Discussed in another of Gnomon's threads, from which:



Do notice the title of this article: ‘Apart from the Experiences of Subjects There Is Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Bare Nothingness’—Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead

Seems strangely familar :chin:

So he's re-stating one of the main ideas in mind-created world, i.e. the centrality of the subject. But he conceives of subjectivity on the level of 'actual occasions of experience', which I find an impossible idea to grasp.

But Whitehead, as you will well know, was vociferously critical of the 'bifurcation of nature' and the Cartesian division. Whitehead was really rather pantheistic in his sympathies, believing that the most primitive elements of being were 'actual occasions of experience' rather than the physical forces of atomistic materialism. Me, I've never quite been able to grasp his 'actual occasions of experience', but I certainly agree with his rejection of the bifurcation of nature.

Our consciousness does not create the world, but is always already "thrown into the world", — Janus

Hey, coral polyps create coral reefs. I think we do something analogous.

One thing Levin is clear about is that physicalism doesn’t accommodate what he is calling the “platonic” elements that he’s talking about. They’re very much more like formal and final causes. They function as real constraints and goal-states that guide biological processes without being reducible to any particular physical mechanism. In that sense, they are not explanatory add-ons but part of what actually does the organizing work in living systems. They are teleodynamic, to use Deacon's term - oriented towards ends - which nothing in physics is, per se, except in the general sense of increasing entropy.

Yes. And don't forget, we are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon. And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to idolize reason and rationality. It's more that I think the decline of the classical understanding of the faculty of reason has had hugely deleterious consequences. The decline of scholastic realism has had huge consequences for culture, but they're very hard to discern because nominalism is so 'baked in'.

But you and I have been through that, and this is not our fate (to quote the bard).

it’s worth noting that some contemporary philosophers interpret the Aristotelian tradition in a broadly materialist way. — Esse Quam Videri

Considerably easier to defend in the Academy!

But here is where my preferred heuristic distinguishes between what is real and what exists. I maintain that universals, numbers and logical laws are real even if they are not phenomenally existent. They are real as the 'invariant content of reason':

Intelligible objects must be higher than reason because they judge reason. Augustine means by this that these intelligible objects constitute a normative standard against which our minds are measured (lib. arb. 2.5.12 and 2.12.34). We refer to mathematical objects and truths to judge whether or not and to what extent our minds understand mathematics. — Cambridge Companion to Augustine

We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience, given fulfillments of mathematical intentions. ...

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. (p. 13). — Phenomenology, Logic, and the Philosophy of Mathematics (review)

Bolds added. So: intelligibles are real, but not in the sense of being 'out there somewhere'. They are indispensable constituents of reason, but they are not materially existent. Here is where I would part company with the kinds of interpretation you mentioned.

The "universe" knows itself? How so? — Relativist

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately. — Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation

Thank you for your good wishes. :pray:

I'm attempting a long fiction work. My intention is, in the final draft phase, to have it scrutinized by all three engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) to purge it of any obviously AI generated expressions. ;-) (I hasten to add, the ideas I'm generating are wholly my own, but I'm finding ChatGPT an expert coach and reviewer. I've also appointed the other two to my "editorial review board" and consult both from time to time.)

Logic tells us nothing about the world; it only tells us what terms can be sensibly used together, given their definitions. Sure, if "subjective" and "objective" can only mean what you say they mean, then they can't be used in certain ways to say certain things without contradiction. But I'm questioning that use as too narrow. Specifically, I'm suggesting that understanding a number-theoretical statement, for instance, is not a subjective experience in the same way that eating a chocolate is. In such a case, the apparent bipolarity of subjective and objective starts to break down, it seems to me. This is a deep problem in how to understand the role of rationality (or call it hermeneutics, perhaps) in human experience. I think the possibility remains open that we can understand subjectivity without requiring that everyone have the same subjective experience, or that we somehow simultaneously inhabit objectivity and subjectivity, as defined in this way. — J

Logic may well be formal and content-neutral, but it does not operate in a metaphysical vacuum. It still presupposes a thinker and something thought. The subject–object distinction is therefore not just a quirk of how narrowly we define certain words; it is assumed by logic itself. It was implicit throughout much of traditional philosophy, but made explicit in phenomenology in particular.

Also, subjectivity obtains across different registers. There is the “merely subjective,” such as my personal taste for chocolate; and there is the intersubjective, which takes account of subjectivity without reducing it to what is merely personal. And yes, we can “understand subjectivity.” But we can only ever be one subject; the only instance of subjectivity we directly know is our own, and that by being it, not by knowing it objectively.

As said in the Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad '“You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the thinker of thinking. That which is the Self is not grasped as an object; it is the ground of all grasping.”

As for Frank’ book, it is a philosophy of science book. It isn’t aimed at Kuhn, Feyerabend, or Polanyi—or likely even at readers who take those figures seriously. Its target is metaphysical realism, which presumably those you are speaking too don't hold to.

