Perhaps the ancients were not as much "in their heads" and language oriented as we are today.
— Janus
I think that's very likely. — Ludwig V

Good comments. The key point is ‘participatory’ - not being a bystander.

Krishnamurti used to say, ‘to see as it is without condemning it or justifying it.’ That is something that stayed with me,

That’s more Freud’s superego, The philosopher’s aim is always ‘seeing what is’.

often these prejudices become reinforced concrete for their bearer — Astorre

Ain’t that the truth. Everyone has them but the wise are willlng to own up to it.

Thank you for that input, it's an aspect of Husserl that I hadn't encountered yet (there are many). I will think that over some more.

‘I tick therefore I am’ :lol:

I always thought of [alayavijnana] as a kind of collective karmic storehouse, and it is explicitly doctrinally classed as a form of consciousness. So I'm not seeing how it is not an idea of collective consciousness or mind. — Janus

As I say, a very deep topic, I could easily be mistaken about many aspects. It is not accepted by all Buddhist schools, because it said by some Buddhists to be too close to the idea of an 'underlying self or soul'. Madhyamaka philosophers say that ālaya-vijñāna risks reifying consciousness into a hidden essence or foundational mind. From their standpoint, this contradicts the radical emptiness (śūnyatā) of dharmas.

Early Buddhist schools (e.g. Theravāda and some Sarvāstivādins) didn’t have this concept, and when later confronted with it, some commentators saw it as smuggling in an underlying self.

Even within Yogācāra, the idea had to be very carefully explained: the storehouse consciousness is not a permanent self or universal mind, but a provisional way of accounting for karmic continuity and the latent “seeds” (bīja) that ripen into experience.

But the whole subject is one which hinges on the sense in which such a faculty can be said to exist. Perhaps we could say that it exists as potential - but then in what sense do such potential states exist? They are by definition not yet manifest so not existent. But also not beyond the realm of possibility.

Calling the alaya a collective mind does tend to reify it as some ethereal kind of medium or intelligence, which is really a non-Buddhist view. I remember the well-known W Y Evans-Wentz translation many of us has in the 60's and 70's The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation by Knowing the One Mind. Regrettably, that translation is not at all accurate, and there is no 'one mind' concept in Tibetan Buddhism. Evans - Wentz absorbed those ideas from theosophy which also had many spurious interpretations of Buddhism.

Bernardo Kastrup in the other hand sometimes dialogues with Swami Priyananda, and says that his ‘analytical idealism’ is broadly compatible with Vedanta. And I think his ‘mind at large’ reflects that. So my essay reflects a Buddhist critique.

Buddhists believe in the Universe. The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on!idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes.

Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept ‘spirit.’

I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this ‘something else’ other than matter which exists in this Universe?

If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.
Some people explain the Universe as a universe
based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.

So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than
matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word ‘spirit’ is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Nishijima Roshi

So you're saying it isn't memory if there's not a purpose of homeostasis in it? Wow... — noAxioms

Show me I’m mistaken and I’ll change my view. As always.

‘ ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’ ~ Ernst Mayr.

I sure will but I’m in grand-dad mode today so am besieged with a thousand minor annoyances and it’s a very deep topic. I’ll try and find some time soon.

Thank you for those comments on my essay, appreciated. My only comment on the closing analogy is the proximity to that materialist saying that ‘the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.’ I wpild agree however that being is more a verb than a noun.

I sometimes entertain the idea that modern culture normalizes problematical states of consciousness—restlessness, distraction, alienation—and that philosophy, properly understood, is a discipline that seeks critical awareness of this fact. In that sense, it’s not just abstract speculation but a kind of therapy, aimed at cultivating lucidity. Of course easier said than done as we’re all to some extent immersed in it.

I have a romantic notion of philosophy as potentially being able to provide this kind of psychological or experiential transformation, not just the lifeless pursuit of analysis and cold reasoning, but a new way of seeing that enlarges our experience in some way. Yet such a description feels rather tendentious, soft and poetic. — Tom Storm

For Pierre Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84).]

https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/#SH5a

This kind of attitude is bubbling up through independent philosophers rather than academics although again John Vervaeke is both.

The edition Paine links to is the Cambridge Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, ed Guyer and Wood. The gold standard translation.

