Thanks. In positivism’s heyday, this wasn’t obvious. I did a unit on Language Truth and Logic as an undergrad, that and B F Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity were the two books I loved to hate. (Passed the unit, though.)

i’ve often mentioned that a lecturer I had in philosophy, David Stove - incidentally not the one who gave the LTL course - used to compare positivism to the mythological uroboros, the snake that swallows its own tail. That was based on the closing words of Hume’s Treatise - ‘take any book of scholastic metaphysics….’. Stove pointed out that the same criticism applied to Hume’s text. Hume wrote his Treatise as a critique of previous philosophy, but at the same time, his book was also presented as philosophy. ‘The hardest part’, Stove would say, with a mischievous grin, ‘is the last bite.’

Something I noticed reading the material on Comte was this:

the positive or scientific stage represents the pinnacle of intellectual development, where understanding is based on empirical observation, experimentation, and the discovery of verifiable, scientific laws. In this ultimate stage, humanity abandons the search for absolute causes and instead focuses on observable facts and the relationships between them. — Wayfarer

‘Abandons the search for absolute causes’ is a pregnant phrase. By this, I’m sure Comte was referring to the final causes in scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy, the reason that things exist or happen to be. This rejection of final causation is the beginning of the so-called ‘instrumental reason’ that is characteristic of Enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophy. I recall an exchange in a televised debate between Richard Dawkins and a Catholic Bishop, who was posing the ‘but why are we here?’ question. Dawkins replied ‘Why we exist, you're playing with the word "why" there. Science is working on the problem of the antecedent factors that lead to our existence. Now, "why" in any further sense than that, why in the sense of purpose is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question.’ Had I been in the audience, I would have stirred the pot by asking ‘why?’ - but I wasn’t and the debate moved on.

Of course not, and that was not why I described your views as positivist. It was more in response to posts such as:

So there is nothing more to say about the metaphysics of reality beyond our best scientific models that supervene on the physical — Apustimelogist

Which meets the description of positivism. (I’ve also posted a separate OP on the subject.)

SO, what are your thoughts about the ineffability of mathematics and the problematic translation of Truth rendered in mathematics, which is poorly understood as a language that can be seen in informal languages? — Shawn

I think the intuition that animated the Greeks was that mathematical reasoning (Dianoia) provided an insight into a higher level of reality than did sensory perception. Even though it may be true that understanding advanced mathematics is a difficult task (one I’ve never mastered), it’s not that difficult to understand this intuition. After all, numbers never come into or go out of existence, they are not subject to change and decay as are the objects of sense, so surely, the argument has it, they are nearer the source of truth than the opinions we have about the material world. And if you consider the role that mathematics has played in science I think this basic intuition has been amply validated.

The reason that it is at odds with much of what modern philosophers think is because of the cultural impact of empiricism, which, recall, emphasises sense-experience as fundamental:

Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

And from another source:

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects.

So does the distrust of Platonism really come down to the fact that Plato's 'ideas' are not things that exist in space and time, and that the only reality they could possess are conceptual?

So touching to see the camaradie amongst the forum positivists.

It is beyond my comprehension that in a Universe 93 billion light years across that has existed for around 13 billion years, the determinacy of the path of photons throughout this Universe is dependent on a few scientists making measurements on the 3rd rock from the Sun. — RussellA

The problem is with taking scientific realism at face value. I watched Sabine’s presentation on T’Hooft. Likewise Roger Penrose and Albert Einstein said they thought quantum physics is radically incomplete. And they too were scientific realists. Penrose says in an interview:

It (quantum mechanics) doesn’t make any sense, and there is a simple reason. You see, the mathematics of quantum mechanics has two parts to it. One is the evolution of a quantum system, which is described extremely precisely and accurately by the Schrödinger equation. That equation tells you this: If you know what the state of the system is now, you can calculate what it will be doing 10 minutes from now. However, there is the second part of quantum mechanics — the thing that happens when you want to make a measurement. Instead of getting a single answer, you use the equation to work out the probabilities of certain outcomes. The results don’t say, “This is what the world is doing.” Instead, they just describe the probability of its doing any one thing. The equation should describe the world in a completely deterministic way, but it doesn’t — Sir Roger Penrose, Interview, Discovery Magazine

The question is, why should it? What if reality is not completely determined by physical principles?