I once watched a documentary on a child with CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain). — Outlander

Wouldn't last long on the veldt.

You're stipulating that subjective experience can never be made into such an object, and I'm saying that it probably can be -- that we shouldn't leap from our current (primitive) understanding of the concepts of "subjective" and "objective" to conclude that our concepts are not only adequate, but force a philosophical conclusion. — J

You said the same in the thread on first- and third-person perspectives. Your use of 'primitive', even with scare quotes, implies that this, too, will somehow be unravelled by the inexorable march of science. But there's a logical contradiction which you're not seeing. Subject-object relations are fundamental to embodied existence - we are embodied subjects, and, to us, beings other than ourselves, and the entire objective domain, are 'other' to us. (What's the philosophical term? Alteriety? As opposed to ipseity, the sense of oneself.)

I'm not at all convinced that such a definition really captures the essence of scientific inquiry. — J

So, please do tell. What would be an alternative to Frank's 'dated historical account'? You don't have to spell it out, a reference will do.

I would agree that Berkeley made a cogent critique of Cartesian and Lockean metaphysics, but I’m not sure that those critiques apply to all forms of metaphysical realism. In the more traditional Aristotelian formulation, matter was construed not as res extensa, nor as a bare substrate, but rather as the principle of individuation and potentiality in the world. — Esse Quam Videri

Quite right—though it’s worth bearing in mind that Aristotelian (and Thomist) realism is a far cry from empiricism or modern scientific realism. It is built on the metaphysical reality of universals, which is precisely what nominalism has since done away with.

Although Berkeley was largely indifferent or even hostile to the Schoolmen, his idealism nevertheless arose as a reaction against the nominalist–empiricist schools that had already severed the older participatory epistemology characteristic of A-T philosophy. That broader historical context is the focus of another OP Idealism in Context.

I think in one of the comments above you had mentioned you were partial to “Aristotelian” realism, but probably had meant to write “Platonic” realism. — Esse Quam Videri

My view is broadly platonic, in that I believe intelligibles (I don't want to describe them as 'objects') are real but immaterial. As to whether and in what way they exist - this is the question! Aristotle, as you say, was more 'down to earth'. But as to the question of whether intelligibles 'exist in a separate Platonic realm', consider this passage on the meaning of separation.

Forms ...are radically distinct, and in that sense ‘apart,’ in that they are not themselves sensible things. With our eyes we can see large things, but not largeness itself; healthy things, but not health itself. The latter, in each case, is an idea, an intelligible content, something to be apprehended by thought rather than sense, a ‘look’ not for the eyes but for the mind. This is precisely the point Plato is making when he characterizes forms as the reality of all things. “Have you ever seen any of these with your eyes?—In no way … Or by any other sense, through the body, have you grasped them? I am speaking about all things such as largeness, health, strength, and, in one word, the reality [οὐσίας] of all other things, what each thing is” (Phd. 65d4–e1). Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?”we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. — Eric S Perl, Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, p28

But again, perhaps the Aristotelian tradition could offer a way out of this impasse — Esse Quam Videri

Yes—Edward Feser makes a strong contemporary case for that in Aristotle’s Revenge, arguing that modern science is quietly rediscovering exactly the kinds of formal and teleological principles that mechanistic metaphysics tried to exclude. And I've noticed neo-Aristotelian (and Platonist!) strands appearing in many discussions of contemporary biology.

To those who say: Kant would never question the veracity of Newtonian physics…
I say: In Kant 1786, if not direct questioning, then at least concern over the lack of metaphysical ground for its justification, from which is deduced the impossibility of annexing absolute space and time to empirical domains on the one hand, and the synthetic a priori judgements necessary for the employment of mathematical constructs sufficient to explain those domains on the other. — Mww

Caveat noted. I agree Kant wasn’t questioning the empirical success of Newtonian physics, only its ultimate metaphysical grounding.

A point I've been trying to make is that we "the world as it is" ="objective reality"= "mind-independent reality" can be referenced — Relativist

Indeed they can, and nothing I've said denies that. But the metaphysical points remain. First, reality is far greater than what we know exists. And also that to imagine the universe as it must be, without any subject, still assumes the implicit perspective of a subject, without which nothing could be imagined. I'm arguing against the attitude which sees humanity as a 'mere blip' (Stephen Hawking's derisive description of man as 'chemical scum'.) We are the 'mere blip' in which the Universe comes to know itself.

Yes I certainly believe trees are organisms and categorically different to devices.

You’re welcome, I found it a fascinating lecture (although I have to say I’m sceptical about ‘tree consciousness’.)

