As the topic of wisdom is being discussed, it may be worth adding a note about Peirce’s philosophy of agapē, or selfless love. Peirce objected to the perceived selfishness implicit in Darwin’s account of the “struggle for existence.” While he accepted evolution, he argued that it could not be adequately explained by chance variation and competition alone. For Peirce, the larger cosmic order bore the mark of agapē—a creative, self-giving love that fosters growth and harmony. He drew this term from the Christian gospels, though he was not himself a denominational Christian, and recast it as a metaphysical principle. In his view, just as wisdom unites knowing with right action, so too does agapē unite being with a purposive direction—evolution not merely as struggle, but as participation in a love that brings novelty into being.

Evolutionary Love is that development of Mind which is the great business of the universe. It is not self-seeking; it is not law-bound; it is not fortuitous. It is the impulse toward perfect sympathy, toward the creation of continuity of feeling, toward the welding together of hearts.

The doctrine of evolution by the struggle for life seems to suppose a natural selection of selfishness. But evolution by love — by sympathy, by kindness, by the desire to make others happy — proves that growth comes by the self-giving of each to the other.

And in frustration at your lack of clarity my responses become increasingly uncharitable. — Banno

Here are your objections to idealism, and my response to them:

Firstly, how is it that there are novelties? How is it that we come across things that are unexpected? A novelty is something that was not imagined, that was not in one's "particular cognitive apparatus". If the world is a creation of the mind, whence something that is not a product of that mind?

Second, how is it that someone can be wrong? To be wrong is to have a belief that is different to how the world is, but if the world is their creation, that would require someone to create a world different to how they believe the world to be. How can we make sense of this?

Finally, How is it that if we each create the world with our particular cognitive apparatus, we happen to overwhelmingly agree as to what that construction is like? So much so that we can participate on a forum together, or buy cars made in Korea. — Banno

Novelty emerges from new external data interacting with our fixed frameworks. In the Kantian view, while the mind supplies the framework for experience, it must work in tandem with the manifold of sensory impressions. The unexpected quality of new data is what we call “novelty.” It doesn’t imply that the mind conjured it from nothing—it simply had to update its organization in response to an input that wasn’t fully anticipated.

Error occurs when our interpretations fail to match that data. When someone holds a belief that is incorrect, it is because there's a mismatch between their mental constructs and what is going on. Although our experience is structured by the mind, it still emanates from the external world. A belief is in error when that mental structure misrepresents or fails to adequately capture the sensible data. This can sometimes result in cognitive dissonance and there are a multitude of opportunities for that in today's world.

Consensus arises because we all operate with fundamentally similar mental structures. This preserves the objectivity of the external world while acknowledging the active role our minds play in organizing experience.

Remember my argument is that what we regard as mind-independent has an ineluctably subjective element or ground, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis (that is the Kantian aspect). Not that the world is 'all in the mind' in the simplistic sense in which you are inclined to interpret it. I'm arguing against 'objectivism' in the sense propogated by scientific materialism which is very influential in today's culture.

anyway enough out of me for now, I have mundane duties to attend to, bye.

Perhaps we might proceed by looking for points of agreement. We both reject reductionism and scientism and those metaphysics that deny a place for mind at all. — Banno

Right. I am basically arguing against the popular view, or myth, of mankind as the 'accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms' (Bertrand Russell), a 'mere blip in the vastness of space-time' (Hawkings), and so on. Within that view, the mind is indeed the product of impersonal material forces, basically an accident. But that extends into popular culture as well. Some of the responses to the original post express that: what is real is what existed long before us and will continue after our extinction. Humans appear within that as mere epiphenomena. These are the roots of nihilism but they appear perfectly natural to a great many people nowadays. That is what I call the 'outside view': taking the attitude grounded in science as being normative, as if we see ourselves as objects from 'outside'. It is not realising that all of science itself is a human activity that relies on the human perspective, as phenomenology realises.

From my perspective, fact that people decided to try to interpret it as the physical particle is misplaced. They could have decided to interpret it differently from the beginning and no measurement problem would have existed. — Apustimelogist

But don't you see how momentous that decision would be? The admission that the fundamental particles of physics are not themselves physical? That you choose not to see this, is not any kind of argument.