A gloss on first the section Paine quotes ( A758 B786)

1. Ignorance as motive, not paralysis

Kant begins by distinguishing types of ignorance. Some ignorance is contingent (we simply don’t know some facts yet), which motivates empirical or dogmatic investigation. But there is also necessary ignorance — ignorance grounded in the very conditions of our knowing — which is revealed only by critique. That’s the crucial distinction between simply bumping up against the limits of what we happen not to know, and recognizing the boundaries of possible cognition itself.

He stresses: ignorance known critically becomes a kind of knowledge — a “science” — whereas ignorance known only empirically is merely a vague awareness that there’s more out there than we presently grasp.

2. The sphere vs. plane metaphor

The extended image is helpful. If reason’s domain were like a flat surface with an indefinite horizon, we could never tell how far our knowing might reach — ignorance would always be open-ended. But if reason is like a sphere, then from any part of its curvature we can (at least in principle) work out the total extent and boundary.

The analogy is drawn from mathematics: by knowing the curvature of a degree of arc, you can infer the whole globe. Likewise, by analyzing the structure of synthetic a priori judgments, Kant claims we can infer the scope of reason itself — where it has jurisdiction and where it does not.

This is why his project is not mere “censorship” (Hume’s skeptical rejection of claims beyond experience), but critique: not simply banning speculative metaphysics, but charting the precise boundaries of possible cognition.

3. Hume as halfway point

Kant explicitly positions Hume as a “geographer of reason” who erred by thinking that because causality could not be justified a priori, therefore no metaphysical principle could extend beyond experience. That’s skepticism as a resting place — useful for sobering us up from dogmatism, but not a permanent home. Kant’s third step is to give positive grounds for why certain a priori principles (e.g. causality as a category) apply within experience but not beyond it.

This is Kant’s classic “Copernican” move: reason is not authorized to legislate beyond the field of possible experience, but within that field, it has real and demonstrable authority.

4. The architecture of the Critique

You can see Kant here making explicit the shape of the CPR as a whole. It’s not merely destructive of metaphysics, nor is it skeptical in Hume’s vein. Instead, it seeks to establish metaphysics as a science by:

• identifying the legitimate use of pure reason (within experience), and
• sharply delimiting the illegitimate transcendent use (questions about “objects” beyond possible experience).

Thus the “sphere of reason” is bounded, but not indeterminate.


5. Resonances

• The passage echoes Socratic docta ignorantia — knowing that one does not know, but in a disciplined and productive way.
• It also resonates with Buddhist cautions about “objectifying the non-objectifiable”: the distinction between what can be known under conditions of cognition versus what lies beyond them.
• It is one of Kant’s strongest rebuttals to both reductionism and naive empiricism: the critical path is neither endless accumulation of data (dogmatism) nor permanent suspension of judgment (skepticism), but systematic self-knowledge of reason itself.

A further reflection: - Kant addresses the limitations, not the limits, of knowledge. There may be no limit to the discovery of further empirical facts, but there are limitations inherent to reason itself, regardless of the accumulation of facts.

@Janus - this is typical of how Kant says there is a 'determinable fact of the matter'. It relies on sophisticated arguments to be sure, but that is what he is claiming.

It's the possibilities that near-death experiences suggest that are of philosophical interest. It raises the question, in what sense is our being more than or other than physical?

Just the passage I had in mind! ‘Tat tvam asi’ :pray:

Is that the discussion you want to have? — Srap Tasmaner

The reason why one might be open to the possibility of a ‘life beyond’, or not, or why one might think it ridiculous, is the philosophical question at issue.

What I said ‘couldn’t be more wrong’ was this:

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. — J

That’s why I mentioned the Bohr-Einstein debates which were precisely over this issue, insofar as this statement assumes the realist attitude.

I’ll try to find some time to study this the next few days.

"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise" William Blake — Janus

Alan Watts used to quote that all the time.


Between drinks.