Yes, but I was using this as an example of "feature": this one indisputable fact is a feature of objective reality (not merely phenomenal reality). — Relativist

The whole point of Descartes' meditation, was that he could doubt the existence of objective reality. But even if he doubted everything he thought he knew and sensed about the objective world, he could not doubt that he doubted it. Here is a translation of the original text:

I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious. I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are chimeras. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain. Yet apart from everything I have just listed, how do I know that there is not something else which does not allow even the slightest occasion for doubt? Is there not a God, or whatever I may call him, who puts into me6 the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I myself may perhaps be the author of these thoughts? In that case am not I, at least, something? But I have just said that I have no senses and no body. This is the sticking point: what follows from this? Am I not so bound up with a body and with senses that I cannot exist without them? But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something7 then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. — Descartes First Meditation

So, in no way can this be interpreted as 'a feature of objective reality'. It is the grounding truth of Descartes' first philosophy. On this basis he proceeds to then erect his structure of 'clear and distinct ideas'. It was only after Descartes that the ideas of 'objective and subjective'came into common use (ref).

The context of my question was Kant's view of TRUTH as a correspondence with phenomenal reality. You said you accepted this. — Relativist

I didn't say that. This was the exchange in question:

"My understanding is that Kant believed that we only can have genuine knowledge and truth about the phenomenal world, but not about things-in-themselves (noumena) as they exist independently of our experience. However, you acknowledged the possibility of making true statements about the actual mind-independent world, so you must disagree with him on this point."

— Relativist

I do not disagree with Kant on this point. It IS the point! Nothing about scientific method demands that it concerns 'things in themselves'. It is perfectly compatible with the idea that phenomena, how things appear, are governed by rules and principles and behave consistently to a point (as we always have to allow for the fact that nature will confound from time to time.) — Wayfarer

Kant's point is, once again: he is at once and empirical realist AND a transcendental idealist. Empirical realist: the scientific account provides genuine knowledge - Kant would never question the veracity of Newtonian physics. So in that context, we can speak of 'correspondence' of statements and facts - but this is something that Kant describes as 'nominal'.

But he is ALSO a transcendental idealist: "I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves." (ref)

There are two levels or two kinds of understanding - empirical and transcendental - at play throughout this debate. That is why I keep saying, that the empirical truth of the fact that the Universe pre-dates human existence, is not undermined by my saying that our knowledge of the pre-human universe still assumes an implicit perspective - even though we know that it existed for billions of years before we did. That's what I mean by an 'implicit perspective'. Take that out, and we can't make sense of anything, as there is no perspective. So the empirical view is not truly 'mind-independent'. What 'mind independence' is, is an extrapolation based on the scientific principle of bracketing out the subjective view, but mis-applied to reality as a whole. It mistakes the methodological step of 'bracketing the subjective' for a metaphysical principle 'the world we see is the same as would exist were we not in it.'

I'm asking you to assess whether or not physicalism is possibly true, in terms of it possibly corresponding to phenomenal reality — Relativist

To answer in terms of the geneology of the idea of modern physicalism. 'Geneology' is the history and background to an idea, how it developed over time. Harking back to Descartes - his philosophy divided the world into res extensa, extended matter, and res cogitans, literally a 'thinking thing' ('res' being the root of 'reality'.) So, thinking being and extended matter. But, as has been often commented, Descartes himself could never account for how res cogitans and matter interacted, if they're of such radically different kinds. So it was inevitable that the whole concept of 'res cogitans', the so-called 'ghost in the machine', would be jettisoned, in favour of a model which proceeded to explain 'everything there is' in terms of res extensa, extended matter, which has, after all, provided enormous material power. I think that's overwhelmingly what is behind today's physicalism and scientific materialism - which is, as said, powerful, but at the expense of bracketing out the subject to whom it is meaningful, hence 'the meaning crisis.'

You have an inherent existence, do you not? You know this because you think, but your existence is surely not merely a phenonenol truth. — Relativist

Any being does, but already said you think cogito ergo sum proves nothing. The point, which I return to, is that the fact of one's own being is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied. For to doubt it, one must first exist.

I embrace reductionism, and reductionism entails the notion that everything that exists is composed of the same kinds of things. Not monism (one thing), but (at least potentially) a set of things. That set of things is what I'm referring to, to avoid a semantics debate about what it means to be "physical". — Relativist

That formulation still leaves a hard remainder. The laws of physics, mathematical structures, symmetry principles, and modal constraints are not composed of the same kinds of things as the entities they govern. Are they also things? They are not particles, fields, or energy distributions. Yet physicalism treats them as objectively real and universally invariant (reflecting the theistic heritage, 'divine law', from which it originated). Materialism would like to say that they are dependent on, or emergent from, or supervene on, physical states or processes — but none of those dependency relations can be shown to be straightforwardly physical either. Any attempt to demonstrate such dependence must rely on inference (“if this, then that”), which is itself of a different order from physical causation. Logical necessity does not require or imply a transfer of energy.

But suppose we simply say that physicalism's model applies specifically to phenomenal reality. Your objection vanishes, does it not? I have much more to say about this, but I first want your reaction. — Relativist

What does 'phenomena' mean? It is from the Greek, 'what appears'. And implicit in that term is the subject to whom phenomena appear.

