Notice the difference between the world being what is the case, and the idealist view that the world is what we believe, know, intuit, hope, doubt to be the case.

It's important.

The world is what is the case.
— Banno

For whom? — apokrisis

Well, not for the folk for whom the world is what is not the case.

It's a given, right? — Wayfarer

No. I'm a bit surprised you think this of what has been said. The world is what is the case.

Deductive logic does not produce anything not in the assumptions.

Inductive, abductive, and dialectic "logics" are quite different, and quite contentious.

Indeed, it remains a mystery how our beliefs might be coherent unless there is something - a coherent world - to keep them so.

I think what you're instinctively defending is naive realism (no pejorative intended). You are shocked by the questioning of the reality of the sensable world. Damn it, can't he just see that my cups are in the cupboard even with the door closed?!? That they don't dissappear when I can't see them?!? — Wayfarer

Cobblers. I'm showing how language works, rather than defending naive realism.


1) reality has an ineluctably subjective pole.
Our understanding of the world has an ineluctably "subjective" pole. Scare quote because subjective is a loaded term. The world just is as it is, regardless of what you think of it - as is demonstrated by error, novelty and there being other folk.

(2) that no world can be imagined in which this is not the case.
To imagine is to invoke this "subjective" pole; so this looks to be tautologous.

(3) that this subjective pole or ground is never itself amongst the objects considered by naturalism
Psychology does just that.

(4) that the emphasis on objectivity as the sole criteria for what is real is deeply mistaken on those grounds.
"Objective" is just as loaded.

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020

If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want?

I don't! I think I made that clear. What I have pointed out is the difference between what we hold to be true and what is true - between belief and truth.

That there is a world that may be different to our beliefs is shown, not said. It's not an "inference". It's demonstrated by the cup coming out of the dishwasher clean, and all manor of other interactions, with medium sized smallgoods and whatever else you might find. It's what enables you to say the car keys are in your pocket even when you can't see or feel them. And even when you are not thinking about them.

Chat — Wayfarer

:roll:

I think it sets out my claim pretty well.

Logic is just how to talk with some sort of consistency.

I don't know but can physics be undertaken without the logical axioms — Tom Storm

Well, without some presumption of coherence, at least. If the aim of physics is to produce a coherent account of how physical things are, then it presupposes coherence, and hence logic.

Please excuse my butting in.

In order for you to establish what the world would be outside your cognition of it, you would have to stand outside that whole process of cognition. (This is even recognised in analytical philosophy, in Sellars' 'the myth of the given'.) — Wayfarer

I have no wish to "establish what the world would be outside your cognition"; it's a nonsense.

And that's not "the myth of the given"...

Ok. If you will not participate in a dialogue...

There are no features without minds. In the absence of minds the universe such as it is, is featureless, formless, and lacking in any perspective. — Wayfarer

Even to say that "In the absence of minds the universe such as it is, is featureless, formless, and lacking in any perspective" is too much. Absent the mind, and you absent inference itself.

For us, the world is always, already interpreted.

But you will take this as implying that there is no world without mind. It doesn't. It implies only that there is no interpretation without mind.

You take one step further than your argument allows.

Who is that addressed to?

Or should that be "what..."?

:wink:

I can't think of a better example of "whereof one cannot speak..."

SO set out the inference, that we might be guided.

There are no features without minds. In the absence of minds the universe such as it is, is featureless, formless, and lacking in any perspective. — Wayfarer

How can you possibly know this?

I'm not too keen to join the speculative physics hereabouts. I don't think it has been shown to be particularly relevant to the topic. Justice and fairness are not found in the world in the way that rocks and planets, or even conservation laws, are. They will only come about as the result of our actions.

To my eye your account of energy is wishful thinking.

It certainly is not accepted physics.

Local-global bound the thirdness that is their hierarchically-ordered connection. — apokrisis

:roll: Back to abstruse verbosity.

I'll leave you to it; no doubt this post will be followed by another round of spit, but at least you now recognise that we are more than passive observers.

A dichotomous distinction – such as local and global – has to show itself to frame the opposing limits of a reciprocal or inverse relation. How do you define local? As 1/global. How do you define global? As 1/local. — apokrisis

To use your own example, where is the synthesis between global and local? Is it the nation? The state? The city? the neighbourhood? All of these - and what use is that?

And if anything will do, then nothing has been achieved.

I added a more detailed link. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks. I'm not reading that this morning. Maybe later.

