I don't understand why anyone would want to say "higher degree of reality" when they mean "has more characteristic predicates applying to it", — fdrake

I suppose in line with what Schumacher says, 'more real' in the sense of possessing a greater degree of organisation, and a greater degree of agency as does matter. So in that sense evolution reveals greater horizons of possibility. But as noted at the outset, one of the characteristics of modern culture is the 'flattening' of ontology.

Yes, I suppose that is a poor example. I suppose what I was driving at, is the various degrees of the grasp of reality, not degrees of reality per se.

I think a better one is more traditionally Aristotelian. Going back to the hierarchical ontology, E F Schumacher presents a version of that in his Guide for the Perpexed (1977). Schumacher articulates a version of traditional ontology where each level includes but transcends the attributes of the one preceeding.

"Mineral" = m (mineral - acted upon but inactive)
"Plant" = m + x (vegetative - organic but insentient)
"Animal" = m + x + y (organic, motile and sentient)
"Human" = m + x + y + z (organic, motile, sentient and rational)

These factors (x, y and z) represent ontological discontinuities. Schumacher argues that the differences can be likened to differences in dimension, and that humans manifest a higher degree of reality insofar as they uniquely exhibit life, consciousness and rational self-consciousness. Schumacher uses this perspective to contrast with the materialist view, which argues that matter alone is real and that life and consciousness can be reduced to it.

Which in turn suggests degrees of agency, the ability for automous action, on the one hand - minerals having none, and animals having ascending degrees of it - and also degrees of self-organisation, which likewise increase with degrees of sentience.

Really no idea, at this point, why this OP got started.

Luke Barnes refutes Victor Stenger.

'The will not to believe is just as strong as the will to believe' ~ Prof Ian Stevenson.

We tolerate every species of fool in my country; dunno about yours. — J

Oh, we have plenty.

Say I have three pretty straight sticks, and I arrange them to make a pretty good triangle on the ground. Does the triangle exist? Surely. Does it exist in the same way the sticks do? ― Apparently not. — Srap Tasmaner

And therein lies a considerable proportion of semiotics, among other things.

The point of classical liberalism is that we allow, politically, for differences of opinion about this; we don't say that no opinion is or can be correct. — J

Not that aspect, more that the individual as the arbiter of value, and that all individuals are equal in principle. Within an heirarchical ontology, there are also degrees of understanding, where individuals might have greater or lesser insight. I had a rather terse exchange about that in your other thread from which this one was spawned (here). That said, I hasten to add that I support the aspect of liberalism as the ability to accomodate a diversity of opinions, but not necessarily that it means that every opinion is equal, just because someone holds it.

I'm also bearing in mind that many of the advocates of the perennial philosophy and 'traditionalism' (René Guenon and others of that ilk) were often associated with reactionary politics (Julius Evola being a prime example.) Mark Sedgewick's book on them is called Against All Modernity.

I think there must be an inevitable degree of friction, if not conflict.

It's very difficult for me to imagine what it might mean to have a degree of reality, in contrast to an existent which has a property of a given intensity. — fdrake

Say as a crude example, that a delusional subject has an inadequate grip on reality. There are of course degrees, ranging from severe mental illness through to narcissistic personality disorder, for instance. I think in classical philosophy, there is at an least implicit principle that the philosopher is less subject to delusion than the untrained mind - the hoi polloi, if you like. They are more highly realised, they have a superior grip on reality.

If you are objecting to my use of the term 'realm' both Plato (in translation) and Perl use it. Perl says: — Fooloso4

Not yours, in particular, but the general tendency towards reification of 'forms' such that they are depicted as existing in a platonic realm. My revisionist interpretation is that forms can be understood as logical principles, arithmetical truths, and all the many elements of thought that can only be grasped by reason. So they're real in that sense, but not existent in the sense that objects are existent. This shows up in all of the arguments about platonic realism in mathematics:

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. — SEP

Note the irony of 'would be an important discovery', discussing something which was arguably well understood two thousand years ago ;-)

Splendid idea!

The source of the quote is 17th Century Theories of Substance in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I assume I get to be a substance in some sense, that I am not less real than my mother was because my existence is dependent on her having existed. — Srap Tasmaner

Substance

My understanding is that the term 'substance' in philosophy can be quite problematical. The above article starts with:

In contemporary, everyday language, the word “substance” tends to be a generic term used to refer to various kinds of material stuff (“We need to clean this sticky substance off the floor”) or as an adjective referring to something’s mass, size, or importance (“That is a substantial bookcase”). In 17th century philosophical discussion, however, this term’s meaning is only tangentially related to our everyday use of the term. For 17th century philosophers, the term is reserved for the ultimate constituents of reality on which everything else depends. This article discusses the most important theories of substance from the 17th century: those of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Although these philosophers were highly original thinkers, they shared a basic conception of substance inherited from the scholastic-Aristotelian tradition from which philosophical thinking was emerging.

