actually is. A statement correctly identified as Objective cannot be challenged or doubted because there is no possibility of it being wrong. And that is the "more" you asked for. :smile:

The silliness comes in when we remember that Objective statements cannot be correctly made by humans, except to say that Objective Reality exists. — Pattern-chaser

But we can even challenge or doubt that "Objective Reality exists", so "objective truth exists" is not an objective truth, it is a personal truth.

If we can't find any statement that cannot be challenged or doubted then what use do we have for the concept of objective truth? It seems to me that the concept is used by people who want to impose their personal truth on others, as if they had a transcendent access to a supposed objective reality beyond perception. The statement "I have access to objective reality" could be challenged itself.

And if we say "There is no objective truth is an objective truth" then we're contradicting ourselves, so again it seems to me the concept of objective truth is incoherent, or at least very problematic, we'd be better off simply talking about personal truth, and not pretend that our personal truths somehow apply to everyone and everything.

Because we're no longer infants. Our brains have developed past a stage where we believe that we're the entirety of the world, so that if we cover ourselves in a blanket, we've effectively disappeared, where we believe that the world is centered on us, and where we are not capable of understanding different from ourselves. — Terrapin Station

Or maybe as we develop even more we realize that we are not passive observers of a world that doesn't depend on us, that we are actively involved in constructing our idea of the world from our perceptions and thoughts, that what we call imagination or dreams or spiritual experiences can be interpreted as perceptions of a world rather than as internal visions of a brain in a material world, that what we call the material world could be interpreted as a shared imagination, and then why would imagination depend on us but not shared imagination?

Why would the existence of something like a rock hinge on anything about us? — Terrapin Station

Why wouldn't it? That we perceive something that we call a rock does not imply that this rock has an outside existence that doesn't depend on us. Which may be hard to see if you remain stuck in a physicalist mindset, seeing minds as parts of a universe rather than the universe as a part of minds. Outside of a physicalist mindset, physical death does not necessarily imply death of the mind. I think you finding idealism to be stupid has more to do with you being a fervent physicalist than with idealism being objectively stupid.

ultimately it is environmental feedback, experience and reason that determines an individual's concept of truth — sime

Do you then agree with the idea that truth is individual-dependent and not something that has independent existence?

The sentence "The sky is orange" is objective. It is objective because it is truth-evaluable. It happens to be false, but so be it. — Kornelius

That's the thing, is it true that "The sky is orange" is false? What if I'm watching a sunset and I see the sky orange? What if someone perceives differently and see the sky orange when others see it blue? What if someone doesn't perceive a sky (in which case the sentence wouldn't be truth-evaluable for that person)? How could we say that "The sky is orange" is false for everyone? How could we find anything that is necessarily false (or true) for everyone?

My point is we can't find anything that is true for everyone. And that even the sentence "we can't find anything that is true for everyone" wouldn't be true for everyone. And so on in an infinite regress.

Some people call psychedelic experiences more real than reality.

Some other animals take psychedelics too, and seemingly not for the sake of eating.

In my view there is a huge vastness to explore that hasn't been explored, and what we usually call the universe is a tiny part of it.

The crazies of an era can be the sane people of another.

Yes, we need objective truth. That is why we have science, engineering, philosophy and common sense. — Frotunes

Where is objective truth in science, engineering, philosophy, common sense? Scientific laws change through history. Some philosophers of science say that scientific laws aren't even an approximation to truth, they are just working models. You may assume that there is an underlying objective reality, but if you assume it it isn't objective truth, it is an assumption.

Objectivity is basic, in areas which it is applicable, like journalism, history, jurisprudence, and many more. For instance, you wouldn't read an account of the Holocaust by a Holocaust-denier, as his/her opinions would clearly be tendentious. If your daughter was in a talent quest, you wouldn't expect to be called as a judge. And so on. Yes, they're perfectly mundane examples, but that's part of the point. — Wayfarer

You could read an account by a Holocaust-denier to attempt to understand why they think differently about it. There are plenty of examples of conflicts of interest in all sorts of domains, including judges in a contest who have an incentive to make a particular contestant win. People usually expect more of objective truth than simply "something the majority agrees on".