Why should it be that because a photon's path through space and time is unknowable to an observer, that its path is not spatially and temporally objectively deterministic?

A photon of light leaves the Andromeda Galaxy and enters a person's eye 2.537 million light-years later.

The photon must have had a path, because it made its way from the Andromeda Galaxy to the Earth, even if the path cannot meaningfully be assigned by an observer. — RussellA

You should really take a look at the article I linked earlier about John Wheeler—it directly challenges the idea that a photon must have had a definite path.

Wheeler’s cosmic delayed-choice experiment involves light from a quasar billions of light-years away being bent around a massive galaxy en route to Earth due to gravitational lensing. The light can reach Earth by two different paths—left or right around the lensing galaxy.

But here’s the twist: if we set up the experiment to detect which path the photon took, it behaves like a particle—one path. If we instead set it up to detect an interference pattern, it behaves like a wave—taking both paths.

And this choice of how we observe the photon is made now, on Earth—long after the photon has supposedly taken its “path.” The implication is that the photon didn’t have a determinate path until we made a measurement. So the assumption that it had a single, objective, space-time trajectory just doesn’t hold up under quantum scrutiny.

And really, that same principle has been illustrated with the much smaller-scale versions of the ‘delayed choice’ experiment e.g. here

It’s been clear from day 1 that Trump rules by decree. ‘Damn these pesky lawmakers with their inconvenient demands for ‘lawfulness’! They should know that I AM the law.” But now, Trump is practically ruling by whim. He will post his angry ruminations about tariffs at any hour of the day or night, with no regard for congressional oversight, and with the ability to drastically affect both the stock market and economics the world over. Then a day or a week later, post the exact opposite - or double it, or halve it. Whatever.

So there is nothing more to say about the metaphysics of reality beyond our best scientific models that supervene on the physical. — Apustimelogist

That sounds close to logical positivism—reducing reality to what our best scientific models can express, and treating everything else as non-serious. But positivism has been mainly abandoned due to its internal contradictions. Most notably, the claim that only empirically testable claims are meaningful isn’t itself an empirically testable claim so it is, as the saying goes, hoist by its own petard.

And more broadly, the assumption that metaphysics supervenes on physics is itself a metaphysical position—one that treats physical science as a final vocabulary. But that’s a philosophical stance, not a scientific result. But as you said before you will only be persuaded by an empirical argument, everything else, you say, is 'empty words'. Part of the same contradiction noted above.

The problem is that reality fails to give persistent indications of these things. But people still assert them, and naturalism (physicalism) is mostly a stance against that. — Apustimelogist

And that's because you look exclusively through the 'objectivist' stance that characterises scientific positivism.

I'm not OK with jumping to intellectual nihilism. — Relativist

So, you believe that 'idealism' (or in modern terms 'constructivism') is nihilistic, because it denies the external world?

There is a clear way of talking about essences, as those properties had by an object in every possible world in which it exists. We can deal with the consequences of essences using this stipulation. — Banno

Hence the expression ‘true in all possible worlds’?

Then how are you supposed to convince me — Apustimelogist

I put the case as best I can but understand that most people are not going to persuaded by it. The OP asks a rhetorical question, ‘does anyone really support a mind-independent reality?’ If a ‘mind-independent reality’ is to be questioned, how could that be made subject to empirical demonstration? Could it?

So, really, you’re demanding empirical evidence for a philosophical criticism of empiricism. I’d like to oblige, but there’s no such thing, I’m afraid

Given that you would agree that the universe had a history before any organism observed it, this is just meaningless. — Apustimelogist

‘Before’ is a concept. See this explanation..