I don't keep up with this stuff, but Wikipedia seems to believe there is still no evidence for extra-sensory perception that is broadly accepted among scientists. — Srap Tasmaner

I suggest Wikipedia may not be a reilable source for matters of this kind. There is a group known as Guerilla Sceptics, who methodically edit or redact anything pertaining to PSI or paranormal phenomena on Wikipedia. Case in point was a story about ten years ago concerning a controversial TED talk given by Rupert Sheldrake, which was subsequently removed from the archives of past TED lectures, due to his criticism of scientific materialism (about which he had published a book, The Science Delusion.) There were 'editing wars' over Sheldrake's Wikipedia entry for months or years after that, with various partisan editors trying to either restore or delete material in favour or critical of Sheldrake.

As to general evidence for psi or esp - it's not a battle I want to get involved in as it often is subject of considerable animus. Dean Radin seems the go-to for acfual scientific research but the only book I've read of his seems to spend huge amounts of time on what can be considered statistically significant, based on meta-data research. The result is that there's always enough margin for the believers to believe, and the sceptics to doubt.

But this being a philosophy forum, and not the National Enquirer, I think the significant philosophical question is, why the controversy? I think the suggestion that there might be states beyond physical death re-opens questions that most would rather leave closed. A quote from a review of one of Carl Sagan's books:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

So PSI, NDE, and past-life recall all appear to open that door a crack.

I'll concede that I'm more in favour of a kind of 'naturalistic supernaturalism', as it were, which considers the possibility that as life and mind may not be explainable solely in terms of physical laws and forces, that there might be some sense in which they accomodate these kinds of research. At the very least, I'm open to the possibility, in the way that those committed to the physicalist view can't be.

//ps// although I will add that I don't believe all the cases that Sam has presented can simply be written off as hallucinations or deceptions. There's too much data.//

I do think the materialism/ idealism dichotomy is ultimately wrongheaded, — Janus

Might I suggest that this is another consequence of the Cartesian divide between mind and body?

Again, the definition of phenomena - the definition, not my idea of what it means - is 'what appears'. Nowadays there is a lazy tendency to describe everything and anything in terms of 'phenomena' but it's a misuse of the term. The 'phenomenal domain' is what appears to us through the senses and instruments. Mathematical theorems, however, are not phenomenal.

If I propose that the things are ideas, then I must imagine an unseen, unknowable entity―a "mind at large" to quote Kastrup, and that seems to bring in the inevitable ontological dualism involved in thinking there is a transcendent realm or reality over and above the one we know. — Janus

I address this in another Medium essay, Is there Mind at Large? This essay interogates Kastrup's expression and compares it with Berkeleyian idealism. But then it draws on Yogācāra Buddhism, the school colloquially known as 'mind-only', to argue that it is not necessary to posit any kind of super-mind or cosmic mind.

Although I also concede that if Kastrup simply means 'some mind' or 'mind in general', then I am in complete agreement with him. Why? I think the reification trap is associated with the tendency towards objectification, to try and consider anything real in terms of it being an object or an other. This is where Heidegger's criticism of onto-theology rings true.

The topic of things-in-themselves is just brutal. When I go down the rabbit hole, it's just total blindness. — Manuel

There's a lot of confusion caused by the question 'what is the "in itself"' - as if it is a mysterious thing, or a mysterious realm. Then the natural tendency is to try and work out what it is. As I've quoted a number of times already, "a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble."

Although I have also learned that Hegel replaced ding an sich with simply 'ansich' - the in itself. I am not the least perturbed by that idea, it is simply 'the world' (or object) as it is in itself. But to even designate it 'thing' is already to sow the seed of contradiction.

So is it the case that whenever this perspective is proposed, it invariably originated from a study of Eastern religious ideas? — Punshhh

No, I’m not suggesting that. The commonalities between German idealism and Eastern philosophy were a matter of convergent development. Schopenhuaer always insisted that he developed his main ideas and published the first edition of WWI before encountering the Upaniṣad, but he did say that he felt the common ground he found with them was due to a universal wisdom. That’s an idea I’m not averse to. (See Schopenhauer and Buddhism, Peter Abelson.) Kant never mentioned Eastern religions at all so far as I know, but there have been extensive comparisons of the Critique of Pure Reason and Buddhist Madhyamaka (‘Middle Way’) philosophy.

it seems we could never be certain about the ultimate or most basic constitution of physical things. — Janus

Right! Kant’s philosophy despite its enormous complexity and prolixity is really an acknowledgement of our limitations. He does manage to retain that Socratic sense of ‘knowing nothing’. Having that sense of not having it all worked out is a virtue. Better to know we don’t know, than to think we know something we don’t.