You’re sounding like a phenomenologist. — Joshs

Yes, I noticed that. I'm sure it was a slip. ;-)

the chip, the theory, and all of the componentry of that experiment, are products of the mind. — Wayfarer

Just explain to me what about this statement was incorrect? And the fact that data is not information until it is interpreted? I'm simply stating that you can't see the world from some position external to your own being-in-the-world. You will find plenty of analogies for that idea in Wittgenstein, whom you know far better than I.

I never claimed it was a religious dogma — Janus

Your own words:

It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.

I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers. They see only through their own confirmation bias. I have no problem with people believing whatever they like provided they can be honest that it is all about faith, not knowledge — Janus

Here, you are directly equating the argument in the original post with religious dogma - and now, you're denying you said it. Just as you constantly appeal to positivism, and then deny you're doing so. Doesn't warrant any further response.

When, in the guts of the chip on which you are typing, a quantum tunnel sets off a current in a transistor, you are not aware of it. No one is. And yet the measurement has been made. You claim is false — Banno

You have a too narrow an interpretation of consciousness. You think it something inside your head, looking out. But the chip, the theory, and all of the componentry of that experiment, are products of the mind.

Well, I endorse an interpretation that has a measurment problem so this is solved for me, personally. — Apustimelogist

Hey, good for you!

the measurement problem is a result of the fact that when quantum theory was first created, people's first and perhaps natural inclination (considering the predecessors to quantum theory) was to interpret the wavefunction as the physical particle itself — Apustimelogist

But surely this was linked to the fact that science was in search of a or the 'fundamental particle', the basic componentry of the atom. So it is natural that this would amount to a search for a physical particle. The fact that this ended up with the uncertainty principle just is the measurement problem. And most of what i know about it comes from three books on the subject:

Kumar, Manjit. 2008. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality. London: Icon Books.
Lindley, David. 2007. Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. New York: Anchor Books.
Becker, Adam. 2018. What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. New York: Basic Books.

Why the sub-titles? What was 'the great debate about'? Why 'the struggle for the soul of science?' 'Oh, nothing really' is not an answer.

The Quantum Measurement Problem* seems to be similar to Bergson's Clock. Mechanisms move one tick at a time, but humans measure Time as duration : the space between ticks. Hence, for 10 billion solar years, the expanding universe ticked along, with no one to measure that change in terms of duration (Time) or expansion (space) or importance (events) — Gnomon

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

An important report from CAP, a democratic-leaning think tank, on Trump’s First 100 Days. Table of Contents:

• Trump’s game plan for establishing an imperial presidency
• Trump’s steps to achieving an imperial presidency
• Weaponizing the Department of Justice for political purposes
• Ending the independence of independent agencies
• Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists
• Circumventing Congress’ power to decide how to spend federal funds via impoundment
• Weakening the independent media and news reporting
• Misusing the Insurrection Act against Americans to stifle dissent
• Neutralizing the Senate’s role of confirming executive branch nominees
• Attacking the rule of law
• Threatening elections and serving a third term
• Launching government attacks on civil society and perceived enemies

So we're seeing the march of the United States into an authoritarian dictatorship, day by day.

Read on for the details.

You would jump from "measurement involves interaction between observer and observed" to "consciousness creates reality". — Banno

I don't use the phrase 'consciousness creates reality' and you won't find it in the mind-created world OP, as it would be misreading the point.

What I will say is that measurement is a conscious act. You might say that an instrument can record data in the absence of an observer, but until that data is actually observed, it is not yet a measurement. Consciousness “creates reality” only in the sense that it constitutes our experience of the world. To talk of things “outside” or “apart from” that experience assumes a false perspective, as if we could stand outside experience itself. This is something I think Wittgenstein also understood.

How? If you're going to make a point, then make it. Otherwise, you're just taking potshots.

The world is our successful interpretation and communication within our forms of life. — Banno

You see, that line could be taken from 'the mind-created world'. But it seems in conflict with:

That we cannot talk about the way the world is without thereby conceptualising it with our minds does not imply that there is no such world without our so conceptualising it. — Banno

The whole argument between Bohr and Einstein in respect of quantum physics, was Bohr's declaration that physics does not describe the world as it is, but only as it appears to us. This is what Einstein (and now, Penrose), could not accept. And point which is surely Kantian in spirit.