‘I referred to his view qua idealist that, really, there was no world per se before the first perceiver, but also that science is correct in investigating ancient history, i.e. the world before perceivers. How could both of these claims be true? This is a general problem that idealism must address.’

‘This dichotomy (of the Page Wooter mechanism) underscores the relational aspect of time in quantum mechanics: the experience of temporal evolution is contingent upon the observer’s interaction with the system. Such findings resonate with philosophical perspectives that consider time not as an absolute backdrop but as emerging from the interplay between observer and system.’

Agree?

But I cannot see how any phenomenological analysis any evidence for metaphysical claims. — Janus

It’s not that phenomenology provides evidence for metaphysical claims in the empirical sense, but rather that it reframes the whole question of metaphysics. Kant’s Critique was a critique of dogmatic metaphysics, but in doing so he introduced a transcendental metaphysics—one concerned with the conditions of the possibility of experience.

Phenomenology continues this line by grounding inquiry in intentionality—the structure of consciousness as always directed toward something—and in doing so, it opens a path to exploring meta-physical dimensions of existence without relying on the old ontological categories. It may not use the traditional metaphysical lexicon, but it’s still engaged in a metaphysical project: clarifying how being, meaning, and world come to presence for consciousness.

My claim is merely that religious beliefs cannot be demonstrated to be true, that there is no evidence for the truth of any of them — Janus

‘Positivism is a philosophical approach that emphasizes the importance of observable, measurable phenomena and empirical evidence in gaining knowledge, generally rejecting claims that cannot be verified by scientific methods. It asserts that true knowledge comes from sensory experience and that knowledge is built through rigorous, objective research, separating the researcher from the subject.’

Also, I'm not saying that Armstrong should believe in religion, but I will say that materialist philosophy of mind rejects certain philosophical beliefs or attitudes that are characteristic of religious philosophies, generally - chief amongst them the immaterial nature of mind or the subject. The point about materialist philosophy of mind - Armstrong, Monod, Dennett, etc - is that only what is objectively real is considered real.

I do recognise the conflict between the philosophical outlook I'm trying to understand and convey, and philosophical naturalism, and I'm not shying away from that.

the human perception of time would not exist if there was no mind. It's something of a tautology, but it's unwarranted to claim that our perception of time does not reflect something ontological. — Relativist

Your use of 'something ontological' simply means, you believe that time is real in a sense outside of any cognition of it. Even that usage is questionable. 'Ontology' refers to kind of being, or alternatively, a method for categorising types of substance or systems. What I really think you're saying is 'mind-independent'. I might agree that our perception of time reflects something real, but whatever that real is, it might well be outside of time - which we would have no way of knowing without measurement.

Consider this passage from science writer Paul Davies:

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

'The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that'. Do you know, incidentally, who Andrei Linde is? He's a Russian-American cosmologist and astrophysicist who is one of the authors of 'cosmic inflation' theory. He is interviewed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn of Closer to Truth on this point, which you can review here.

He's making the point that I'm making, and that Bergson makes, and Kant makes - time exists as an inextricable basis of our cognitive apparatus. That doesn't make it 'merely subjective' - from within that apparatus, we are able to measure time objectively and with minute accuracy, but that doesn't negate the necessity of their being a system of measurement nor a mind to measure it.

Physicalist philosophy projects that functionaity outward onto what you think is the existing world, the world as it would be without you are anyone in it, but you're viewing it through the VR headset that is the brain.

You can happily indulge in the idiosyncratic use of "philosophical perspective" that you envision, but others need not agree — Banno

Of course. A large part of philosophy about managed disagreement. I've learned a ton from disagreeing with contributors here.

The condescending elitist cop out. — Janus

vs truculent atheism ;-)

I didn't say 'we'

make a leap of faith to some spiritual position or other. — Banno

Or, a philosophical perspective that you can't fathom.

