Contents of consciousness are given from the human cognitive system, operating from the brain but are not the brain. Although advocates of modern neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience will shoot me if they find out I said that.

Yes.

(Weird. Did you see where the C & P included the time? Made it look like I said “....impressions seconds ago.”

In dreams, that which appears is the contents of consciousness.

In conscious awareness, that which appears are intuitions representing sensory impressions.

Fundamentally correct; the human system is internally representative.
Fundamentally incomplete: there must be something external to be represented.

Can you give concrete examples of the "gains" of Idealism? — ZhouBoTong

Great care is advised here, because there are many disciplines listed under Idealism as a philosophical domain, just as there is in Realism. The purely subjective idealism of Descartes has been pretty much refuted, the Monadology of Leibniz was constructed with insufficient explanatory power and Christian Wolff was far too dogmatic to survive criticism. In short, plain ol’ Idealism, without qualification, can’t be said to have offered much of anything except background for what came after. Just as Realism, in and of itself, is much too ambiguous to have any substance.

And what came after was a paradigm shift, the single greatest such shift in history, with respect to philosophy in general and epistemology in particular. And this shift was predicated on the absolutely necessary attributes of the human subject, in and of itself, which is of course, an idealist position. The difference was how the subjective condition unites with the objective, in a complete theoretical derivation which for the most part still stands today.

Here the gains are most important, to wit: when we talk about the world, it is us telling the world how we understand it, not the world telling us in fact what it is. In other words, it was classically thought that the image in the mind of, say, star, was because of the object itself and knowledge of the star was given by it. The new way says the image “star” belongs to the mind alone, hence the mind is responsible for everything having to do with “star”, meaning we tell ourselves how it is to be known by us. While we are not responsible for the existence of the star, whatever the star is will be determined by us and not by the star.

There’s also the aspect of the new Idealism in the reinstatement of a priori knowledge as being both real and substantial, whereas classically, and even mid-Enlightenment, a priori knowledge was generally either disavowed or at least misunderstood. Like, everybody knew mathematics was always true but nobody knew how it could always be true, what made it always true, with respect to human cognition. It wasn’t the instance of “ideas” in the mind for rememberance of things not in immediate attention, but a very real kind of actual knowledge by means of which intuitions based on extant experience are brought forth.

The greatest gain, if one wishes to think of it that way, is the ground being laid for the dissolution of the church’s stranglehold on philosophy. While religion was still primary in everyday life, the seeds were sown for academia to stand on a different soapbox. The power of the mind began to overshadow the power of the Establishment.

The rest is all downhill.

As I said in the beginning, there’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking there would be rocks, because sentience is not a requisite for existence. That is to say, just because we’re gone doesn’t imply rocks left with us, which permits the continuance of them. To say anything more than that, especially in a declarative affirmation, is irrational, for the painfully simple reason the proposition, “Is there a rock? Yes”, translatable without loss of coherence to “There is a rock”, is not susceptible to falsification.

Nevertheless, opinions rendered of idealistic bent had already been “reduced to the absurd” by the author, which immediately cauterized any rational argument predicated on pure reason alone.

Hmm, yeah. Reads differently the next day. Images can be a temporal sequence without being causal, of course. The specific relation expressions by our perception in this case would be succession.

Sorry. Dunno what I was thinking.

I’m cool with all that.

Not every temporal sequence is one of causes and effects, — Echarmion

If not spontaneity, what did you have in mind?

Dunno how reality can be all that far removed from our human experience, when we’re right smack dab in the middle of it. Actually, all our experiences are of material reality, or, the appearance of it anyway. But yes, the ontology behind reality is far removed, I’ll give you that.

Max Tegmark, 2007, thinks it’s mathematical structures all the way down.

Kant is always right!!!!! (Grin)

Agreed; subjective idealism went out with continental German idealism, which advocated a necessary external material reality.

Within the context of possible experience......

Empirical truth: that of which the negation is impossible.
Logical truth: that of which the negation is contradictory.

That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it? No matter how we go about trying to explain things, we have nothing with which to compare our results. As you say, we are forced to use ourselves to understand how ourselves understand things.