What is meant by "access"? I suppose in some sense of "access" everyone has access to the objective truth, and in another sense, they don't. — PossibleAaran

The ability to formulate that objective truth in a language, to say what it is or to give an example of it. But if we say that something is objective truth and some people disagree, then how is that an objective truth?

You first need to distinguish truth from objectivity; the difference being that the latter is dependent upon linguistic convention. — sime

Cambridge dictionary defines truth as "the real facts about a situation, event, or person". Who gets to determine what the real facts are? If I say what the real facts are and others disagree, who is right? The same dictionary defines objective as "based on real facts". If we say that the real facts are determined through social consensus, then truth is a social consensus.

First re "If no one can access it, it's an idea."

Say that there's a particular rock on a planet a million light years away. It turns out that we're the only technological creatures in the universe, and some catastrophe wipes us out soon. Is that rock on a distant planet just an idea? — Terrapin Station

If we have detected that rock in some way then we could access it in some way. If we haven't detected that rock, then some people would say it makes no sense to say this rock exists as anything more than an idea. Some people think that we aren't creatures in a universe, but that the universe is in minds, and in that view there is no sense in which the universe exists without minds.

What is objective is the truth. It is objective that the Earth is a sphere, not flat, despite what people believed, or still believe. — Harry Hindu

What is the difference between truth and belief? Cambridge dictionary defines belief as "the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true". You're implicitly saying that there is a true way to differentiate between truth and belief. You're saying it is true that the Earth is a sphere, but many people say it is true that the Earth is an ellipsoid, and many other people say that it is true the Earth is neither a sphere nor an ellipsoid but something that approximates these shapes, and many other people say it is true that the Earth is flat. Who is right? Who is stating a truth and who is stating a belief?

If I were to say that there is only objective truth, am I right or wrong in disagreeing with you? — Harry Hindu

If I disagree with you, how is your truth objective?

Your beliefs are such that they exist independent of what I think or believe about them. — Harry Hindu

Solipsists do not agree with that, so how are my beliefs objective?

If there is no objective truth, then why do so many people on this forum feel the need to quote other philosophers as if those other philosophers hold some truth about others than just the philosopher being quoted? — Harry Hindu

Because they agree with these philosophers, they share the same point of view about something, or they believe they do. This is my view, my personal truth. If you disagree with me, then you have a different truth, and we're not sharing the same truth, so it isn't objective.

An Objective Truth is true. It cannot be challenged or doubted. It's a lot more than "something everyone agrees on". — Pattern-chaser

If it cannot be challenged or doubted then it is something everyone agrees on, no? If it is more than "something everyone agrees on", then what is this "more"?

Do you perhaps mean experiencing when you refer to Process and truth when you refer to Product? You are more drawn to experiences than to some ideal of truth?

You are more about experiencing without forcing your experiences to fit into a preconceived construction, as opposed to attempting to fit all your experiences into a single construction, into a finished product?

I feel like throwing my life away at the moment. I have no reason to live, (pretty much disabled for life given my diagnosis), and looking forward to death. I have my mother whom I don't want to impose more grief on; but, life seems so uninteresting, that I am seriously contemplating suicide. It has been on my mind for some 15 years now, and it's getting really tiring waiting on death to knock on my door. — Wallows

You know what my point of view on mental illnesses is, even if you don't agree with it. I don't believe you are disabled for life, and I don't believe you have to see it that way either.

Is there really no way to change the lawyer at this point? Or to speak directly to the judge?

I remember reading some posts of yours where you mentioned that you were happy with how you lived your life with your mother. It seems to me that it is this whole prospect of moving to a different unfamiliar place that is making you feel down at the moment.

But even if moving turns out to be inevitable, just wait. Wait and see how it's gonna be. You don't know where that will be yet. Maybe you will like it. Maybe the change of scenery will change you in a way you don't expect or can't imagine now. Maybe you will meet some people there who will give you a different outlook on life.

Or fight right now for what you believe your mother and you deserve. If it isn't right that your father gets a 50/50 split, if you are convinced it isn't right, then don't agree to it, fight to make your voice heard. Your life doesn't have to depend on a bad lawyer, don't kill yourself because of a bad lawyer, because it seems like that's essentially what it boils down to right now.