What 'more'?

Indeed. So we have the question, Is there anything to guide us in choosing between these different senses? The question lends itself to special pleading, as I'm sure you're aware: It's tempting, and convenient, to say, "Oh, when it comes to what is scientifically real, the pre-moderns were hopelessly wrong, but with spiritual reality the reverse is true; it's we who don't understand." — J

There was plenty wrong about the pre-modern world, no question. But there's a definite historical trajectory. In the forum environment it's impossible to go into all of the details. For instance, I only discovered John Vervaeke's lectures in 2022, but his original 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' series comprises 52 hours of material! And that there really is such a crisis, I have no doubt, although it's never hard for the naysayers to say 'prove it' and then shoot at anything that's offered by way of argument. I understand that the kind of argument I'm presenting is an attempt to describe an aspect of this historical trajectory as it developed over centuries, but I'm trying to retrace the steps, so to speak.

As for 'pushing the boundaries of what philosophy can talk about', I do agree. But consider this passage from Thomas Nagel:

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. — Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament

One of the aspects of the 'meaning crisis' is this sharp but often tacit division between religion and science. This manifests frequently as criticism of idealist arguments on the grounds that they're basically appeals to religious faith. But many of these criticisms are in turn grounded on a stereotyped model of religion, which in turn is based on the very history that produced 'the meaning crisis' in the first place.

The Copenhagen interpretation denies that we need to explain the mechanism of collapse, that there's some deeper level of reality beneath the quantum description and that the measurement problem requires a solution. — Banno

Bohr wasn't saying "don't ask deeper questions" or "physics should only describe observations." His complementarity principle was a sophisticated attempt to understand what quantum mechanics reveals about the nature of physical reality itself. Bohr argued that quantum phenomena demonstrate fundamental limits to classical concepts like "particle" and "wave" - not because we can't measure precisely enough, but because reality itself doesn't conform to these classical categories.

I have to mention the family Coat of Arms that was bestowed on Neils Bohr by the Danish Crown in recognition of his services to science. Bohr designed it himself, and it included the taoist Ying-Yang symbol, representing his discovery of complementarity, which he regarded as his most important philosophical insight.

The positivist reading - which you're advocating here - treats Bohr as an anti-realist who wanted to avoid metaphysics entirely. But Bohr was actually making a profound metaphysical claim: that the classical subject-object distinction breaks down at the quantum level, and that phenomena only exist in relation to experimental contexts. This isn't avoiding the measurement problem - it's proposing that the problem reveals something fundamental about the nature of physical reality.

Bohr's "no deeper level" claim wasn't anti-explanatory positivism but rather the view that quantum mechanics reveals the deepest level - that reality is inherently relational and contextual rather than consisting of objects with intrinsic properties.

You're conflating the copenhagen view with the later "shut up and calculate" attitude - just leave those questions aside and do the work. Bohr was deeply concerned with interpretation and meaning - he just thought quantum mechanics was telling us something revolutionary about the nature of reality itself.

John Wheeler: “The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy, It conflicts with the view that the universe exists “out there” independent of all acts of observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it gives us. In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word “phenomenon”. In today’s words, Bohr’s point — and the central point of quantum theory — can be put into a single, simple sentence. “No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon”.

Werner Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

Neils Bohr: “Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world”.

It's common for folk with idealist tendencies to confuse what they believe, understand, think etc. with what is true. — Banno

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’. — George Berkeley

So - let's solve that problem! Demonstrate to Bishop Berkeley that matter is composed of absolute and indivisible particles that exist entirely independently of anyone's observation or say-so. Get to it!

I appreciate the response, but I think it sidesteps the core issues rather than addressing them directly.

While there may be broad agreement that consciousness isn't necessarily special in quantum mechanics, this doesn't resolve the deeper puzzle. Even if consciousness plays no unique role, the measurement problem remains: something distinguishes measurement interactions from non-measurement interactions, and standard quantum theory doesn't specify what that 'something' is. We still need to explain why certain physical interactions produce definite outcomes while others maintain superposition.