So, the history of that term, in brief, is that 'substantia' was used to translate Aristotle's 'ousia', from the Greek verb 'to be'. There are entries in SEP and IEP about the term under various headings (for example The Meaning of Being in Plato.)

In the Wikipedia entry on ouisia, I note that 'Heidegger said that the original meaning of the word 'ousia' was lost in its translation to the Latin, and, subsequently, in its translation to modern languages. For him, ousia means Being, not substance, that is, not some thing or some being that "stood" (-stance) "under" (sub-).'

Note for illustrative purposes, that if one simply substituted 'subject' for 'substance' in relation to, say, Spinoza's philosophy, that it carries a very different connotation: "the world comprises a single subject' has a very different sense to 'the world comprises a single substance'. It's not entirely accurate, of course, but it reflects Heidegger's point, which is that substances are somehow, 'beings', not objectively-existent things or kinds of stuff.

Which, in turn, has considerable significance for consideration of the sense in which 'substances' (or is that 'subjects'?) can be understood as constitutive elements of reality. I think, for us, it is almost unavoidable to conceive of such purported constituents as being objectively real in the same sense as the putative objects of physics, but in pre-modern philosophy the meaning is much nearer to 'soul' or psyche.

Hierarchical ontology

In any case, as mentioned, this idea of 'substance as being' is related to the archaic idea of the 'great chain of Being'. The Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical framework originating in classical and medieval thought that envisions the universe as a structured, interconnected whole - the literal meaning of Cosmos - with all beings and entities ranked according to their degree of perfection or closeness to the Divine Intellect. At the top is God, the ultimate source of all existence, followed by angels, humans, animals, plants, and inanimate matter, each occupying a specific place in the cosmic order. This concept, influenced by Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and later integrated into Christian theology, reflects a worldview in which every entity has a purpose and position within a divinely ordained system. The chain emphasizes continuity and gradation, with no gaps between levels, symbolizing unity and harmony in creation. This is exhaustively described in Alexander Koyré's writings, particularly From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe.

I'm in no way suggesting any kind of 'return' to that pre-modern conception, but I think it's important background in understanding the radical difference that came about through the scientific revolution.

Why I brought it up in the first place, is because the role of there being 'degrees of reality' as providing a qualitative axis, an axis against which terms such as 'higher knowledge' is meaningful. I fully understand this triggers a lot of pushback, as I think it's probably quite inimical to liberalism in some respects (hence the frequent association of traditionalism in philosophy with reactionary politics.) But again, something to reflect on.

Now, having opened this exceedingly large can of worms, I'm going to be scarce for a couple of days, due to familial obligations. But I hope that provides grist to the mill.

See the newly-started thread Degrees of Reality, which will mention Heidegger in the forthcoming post.

As in Stove’s Gem notoriety, I presume. — Mww

Yes, that David Stove, under whom I studied Hume. I didn't learn about his 'gem' until much later, but I can't say I think much of it. (See a critique. His Gem sounds awfully like most of what Banno says about philosophical idealism.)

Allan Bloom's commentary sounds about right to me: "It [the Line] shows that reality extends far beyond anything the practical man ever dreams and that to know it one must use faculties never recognized by the practical man." To doubt this, I think, is to doubt the cave allegory as well -- or else give it a reading in which the one who returns brings back only another image. — J

Is there a realm of Forms? Are there philosophers who know these Forms? Do you know the Forms themselves? — Fooloso4

Have you looked at the book I have mentioned, Eric Perl Thinking Being? The chapter on Plato in particular, in which he criticizes the customary idea of there being the 'separate realm' of Forms. ('The Meaning of Separation'). I don't want to launch into exegesis, other than to say I believe that Plato's metaphysics has become systematically misrepresented over time, due to the fact that modern philosophy and culture has no concept of there being degrees of reality, which was still visible in the 17th century philosophy of Liebniz, Descartes and Spinoza:

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. Given that there are only substances ('substantia', ouisia) and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances are the most real constituents of reality. — 17th Century Theories of Substance

I interpret this as a reference to the dying embers of the 'Great Chain of Being', which was to be extinguished by the scientific revolution. Whereas for modern culture, with its nominalist roots, existence is univocal: something either exists, or it does not. There can't be degrees of reality. Which again, is why it is necessary to put quotes around "higher". (Also recall the many discussions about the meaning of 'substance' in philosophy, see this acid comment by Joe Sachs.)