We even create our own regulatory devices, re: the logical laws of thought on the one hand and the physical laws of Nature on the other, in an attempt to guide ourselves from what we think contradicting what we observe. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Nature of the cognitive beast, I say.

Would we experience things at the speed of light due to no additional processing time through all those neurons? — Coeus

This is easily reconciled if we acknowledge that experience itself isn’t the receptivity and processing of sensory data. They are the conditions for it, but at not it, per se. If we treat experience as the end of the process, the speed of the information being processed is irrelevant to the experience.

No additional processing time is an interesting notion, but because the human cognitive system doesn’t work that way, such speculation can’t really tell us anything.

The pellet argument might be reconciled by asserting that the pellet, hence its information, isn’t moving at the SOL as soon as it enters a conducting medium of some arbitrary, but much greater physical density, than regular atmosphere.

Besides, Einstein also said an object, in this case a pellet riding a light beam, would have zero mass hence infinite energy, due to the Principle of Complementarity, so when that sukka hits your eye, you’re not going to see anything anyway. But that is an impossible physical scenario, which implies the whole pellet thing is too speculative.

Another thing. The pellet’s zero speed is relative to the light beam, not the eye or subsequent medium it’s transferred to.

Interesting. I doubt any professionals disagree with realism, but I certainly hope they don’t agree with realism exclusively. Depends on the choice of concepts attributed to the discipline, I suppose.

So is there a way to just always simplify one's cognition of causal reality? — Josh Alfred

Always a way to simplify one’s *cognition* of causal reality? Sure there is....reduction to principles. Of which the primary one would of course be, cause and effect. The complication comes from the examples of it, not from the principle itself.

Whether or not cause is real is quite easy to think, to cognize. If we acknowledge the ubiquitousness of observation with respect to it objectively, and acknowledge the legislative authority of pure reason with respect to it subjectively, the principle falls out as a necessary condition.

Simple, huh?

So, what has philosophy taught you? — Wallows

Beginning with what it may be said to do......
“...For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error....”

......coupled with what it may be said to actually be......
“....certification as to the pure and legitimate origin of fundamental conceptions...”

.....then personally, I can say there exists a certain kind of philosophy that has taught me at least a more precise and hence more comfortable way to think, without contradicting my experience.

On another philosophy discussion medium, I used to sign off with “Peace”. Seems weird to see it when I didn’t write it.

On Libet. Sufficiently counter-argued by Dennet, 1996 and P. Churchland, 1981. I don’t have a problem with allowing the mechanics of the brain to have a little time to do it’s thing before presenting it to my attention.

On Einstein. We and our perceived information are in the same reference frame, so SOL effects are not an issue. Quantum effects with respect to human mental processes, on the other hand, have pros and cons, re: Penrose and Tegmark, resp., and probably others.
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So we say there has only been one path and not a multitude of possible paths that got us to here and now. So if we accept this as true then it also has to be true in all futures. — Coeus

We can say there was only one path leading from past to present, only after a path has been taken. That doesn’t mean there was only one path possible to take. We can also say we will take only one path in the future, but this time, only because taking more than one path is impossible.

We know which path leads from past to present, aka experience, but cannot know the path from present to future, hence there cannot be a preferred path of all possible paths, but there can be a path of greater probability.
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This tells me that there are not an infinite number of possibilities at each point or second in my future. — Coeus

The only reason we consider an infinite number of future possibilities is because it is impossible to know the one it is going to be. Technically, there can’t be an infinite number anyway. It’s better to say, future paths are not entirely under our own control, and given a certain set of antecedent conditions, there should be a particular consequence.
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When this speed of light information comes in it should be at a standstill and how the hell can a brain slow down information that is supposed to be topped or at a standstill? — Coeus

If light informations stops at the eyes, how would we experience what we’re looking at?

Nahhh. Waste of time for both of us. As a practical extreme realist, by your own admission you can’t go where the depths of logic and speculative philosophical theory would lead you, and I’m already there, so.....maybe some other time.

You might be internally consistent, but that's all your position has going for it. — S

Thanks. The credibility of all proper logic and all physical theory is required to be at least internally consistent, so looks like I’m ok. If that’s all I’ve got it’s only because I haven’t taken either the logic or the theory any further.