Second, your comment that "if your preferred interpretation does not have..." is circular. You're essentially saying that if we choose an interpretation that claims to solve the measurement problem, then there's no problem! But the measurement problem is precisely why interpretations were needed in the first place. The various interpretations exist precisely because the theory leaves this fundamental question unanswered.

Third, saying that "quantum theory does not suggest consciousness is required" misses the point. The measurement problem doesn't arise because the theory positively suggests consciousness is involved - it arises because the theory is silent about what actually happens during measurement. Quantum mechanics works perfectly for making predictions, but it doesn't tell us what's really occurring when superpositions become definite outcomes, or what was really the case prior to measurement except by way of probabilities.

The hard question remains: given that quantum systems evolve unitarily according to the Schrödinger equation, why do we observe definite measurement results rather than experiencing superpositions? This puzzle can't be dissolved simply by adopting interpretations that claim it doesn't exist.

And what way do you think I suppose?

I think I could say that the act of observation seems inextricably connected with an experimental result in quantum physics, and this is what has given rise to the well-known interpretive problems. As observers are conscious, some will say that it is inferred from that fact that consciousness is involved, although there is still debate about whether registration by an instrument that is not observed amounts to a measurement. But one can always say that any such registration must itself be validated by observation before it has been brought to completion.

84% of physicists reject the idea that consciousness is necessary for measurement. — Banno

Physicists are not trained in theories of consciousness. There’s probably precious little agreement amongst them about what the word even refers to. (Good article, BTW.)

It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.

I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers. — Janus

You think the Kant's description of the unknowability of the in itself is a religious dogma, because you don't understand it. You think he's projecting an unknowable something. Meanwhile, 'the world', which you so confidently proclaim our knowledge of, is itself not the knowable, familiar and determinate realm which you so casually believe it to be. So you categorise this kind of argument, and that of the original post, as being kind of religious, which is why you think them dogmatic. It's just completely transparent, and it's the opposite of intellectual humility.

verificationism is a theory in the philosophy of science — Janus

It is not! Verificationism is not specific to philosophy of science. It is a central tenet of positivism and was associated with the Vienna Circle and A J Ayer (reference).

So this statement:

I said that only in the case of statements whose assertions are either self-evident or demonstrable by observation can the truth or falsity be determined. — Janus

is verificationism, plain and simple. And if you add

even though the truth of metaphysical theses cannot be determined by either verification or falsification, they can provide a stimulus that may lead to important scientific results. — Janus

Then you're still saying the only criterion of factuality is science, again.

I keep asking you to explain how the truth of any metaphysical thesis could be determined, and you never even attempt to answer the question, which is telling; it seems to show that you are in a kind of denial — Janus

I spend lot of time addressing your objections. I write, publish and defend opinion pieces here and on Medium and will always attempt to address questions and criticisms. I have about the second most number of posts on this forum and a very large proportion of them are responses to criticisms.

What I observe of your modus operandi is that there are many questions in philosophy about which you will say there are no determinable facts. Then you'll say, because they're incapable of being determined, therefore nobody can answer them, therefore empiricism is the most plausible attitude.

How to test a 'metaphysical theory'? Just now Kastrup was interviewed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, he suggests internal consistency, explanatory power, and parsimony would be good starting points. I would concur with that.

But as Karen Armstrong says, spiritual truth is a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we can't learn it in the abstract; we have take the plunge. We have to make it meaningful by engaging with it. And that can only be done first person.

How would you determine the truth of "consciousness is fundamental to reality"? I am not even sure what it means — Janus

Plainly!

Instead I said that only in the case of statements whose assertions are either self-evident or demonstrable by observation can the truth or falsity be determined. — Janus

Which is verificationism in a nutshell . I know you resent being described as positivist, but then you go ahead and make statements right out of the Ayer/Carnap playbook, so how else ought they to be described? The web definition of positivism is 'a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism', which you frequently re-state.

There is no religious truth in any propositional sense. — Janus

The four ways of knowing: propositional knowing (knowing that facts are true), procedural knowing (knowing how to do something), perspectival knowing (knowing through a viewpoint), and participatory knowing (knowing through acting and being in an environment).