Well, at this point I'm not even sure if our lawyer is on our side, given his attitude. — Wallows

That's certainly possible, there is an element of subjectivity in justice, you can get different results with different lawyers. I think your mother and you should try to pick a lawyer that you feel comfortable with, that you feel is on your side, and then it will be easier to bring the judge on your side too.

The way things are going in court, it looks like it will be a 50/50 split between both my mother and father. My mother and I live under the poverty level, and I'm not sure what will persuade the judge to give us a favorable share of the house. — Wallows

Why doesn't the following persuade the judge to give your mother a favorable share?

My father hasn't contributed a penny to pay for the mortgage of the house or any financial help since he divorced my mother some 15 years ago. My mother never got alimony or anything out of the divorce in another country — Wallows

I have created a new thread starting with your response, as it's tangential to the topic of this thread - is it OK if I post that? — Wayfarer

Sure if you want, but maybe I should get my thoughts together and expose my point of view in a more systematic way, comparing it with other mainstream world views, showing what problems it solves, addressing potential criticisms, otherwise I think my view can easily get misinterpreted/misrepresented, and then once that happens people start talking past each other and then the thread devolves into some heated debate on semantics that doesn't get anywhere.

Or maybe it's fine if you post it like that, if it isn't exposed systematically then that leaves more room for imagination, and that might give rise to new ideas, and I think there needs to be some dose of imagination to see that point of view.

How do you deal with the claim that this is simply relativism, that the only truth we can know is the truth 'for us'? — Wayfarer

I think I would have to write a treatise to get across what I try to get across here, but then is it worth it, would anyone read it? Though no one will read it if I don't write it.

There are a lot of ramifications to this point of view I have so I wouldn't call it "simply relativism", or rather by the time you get a good idea of my point of view I think you wouldn't associate it simply with the idea of relativism you have now.

There is a relativist core in this idea, but even if you call it relativism is this such a bad thing? I see truth as an ideal that we strive towards but never reach. Something absolutely certain that we hope to hang onto no matter what amidst the apparent unpredictability of existence. Many claim to have found truth, but what have they found? They are deeply convinced of something, they hang onto it no matter what, but is there anything more to truth than this? If others do not agree with their truth, is it that they do not see the truth, or that they see differently?

I see truth as something we create for ourselves. And that's my truth. Maybe others would agree with me if they saw what I see. Maybe if they saw what I see they would still hope that there is some truth out there that doesn't depend on us. But why this need for a truth that doesn't depend on us, why this need to get ourselves out of the equation? I see the belief in a truth outside of us as a blind spot in itself, neglecting ourselves. In believing in such a truth we see ourselves as not ultimately responsible for our actions, we can justify doing anything in the name of an absolute standard that doesn't depend on us. We see ourselves as a tool working for an outside cause, or as slaves to outside laws that dictate how we behave and how we ought to behave, the being is not anymore the important thing, it becomes relegated to the background, and the outside truth gets the spotlight, and then we forget that we have created it ourselves, that we have created this world, that we are responsible for how the world is. No outside truth is responsible, we are.

Now you can see that modern science in a sense is striving for that ‘common world’ also, which is the world of primary objects and forces that can be shown to be ‘the same for all observers’. This notion is elaborated in great detail on Thomas Nagel’s important book, The View from Nowhere (review here.) Again, the particular contribution of modern scientific method was to bracket out the individual, the subjective, by discerning what could be quantified and validated by all observers. Or that was the theory. But as Nagel says, ‘Among philosophers of mind, the prevalent form of objective blindness is a cult of the method of the physical sciences, which leads in extreme cases to the outright denial of subjectivity. — Wayfarer

I agree, thanks for the reference, I will check it out.