Have you encountered Alva Noë ‘Out of Our Heads’? ‘Noë’s contention is that you are not your brain – rather, that “consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context”.

Noë supports this contention with references to many fascinating experiments in neuroscience. But he claims that neuroscience isn’t getting anywhere in explaining consciousness because it views consciousness of reality as a representation of the world created and manipulated by the brain. Noë attacks brain-body dualism in part by attacking this representationalism.

Process is an important way of thinking for Noë. Thus, consciousness isn’t just what happens in the brain: brain activity is just part of an extended process that starts with the environment, involves the whole body and includes the brain. In this, the environment isn’t merely a source of stimulation, nor is it a model or representation built by and viewed by the brain. In Noë’s words, “the world is its own model.” To put it another way, the real object of perception is the physical environment, not some artifact of the brain/mind.

According to Noë, the brain facilitates the dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and world. Surfers apprehend the world through their familiarity and skills of surfing. Certain surprises that arise while riding a wave cause the surfer to intuitively act and stay on the board. The brain is responsible for this skill, but without the world, such an interaction between the world would not be possible.‘ (He says on these grounds that the thought-experiment of a brain-in-a-vat could never be possible.)

While I’m not completely persuaded by his book, the broader point attacking ‘mind inside head’ is compelling to me. It’s that sense of the separated ego confronting the world of objects and forces that needs to be relaxed. Noë’s approach is more in line with enactive or participatory epistemology and the merging of knowing with being.

Well, Schopenhauer and Kant have been compared with Eastern philosophy. Indeed in Bryan Magee’s excellent Schopenhauer’s Philosophy from which that is quoted, there’s a chapter on Schopenhauer and Buddhism. Schopenhauer, as is well known, read a translation of one of the Upaniṣads all his life. But it can’t be pushed too far as they never really had any contact with authentic practitioners in those traditions. Nevertheless the basic point that Magee makes stands - that insight into transcendental idealism does require a kind of fundamental shift in perspective, akin to a gestalt shift but in a more general way, and it’s not easy to come by.

reside within the brain/body? — Janus

'within' is an interesting concept in this context. It's a spatial metaphor in which brain/body is a container and the mind is something inside it. But from another perspective, the body exists 'within awareness'.

it's contradictory to use physical evidence to prove the non-physical. — Hanover

You’re right that “empirical proof of the non-physical” makes no sense - if by proof we mean showing a physical photograph. But philosophy has long understood that the human condition is metaxy — “in-between” the physical and the intelligible, the mortal and the divine. Plato, for example, describes the soul as dwelling in this in-betweenness.

So the question isn’t whether the non-physical can be photographed, but whether our lived condition points to realities that are not exhaustible by physical descriptions. To reduce everything to “what can be photographed” is already to close off the very dimension that metaxy points towards. But on the other hand, these first-person reports may correspond to insights that are owed to this condition of 'liminality'.

I've only argued that paranormal experience doesn't offer proof of substance dualism. — Hanover

I take “substance dualism” to be implicitly Cartesian — res cogitans as a second kind of stuff. But I think that model is flawed, and Descartes himself could never explain how such purported substances interact. The deeper issue is how to conceive the non-physical at all. What if it isn’t another substance, nor any kind of objective “thing.” Maybe if there is a non-physical, it is a dimension of subject-hood which manifests only in, for and through subjects.

Which one are you? — Janus

I'd like to be Sam, but I won't insist.

This whole project of treating these stories as testimonial evidence is doomed from the start. — Srap Tasmaner

What other kinds of evidence could there be? The issue is about first-person reports of near-death experiences. The only third-person corroboration that is possible consists of trying to compare what the subject says, with things that other subjects in the environment saw (instruments, clothing, the positions of the furniture and so on.) It's not possible to corroborate it in any other way, as by its very nature, the material in question is experiential, undergone by a subject. So if they are not a source of real data, then ought all such testimonial evidence to have been disallowed from the outset, and no notice taken of it? It's not even a real subject?