Anyway, carry on.

Regarding Armstrong suggesting that humans are objects. In his ontology, they are. That doesn't mean they're JUST objects — Relativist

But it does. That is exactly what it means. His profession of respect for religion is out of civility. But, he says, understand that it is subjective, comforting for those who believe it, but not true.

What you consider the "pretense of objectivity" is, to me, just applying a consistent perspective from which to evaluate the world. — Relativist

A perspective which includes a number of presuppositions, mainly drawn from science (despite your denials) or at least from natural philosophy. Hence why I say 'metaphysical naturalism' is self-contradictory - naturalism has generally defined itself in opposition to metaphysics.

Just because our methods emerge from our understandings doesn't mean we aren't reducible, but this shouldn't be a threatening proposition - because it doesn't erase our values or the feelings we have. — Relativist

The underlying belief is that mind is the product of physical causes - and Armstrong says it! - which I'm saying forgets or fails to realise that mind is the pre-condition of an analysis of causes. That is why Schopenhauer says 'materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself.' (Why to I keep quoting Schopenhauer? Because he was an articulate advocate of philosophical idealism. There are aspects of his philosophy I don't agree with, but he puts this point with clarity and force.)

I'm talking specifically about your Kantian space and time stuff — Apustimelogist

It is not my invention. You can find the source text here. Suffice to say, Kant is very difficult to read, and I claim no mastery of his books. But just take the first paragraph in that section:

1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation à priori. Without this presupposition we could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or in succession.

The other passage that was introduced earlier in this thread was from the Aeon Magazine article on the Einstein-Bergson debate on time, specifically:

To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.

Bergson appreciated that we need the exactitude of clock time for natural science. For example, to measure the path that an object in motion follows in space over a specific time interval, we need to be able measure time precisely. What he objected to was the surreptitious substitution of clock time for duration in our metaphysics of time. His crucial point in Time and Free Will was that measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement.

The tendency of his thinking is shown in the "pure". — Janus

Why does Kant say that space and time are 'pure intuitions'?

2. Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions. With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given à priori. In it alone is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be annihilated in thought, but time itself, as the universal condition of their possibility, cannot be so annulled. ...

4. Time is not a discursive, or as it is called, general conception, but a pure form of the sensuous intuition

By calling them pure forms of intuition, Kant is emphasizing that space and time are structural features of human sensibility, not features of reality as it is in itself. They are not merely psychological or subjective in the personal sense, but transcendentally subjective—conditions without which we would have no coherent experience at all. ( You could credibly use the term 'transpersonal' in place of 'transcendental' in this context i.e. 'true for all subjects'.)

Bottom line in all of this is there is no time without mind. If you sputter and gesticulate and point to the 'vast aeons of time that existed before sentient beings came along', there is still mind there.

It's yours.

//and that, for now, is that.//

Can you see any connection between philosophy of science and what I’m attempting to argue for? Because I’m not talking about science.

I don't understand what you actually mean by it or what implication has for anything at all in any possible way. — Apustimelogist

Have you ever studied any philosophy of science—Kuhn, Polanyi, Feyerabend, that sort of thing?

So...your view is that space and time are entirely mind-dependent. — Relativist

I wouldn’t say that space and time are “entirely mind-dependent” in the sense of being subjective or personal. I’m not saying they’re imaginary or arbitrary, nor that they vary from person to person. What I’m proposing is in line with the Kantian (and later phenomenological) insight that space and time are conditions of appearance—they are the framework within which any object can appear to us at all, not features of things as they exist independently of experience. That is the sense in which they're not mind-independent.

Why? Because we never encounter any object that is not extended in space and persisting or changing through time. But we never experience space or time themselves apart from the objects and events that are given in them. Time and space are preconditions of experience, but not themselves objects of experience.