If science is a virtue... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, the key differentiator of modern science is the emphasis on quantitative data, measurement and prediction. Isn't that why physics has been made the paradigm for much of modern science and philosophy? Isn't that why, in philosophy of mind, the mind itself has been reduced to arguments about the significance of 'qualia' (merely a technical term for the qualitative nature of experience.)

This is an interesting strand. I suspect that philosophy is unattainable for most people who lead lives where the barriers to philosophy are significant and sometimes insurmountable. — Tom Storm

There are many interesting practical philosophy writers on Medium and Substack. Too many to follow, really. Masimo Piggliuci is one. Many of those writers are going back to the classics - Marcus Aurellius other Stoic writers. And it's because the ancients were in their way much more practical - what's that word, 'phronesis', practical wisdom. There's an audience for it, even if it's not a mass audience.

Speaking of 'elitism', did you ever happen upon John Fowles foray into philosophy, The Aristos? I only read it once, many years ago, but it left an impression. Especially the compendium of sayings by Heraclitus at the end.

Where Parmenides says “it is the same thing to think and to be.” — Fire Ologist

There's a saying associated with Platonism, 'to be, is to be intelligible'. It took me a long while to understand that, but one of the books I mentioned cleared it up, Thinking Being, Eric Perl.

Do you have a link to an article? — Leontiskos

Facing the Great Divide, Bhikkhu Bodhi.

Beyond Scientific Materialism and Religious Belief, Akinko Weber.

Some like Parmenides worked to put the puzzle together, not seeing the pieces once he saw the whole picture, while today we are told the pieces are all there is to talk about and must not talk about any whole picture. And the consensus today is that we aren’t being scientists anymore when we think we see a whole. — Fire Ologist

There really is such a thing as 'the unitive vision', alluded to by Parmenides. Also a recent book by a philosophically-inclined physicist, Heinrich Päs, The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics. (I haven't read it but I've listened to him expound on the ideas in an interview.) There's actually more than a few mystically-inclined physicists (much to the chagrin of physicalists).

Buddhists would have us empty out even the science and the metaphysics to experience truth, and let the whole be whole, where none of the pieces even exist anymore. — Fire Ologist

Well, śūnyatā is often misinterpreted as a kind of monstrous void, but in reality it's much nearer to the phenomenological epochē of Husserl (who commented favourably on Buddhist Abhidharma.) I like to think of it as 'going beyond the word processing department' i.e. going beyond the part of your brain that encodes everything in language and discursive ideation (which in my case is always a very busy place.)

The conflict, if it is a conflict, between secular and sacred readings of traditional and pre-modern culture, is also a factor in Buddhist modernism. It's a sort of tectonic plate.

By the way Book 1 of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis has just been published.

I guess I don't see science and scientific objectivity as separate from philosophical virtue, even in the realm of "reality as lived." It seems like a lot of the same virtues underlie both philosophy and science. — Leontiskos

Surely. I suppose a traditionalist way of putting it, would be the relationship of scientia and sapientia, which don’t conflict, but have a different focus. It’s one of the things I admire in Aquinas, with this view that science and faith can’t be ultimately in conflict, although that itself would be considered contentious nowadays by a good many people. It’s more that in the case of philosophical spirituality, the subject and the object of study are the same.

Why thanks, that means a lot, coming from you. :pray:

It’s because there’s a kind of unspoken prohibition on certain topics or attitudes in the consensus view. I’m reminded of a clause in the founding charter of the Royal Society of London, which explicitly prohibited the consideration of ‘metaphysik’ on the grounds that it was in the province of churchmen, not natural philosophy as such (and in those days, one really had to stay in one’s lane.)

(I learned of Eric Perl’s book Thinking Being from John Vervaeke’s lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. As you know, he is attempting to critique some of these naturalist assumptions from within a naturalistic perspective and what he has called ‘transcendent naturalism’.)