This is strongly connected to the original post. The faith you speak of, is the faith that reality is physical and objective, or in any case, is amenable to discovery by the sciences. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is why I am posting in this thread ;)

I think the solution lies in the direction of ‘transcending subjectivity’ i.e. transcending the sense of self-hood, but not on the basis of according sole reality to the so-called ‘objective domain’. That’s the sense in which it is basically a spiritual quest. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that in the idea of transcending subjectivity there is still the idea of finding something objective 'out there', some eternal objective truth. I am more of the idea that we do not find the 'out there', we create it, and that when we create it it becomes real, to us. That we and others before us have created or shaped what we experience, and that we are the ones changing it. That if we insist in believing that scientific laws are the truth, are objective, are eternal, and we silence those who disagree, and we dismiss any experience that doesn't follow these laws as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, then we will create such a world where nothing can transcend these laws, because in a profound sense we will stop experiencing anything that transcends these laws.

You may have already looked at this, but in case not:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm — g0d

And this dude resisted the theory of the atom. That's how skeptical he was. Was his passion for understanding not spiritual somehow? — g0d

Thanks for the link, I have read the quotes you cited here but I will read the whole thing. I agree that not all physicists are rude or not open-minded to ideas that go against their cherished beliefs or theories, but they are the exception rather than the rule. And there may have been more exceptions in the past than there are today. Ernst Mach, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré, Nikola Tesla, Henry Margenau, Arthur M. Young, David Bohm, John Stewart Bell, and many more that aren't well known, but they are still a tiny percentage. But then again they had in common that they did philosophy and not just physics. When you do physics only, you are stuck thinking within the mainstream theories of the era, seeing the assumptions at the root of the theories as truth rather than as assumptions.

But what can it mean for you to say what you said above? About what is it true? — g0d

I started the sentence with "If", "If there are only minds", "If there are only minds, then there is no mind-independent 'here' or 'world' that our minds are in". If you disagree with that sentence, I would be interested to hear what makes you disagree, because in my reality I don't see how it could be wrong.

If there are only minds, then nothing is not mind, so there is no 'here' or 'world' that is not mind. This is true to me because this is what I see, just like "the sky is blue" is true to me if I see something that I call sky which has the color that I call blue. I am involved in creating my truth.

Is it meaningless for us to talk about a single reality? Or just for you? For me there's a performative contradiction in arguing against a single reality. Or rather the good arguments against a single reality are well aimed at bad conceptualizations of the single reality. — g0d

It is meaningless to me if I assume that there are only minds and that minds do not see the same reality. If you tentatively make the same assumptions, and you do not see it as meaningless to talk about a single reality, then again I would be interested to hear what makes you disagree, because to me this points to your reality being different to mine in a way that I cannot yet grasp.

The single reality I have in mind is manifest in the very structure of our communication, the same communication we use to give artificial names to it like the 'physical.' — g0d

If I see/hear you using the word 'tree', and you see/hear me using the word 'tree', and I see you point a finger towards what I call a tree, and you see me point a finger towards what you call a tree, does that imply we are having the same experience, seeing the same thing? That same word could refer to very different experiences. Now if there is repeated consistency and agreements between how we name our experiences, then we can say there is a common ground between our realities. Does it imply there is one single reality? Are we going to agree on everything? What of people who don't see that tree? Is there something wrong with them, are they delusional because they don't see the single reality that you assumed exists?


It seems to me that as soon as there is subjectivity in our experiences, we can't reconcile that perfectly with a single objective reality. For instance, if you see something that others don't see, then others can attempt to explain why you see that in terms of what they see. If there is a single reality, then in principle they could find an explanation, such as your brain being different in some way to theirs. But if there is subjectivity in the way others see your brain, then they wouldn't all come up with the same explanation, some might even not find an explanation. Or even if they agree on an explanation, you may not agree yourself because they have not seen what you have seen, and they may not see how their explanation does not account for what you have seen.

There is comfort in the idea of a single reality. When we stick to what we agree on, it seems like there is indeed one reality. And when there is a disagreement that doesn't get resolved, we say the other is wrong, or delusional, or we agree to disagree, or we say that some day we might be able to explain that disagreement in terms of something we agree on. Today many people agree on the idea of a single physical reality, but they can't explain how is it that they can experience anything at all in such a reality. At that point there is only faith holding that single reality together. Minds believing in it.