I'm only using formalism in order to set out with some clarity the argument at hand. Putting Hegel's work in a model-theoretical formalism is presumably a way of set out more clearly what Hegel is up to. That's where formalism helps.

My critique is that dialectic approaches do not fix the nature of the synthesis. So given any thesis and antithesis, any of a number of syntheses are possible.

Can a model-theoretical approach show this not to be so, or in some way fix the positively rational moment? How, at least in outline?

I recognize a brick wall when I encounter one. — Wayfarer

Ok. To my eye, it looks as if my critique has hit home and there is no difference to be given between your idealism and my realism.

Hegel's logic has generally been dealt with in a category theoretic framework. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Such an approach might be interesting, but the link has little content and I could find little else. Can you say more? It might be interesting to see some sort of formalisation of dialectic.

Ok, tell me what I ignored.

...and back to spit and the one true faith.

But it was worth it. :wink:

Pretty much. Esoteric stuff. Hence my lumpen emphasis on medium size smallgoods, the stuff of life.

But the debate gives us something amusing for a quiet Sunday morning.

We might be just modellers of the world, but we also do attempt to then remake that world in our own image... — apokrisis

Oh, the joy! Light dawns!

...and of course, you were always saying this...

So the passage from Berkeley’s imaginary dialogue was provided to illustrate how Berkeley deals with that criticism. — Wayfarer

Sure. I think I replied to that, using Austin. A straight stick appears bent in water.

It might help to try and look at why we keep coming back to these same arguments. I think it to do with the vanity of small differences. We agree on pretty much everything except that final wording, where you say that the world is a construction of the mind, and I point out that the construction is dependent on stuff outside the mind.

I am not at all convinced we are in any substantive disagreement.

Is the argument then that this complexity somehow implies (leads to, causes...) a fair and just universe?
— Banno
No. Where did you get that idea? One implication of this New Law of Evolution is that its progression of increasing complexity & creative novelty eventually led from a hypothetical Singularity Soup (quark/gluon plasma) to the emergence of complex brains & minds capable of asking questions about Fairness & Justice, that we world-observers call Philosophy. :smile: — Gnomon

Just trying to work out what your claim is. So we have something like that the universe that, as it slides inevitably towards thermodynamic equilibrium, progresses towards increasing complexity & creative novelty eventually led from a hypothetical Singularity Soup (quark/gluon plasma) to the emergence of complex brains & minds?

It remains that the universe is fair and just only if those "complex brains & minds" make it so - is that right?

Thanks. Reiterating, there are two bits of logic in my post, not unrelated but also not the same. The first is the classic Popperian argument that historicist arguments are generally unfalsifiable, which we can to some extent extend to dialectic arguments generally. The second is the lack of fixity as to the third moment, the synthesis.

This latter is shown explicitly in classical logic by the explosion ρ^~ρ⊃ψ, that from a contradiction anything follows. But I don't see that (for example) moving to a paraconsistent logic helps dialectic - that move does not serve to fix the nature of the synthesis.

My suggestion is that in most cases the synthesis is fixed by other factors external to the dialectic, and the dialectic then used to justify that fixing. Which is an invalid move.

And it's this aspect I wanted to bring out, rather than Popper's criticism using falsification, which I agree is not quite up to the task.

I said ‘any judgement regarding what exists’. — Wayfarer

As opposed to sentence? But there remains the distinction between how the universe is and how we judge it to be. On one side, we have what we state, judge, believe, know, expect, doubt to be the case; and on the other, what is the case. Things we do against how things are.

Optical illusions and mistaken perceptions such as ‘the bent oar’ are discussed by Berkeley. I’ll dig up the ref although not right now. — Wayfarer

Sure. Why? In , you didn't take the time to set out what it is you want me to take from the extended quote. I'll refer you to the thread on Sense and Sensibility, to a post that outlines the physics of the bent stick and others that sets out Austin'e response. "The sting, when it comes, is pithy and simple."

What is wrong, what is even faintly surprising, in the idea of a stick's being straight but looking bent sometimes? Does anyone suppose that if something is straight, then it jolly well has to look straight at all times and in all circumstances?
— p.29 — Austin, p.29

So here:

The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. — Dialogue between Philonious and Hylas, Berkeley

Seeing the stick as bent is exactly what we expect, given that the stick is straight and partially immersed in water. Nothing incoherent here.