As pointed out, the texts lend themselves to a variety of interpretations. That is part of their inexhaustible nature. But nevertheless

The introductory section of Parmenides’ philosophical poem begins, “The mares that carry me as far as my spirit [θυμὸς] aspires escorted me …” (B 1.1– 2). He then describes his chariot-ride to “the gates of night and day,” (B 1.11) the opening of these gates by Justice, his passage though them, and his reception by a Goddess, perhaps Justice herself. The introduction concludes with her telling him, “It is needful that you learn all things [πάντα], whether the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth or the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief” (B 1.28–30). From the outset, then, we are engaged with the urgent drive of the inmost center of the self, the θυμὸς, toward its uttermost desire, the apprehension of being as a whole, “all things.” Since the rest of the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine. The very first full-fledged metaphysician in the western tradition, then, experiences his understanding of Being in religious terms, as an encounter with divinity. — Eric J Perl, Thinking Being, p13

I presume at least a trace of this revelation will be preserved in the subsequent tradition.

There is no collapse. That's why I differentiated myself from Penrose's account.

The key idea of QBism is that the wavefunction ψ does not describe something that exists objectively “out there” in the world. Instead, it represents the observer’s knowledge of the probabilities of the outcomes of observations. In other words, the wavefunction provides a rule that an agent/observer follows to update their beliefs about the likely outcomes of a quantum experiment. These probabilities, much like betting odds, are not intrinsic features of the world but rather reflect the agent’s expectations based on their unique perspective and prior information.

In QBism, measurement outcomes are seen in terms of experiences of the agent making the observation. (In contrast, the Copenhagen interpretation views the wavefunction being relational to objective facts about how a system is prepared, and downplays the subjective aspect.) Each agent may confer and agree upon the consequences of a measurement, but the outcome is fundamentally the experience that each of them individually has. Accordingly the wavefunction doesn’t describe the system itself but rather the agent’s belief about what might happen when they interact with it. So while quantum theory has extremely high predictive accuracy, no two observations are ever exactly the same, and each observation is unique to a particular observer at that moment. This is why the role of the subject is central to the QBist model, and where it diverges from the realist view, which holds to a mind-independent reality that must be the same for all observers. In this sense, QBism puts the scientist back into the science — where, really, she has always belonged!

No ghost, and no collapse.

Depending on what happens, I think the US is approaching the point where it simply has to acknowledge that Donald Trump is above the law.

If he succeeds in getting his hush-money conviction overturned by presidential fiat, and also makes good on his promise to pardon most or all of those convicted for January 6th crimes, then he will establish this as a fact. And now he's also armed with the Supreme Court decision that any official acts (or 'whatever Trump wants') will be immune from prosecution.

is happy with ghosts in machines. — Banno

Instructive that you think that I think there are any.

But thanks for the explanation.

A realist can employ Davidson — frank

Ah yes. With the magical supervenience, which fills all manner of explanatory gaps.

Anyone paying attention to the scholarship for the last fifty years or more knows that that there have been significant changes in the way Plato has been interpreted — Fooloso4

But isn't it also possible that traditionalist interpretation of Plato - the mystical side of Plato, if you like - has been deprecated by secular culture? Today's culture often deprecates metaphysical claims, especially those that verge on mysticism or spirituality. The Platonic Forms, for instance, are easier to treat as intellectual constructs or pedagogical devices rather than ontological realities when seen through a secular lens. Plato couldn't really be talking about the reality of such non-empirical states or abstractions, could he? There's no conceptual space for that in the naturalist worldview. (Enter Gerson.)

Yet you insist that the only thing that collapses a wave function is a mind — Banno

You complimented my essay on it. You will no doubt recall the citation:

The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains.

What do you make of this criticism from the above-mentioned SEP article on metaphysical realism:

For Putnam, metaphysical realism boils down to the idea that the facts of the world (or the truth of propositions) are fixed by something mind-independent and language-independent. As a consequence of this idea, Putnam suggests that the Metaphysical Realist is committed to the existence of a unique correspondence between statements in a language or theory and a determinate collection of mind and language-independent objects in the world. Such talk of correspondence between facts and objects, Putnam argues, presupposes that we find ourselves in possession of a fixed metaphysically-privileged notion of ‘object’.

Does this accurately describe your view?

Tables, rocks, the moon, and so on, all exist — Realism | SEP

Portentious, then, that Albert Einstein himself felt obliged to ask his friend Abraham Pais 'does the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?' It was a rhetorical question - the implication being of course it does. But that Einstein was obliged to ask it was portentious.