A degree of skepticism is appropriate because all scientific "knowledge" (body of accepted facts) is tentative. Feel free to add an element of skepticism on the basis that our foundational starting point (our perceptions and cognitive faculties) is a step removed, but then I ask: what's the value of doing this, other than as an intellectual nod to possibility? Why treat it as tentative, like we do scientific knowledge, when there is zero chance of correcting it? — Relativist

Here, I’d say the value isn’t in treating our foundational perceptual and cognitive framework as "tentative" in the same way we treat scientific hypotheses—after all, as you say, we can't "revise" the basic conditions of human cognition. But acknowledging their conditional or constructed nature serves a different philosophical purpose: it helps us see the limits of objectivity, and opens space for deeper inquiry into the nature of reality and experience.

Kant’s insight—and I think Schopenhauer, Husserl, and even parts of quantum theory echo this—is that the very things we take for granted (space, time, causality, objecthood) are not absolute givens, but conditions for appearance. We can’t “correct” them from the outside, but we can come to understand how they frame everything we think and perceive, and that’s not trivial.

Why bother? Because once you see that the world we experience is not the world-in-itself, but the world as it appears under certain cognitive conditions, you begin to notice how easily we mistake models for reality, conceptual constructs for independent facts, and contingent frameworks for absolutes. That has enormous implications—not only for metaphysics, but for ethics, consciousness, and our place in the cosmos.

In short, it’s not about revising cognition—it’s about cultivating the humility to see that reality might be deeper than what any model or theory can capture. That’s not idle skepticism—it’s philosophical maturity.

What I’m ultimately taking issue with is the pretense of objectivity in philosophy, especially where it has been co-opted by scientific materialism or physicalism. This worldview treats the human being as simply another object among objects, to be analyzed in the same terms as stars, stones, or synapses:

What does modern science have to say about the nature of man? There are, of course, all sorts of disagreements and divergencies in the views of individual scientists. But I think it is true to say that one view is steadily gaining ground, so that it bids fair to become established scientific doctrine. This is the view that we can give a complete account of man in purely physico-chemical terms. — D M Armstrong, The Nature of Mind

That is, as an object.


But philosophy cannot honestly sustain this stance. The human subject is not just an object within the world, but also the condition for any world appearing. Scientific objectivity depends on observation, and observation presupposes a subject—a standpoint, a perspective, a consciousness. To then treat that subject as if it were just another measurable object is to erase the very ground from which all measurement arises.

This is not a rejection of science, but a rejection of a metaphysics that forgets its own conditions. It’s requirement to recover the truth that human beings are not reducible to what objective methods can say about them, because those methods themselves emerge from the activity of human understanding.

And physicalism, to put it in the Australian vernacular, has that entirely arse-about :-)

both of which reinforce my point that time has an ineluctably subjective element. That doesn't mean that it is subjective or only in the mind but that it cannot be understood as objective in any absolute sense.

On its way to the eye, the photon passes through every point between the object and the eye, of which there are an infinite number. As the photon can only be in one place at one time (ignoring complexities of quantum mechanics), at each point the photon passes through, it exists in the present time, it exists in the "now". Either there are an infinite number of "nows" between the object and the eye or there is only one "now", where the photon happens to be at any moment in time. — RussellA

That picture of the photon passing through every point on a classical trajectory assumes a deterministic path and a continuous sequence of objective instants. But Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment casts serious doubt on whether such a path can be meaningfully assigned at all. In quantum mechanics, the photon doesn’t have a definite position at each moment unless measured.

In fact, what counts as the history of the photon (did it take one path? both? neither?) can depend on a measurement made after the photon has already passed the apparatus. This suggests that there is no determinate series of spatial locations or temporal “nows” that the photon occupies independently of the measurement context.

So no—we can’t “ignore quantum mechanics” here, because it challenges the very assumptions that underlie the idea of a photon existing at some location at each moment in time. Meaning the example of a photon does not serve the argument (ref).