There's a piece of apocryphal about a philosophy lecture in which the class is presented with an apparent straight stick in water, only later to have the lecturer draw the stick out to show that it actually is bent. I hope it is true, because it shows another aspect that needs to be taken into account. We are not passive observers. We interact with the world. We put sticks into water and take them out. So this is inaccurately passive:

‘what we consider to be ‘reality’, symbolised by the letter R in the diagram, consists of an elaborate paper maché construction of imagination and theory fitted between a few iron posts of observation’. — Wayfarer

"What we consider to be reality". Again, what we do, not what is. So sure, we "divide" the world up so as to make sense of it. Therefore there is a world for us to divide up. Hence Idealism is insufficient to explain how things are.

...an argument in physics as to ‘what is real’ — Wayfarer

I spoke previously about speculative physics. Specificity is needed here. Folk think that it's all mins because quantum, but you and I want better arguments.

In previous discussions we reach a point where you seem to be pointing at stuff and trying to show something you see that I don't. We seem to be there again. I think we agree that there is a world, and that we have what philosophers call intentional attitudes towards that world, but you put all the emphasis on those attitudes, as if the world were not also part of what is going on. And again, what I am suggesting is not that idealism is wrong and realism is right, so much as that the juxtaposition of idealism and realism is misleading.

We might agree that we can make true statements about how things are.

On the contrary realists insist that the object is as it is irrespective of the presence or absence of an observer. — Wayfarer

I said that any statement of, or knowledge about, the object's existence or non-existence can only be made by an observer. — Wayfarer

The Statement can only be made by an observer. That's quite compatible with realism -at least, those realists who do not believe in disembodied statements.

Again, there is a difference between how things are and how we believe they are. A difference between how they are and how we say that they are. A difference that tends to dissipate in idealism. A difference that explains what it is to be mistaken.

Cheers. .

More spit. Cheers.

Yet you seem to claim that for “classical logic”? — apokrisis

Well, no - see my thread on logical nihilism. The "Peircean triadic systems view" is, so far as it is comprehensible, just more Hegel.

It certainly is not physics.

Back to spitting, I see. Fine. A change from your name-calling.

I'll put the point more forcefully: Dialectic has more of rhetoric to it than of logic.

One might be hard pressed to find a case where dialectic cannot be applied. That's not a good thing.

So a dialectic. — apokrisis

Well, ok, that's a way of describing it. So what. More Wittgenstein than Hegel. And the resolution is not a third option, not a synthesis, but adopting the thesis, so it's not a very good example of dialectic at work.

My suspicion is that dialectic is a way of narrating the way things are, of sense-making. As such it's post hoc. The argument agains dialectic that I presented above shows how it is that dialectic methods serve to choose the option preferred by the narrator. That critique stands.

To be candid, I should point out that the arguments here against idealism should not be taken as implying realism. It's not the case that one or the other must be the "true" description of how things are. It's more that each is a "way of talking about how things are", each with its own merits. I don't think a definitive case can be made either way, but realism aligns better with "homely examples like kitchen utensils". Keeping this in mind can prevent our discussions from going on holiday.

I said that any statement of, or knowledge about, the object's existence or non-existence can only be made by an observer. — Wayfarer

Were this the limit of your claim, no one would be objecting. This is entirely compatible with hard realism.

But you take this as somehow demonstrating idealism. It just doesn't.

Presumably, if you give Wigner's friend a gas mask and put her in the box with the cat, the situation for Schrödinger, outside the box, remains unchanged... the cat is alive and dead; yet the situation for Wigner's friend is different - they can see the cat.

And crucially, Wigner's friend and Schrödinger will agree that this is the case. The rules of physics remain the same for both observers.

I'm not keen on philosophers indulging in speculative physics, but it's worth pointing out that "Shut up and calculate!" is itself a worthy metaphysical option:

To shut up and calculate, then, recognises that there are limits to our pathways for understanding. Our only option as scientists is to look, predict and test. This might not be as glamorous an offering as the interpretations we can construct in our minds, but it is the royal road to real knowledge. — Quantum Wittgenstein

So we have a universe that, as it slides inevitably towards thermodynamic equilibrium, contains pockets of ever increasing complexity.

Is the argument then that this complexity somehow implies (leads to, causes...) a fair and just universe?

The difference between how things are and how they ought be remains.

None of the good ones, I would hazard. — Wayfarer

Well, none I thought much good, at least. :wink:

My beef is with the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion of truth. — Wayfarer

And on that we agree.