You don't want to be sensible? — S

You’ve got the chutzpah to ask me that after killing off all my kind? For your own personal aggrandizement, no less? Kill us off cuz we’re destroying the world, cutting down 3 football fields worth of trees every minute, dumping 8 billion tons of plastic in waterways every year.. ....sure, we don’t deserve any better. But just to see if rocks would be here if we weren’t?

THAT is nonsense if you ask me.

I've clarified that the question here is whether there would be a rock. I clarified that many pages ago. — S

Irrelevant.

The OP shows no edit, and even if it did, the logical response would be the same. “Is there a rock? Yes” has the same declarative value as “Would there be a rock? Yes”, therefore would justify identical responses.

Wiggling is permitted in average philosophy, apparently.

Given your impression of what knowledge is, and how you characterize what blue is, I dare not ask what you think time is.

Also, given you must know how expensive that Rangpur gin is, why you’d even consider throwing it at me must have been derived from reasoning as irrational as is the reasoning behind this thought experiment.

I’ll have another, if you’d be so kind. In a glass this time.

“...All this means is that you choose to interpret truth-claims in a manner incongruent with how the opening post is supposed to be interpreted...”

How in the bloody hell is it possible to misinterpret “Will there be rocks? Yes.” This truth statement is the conclusion of the Part 1 argument. If the conclusion is deemed false, then it is required to find the fault in the premises that ground the conclusion, which means they MUST be deemed incongruent with the originals. If they weren’t, the conclusion would hold. But it doesn’t So....

Yes, I could avoid the problems by relaxing my criteria. You, on the other hand, could avoid the irrationality by strengthening yours.

Apparently, average is good enough for you? I am truly disappointed.

Has nothing to do with when the truth statement was made. Has only to do with when the truth statement applies. “Is there a rock? Yes.” makes explicit the truth statement applies to the present of rocks but is premised on the future of humans. In effect humans making a truth statement about a present of which they are not a member and of which, accordingly, they could in fact know nothing about.

Even an average philosopher should see the fallacy in that reasoning.

Ok, no prob. It is true there are apt to be rocks in the future. No different in principle than believing there will be rocks in the future. No different in principle than having no reason to think there wouldn’t be rocks in the future, all else being equal. None of those are congruent with the truth statement in the OP. And, truth-apt statements can be false, which means the statement there are no rocks when all the humans are gone is truth-apt.

That is the predication of my whole argument: if there can be no truth statements if humans are gone, then the truth statement “there are rocks when humans are gone” cannot be made. No truth value can be assigned to a truth statement impossible to make. There very well may be rocks, but no true statement can be made about that existential condition, which includes “there will be rocks”.

Maybe there will be rocks is not a consideration a truth statement admits.

Not existence, no; that which is, is. The equivocation arises from requisites for the when, the temporality, of truth statements with respect to existence.

Motivation is falsification of the OP thesis. A substantive falsification. My two questions set the premise.

Granted, of course. No one claims the unperceived simply ceases to exist. But is that tacit entitlement for an affirmative truth claim with respect to the physical reality of future objects? Is the logic that it wouldn’t disappear serve as truth that it would still exist?

HA!! Good one!!

I seem to recall (oh oh....memory trust again) you agree with S, there is a rock, in the future without observers. If so, what is the ground of your reason?

Bummer. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted my memory.

Thanks

Would you like me to construct a half-decent argument for your position whilst I'm at it? — S

If you were to construct an argument for my position (no knowledge of the existence of future objects is possible) all it could ever be is half-decent, because you actually think “knowledge is what we know” is sufficient ground.

Tanquery. Rangpur if you got it. I hate beer.

a dim reflection in the dark mirror of your prejudicial thinking — Janus

Sounds like Rod Serling opening an Outer Limits episode.

Am I asking whether there would be a rock? Yes. — S

Relax your blood pressure, there, bub. Call it a course correction, aligning the stars. The question remains the same, and so do all my replies.
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Or, if you do understand what I'm asking, then do you have an answer that isn't either a bare assertion that I don't accept — S

Answer, yes. Bare assertion, no. That you don’t accept....ehhhh, looks that way.
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It looks like you make a logical leap in order to reach a different conclusion to me here. — S

Logical leap, yep. Different conclusion, yep. Nothing wrong with a different conclusion, as long as it reached with valid premises.