In Aristotelian philosophy, matter (hyle or prima materia) is formless and unknowable until it is informed by an intelligible kind. So, in that sense, the physical (matter) and intelligible (form) can be understood as separate principles, although Aristotle would not say they could exist separately. But the point is, neither can it be used to endorse physicalism, because matter in itself has no determinate form.

So: phenomena already imply subjectivity, and the physical already presupposes form, as if it has no form, it has no identity. The error of physicalism is to say that the physical has determinate reality sans any act of observation or form - that's what I mean by 'inherent reality'. This is also why quantum theory persistently resists being interpreted as a theory of fully determinate, observer-independent objects - “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." That holes physicalism beneath the waterline, something which a lot of people seem not to have noticed.

:clap: Your speaking my language!

I think the key is reason. The ability to ask 'why is that?' 'Why should that happen?' 'What does that mean?' I was contemplating the other day that the hallmark of reason is to be able to recognise necessary truths. That is the rational faculty in a nutshell, and the thing that separates us from our simian forbears. The 'rational animal'.

In evolutionary terms, presumably that began to emerge long before any kind of real culture, probably paleolithic. I always took that to be the drift of the famous monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I think of it more as metacognitive insight, knowing how we know. It's been a central question of philosophy since its inception.

I suppose you could say that enactivism says that that all organisms 'enact their world' in this way, but that humans alone are capable of meta-cognitive insight.

From the perspective of neuroscience and physiology, it's the brain. From the perspective of philosophy and the humanities, it's the mind. I don't agree with the idea of brain-mind identity, though, because the terms are meaningful in different domains of discourse.

But, yes, looked at neurobiologically, the brain certainly 'constructs' the 'lived world' of creatures including h.sapiens . That is basic to enactivism and embodied cognition. But it doesn't mean mind should be reduced to neurology.

“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point.
— Wayfarer

Here my question is about your "they" (though I may just be misreading you). Do you mean Frank and Gleiser, or the scientists referred to in the quote? I think you mean F&G, in which case I'd ask you to expand on this. — J

Let's focus on what the basic argument is about. What I'm saying is that the authors ('they' - Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser, Evan Thompson), cite and endorse Nagel's The View from Nowhere:

Our purpose in this book is to expose the Blind Spot and offer some direction that might serve as alternatives to its incomplete and limited vision of science. Scientific knowledge isn’t a window onto a disembodied, God’s-eye perspective. It doesn’t grant us access to a perfectly knowable, timeless objective reality, a “view from nowhere,” in philosopher Thomas Nagel’s well-known phrase.

That passage you quoted above from Thomas Nagel's 'View from Nowhere' is from his chapter on Mind, and the difficulty of framing an objective view of consciousness, given its first-person nature. But it doesn't really conflict with anything in the essay or the associated book. They're approaching the same kinds of questions from separate angles, but I don't see any inherent conflict.

(Frank) says things like “Science has no answer to this question” and “Science is silent on this question” as if we should then conclude than ignorance and silence are the end of the story. — J

In the essay, the context is as follows:

consider that in certain intense states of absorption – during meditation, dance or highly skilled performances – the subject-object structure can drop away, and we are left with a sense of sheer felt presence. How is such phenomenal presence possible in a physical world? Science is silent on this question.

Experiences have a subjective character; they occur in the first person. Why should a given sort of physical system have the feeling of being a subject? Science has no answer to this question.

This is not 'science has reached a dead end', or that 'silence is the end of the story'. The point is polemical: to illustrate how these fundamental elements of experience are outside the scope of science. It is in keeping with the whole thrust of the work: that science is grounded in objective analysis, that is, analysis of those things, states, processes that can be made objects of analysis. The argument is that this involves the process of abstraction - the bracketing out or exclusion of factors that are not part of the specific process that science wishes to study. This process of abstraction then becomes internalised as part of the 'scientific worldview' - and voila! No subject! No experience! All that remains are the equations and abstractions that describe - very effectively! - how stuff happens.

This is very much the same territory as that explored by Husserl in the Crisis of the European Sciences.



I don't think Husserl's grand aims for phenomenology as a universal science really took off, but it made a mark, and this book is in that lineage.

I can see why you would think that approach resonates with me, which it does, to an extent, but what I keep coming back to is the active way the mind (or brain) constructs its sense of reality, not as a passive recipient of sensory data, but as a generative, world-forming process. That article operates more at the level of propositional analysis. So, some aspects in common with it, but also some diversions.

It is, but a very concentrated piece of work. I doubt I’ll be able to take it on, at any given time there’s a whole bunch of stuff I should read.

If we can consistly identify something as an object, then we are warranted in applying the label to represent the concept and use it as a reference. The concept is useful for studying the world- it is a component of our perspective that has led to fruitful exploration, and discovery. — Relativist

You’re right, I did miss the bolded part. I agree, of course. The whole point of my argument is the refutation of the idea that an object has an inherent existence absent any mind.