Every so often, MU, you hit upon a vein. Anyway, I'm reading that Heidegger essay ('What is a Thing?') this morning, with able assistance from my friend Chuck, and it's really very interesting.

That is the whole point of the Heidegger essay, which I've been re-reading.

If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged. — Heidegger

Like the OP, right?

So, did the clock on your wall keep moving while you slept, or was there a leap from when you closed your eyes to when you opened them again, no time passing - nothing exists, just things leaping ahead as if time had passed? — Banno

To examine the measurements involved in clock time, (Henri) 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. — Clock time contra lived time

Idealism has a great deal of difficulty avoiding solipsism. — Banno

At least your version of it does.

I could say that a mystical experience is about something objective -- God or Divine Reality or whatever phrasing you like -- but only occurs subjectively. But the problem is how a subjective experience could provide evidence for sorting out the difference between some genuine objective reality and a mere psychological event, however powerful. In other words, my asserting the objective existence of what I'm experiencing doesn't make it so. How many such assertions would make it so? That's a complicated question, focusing on the blurred line between objectivity and intersubjectivity — J

You may recall that this is the subject of my essay Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Detachment. It is also a point made in this OP, that the word 'objectivity' only came into use in the early modern period. The background idea is that the pre-moderns had a very different sense of what is real. Their way-of-being in the world was participatory. The world was experienced as a living presence rather than a domain of impersonal objects and forces. In that context, the standard of truth was veritas - rather than objective validation. This state was realised through the emulation of the sacred archetypes rather than made the subject to propositional knowledge (per Hadot's Philosophy as Way of Life).

what prompted its emergence is found in Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the Greeks, Hegel, etc., and what THIS is all about is, even prior to Husserl, the reduction-to-metaphysics discovered in an authentic analytic of what stands right before one's waking eyes. — Constance

Thanks for your insightful comments! One of the books I've been studying the last couple of years is Thinking Being, Eric Perl. It helped me understand the sense in which metaphysics could be a living realisation, not the static religious dogma it has become. I've read parts of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics, but I'm not completely on board with his analysis. I think the flaw that he detects is that of 'objectification' - that philosophy errs in trying to arrive at an objective description of metaphysics, when its entire veracity rests on it being a state of lived realisation. (This is the subject of Perl's introductory chapter in the above book.)

The problem is that the truth (or falsity) of such intuitions is not in any way definitively decidable. — Janus

You say this repeatedly, as if it were revealed truth, when in fact it’s simply the dogma of positivism: that only what can be scientifically validated can be stated definitively.

Religious orders have existed for millennia, during which countless aspirants have practiced and realized their principles. From the outside this may look like hearsay or anecdote, but that is because truths of this kind are first-person. They are not propositional or hypothetical, nor can they serve as scientific predictions.

As Karen Armstrong said

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

The point isn’t that spiritual truths are “indecidable” in principle, but that they are not decidable by the methods of science. Their test is existential: whether practice transforms the one who undertakes it.

The fact is, if noumena do not represent, in an abstract phrasing, actual physical objects the system falls apart. That much is sound. — AmadeusD

I'm going to agree with in this regard. I don't think there is a phrase that translates as 'physical object' in the COPR. Kant is clear that noumena cannot be equated with physical objects. Physicality, for him, already belongs to the phenomenal realm (governed by space, time, and causality). Noumenon functions as a boundary concept (as you say), marking the limit of experience (or: hypothetically as an object of intellectual intuition). To say “noumena must be physical objects” is to import a post-Kantian usage of “physical” that he explicitly brackets out. The better way to put it is: noumena are required for the system, but precisely as non-physical and unknowable.

What I am saying is that the idea that there is "a thing" which is perceived is a faulty idea. So, I'm saying that all these supposed "things", forest fires, balls, and clouds, could be better understood if we simply accept that the perception of them as things is mistaken and misleading. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fascinating line of thought. It reminded me of Heidegger's essay on the topic What is a Thing? where he says that our very notion of 'thing’ is not given once and for all but always interpreted in accordance with the domain of discourse in which it is understood.