It's also worth remembering that special relativity already showed us that time is not absolute. The rate at which time passes depends on the observer's frame of reference—what counts as “now” for one observer is not “now” for another moving at a different velocity. There is no single universal present in relativity. (Hence the name ;-) )

So I think I’m actually agreeing with the post I responded to, but I didn’t read it very carefully.

Well, if it’s true that the strong force was a small percent different, then matter would not form, the fact that it’s a logical possibility that it might be a small percentage different is meaningless, isn’t it?

How do possible worlds intersect with the anthropic cosmological principle? As is well known this principle states that had a very small number of constants and ratios on the atomic scale been ever so slightly different, matter and living organisms could not exist.

The fact that it is logically possible that those ratios and standards might be different only goes to show the emptiness of pure logic.

A book on the subject of this thread: Heidegger, Neoplatonism, and the History of Being: Relation as Ontological Ground, James Filler

This book argues that Western philosophy's traditional understanding of Being as substance is incorrect, and demonstrates that Being is fundamentally Relationality. To make that argument, the book examines the history of Western philosophy's evolving conception of being, and shows how this tradition has been dominated by an Aristotelian understanding of substance and his corresponding understanding of relation. First, the book establishes that the original concept of Being in ancient Western philosophy was relational, and traces this relational understanding of Being through the Neoplatonists. Then, it follows the substantial understanding of Being through Aristotle and the Scholastics to reach its crisis in Descartes. Finally, the book demonstrates that Heidegger represents a recovery of the original, relational understanding of Being.

YouTube dialog on the book between the author and John Vervaeke

Anyway, as you know, most Buddhist schools regard the 'self' as illusion-like/mere appearance. Of course, there are various strands of Buddhist thought. I believe that Madhyamaka and Yogacara come close to transcendental idealism. But, in both case, both the 'self' and the 'world' (and thus every thing) are illusion-like, mere apperances. When all conceptual constructs are removed, 'what remains' is neither 'something' nor 'nothing' (because, after all, apperances cannot be negated). — boundless

the Dharmakaya is nevertheless real - but never to be made the subject of dogmatic belief. But that is definitely another thread (or forum!)

It (Schopenhauer's analysis) seems to conflate the object (the existent that we naturally believe we are perceiving) with the perception of the object. It's perfectly fine to draw attention to the perception process, but I object to blurring the distinction. It's unclear what is meant by coming "under the forms of space, time and causality". Is this just a reference to our cognitive interpretation? Is there some reason to think space, time, causality, and spatial extension are all imaginary? — Relativist

Space and time are not imaginary, but nor are they properties of things in themselves. They are forms of intuition—that is, they belong to the structure of experience, not to things independently of experience. They're part of the conditions under which anything at all can appear to us as an object. In that sense, they are functions of cognition—not invented by the mind, but intrinsic to how the mind makes sense of what it receives.

Your objection seems to come from a position that assumes we can somehow stand outside both perception and object, as if we could compare “the thing as it is” with “the thing as it appears.” But that’s precisely what Schopenhauer—and before him, Kant—insists we cannot do. We never encounter the object “in itself”; we only ever encounter appearances—ideas, in Schopenhauer’s terms—which are already presented in accordance with the structures of mind: space, time, and causality.

Take any object you perceive—your keyboard, for instance. Its mass, extension, color, and hardness are all sensory qualities that correspond to your perceptual categories of sight, touch, etc. Its function as a tool corresponds to a conceptual framework you've learned and internalized. All of that—sensation plus interpretation—is what Schopenhauer means by “idea.”

The object as such is not separate from the idea; it is the idea, for us. This is not a denial of reality, but a statement about how reality appears, and through what structure it becomes meaningful to us at all. To ask what the object is “apart from” all that is to ask what the object is apart from any consciousness of it —an intelligible question perhaps, but one with no experiential content.

This insight—that every object is already shaped by the structures of perception and understanding—later became a stepping-off point for phenomenology which built on this by exploring how the world is always "given to" consciousness, and how even our sense of objectivity is conditioned by the intentional structures of experience.