So what he seems to be saying is there would be no humans to describe the universe this way... — Relativist

Not quite. Absent cognition, the universe is featureless, because features map against the capacities of the ‘animal sensorium’. Again, that what we see as shapes and features has an inextricably subjective basis. I do recommend Pinter’s book - it’s a compelling essay in cognitive science, physics and philosophy. Not much noticed in academia because of Pinter’s background as a math professor, but I think an important book.

The fact "the thing itself" is distinct from a complete description of the thing doesn't matter, because no one would claim a description IS the thing. — Relativist

Scientific reductionism is not merely the view that life and mind can be described in physical terms, but that they fundamentally comprise nothing over and above the elements and laws described by fundamental physics.

If “physical” just means “whatever exists,” then physicalism is no longer a metaphysical thesis but simply another way of talking about ontology. And the other million-dollar question is whether laws and principles are themselves physical or reducible to the physical.

It doesn’t require a brain to know what it is like, or to have experiences. — Punshhh

(I beg moderator indulgence for this presentation, it is highly relevant to the remark that prompted it and besides is of very high-quality.)

You're assuming, without support, that the actual world lacks objects, or any aspects that a human perspective might consistently identify as an object. — Relativist

First, kudos for a very well-written post.

But my argument is well-supported. I’m not saying that the actual world “lacks objects” in the sense of being chaotic or structureless. What I’m denying is that object-hood itself—given as discrete, bounded, enduring units—is something we are entitled to project into reality as it is in itself. As Charles Pinter shows in Mind and the Cosmic Order, the mind (and not only the human mind) operates in terms of the cognitive gestalts by which anything shows up as an object at all.

Let’s begin with a thought-experiment: 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. — Mind and the Cosmic Order, Chap 1

I’d also add that what counts as an object for h.sapiens need not be what counts as an object for another kind of being. We pick out and stabilise “things” within our own contextual scheme—our Lebenswelt, to use the phenomenological term—with its specific sensory capacities, practical interests, and biological needs (and, yes, perspectives). Another animal, or another kind of intelligence altogether, could inhabit the same underlying reality while carving it up into entirely different unities, boundaries, and saliencies. In that case it would still be “the same reality,” but not the same objects

You have defined '"things in themselves" in terms of an absence of perspective, which strikes me as incoherent. Descriptions are necessarily in terms of a perspective. Successful science entails accurate predictions. It does not entail accurate ontology. Consider Quantum Field Theory, a model that theorizes that all material objects are composed of quanta of quantum fields. The math and heuristics are successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a true ontology. — Relativist

Right! But don’t loose sight of where this all started - with the argument over physicalism. And acknowledging this surely undermines physicalism. Physicalism isn’t just the claim that physics is successful or that scientific models work (which incidentally is not in question); it’s the stronger metaphysical claim that the fundamental constituents of reality are physical. But if we also say (as you’ve just done) that science doesn't, in principle, establish a final ontology, that its models don’t guarantee true ontology, and that all description is perspectival, then the core physicalist claim has been abandoned.

(I don’t think the notion of the in-itself is incoherent at all. It is, by definition, what lies outside any perspective — that’s what the term is doing. The confusion arises when empirical reality is assumed to possess an inherent reality, which is precisely what scientific realism does — as if the conditions under which objects appear could simply be projected into reality as it is in itself.)

We need to look carefully at what Frank means when he talks about “experience.” He never quite gives a precise definition, but consider this: “Scientific investigations . . . occur only in the field of our experience. . . Experience is present at every step,” including the abstract: We experience models and theories and ideas just as we experience sense perceptions. — J

True - but I think this comes from the way the term has been used in phenomenology and in consciousness studies discourse. Me, I think it's actually a more familiar term for what elsewhere might be better designated 'being'. But then, the term 'being' is (as Aristotle famously says) 'used in many ways', so you already have considerable risk of equivocation.

At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible, just as the blind spot lies at the heart of our visual field and makes seeing possible. In the visual blind spot sits the optic nerve; in the scientific blind spot sits direct experience—that by which anything appears, shows up, or becomes available to us. It is a precondition of observation, investigation, exploration, measurement, and justification. Things appear and become available thanks to our bodies and their feeling and perceiving capacities. Direct experience is bodily experience. — The Blind Spot, p9

But then, the next section is devoted to the 'Parable of Temperature', which begins with the sensation of hot and cold, but then proceeds through a series of abstractions to the point where the thermodynamic termperature is said to be more fundamental than the experience of hot and cold

This happens when we get so caught up in the ascending spiral of abstraction and idealization that we lose sight of the concrete, bodily experiences that anchor the abstractions and remain necessary for them to be meaningful. The advance and success of science convinced us to downplay experience and give pride of place to mathematical physics. From the perspective of that scientific worldview, the abstract, mathematically expressed concepts of space, time, and motion in physics are truly fundamental, whereas our concrete bodily experiences are derivative, and indeed are often relegated to the status of an illusion, a phantom of the computations happening in our brains. — P11

I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity. — J

Who is this "we?"