(Incidentally, a line from the introductory paragraph of that essay: “If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged.” Something which participants in this thread would be well advised to contemplate.)

Let's recall the point of the original post. It was that Bishop Berkeley's idealism was a reaction against the emerging scientific worldview which sought objectivity as the sole criterion of truth.

This was connected with the influence of the empirical philosophers, who said that all knowledge comes from (sensory) experience. It was also due to the decline of the 'participatory ontology' of scholastic philosophy, in which 'to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is.'

And finally, with Galileo and Locke's division of primary and secondary attributes, whereby the 'primary attributes' were the province of objective knowledge, and the secondary, how things appear or feel to us, relegated to the interior realm of subjectivity.

This is the origin of that distinctly modern form of consciousness, the Cartesian ego seeking to subordinate nature through science and technology. It permeates all of our awareness in today's world.

:100:

I don’t conflate them at all. I distinguish them. To say that what exists must be subject to a perspective is not to deny its existence; it’s to say that “existence” is only ever intelligible to us under the conditions of possible experience. There is a difference between what is and what we can say about what is. My point is that when we speak of existence, we are always speaking from within the limits of our perspective. That doesn’t abolish the external world — it marks the difference between the world “as it is in itself” and the world as it is given to us.

The other point is that I don't accept the idea that things cannot exist outside of any perspective — Janus

Name one.

A lot depends on how much certainty you want to pack into "knowledge'. — J

Note the qualifier, 'objective knowledge'. Let's recall the point of the original post. It was that Bishop Berkeley's idealism was a reaction against the emerging scientific worldview which sought objectivity as the sole criterion of truth.

This was connected with the influence of the empirical philosophers, who said that all knowledge comes from (sensory) experience. It was also due to the decline of the 'participatory ontology' of scholastic philosophy, in which 'to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is.'

And finally, with Galileo and Locke's division of primary and secondary attributes, whereby the 'primary attributes' were the province of objective knowledge, and the secondary, how things appear or feel to us, relegated to the interior realm of subjectivity.

This is the origin of that distinctly modern form of consciousness, the Cartesian ego seeking to subordinate nature through science and technology. It permeates all of our awareness in today's world.

Positivism, pure and simple.

I point at a green one say, and that you also see me pointing at a green one shows that there must be something independent of both of us that explains that, provided we accept that our perceptual organs and minds are in no hidden way connected. — Janus

But I'm not denying that there is an external world. What I'm denying is that knowledge of that world is purely objective, that we can see it as it is or as it would be absent any observer. The entailment being that when we imagine or depict the Universe with no human observer in it, that depiction is still dependent on the perspective which only the mind can bring. But that we forget that, or suppress it, or bracket it out, such that we believe that our bare cognition of the world reveals it as it truly is, in itself.

There's no point in trying to 'explain' something to me in respect of something I haven't claimed in the first place:

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. — Mind-Created World

this is nothing like the "hylomorphism" presented by Aristotle and others. — Paine

I've been alerted to a book on Kant called Kant's Theory of Normativity, Konstantin Pollok. He refers to Kant's transcendental hylomorphism, by which he means that Kant transposes Aristotle's form and matter relation to the register of cognition itself (where form is supplied by the a priori structures of sensibility and understanding, and matter by the manifold of intuition). This is foreshadowed in the opening section of the Transcendental Aesthetic, where he writes:

I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation its matter, but that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relationsa I call the form of appearance. Since that within which the sensations can alone be ordered and placed in a certain form cannot itself be in turn sensation, the matter of all appearance is only given to us a posteriori, but its form must all lie ready for it in the mind a priori, and can therefore be considered separately from all sensation. — B34-A20

This is not to suggest a direct equivalence with Aristotelian hylomorphism, but rather a genealogical similarity: Kant is reworking the old form–matter distinction in a new, transcendental key, shifting it from the register of being (ontology) to the register of knowing (episteme).

Incidentally for those interesting reading Kant, the site Early Modern Texts has a useful resource here https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/authors/kant . The translator, Bennett, translates the texts into a more modern idiom with explanatory content. It's more an addition to the Cambridge/Guyer translation, rather than a substitute for it, but also has very useful detailed tables of contents which help with forming a mental map of the materials.