My point here is that if we take the mind/body interaction problem seriously, we don't just shrug our shoulders and claim that ghosts exist as a seperate substance in a mysterious way, but we say instead that ghosts must be physical as well. — Hanover

Why must they? Only if you start with the axiom that the only kind of substance in the universe is physical do you arrive at that conclusion. But that’s not a demonstration, it’s a metaphysical presupposition. Even science admits that most of the universe is made of something “dark” we cannot observe directly. The real issue is whether physicalism should be granted by fiat, or whether phenomena themselves should be allowed to test its limits. Otherwise it’s like a prospector with a metal detector declaring that only metal exists, because metal is all she ever finds.

A philosophical challenge, as distinct from evidentiary matters, is what kind of worldview could accomodate near-death reports? Obviously, if you start with the premise that humans are solely physical, and that the mind is solely the activity of the physical brain, then the question is a non-starter. But then, cultures the world over have reported such experiences, along with narratives of other planes of existence, re-birth (and there is substantial corroborated evidence of children with past-life recall) and so on. Might it be that the physicalist worldview is deficient in some respect.

Suits me. Kudos for keeping the discussion going.

That’s a more reasonable framing, yes. I’d agree that phenomenological reflection is the method by which we clarify the conditions of experience, and that these conditions are not “observations” in the empirical sense. If you want to call them a “species of observation,” that’s OK — but the crucial point is that they are not observations of objects in the world but of the structural features of experience itself. They are self-reflective in a way that objective observation is not.

So when I say that “existence” or “objectivity” only have sense within experience, I’m not appealing to a particular empirical observation, but to precisely this kind of reflection. And that’s where the transcendental analysis differs from science: it’s not discovering new objects but clarifying the preconditions of there being any objects-for-us at all.

On the “non-physical” question, my point would be that the very category of “the physical” is itself mind-dependent in some basic way. That’s not to deny that there are physical objects — of course there are. But “the physical” as such is already a construct of our observational and conceptual framework: spatiotemporal, measurable, extended, resists our will. To point this out is not to dispute reality, but to draw attention to the inescapable role of the observer in what counts as physical in the first place. As I said in the extended version of the OP:

As for the nature of the physical, Charles Pinter (in Mind and the Cosmic Order) points out that it originates ‘with the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions’ — push it, and it resists, or lift it, and it is heavy. But then, ‘since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside material reality’ — in other words, non-physical. However, contrary to the popular understanding, the so–called ‘immaterial’ acts of cognition are fundamental to any conception we can form of ‘the physical’, as physics itself is inextricably intertwined with mathematical concepts. But again, the primacy of mind has been deprecated because of having been relegated to the so–called ‘immaterial domain’, which does not objectively exist. To put it another way — our cognitive construction of the world is not itself amongst the objects of the natural sciences, and so is deprecated by physicalism, even though, in a fundamental sense, the physical sciences depend on it. This points towards the fundamental contradiction in the physicalist conception of the world. — The Mind Created World

But, overall, very good questions.

A general observation on many of the comments being made in this thread:

the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not. 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 impossibly 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 of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices. — Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Bryan Magee, p106, 'Subjects and Objects'

Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined? — Janus

Isn’t that exactly what the OP was about? The point of the transcendental argument is that there are truths not determined by observation or logic, but by clarifying the conditions that make either possible. That’s why I began the thread in the first place. Your two-years-worth of criticism don't illustrate any grasp of that.

You don't even attempt to back up your claim. — Janus

I say the OP stands on its own two feet. You can continue to say whatever you like, but unless you can come up with an actual criticism, I will feel no obligation to respond.

Of course there is a perspective involved in saying that the Universe is or is not independent of minds, but it doesn't follow that it is impossible that the universe be either independent or dependent on minds―we just don't know and may only speculate about it. — Janus

Right - that's what you're doing. You fall back on the 'it can't be determined, therefore a matter of opinion.'

Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined? — Janus

I think the logic of the original post is quite sound. Every time you take issue with it, you do so on the basis of an innaccurate paraphrase of it, before reverting to the argument that 'it can't be known, it can't be determined'.