Which leads to another useful SEP entry, Challenges to Metaphysical Realism

Time passed before there were minds — Banno

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

Hence, once again, the fundamental role of 'the observer', which (or who) is ever excluded from the objective picture.

historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality. — Leontiskos

I rather like to think that philosophy is concerned with reality as lived. It's in that sense that it is concerned with the nature and meaning of being rather than the study of what can be objectively assessess and measured. Which is why I'm sceptical of the suggestion that philosophy and science are the same in essence. Since the advent of a specifically modern science, with Newton and Galileo, there has been a difference in principle, grounded in the primacy of the objective. (It's not coincidental that the earliest known use of the term 'objective' in our modern sense is from 1654 (source))

There is a Buddhist Sanskrit term, yathābhūtam, meaning 'to see truly,' with the connotation of knowing what is truly so. Parallels can be found in Latin and Greek philosophy, notably veritas and aletheia, the latter meaning 'unconcealment'—a concept central to Heidegger's philosophy. Another term is sapientia (or the related English terms sapience and sapiential), which denotes wisdom imbued with a moral or ethical dimension.

What these terms share is their connection to a form of knowing that transcends simple factual correctness, emphasizing lived wisdom and integrity. They suggest a union of understanding and way of life, a dimension often omitted in the modern notion of objectivity. A distinction can be drawn between the detachment that characterised sagacity in that sense, and the neutrality associated with modern scientific objectivity (although I think that is probably where it originated).

Regardless, the argument does not depend on time. We can posit instead a space with no folk in it to know stuff, and get similar results. There may be a planet in orbit around the pulsar described here. That there is such a planet is either true, or it is false, and this is so regardless of what we know. — Banno

Time comes into existence with minds. Outside minds there is no time. You and I understand what pulsars are, and remote stars, and planets, because we have a shared language and culture within which they are meaningful.

For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. Nothing will ever lead me to understand what a nebula, which could not be seen by anyone, might be. Laplace’s nebula is not behind us, at our origin, but rather out in front of us in the cultural world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoted in The Blind Spot, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

The authors add:

Merleau-Ponty is not denying that there is a perfectly legitimate sense in which we can say that the world existed before human consciousness. Indeed, he refers to the “valid signification” of this statement. He is making a point at a different level, the level of meaning. The meanings of terms in scientific statements, including mathematical equations, depend on the life-world... Furthermore, the universe does not come ready-made and presorted into kinds of entities, such as nebulae, independent of investigating scientists who find it useful to conceptualize and categorize things that way given their perceptual capacities, observational tools, and explanatory purposes in the life-world and the scientific workshop. The very idea of a nebula, a distinct body of interstellar clouds, reflects our human and scientific way of perceptually and conceptually sorting astronomical phenomena. — ditto

//

realism is the view that something is real. If one thinks that universals are real then they are a realist with respect to universals — Leontiskos

But the significance here is that realism concerning universals is at odds with the naturalist conception of the mind-independent object.

Everything in the cosmic universe is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. ...if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality. — Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P

Elsewhere:

Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object. — Aquinas Online

These are references to Aquinas' epistemology of assimilation, which I have no doubt you know considerably better than I do. But the salient point is, it undercuts the idea of 'mind-independence' in the sense posited by naturalism. Why? Because the pre-moderns did not have our modern sense of otherness or separateness from the Cosmos. (I know this is very sketchy, but I think I am discerning something of significance here.)

I am questioning that 'x can be the case even if nobody knows it'. It doesn't mean that in the absence of any knowledge of it, 'x' does not exist or ceases to exist. We discover facts about the Universe that obviously pre-date the arrival of h.sapiens, as has already been cited. Likewise the gold of Borowa, or wherever.

Objection: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ('if I take away the thinking subject') that is impossible'.

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper (or for that matter the screen this is being read from.)

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares .... Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding...which is untainted by them. — Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Also - I noted that you mentioned Aquinas' realist epistemology in our previous discussions of these matters. However, a vital distinction between today's realism, and his form of realism, is that Aquinas was an Aristotelian realist, one for whom universals are real. This is not the thread for the discussion of that hoary topic but it's part of the background to the whole debate of the relationship of mind and nature, which is very different for the Aristotelian than for today's naturalism.

Do you remember when in one of your threads I disagreed with Pinter's idea that shape is not inherent to objects? — Leontiskos

I do now. Thanks for the reminder, I will re-visit it.

And the reason I'm impressed with that book is that I think it is one of the many in that emerging area of cognitivism and cognitive science, which provides support for a kind of scientifically-informed idealism, as distinct from the materialism which has hitherto tended to characterise scientific philosophy.