Sir Roger Penrose, surely an esteemed scientist, is actually a good counter-example to the claim that objectivity no longer means anything like “unvarnished reality.” Penrose has repeatedly argued that quantum mechanics must be wrong or at least deeply incomplete precisely because it fails to give a clear, observer-independent account of 'what is really there'. In other words, for him the problem with quantum theory is not empirical adequacy but that it is ontologically opaque. That suggests that the demand for a God’s-eye level of description is not a straw man imported by philosophers — it is alive and well inside physics itself. In that sense, what Frank calls the “blind spot” is not a misunderstanding of science but a tension within the scientific community itself (and Penrose is far from alone in this demand.)

Furthermore, quantum physics, in which both Adam Frank and co-author Marcello Gleiser have expertise, is an excellent case in point about the limitations of objectivity and the role of consensus. The fact that there are competing and incommensurable interpretations of the same objective set of facts is illustrative of that. People talk of the 'many worlds community' (of which David Deutsch is the patron saint.) They devote a whole chapter to qm and to the vexed question of interpretations (noting that none are necessary to actually applying it.) They point out that many scientists will defend the (to me, obviously preposteious) 'many worlds interpretation' BECAUSE it appears to support complete objectivity. '“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point.

But thanks for those detailed comments, it's reminded me to return to this book for a more thorough reading. Because I've been predisposed to it, I've skimmed quite a bit, but they really do put a lot of flesh on the bones.

Fair enough, but this doesn't seem to undermine the weaker claim that experience provides us with at least some information about the entities that exist out there in the world and, therefore, gives us some epistemic purchase on those entities. While those entities perhaps cannot objectively look, feel and smell as presented in experience (since these qualities only exist relative to our perceptual apparatus), we are nevertheless warranted in thinking that those entities exist and that we know something about them. — Esse Quam Videri

Thanks for your very perceptive comments! I am not insisting that because of the constructive activities of the mind, that the objects of perception are non-existent or illusory. I recall a quote from George Berkeley, with whom I am in agreement in some respects:

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’. — Berkeley

Here, the word 'substance' is being used in the philosophical sense i.e. 'bearer of predicates', So he's arguing that while the proverbial apple, tree or chair really do exist, they don't comprise some 'corporeal substance' which is real wholly apart from their phenomenal appearance. So, yes, apples, trees and chair really do exist, but they lack the inherent reality that naive realism tends to impute to them. Whilst I have differences with Berkeley's philosophy on other grounds, here I'm in agreement .

Consider the mathematical models that we build to predict and explain the phenomena we experience. While it is certainly true that these models require experience and intelligence to construct, these models describe quantitative relationships rather than qualitative properties, and therefore are not relative to our perceptual apparatus in the way that qualitative descriptions are (unless you are willing to argue that mathematics has no purchase on world). I would argue that knowledge of these quantitative relationships constitutes genuine knowledge of mind-independent entities because it is knowledge of relationships between those entities irrespective of their relationship to us. — Esse Quam Videri

Well, yes, but notice something - mathematical models are essentially intellectual in nature. Myself, I am sympathetic to Aristotelian realism, which declares that 'intelligible objects' (including numbers) are real - but they're not corporeal (or material). So they're 'mind-independent' in the sense that they are in no way dependent on your mind or mine - but then, they are only perceptible to the rational intellect, so in that second sense, not mind-independent at all.

Intelligible objects must be incorporeal because they are eternal and immutable. By contrast, all corporeal objects, which we perceive by means of the bodily senses, are contingent and mutable. Moreover, certain intelligible objects for example, the indivisible mathematical unit – clearly cannot be found in the corporeal world (since all bodies are extended, and hence divisible). These intelligible objects cannot therefore be perceived by means of the senses; they must be incorporeal and perceptible by reason alone. — Augustine, Book 2, De libero Arbitrio

The genius of modern physics, and scientific method generaly, was to find ways to harness physical causation to mathematical necessity. And this is actually further grounds for a scientifically-informed objective idealism. But this came at a cost - the elimination or bracketing out of the subject in who's mind these facts obtain, with the consequence that they came to be seen as true independently of any mind whatever. Especially when taken to be true of empirical objects, this introduces a deep contradiction, because empirical objects cannot, pace Kant, be understood as truly 'mind-independent'. That is responsible for many of the controversies in these matters.

But, as said, my sympathies are with some form of Platonic realism. And this is consistent with the views expressed in the mind-created world. (It is perhaps best expressed in Husserl's mature philosophy but that is a subject I'm still studying.)