I'm not going to try to address any purported implications of quantum mechanical experiments and results because I don't have the expertise — Janus

Very convenient. Remember that it was you that said:

It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. — Janus

Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. — Janus

It doesn't require knowledge of mathematical physics to show that the sources I mentioned call this into question: it is not the case that 'people see the same things at the same time and place' and that 'all observers see the same result'. So if you're going to appeal to the facts, how about making sure you understand them first.

This is becoming very repetitive, you keep making the same objections, and I'm giving the same responses. If you honestly can't see the point of the OP, maybe find another one to comment on.

It follows then that it must be real independently of all minds unless you posit a hidden collective mind. Is that what you believe? — Janus

No. It's that when you imagine or conjecture a universe with no humans in it, that conjecture still requires an implicit perspective. To conjecture a universe, or an object, without already bringing to bear the framework of space and time would be impossible - you would be imagining nothing. All of your statements about the 'already existing objects' and 'previously existing universe' rely on that implied perspective which you're bringing to bear on it, without noticing that you're doing it.

Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. — Janus

But they don't. The claim that “we all see the same thing” doesn’t hold once you move beyond the classical scale. Wigner’s Friend (1961), a thought-experiment, implied how two observers could end up with irreconcilable results — one sees a definite measurement, the other only a superposition. And in 2019, Massimiliano Proietti and colleagues ran this with six entangled photons. The result: Wigner’s “reality” and the friend’s “reality” coexisted but could not be reconciled. That suggests there may be no single set of “objective facts” that all observers must agree on — which is precisely the point at issue here. Also Does Physical Reality Objectively Exist? Ethan Siegel (Medium, may require registration):

For relativity:

Space and time might be real, but they’re not objectively real; only real relative to each individual observer or measurer. — Ethan Siegel

For quantum physics:

To the best that we can tell, the real outcomes that arise in the Universe cannot be divorced from who is measuring them, and how. — Ethan Siegel

In any case why deny what science tells us, and then appeal to it when it suits you? — Janus

Ethan Siegel, for instance, is a well-known popular science communicator and writer. Mostly he just writes on straight-ahead physics, but that essay above is him looking at the philosophical question concerning whether physical reality objectively exists. And he suggests that both relativity theory and quantum theory suggest not.

So - I'm not disputing science. I'm questioning scientific realism, which is philosophical attitude, not a scientific theory. Or if you like, a meta-scientific theory.

I don't believe you have any real doubt that the everyday objects we encounter constantly have their own existence, which does not rely on our perceiving them. — Janus

From the OP: 'It is empirically true that the Universe [and 'the object'] exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.' Which is Kant's 'Copernican Revolution in Philosophy'.

This requires an exercise in looking at your spectacles, instead of simply through them.

PS - also I would never want to be accused of science denialism. I accept wholeheartedly the science of climate change, and the science of vaccination, things which are only denied by cranks and weirdos (and the current US administration.)

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it. ...I'm suggesting that the particular brand of objectivity that we call scientific objectivity -- essentially an intersubjectivity, a faith in a shared point of view -- will be unchanged. — J

That couldn't be more wrong. Surely you know of the many controversies over the interpretation of quantum physics. The question of whether the objects of analysis really exist, or in what sense they exist, is central to that. Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein debated it over a period of four decades. Einstein was a convinced scientific realist, he believed that reality was fundamenally 'out there' and it was the scientists' job to discern it. Bohr, on the other hand, introduced ideas such as wave-particle complementarity to account for the fact that sub-atomic particles could act as wave structures in some contexts and particles in others. You can't say whether they're really waves or really particles - it depended on which experimental setup you ran.

The dependence on what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein uhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there", independent of all acts on observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it givs us. 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”. — John Wheeler, Law without Law

This is the basic stance of the 'Copenhagen Interpretation', named retrospectively by Werner Heisenberg to denote the philosophical views of quantum physics developed by Bohr, Heisenberg, andt the other Copenhagen figures who devised quantum theory. To this day, notable public intellectuals including Sir Roger Penrose are convinced quantum theory is wrong - you can find any number of video interviews with Sir Roger proclaiming this in no uncertain terms. Why? Because he's convinced that a proper theory 'should describe what the Universe is doing'. The indeterminate nature of sub-atomic particles, and the ontological status of the wave function described by the Schrodinger equation, remain outstanding questions in philosophy of science. Furthermore, what role, if any, mind or consciousness is assigned in all of this, is another central question. So all of this is far from settled, and is still right at the forefront of philosophy and science.