We are both (partially) 'here' ---wherever or whatever 'here' is. — g0d

But even philosophers appeal to 'world' as I intend it. 'World' is what our philosophical theses describe. 'There is no single reality' is aimed at some kind of a single reality, since otherwise it would have no use. We who speak only have reason to talk and listen inasmuch as we are in a single reality/world which we can inform one another about. — g0d

If there are only minds, then there is no mind-independent 'here' or 'world' that our minds are in. In that view it is wrong to attempt to imagine minds moving or changing in some 'world', because there is no such world, the concepts of space and time do not apply to minds. Where we do encounter is within our realities.

What use is it to talk of a single reality if we can say nothing at all about it? Just like it is seen as meaningless to talk about what's outside the universe, in the view here it is meaningless to talk about a single reality.

And if we participate in creating our reality and in shaping the realities of one another, then in principle it would be possible to shape the realities of others to the point that we all see the same objective reality, in which subjectivity is gone. And that would be the death of our minds.

That is the post my post you are responding is a response to — Janus

No, that's not the post you quoted. Looks like we are not sharing the same reality?

I largely agree. If we take 'mind-independent' in a sharp, metaphysical sense. But I think the opposite position fails for the same reason. What is the 'mind' but experience of the 'world' or 'non-mind'? — g0d

If 'mind-independent reality' is a contradiction, then that only matters if it's a contradiction for us. What is it that is 'for us' and 'not just me' that grounds intelligible conversation? You and I have to share a language and a sense of logic to even discuss the issue. So being in language together is (I argue) being in a 'world' together. — g0d

In the quote above, you open with There are. What is in this 'are'? 'Reality is socially constructed' seems to want to tell me about reality, about 'real' reality. — g0d

That's why I didn't want to use the word 'mind', because the word is imbued with the idea that the mind is part of an external world, but what word could I use? People mostly use language in a context where they presuppose an external reality, so the words they use refer to things that are part of an external reality, but I am not referring to an external reality myself. That's the difficult thing with language, the same words can be interpreted in many different ways.

My point of view is that every being has their own reality. But when I talk of beings, I do not mean they are part of an external reality that can be described in any way. To me there are only beings who create their own reality and influence the realities of one another. We might say there are only minds, or that these minds all make up one whole, but what sense would there be in speaking of an external world or of non-mind in that view? Whatever world I speak of, it would be my own, not some external one.

We can't even say that "there are only minds" is an objective statement of an objective world, because we see that many minds do not agree with that view. And I talk of "we" because we have a common ground, our realities partially intersect.

When I say "there are only minds who create and shape the reality of one another", I am not talking about a "real reality" that applies to everyone, I am talking about my own reality, this is what I experience. And in my reality, others have a different reality, sometimes with a lot of common ground, sometimes with little. And in my reality, your reality will have been changed through our interaction, maybe in a negligible way that you don't consciously notice, or maybe in a significant way. And maybe you will come to agree with that, maybe that will become part of your reality, that will become real to you too.

I can't talk of a world in which minds move through some objective space or time and experience that world. I do not experience an external world in which other minds are, I experience other minds. My world was created and shaped by other minds and by my own. Maybe others will come to see that too. Maybe they won't.

In my view, in the temporary intersection of our realities we find regularities, which we summarize in what we call scientific laws, and we make predictions from them, from which we create technology, which is a way to shape our shared reality. In that view scientific laws would not have a universal everlasting validity, they would apply to a temporarily shared reality, and they would be wrong or meaningless to someone who doesn't share that reality.

The only explanation for this other than that doorways etc. really are where we perceive them to be is that our minds, including animal minds, are all connected in some indiscernible and unimaginable way. If the latter explanation is what you want to go for then I think you need to posit God or a universal mind or something along those lines. But then you also need to provide some reason why we should think that to be a more plausible explanation than the idea that things simply exist in their own right. — Janus

I gave some reasons in that post https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/298936 , you might have missed it.

Is this even true of realists who like philosophy? Of course there are rude people around. — g0d

Sure, although the philosophically-inclined ones are on average less rude. I'd say the rudest are the professional physicists, they base all their reasonings and career on the belief in an objective reality, they consider themselves to be uncovering and probing the fundamental constituents of reality, and there is some prestige that comes with being a theoretical physicist, so there is a lot of smugness that gets unleashed when they encounter people who dare question their most cherished beliefs and their position of importance. As someone who once considered having a career doing fundamental physics, I dealt with them for years, I guess it shows.