I would argue that we can rightly claim that there are two entities out there in the real world that have mass and velocity, and that they will exert force upon one another upon collision in a way that described by the laws of physics regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it. — Esse Quam Videri

This is precisely the 'objection of David Hume'. It was Hume who pointed out that the conjunction of events such as the effects of collisions leads us to believe that these are necessary facts, when in reality, there is no logical basis for such a belief, other than the repeated observation. That is central to the whole 'induction/deduction' split which begins with Hume. But, recall, it was precisely this which awoke Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber' and inspired him to show that these kinds of physical reactions are intelligible precisely because of the categories of the understanding which the mind must bring to them. Again, this calls into question the natural presumption that these kinds of causal relations must be real independently of any mind, as Kant demonstrates that the whole idea of 'causal relations' is not really grounded in observation as such, but in the fact that causal relations are native to the intellect.

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Kant’s position is best described as empirical realism combined with transcendental idealism. He is an empirical realist because, within experience, the world is objectively real: objects in space and time exist with lawful regularity, causal order, and public objectivity — science is entirely valid in describing them. But he is a transcendental idealist because space, time, causality, and objecthood themselves do not belong to things as they might exist “in themselves,” independent of all experience; they belong to the conditions under which anything can appear to a finite knower at all. So Kant is not saying that the world is an illusion, nor that reality is merely subjective. He is saying that the world of experience is genuinely real, while its form reflects the structure of cognition rather than a mind-independent metaphysical substrate.

Ref:

The "mind created world (model)" is a mental construct that fits my definition. — Relativist

The “model” is not a representation standing over against a separately existing world. The modeling activity and the world it yields are the same process viewed from two aspects. There is no second, independently formed object for the model to correspond to. The very features by which something counts as an object—extension, mass, persistence, causal interaction—already belong to the structured field of appearance itself. We can test and refine the model and develop new mathematical terminology and even new paradigms (as physics has since Galileo), but this testing takes place entirely within the same field of appearances, through coherence, predictive stability, and intersubjective invariance—not by comparison with a mind-independent reality as it is in itself.

I'm well aware that this sense of separateness or otherness to the world is innate. This is what makes it so hard to challenge! It is, to quote Bryan Magee, 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' (Schopenhauer's Philosophy, p106.) Magee notes, in that passage, that this is why Kant's philosophy is so hard to grasp, saying that 'Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices' (ibid).

My understanding is that Kant believed that we only can have genuine knowledge and truth about the phenomenal world, but not about things-in-themselves (noumena) as they exist independently of our experience. However, you acknowledged the possibility of making true statements about the actual mind-independent world, so you must disagree with him on this point. — Relativist

I do not disagree with Kant on this point. It IS the point! Nothing about scientific method demands that it concerns 'things in themselves'. It is perfectly compatible with the idea that phenomena, how things appear, are governed by rules and principles and behave consistently to a point (as we always have to allow for the fact that nature will confound from time to time.)

Again, in interpreting it, you have a 'mental construct' of your own - that of the mind's model of the world, 'in here', and the purportedly real world 'out there' which pre-exists you and will outlive you. But that too is part of the way the mind construes experience. Your implicit perspective is from outside both your mind and the world you live in, as if you were seeing it from above - but we really can't do that.

I will keep the Forum posted, but only if I find a publisher.

Chance has a very specific role in this context and in modern culture. It is generally presumed to be the only alternative to intentional creation - either something was created intentionally (per Creation) or it ‘just happened’. I think that is a false dilemma.

(As it happens I’m writing a novel on the subject of the propagation of life. It is very sympathetic to the idea of panspermia which is the theory that the there are clouds of proto-organic material in the Cosmos which form the basis of living organisms wherever the circumstances are propitious (hint: doesn’t include Mars.) But in this novel, this process doesn’t involve physical space travel, which is laughed off as a techno-barbarian fantasy.)

The roomba empirically demonstrates the knowing of where it has been — noAxioms

Well, I hope you and it can form a meaningful relationship.

You are applying a different definition of "belief" than I. — Relativist

I use the regular definition.

All of this has bearing on your acceptance of "scientific facts" — Relativist

I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.

do you accept my definition - that "true" = corresponds to objective, mind-independent reality? If not, then provide your definition. — Relativist

I've posted several objections to the idea of correspondence previously, but you seemed not to notice them. They're all textbook examples I have found over the years.

According to [correspondence], truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. This view […] seems to conform rather closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in the definition arise when we ask what is meant by “agreement” or “correspondence” of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality. In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it with the reality in some sense.

1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don’t know the reality, how can we make a comparison?

2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How do we know that our belief in this agreement is “true”? This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true belief. — Randall, J. & Buchler, J. Philosophy: An Introduction, 1957, p133

Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. — Kant, 1801. in Lectures on Logic.

Excellent NY times article on AI impact on writing, generally. Gift link

A.I.s do not have the same vocabulary as humans. There are words they use a lot more than we do. If you ask any A.I. to write a science-fiction story for you, it has an uncanny habit of naming the protagonist Elara Voss. Male characters are, more often than not, called Kael. There are now hundreds of self-published books on Amazon featuring Elara Voss or Elena Voss; before 2023, there was not a single one.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT why this might be:

That’s a wonderful—and slightly chilling—little empirical proof of cultural feedback loops solidifying in real time.