Presumably this sort of approach was born in the modern period. — Leontiskos

The passage that is being commented on was from the abstract of a book I mentioned, Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order. It is of course difficult to convey the thrust of an entire book on the basis of an abstract of the introduction. The book's general abstract says 'tracing philosophical thought from Descartes through Kant to 20th-century physics, Pinter examines how cognition shapes our understanding of reality. He argues that the mind constructs the form and features of objects, suggesting that shape and structure arise in the observer rather than being inherent in objects themselves. Drawing on Gestalt psychology, Pinter contends that the meaningful connections we perceive are products of the mind's organizational processes.'

So the sense in which I question the reality of 'mind-independence' is that whatever we assert, about gold in Boorara or whatever, relies on this cognitive framework - that we can't stand outside of that faculty to see what is outside of or apart from it. So the world is not 'mind-independent' in that sense, but this doesn't mean, as Banno seems to think it must, that there can be no unknown facts.

Well, yes it was... that there are still facts even when no one is around. — Banno

Which neither you nor anyone would ever know, were we not around :rage:

By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience.

By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. — Wayfarer

we can still talk of truths. — Banno

That was never at issue, but please let's leave it there.

It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there would still gold in Boorara. — Banno

But as I said, that is the case for any empirical fact whatever. You're loosing sight of what 'mind independent' means if indeed you ever had sight of it.

The world wouldn't disappear if we disappeared. — L'éléphant

We might imagine that it would continue to exist, but whatever existence it possesses would be unrecognisable to human intelligence. I did mention Wittgenstein.

there truths when no one is around — Banno

Yours is basically the argument from the stone.

Because to Kant, even space and time are only appearances to us. — L'éléphant

The 'forms of intuition' - namely, space and time - and the world of appearances exist only in relation to the subject's cognitive faculties. If the thinking subject were removed, what we understand as the empirical world would also cease to exist because it is dependent the structures of human cognition.

If we remove the perceiver, then there's no object of experience, is there? — L'éléphant

Right.

There is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed... your hypothetical, not mine... by the definition you gave, there would still gold in Boorara. — Banno

The same can be said for any empirical fact whatever, but that is still not the point at issue.

Incidentally, the passage I quoted was the absract of Chapter 1 of Charles S. Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order, which is essentially about the convergence of cognitive science and philosophy in support of a thesis about the foundational role of cognition in the cosmic order.

The book’s argument begins with the British empiricists who raised our awareness of the fact that we have no direct contact with physical reality, but it is the mind that constructs the form and features of objects. It is shown that modern cognitive science brings this insight a step further by suggesting that shape and structure are not internal to objects, but arise in the observer. The author goes yet further by arguing that the meaningful connectedness between things — the hierarchical organization of all we perceive — is the result of the Gestalt nature of perception and thought, and exists only as a property of mind.

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. — Banno

Right. Imagine it. There you are - that's the 'implicit perspective' that I'm referring to.

It's time for a change—it's time you started genuinely engaging with your interlocutors. You never know—you might learn something new. — Janus

That would depend on there being a valid objection.

Moving from the topic at hand — Banno

It is quite on-topic. You mentioned Einstein - Bergson's argument for the role of subjective awareness as an essential component of time is plainly similar to Kant's argument that time is 'a form of our intuition', rather than something possessing absolute or objective existence. It was in that respect that he disagreed with Einstein's scientific realism, so it's directly relevant.

But they're not things until they're cognised.
— Wayfarer
What could that mean? — Banno

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer.

If you want the most radical thesis on time check out The End of Time by Julian Barbour. I've been reading, and trying to understand, it, and it's doing my head in (in a good way). — Janus

I'm reading his 'the nature of time', which is a shorter account of his overall understanding. As I understand it, for Barbour, what we experience as the passage of time is tied to the way observers interact with the universe’s configurations. This makes time observer-dependent, rooted in human perception rather than a property of the universe itself.

You seem to be moving around a lot. Apologising for Bergson? — Banno

It's the same point that Kant was making, about how time has a subjective component, arising from the awareness of duration. What is it that connects the moments of a pendulum swing into a coherent series which we call 'an interval of time' other than that awareness?

Did he mean that there are great living philosophers but they are tucked away in departments other than philosophy, or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning? — Joshs

I think he thought that the Department, which was then under the professorship of one D M Armstrong, would not provide the kinds of answers I was seeking.

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Still, I've learned quite a bit since I started on Forums, due to researching names and ideas that are mentioned here. (Including from you, who introduced me to Dan Zahavi, and who's writing I find generally pretty approachable and lucid.)