We only never see things as they are if we insist that reality is hidden. You claim there is an apple in the cabinet. We both check and it's gone. Then we theorize about what happened. What can't we call that apple real? Must we call its molecules real instead? Why aren't those molecules just another aspect of the same apple? — g0d

It's not so much that we insist reality is hidden, rather the widespread view is that reality is right there in front of us, but there is a lot that doesn't fit in that view. If we were all blind we wouldn't call real a lot of what we call real today. There are plenty of things that used to be considered real that aren't considered real anymore, and plenty of things that didn't use to be considered real that are now considered real. There is a lot that shows that what we call reality is socially constructed.

Now if you only focus on those things on which most people have agreed on for a long time, then you might get the idea that there is no need to think that reality is hidden, but when you start focusing on all the rest then what we call reality appears to have really shaky foundations.

If only you saw that apple, and no one else can find a reasonable explanation for its disappearance, then you might start being seen as delusional, as not being able to discern reality. Was the apple real? Well to you it was. To everyone else, you imagined it.

What we call imagination is socially constructed too, same as reality, if you see it and other people don't consider it real, then it's your imagination, but if later on they happen to find a plausible explanation to account for your observation then it becomes reality, and then some time later when the widespread scientific paradigm changes it might become imagination again. There is no unshakable foundation there, rather it's all temporary.

For me the issue is that you imply that the theory of mind-independent reality could be wrong. Wrong in relation to what? — g0d

Self-contradictory. But the self-contradiction doesn't exist out there in relation to another mind-independent reality, it is a mind seeing a self-contradiction.

The more natural response for an intellectually curious realist would be to investigate why the new person thinks differently to the others given that they're all interacting in the same world. — Andrew M

Indeed. Personally I have mostly encountered intellectually incurious realists, who believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, who ridicule and dismiss those who believe differently as cranks, adepts of pseudoscience, believers of supernatural bullshit, brain diseased, delusional, too stupid to see why they are wrong.

If Alice thinks that she and the people she encounters are real (actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed (OED)), then she will model them as being real. Similarly, if others accept that her reported observations and experiences are real (not as imagined or supposed), then they will also model those people as being real. — Andrew M

Sure, and then when others model these people as they experience them, and they find that their model doesn't match that of Alice, then they have a problem: these people are real but they do not appear the same to different people, why is that? So they attempt to find the similarities between their model and that of Alice, and they say that the similarities is what is really real, and the differences are subjective interpretations. And then some time later someone else comes and models these people, but that model doesn't have the same similarities as the other models did. But Alice and some others already agreed on what was real, so this new person is wrong, he is delusional, he ought to accept what is real! And if he doesn't we'll lock him up and attempt to make him see the right way, 'cause we can't have him running around not seeing reality as it really is, y'know.

The point was not that our experiences are exactly the same, but that we perceive the same objects and that it can easily be shown that we can all agree about precise qualities and features of those objects. I can only imagine two possible explanations; one is that the objects are mind-independent and the other is that our minds are all connected together in some unknown way. — Janus

I thought I had made clear that we don't perceive the same objects. That when we refer to an object, we don't actually refer to the same perception/experience. You perceive something that you call a cloud, and you perceive someone else that points to it and call it a cloud, so you think that you two perceive the same object. And yet if you spend time discussing with that person you may find out that you two are actually perceiving something quite different. Some people might have a very similar perception to yours, and some others might have a quite different perception.

So what does it mean to say that you are perceiving the same object if you are not perceiving the same thing? All you can really say is that there are many similarities between your experiences and what you infer to be the experiences of others, but if you don't only focus on the similarities you would see that there are also many differences. You may assume that the similarities stem from the existence of mind-independent objects, but you may also assume that the similarities stem from minds being connected in some way, as you mentioned.