What you’re seeing with Elara Voss and Kael is basically latent-space gravity made visible. These models don’t “invent” names the way humans do; they sample from dense statistical attractors formed by:
• Decades of genre fiction tropes
• Name-generator websites
• RPG character databases
• Fan fiction archives
• Sci-fi game NPC corpora
• YA dystopia naming conventions

Over time, certain phonetic + semantic bundles become hyper-prototypical for a role:
• Elara → soft-vowel, Greco-astral, “female protagonist energy”
• Voss → clipped, Teutonic, authoritative, morally ambiguous
• Kael → monosyllabic, Blade-Runner-adjacent, brooding competency

So when an LLM is asked to “write sci-fi,” it doesn’t reach for novelty—it reaches for maximum conditional likelihood. And that produces name convergence.

Before 2023, no Elara Voss.
After 2023: hundreds.
That’s not coincidence. That’s algorithmic fossilization happening in public.

Oh and that closing phrasing is also characteristic of botprose: “That’s not X. It’s Y.”

I think a primary factor in determining the variation in time between life on Earth compared to when life forms elsewhere would be the difference in time between Earth's formation and the formation of most Earthlike planets. — NotAristotle

We know there are trillions of galaxies, and that each galaxy probably contains trillions of planets. Who's keeping the Almanac?

Here, Janus, a special one for you.

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his (the dog's) field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

Good old Aristotelian Thomism.

That tells me you must feel threatened. — Janus

Terrified. Shaking in my boots.

Functional adequacy, in fact extremely precise functional adequacy, which you would know if you have ever seen a bird flying at high speed through a forest, does say something about what our rational truth propositions are based upon. — Janus

The bird example again shows the equivocation I was pointing to. Yes—its perceptual system must be exquisitely tuned to environmental structure. But that gives us sensorimotor covariance, not truth in the rational sense. The bird does not entertain propositions about where the trees are, nor does it distinguish between correct and incorrect judgments—only between successful and unsuccessful action. You can say that its responses 'are true' but that is because you already have the conceptual ability to to that.

Experience can show us what is the case. It can never show us what must be the case. And logical necessity lives in that second domain.

Reason has no authority beyond consistency — Janus

You'd be well advised to heed your own advice!

Rational grasp of truth is not the point. — Janus

If that’s not the point, then we need to be clear about what the point actually is. You’ve shifted the discussion from rational grasp of truth to perceptual adequacy for survival. Those are not the same thing.

Yes—animals must have perceptual systems that are adequate to guide response. That’s a claim about functional adequacy. It says nothing about truth in the rational sense: about propositions, validity, necessity, or justification.

A frog can track flies, a bat can echolocate, a bacterium can follow a chemical gradient. All of that can be adaptively successful without any grasp of truth, falsity, inference, or contradiction. Survival only requires that responses work—not that they be true.

The issue under discussion (which is tangential to the 'mind-created world' argument) is not whether perception must be good enough to survive, but whether survival explains the existence of a faculty that can grasp what must be the case—logical necessity, valid inference, contradiction, mathematical truth. That kind of truth does no direct survival work at all, and yet as the rational animal we are answerable to reason.

So if “rational grasp of truth is not the point,” then the question is: what, exactly, is being offered as an explanation of the authority of reason itself, rather than merely of adaptive perception? And if there isn’t any such explanation, then what point can be made?

Try to grasp mine: the "mind created world(model)" is a belief (a compound one) and it's core is properly basic. Please acknowledge this, instead of brushing it aside by simply reiterating what I've already agreed to. Make an attempt to understand what I'm saying. You can then challenge it, and explain why you disagree. But so far, you've mostly ignored it. — Relativist

I understand it, I am not ignoring it, and I'm saying it's mistaken. The 'mind created world' thesis is a rational and defensible argument based on philosophy and cognitive science. It's is not appropriate to describe it as a belief, as the subject is a factual matter. That is not to say we can't have beliefs, but beliefs are only a part of what the mind entertains - it also has concepts, intentions, reasons, passions, and much else besides.

This is the last time that I'll say it, but I don't deny the reality of the external world nor the validity of objective facts. I say that throughout the original post. What I deny is that the world would appear in the way it does to us, in the absence of any observer or mind, and that this is a fact that is generally ignored.
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It shouldn't be forgotten that aside from the vast distances involved in astronomy, there are also vast periods of time to be reckoned with. Human culture has had technology capable of seeing beyond the solar system for a bit more than a century - the flash of a match, in cosmic timescales. So what are the odds of two matches being lit at the same time? You see the point? Other civilizations might have preceeded ours by tens of millions of years, or conversely we might have preceeded theirs by the same factor. Of course, all wild guesswork, but something to consider.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. — Punshhh

Language and politics vary tremendously, but hearts and lungs are the same everywhere.