What else you got? Time for another thought experiment?

If I’m misunderstanding over and over, why aren’t you telling me how? Your experiment is really simply worded, which implies simple responses. Now, I did find reference to “hidden premises” on my search for cats and optical illusions, but I’m going to ignore those because hidden premises amounts to a guessing game along the lines of Russell’s teacup, which doesn’t interest me.

It's not my fault if you apparently can't help but misinterpret the question. — S

WTF is the gawddamn question?????????
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Your calling what we know “knowledge. “Knowledge” is what we know. “Thoughts” are what we think. “Feelings” are what we feel. “Experiences” are what we experience. “Anything” is any thing.

Yikes.

I think that that's a problem. And I'm guessing that I'm not the only one. It removes the requirement that reality matches up with our language, and instead goes by a model whereby language matches up with mere appearance, which of course can be illusory, which causes problems for the model, as I've shown. — S

The methodology for remedying the possibility of illusion has already been given.

On the modern idealist model, which is still in force philosophically:

“....We here propose to do just what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the celestial movements. When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge. Now as I cannot rest in the mere intuitions, but—if they are to become cognitions—must refer them, as representations, to something, as object, and must determine the latter by means of the former, here again there are two courses open to me. Either, first, I may assume that the conceptions, by which I effect this determination, conform to the object—and in this case I am reduced to the same perplexity as before; or secondly, I may assume that the objects, or, which is the same thing, that experience, in which alone as given objects they are cognized, conform to my conceptions—and then I am at no loss how to proceed....”

I’d be interested in how you think this model causes problems. Problems with what? What problems?

Wait, why the heck are you specifying empirical knowledge?! That's doing it wrong. I'm not asking about empirical knowledge of the rock! I thought I made that clear, multiple times. Empiricism is a useful tool, but it is not suited for all jobs, and it is the wrong tool for this job. I'm just asking about whether we know that there'd be a rock. — S

I am specifying empirical knowledge because you are demanding knowledge of a physical object. Asking about whether there would be a rock must use empirical knowledge because you’re still asking about a physical object. Hence the dialectical conundrum, re: empirical knowledge a posteriori is not suited because there’s no direct experience, we’re all dead remember, and empirical knowledge a priori cannot give the answer you insist is correct.

You’ve asked a million times, and got back the same answer every time......it can’t be empirically known whether there would be a rock; reasonably believed, sure; known.....nope.

Obvious to the most casual idealist observer.
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please don't interpret "reasonable enough" or "knowledge" as requiring absolute certainty — S

Nobody does that. “Reasonable enough” and certainty are mutually exclusive, and “knowledge” is never absolute.
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Actually, I did know that. — S

Riiiighhhttt. 1921 Solvay Conference?
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Proof generally seems to be about sufficiency, — S

No. No it doesn’t. Proof has to do with necessity. That which is contingent cannot be a proof.
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I might call that "knowledge", whereas you might not. — S

I call “knowledge” the condition, or the state, of the intellect. What do you call it?

I’m back. I packed a lunch, got my walkin’ shoes on, went looking for cats and optical illusions. Didn’t find any.

You know, I never understood this fixation with language. I just figure those guys with PhD’s in philosophy had to do something different because Kant had already set the bar so high for epistemology and reason nobody could do any more with it. Maybe Schopenhauer, another transcendental idealist, and Russell, an empiricist with prominent a priori tendencies due to his math and logic distinction, who added stuff because of the major advances in the science of his day.

Common language is fine most of the time. Even technical language is fine as long the understanding remains consistent with the language being used. That is to say, a guy talking in the technical language of chemistry isn’t going to communicate too well with a guy using the technical language of astrophysics. Even so, where the terms overlap there shouldn’t be any language or understanding issues.

Bet you didn’t know Bohr answered Einstein’s “I can’t believe the moon doesn’t exist if no one is looking at it” with “try as you may you cannot prove it does.” Look it up.

Hand me my Nike, wodja?