But then through your experiences you can actually notice that minds are connected in some way. Because you can influence what others experience, what they perceive, their beliefs, shape their world view, through speech, through what you do. Whereas earlier you were saying that our experiences tell us our minds are not connected, which I don't agree with. And sure this can be accounted for in both frameworks, both the framework of a world of objects existing independently from minds, and the framework where everything is mind-dependent. If our minds are connected in some way, it could be that as we are born and grow up we receive what others experience, which explains the similarities. And then we participate in shaping and creating our own world, and in making it experienced by others.

But the mind-independent framework has a lot of intractable and unsettling problems. In that framework we cannot explain how we can experience anything. We never see things as they are. Free will is very limited or inexistent. Why do these things bother us so much? Maybe because they are not an accurate representation of existence. These problems go away if we stop assuming a mind-independent reality.

But then we cannot explain how it is that we all experience the same world of things, given that our experience tells us that our minds are not directly connected at all. — Janus

We don't experience the same world, there are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences. There are obvious differences in the way we feel, in what we think, what we imagine, what we dream, what we want, what we believe, but there are also differences in the way we perceive the so-called objective things (there are blind people, deaf people, people who perceive things that others don't), there are so-called optical illusions that appear differently to different people, we might say we're looking at the same 'thing' and yet what we see is different (such as what we see when we look at a cloud). We tend to assume that we're all experiencing the same world, but when we don't assume that and instead share and discuss what we experience we find a lot of differences.

Depending on what we want what we perceive appears differently too, a tree may be seen as a source of life, you may focus on its shape and colors and see it as a living being, feel its leaves, see the life that lives on it, or you may see it as a tool, as wood to cut to build a house or sell to someone. We experience such a different world that I find it hard to stick to the idea that we can somehow describe an objective world from which stems all that. What we call the objective world is a very limited description of some of the perceptions that people seem to share.

And then we don't really allow others to express what they experience. We teach kids in school that the world is objective, we tell them how the world is, we force them to interpret their experiences in terms of that objective reality. If some of what they experience doesn't fit that objective reality that they are forced to accept, they dismiss these experiences, or they make them fit clunkily, or if they refuse to accept the reality they are taught then they are labeled as delusional, what they experience is not valid if it doesn't fit a widespread belief of what the world really is. We force one another to believe that there is one objective reality, we are involved in constructing that objective reality.

There is the fact that we can shape the realities of others, through speech, through what we do, we can shape the beliefs of one another, and beliefs shape the world we experience, so our minds are connected in some way.

What kind of "access" do you expect? How could we have any kind of access that wouldn't be dismissed as being "merely experiential"? — Janus

If we stop assuming that our senses give us access to some reality "out there" independent of us then we don't have to deal with this conundrum. All would be experience, but we wouldn't claim that these experiences give us access to some objective reality, rather they would represent our subjective reality, and we could attempt to discuss it with others and find commonalities and differences between our subjective realities. Instead of forcing our different subjective realities to fit into one believed objective reality. And then maybe we would come to realizations that we couldn't hope to have in a physicalist paradigm.

What is the deeper 'why' that you mention? — g0d

It is just a how, how is it that physical entities that make up our body can give rise to experiences. It is not a why in the sense why is there something rather than nothing. If we claim that we are made of physical entities, then we ought to explain how these give rise to experiences, and if we can't then there is something missing in the idea that we are made of physical entities, as it isn't an idea that fits the very fact that we experience.

Otherwise we could just claim that the Sun is made of angels, and say that we can't explain it, but it's ok because it doesn't require an explanation!

The physical processes involved in bringing about the seeing of colour are well understood. — Janus

No, again this would be like watching a movie, and concluding from correlations found within the movie that the physical processes involved in bringing about colors in the movie are well understood. That's the category error. What we experience with our usual senses is always the movie, we don't have access to the TV with these senses.

Why should we expect to have a physicalist explanation of something that cannot be objectified or measured? — Janus

Indeed, so then the problem is when physicalists claim that their models take into account the whole of reality, while their models cannot explain the very fact that we experience. They view the world as made of entities that behave according to laws, but they cannot explain how anything in that world can experience anything at all, why a human being has experiences but not a rock. This to me points to the idea that physicalism is a fundamentally flawed paradigm. But for some reason they usually don't seem to see this as an issue, in their view the motion of stars in a galaxy is something that requires an explanation, but not the fact that a human being has experiences.