And that continues into phenomenologically-informed cognitive science today—especially in enactivism and embodied cognition. These approaches recognize that perception isn’t a passive mirror of a ready-made world, but an active synthesis of sensorimotor patterns, embodied engagement, and context-sensitive understanding. The world, as experienced, is always co-shaped by the organism's mode of being.

So this is not just a metaphysical musing—it’s part of a serious and ongoing philosophical effort to understand how experience, meaning, and cognition are bound up with the structure of appearance itself.

Sorry to come back to this mind-warping concept, spinning off from Plato's spooky Forms. But how does the notion of "degrees of reality" differ from the "stipulated models" & "possible worlds" in Banno's post*1 to tim wood? — Gnomon

Because it is—or was—embodied in a living philosophy, not merely in the textbooks of scholars. And indeed, the origin of those schools of thought does trace back to the Platonist tradition (in the broad sense), but philosophy as a way of life, not just an academic pursuit.

The idea of hierarchy here is that reality unfolds in levels. A classic example is found in Aristotle’s De Anima, where he outlines a graded hierarchy of soul (or being), corresponding to different kinds of living things. Aristotle was not a religious mystic, and many aspects of his biology are acknowledged today as precursors to modern biology—though of course far less developed.

In De Anima, the soul (psyche) is the form or actuality of a living body, and Aristotle identifies three primary levels:

• Nutritive Soul – possessed by plants; responsible for growth, nutrition, and reproduction.
• Sensitive Soul – found in animals; includes nutritive functions, plus sensation and movement.
• Rational Soul – unique to humans; includes all prior functions and adds reason and abstract thought (nous).

Each level includes but transcends the previous—forming a natural hierarchy where higher beings realise a greater degree of actuality and potentiality.

These ideas were later woven into the Scala Naturae, or Great Chain of Being—a comprehensive metaphysical synthesis that arranged all beings in a continuous vertical order: from inanimate matter, to plants, animals, humans, celestial intelligences, and ultimately to God. Each level reflected a greater degree of perfection, actuality, and participation in divine being.

(Modern materialism inverts this ontology, treating matter as fundamental and everything else—mind, purpose, value—as emergent or illusory.)

Yet this kind of hierarchical ontology was characteristic of nearly all premodern cultures, as depicted in this schematic image:



The Great Chain of Being reached its apogee in medieval thought and has largely dropped out of secular culture. But the key difference between this and modern modal metaphysics lies in the participatory aspect: in the traditional understanding, the philosophical adept could ascend through these levels of being—gaining deeper insights into higher realities. Knowing was linked to being, and the journey was transformative (hence again the title of the Eric Perl book “Thinking Being”).

A trace of this idea still lingers today, though flattened. We still say that highly trained individuals in academic or scientific disciplines have insights into domains imperceptible to others. But now, these are typically technical or mathematical realities within a naturalist framework—stripped of the vertical, moral, and ontological significance once attached to ‘higher’ levels.

Am I missing something important in-between those philosophical categories? :smile: — Gnomon

I think you’re making an honest attempt.

Plato certainly would not entertain the later, Christian dogma of ‘ideas in the mind of God’, but due to the assimilation of Greek philosophy with biblical revelation, this became foundational to the Christian worldview for centuries. It was displaced in the late medieval and early modern periods. Modern ontology tends to be ‘flat’ - there is only one real existent, that being matter (or matter-energy-space-time). Consciousness is a result or product of undirected physical causes. ‘

But heirarchical ontology is making a comeback. Deacon refers to Aristotelian ideas in Incomplete Nature.

You are correct that no measurement exists outside of conscious temporary awareness. However, Bergson did not completely reject objective time. He differentiated between 'measured time' and 'lived time,' arguing that time cannot be fully captured by concepts or categories alone. Instead, there is likely a complex interplay between these two forms of time. — Number2018

Surely. But to say that time has a subjective element, does not therefore say that it is simply subjective. All subjects can measure time according to an objective measurement, but it regardless will always involve a subject. It’s a mistake to think of it as wholly subjective or wholly objective; it is what could be called co-arising.