C.G. Jung once said that the world only exists when you consciously perceive it — Jan

The actual quote was:

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists for us only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. — Source

What is at issue is the explanatory power of your idealist thesis absent the inclusion of 'mind at large', collective mind, universal mind, God. — Janus

What I’m saying is that the frameworks through which we recognize “yellow, blue, green, red” are already the product of shared cognitive, biological, and cultural conditions. That explains the convergence without appealing to a “mind at large.” Agreement on basic perceptual categories doesn’t refute idealism — it actually illustrates it: what we call “the same world” is constituted through intersubjective structures of cognition. That’s the whole point of transcendental idealism: not denying reality, but clarifying that the way it shows up for us is inseparable from the conditions of human experience.

You keep coming back to the idea that I’m saying “the world is all in your mind.” But I’ve disclaimed that right from the start. My point is not solipsism. The point is that the only sense in which we can talk about “the world” is through the cognitive and experiential structures that make it appear for us at all. That doesn’t deny that there is a shared reality — on the contrary, it explains how we come to agree on things like colors in the first place: because we share common forms of sensibility, cognition, and culture.

Are you saying that the fact that there are different conceptual interpretations of the experimental results goes against my claim that every observer sees the same thing? — Janus

You’re the one who said that if science digs down far enough, different observers will converge on the same underlying reality. But quantum physics has shown that this is not straightforward. The uncertainty principle already tells us that knowledge of subatomic particles is inherently approximate, not exact. And in some cases, like the experiment described here A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality. It doesn’t take a degree in maths to follow it: two observers obtain different and conflicting observations, both of which are accurate. But there are other examples from quantum physics, such as Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment.

And it’s not a matter of my choosing or preferring one interpretation over another. If it were truly objective, there’d be no question of interpretation.

among monotheistic religions, the philosophical god conceived by scholars of the church were much later additions to a traditionally personalist god. Ever since then, the god of the scholars and the god of the parish have remained two very different conceptions. — finarfin

Concepts of God(s) are notoriously difficult to define with any precision. What I had in mind with Feser and Hart were these kinds of critiques.

Feser says that theistic personalism tends to reject divine simplicity, a core tenet of the classical tradition. In classical theism, God isn’t composed of parts; rather, God is being. Theistic personalism, by contrast, portrays God as a being with distinct attributes (like intellect, will, power), effectively making God composite in a way classical theists view as metaphysically untenable. Theistic personalists (he's discussing William Lane Craig here) depict God essentially as “a person” with amplified human-like qualities—leading to what Feser sees as anthropomorphism: imagining God as a “super‑creature” rather than as the source of being ref

As for Hart:

Many Anglophone theistic philosophers …, reared as they have been in a post-Fregean intellectual environment, have effectively broken with clas­sical theistic tradition, adopting a style of thinking that the Dominican philoso­pher Brian Davies calls theistic personalism. I prefer to call it monopoly­the­ism myself (or perhaps “mono-poly-theism”), since it seems to me to involve a view of God not conspicuously different from the poly­theis­tic picture of the gods as merely very powerful discrete entities who possess a variety of distinct attributes that lesser entities also possess, if in smaller measure; it differs from polytheism, as far I can tell, solely in that it posits the existence of only one such being. It is a way of thinking that suggests that God, since he is only a particular instantiation of various concepts and properties, is logically dependent on some more comprehen­sive reality embracing both him and other beings. For philosophers who think in this way, practically all the traditional metaphysical attempts to understand God as the source of all reality become impenetrable. — Source

Of course, this may not be at all relevant to the God 'of the pews', but this is a philosophical discussion.

To be fair, neither survey included your option, "It's magic". — Banno

‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ ~ Arthur C Clarke. If you don’t think modern information technology is magic, you have a very limited imagination.

I’m not ‘proclaiming’ anything. I’m saying that quantum physics is like magic: it produces astonishing results but nobody can really say how. Hence the most embarrassing graph in modern physics. No wonder the staunch realists say it there must be something wrong with it.

But then, this is a philosophy forum, not physicsforum, where this discussion wouldn’t even be tolerated.