See my The Timeless Wave of Quantum Physics if interested.

Also Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality. London: Icon Books, 2008.

Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. — J

Please notice the strong presumption of “mind-independence” in the way this is framed. The very word phenomenon means “what appears,” and appearance is always to a subject. As John Stuart Mill put it, facts are “permanent possibilities of sensation.” That’s not a weakness of our epistemic situation; it’s a structural condition of knowledge itself. We can’t disentangle this or parcel it neatly into independent boxes. If even in quantum physics the notion of an observer-independent reality is problematic, then this holds all the more for consciousness — which is even less tractable to purely objective analysis.

There is no determinable fact of the matter that that can be used to ascertain what makes sense and what doesn't as a universal rule. — Janus

"Not determinable” in what sense? If you mean not determinable by science, then of course — but that doesn’t reduce it to mere opinion. If you mean not determinable in principle, then I disagree: there is a fact of the matter about whether categories like “existence” or “mind-independence” are meaningful outside the bounds of cognition. That’s the point of the argument: It’s not about my opinion versus yours. Your implication always seems to be: can't be 'determined scientifically' therefore it's a matter of opinion.

I'm saying it seems most plausible to me that there is a reality outside any consciousness of it. — Janus

As said a number of times already, 'there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind.'

It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. It's easy to test. — Janus

At the macroscopic level it’s easy to say “we all see the same thing.” But at the quantum scale - which is the smallest detail you can expect - it’s not so clear cut. In the double-slit experiment, whether you get an interference pattern or not depends on whether an observation is made. And the 'Wigner’s friend' experiments show that two observers can have inconsistent but equally valid accounts of the same event. So the claim that everyone just “sees the same thing in the same way” doesn’t hold once you look deeper. On that level, which is the most fundamental level, it's the nature of the physical that is 'not determinable'. So you can't appeal to it.

Furthermore, the fact that “we all see the same thing” is not some metaphysical given — it’s because we are all members of the same species, with the same sensory and cognitive apparatus, and also because we inhabit a shared culture that trains us to interpret the world in broadly the same ways. That’s why we can agree that “this is a table” or “that’s red.” But how a bat, or an octopus, or a machine intelligence “perceives the world” is another matter entirely — and one we simply cannot know from the inside. So even the claim that “we all see the same thing” is already species- and culture-bound.

But, appreciate the questions.

Depends on who you ask ;-)

we'll pick it up elsewhere, it's not really connected to this topic.

Your argument is something like:

We derived our idea of existence from our cognitive experience, therefore nothing can exist apart from its being cognized.

The conclusion does not follow logically from the premise, so it is not a deductively valid argument. — Janus

That’s a very simplified gloss, and not my argument. I’m not claiming that “nothing exists apart from cognition.” I’m saying that any concept of existence only makes sense within the conditions of possible experience. (I'm not bound by Kant's argument, but I am trying to stay in his lane, so to speak.)

The point about the Husserl quote was that:

Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology

That is much nearer what I mean. You're saying, there must be a reality outside any consciousness of it.

whatever cannot be determined by observation or logic is a matter of opinion. You tell me how it might otherwise be determined. — Janus

But that’s precisely the point: your criterion itself — “only what can be determined by observation or logic counts” — is not itself established by observation or logic. It’s a philosophical commitment, not a scientific observation. And that is what I mean by “dogmatism”: a framework that denies legitimacy to what it cannot assimilate, while never acknowledging that its own framework is not supported by its arguments.

I'm positing a real world beyond what appears, because I think all the evidence points to that. — Janus

But this “real world” you posit beyond appearances is itself nothing but conjecture. You say “all the evidence points to it,” but by definition the evidence only ever belongs to the realm of appearances. To project what the “real world” is behind appearances is less defensible than what you’re criticizing, because it claims the authority of evidence precisely where no evidence can reach. And I'm not positing that there is no reality beyond what we can experience: what I said was that 'what its existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible.'

you're asking me to believe NDE testimony has been offered in a way that leads to no other conclusion than to admit that our physical laws as we know them have been violated. — Hanover

We demand physical evidence that there is anything that is not physical!!