There’s this kind of Darth Vader force field effect from the political right. You see it with Trump. Maybe the false illusion of certainty in a world where nothing is.

My younger sister’s example is instructive. She’s married to a public prosecutor, lovely chap, but straight out of a Somerset Maugham novel. Very old-fashioned in his view, a staunch conservative (for which reason we never discuss politics.) But the instructive thing is the depth with which he (and my sister, by way of osmosis) hated Malcolm Turnbull. Far more than anyone on the actual Left, so far as I could tell. And I think Turnbull was the last actual Liberal (as distinct from Conservative) to lead the Liberal Party.

Me, I liked him OK, although I thought he tended towards being vain, in a Warren Beatty kind of way. But I always completely supported his attempts to re-introduce some kind of sane climate policy, and was really annoyed, verging on outraged, when he was rolled over that attempt. And now, I think, the Lib-Nat coalition are reaping the bitter fruits of those decisions. And the Nat side still hasn’t learned anything from it.

Metaphysical naturalism (MN) provides a metaphysical context for what we know about the world. Of course, any metaphysical theory should be consistent with what we know, but the strength of naturalism is that it depends the fewest assumptions. The basic assumptions of MN are not derived scientifically (as scientism would require)- they are a product of conceptual analysis - just like any other metaphysical system must do. — Relativist

However, if you drill down, the basis of the 'conceptual analysis' turns out to be scientific. If you discarded scientific cosmology, atomic physics, evolutionary theory, and so on, what would be left of 'metaphysical naturalism'? And, for that matter, isn't 'metaphysical naturalism' oxymoronic insofar as naturalism is generally defined in opposition to metaphysics?

Qualia are a problem, but can be rationalized as illusions. — Relativist

What is at issue inthis rather glib statement? What's hiding behind these words?

'Qualia' is an item of academic jargon intended to denote 'the qualitative aspects of experience' - the 'what it is like'-ness of seeing, smelling, touching, experiencing - of being, in short. So in what sense are qualia 'a problem'? They're a problem for physicalism, because physicalism claims that what is real must be objectively measurable, which these qualitative states are not. Physicalism recognises only atomic, molecular, and chemical reactions that can analysed in quantitative terms within the framework of mathematicized science. 'Qualia', the qualities of existence, are 'a problem' only insofar as they can't be accomodated within that framework. So they need to be 'rationalised as illusions'. Meaning that the qualities of experience, how it feels to be human, need to be rationalised away. But an illusion can only be an artefact of consciousness. One may have delusions about consciousness, but it's not possible that consciousness itself is an illusion.

You haven't provided an overall metaphysical framework. — Relativist

To do so would require probably another long post, but essentially, I try to combine elements of traditional metaphysics (Christian and Indian) with phenomenology whilst also keeping within the outlines of evolutionary science and cosmology. I see the evolution of life in terms of the manifestation of intelligence, through which the Universe becomes aware of itself. So life and human life in particular, are not the products of chance, but neither necessarily the products of an external 'intelligent designer'. 'What is latent', as one lecturer put it to me, 'becoming patent'.

In Buddhist philosophy, the source of suffering is attachment (or clinging) to what is transient and ephemeral revolving around ego-centred consciousness. The aim of philosophy is release from those attachments, known in Eastern philosophy as liberation or mokṣa, whereas the absence of insight into that is to be ignorant of the causal chain that drives existence. Much more could be said, but that's the general drift of the metaphysical framework as I understand it.

Plus you have Rinehart stomping around saying that they're not far enough to the Right. And that dreadful Madame Lash on Sky News (Abbott's former dominatrix). So, yes, there are nefarious forces.

you're welcome. Recommend the book if you can get hold of a copy.