Recommend it. Not a philosophy text per se but with many interesting philosophical implications.

Something that occurs to me in respect of this argument: when people say they're 'sceptics' in this day and age, you can bet your boots they generally mean 'scientific sceptics', i.e. they will question anything for which there isn't or may not be scientific evidence. Yet 'scientific scepticism' generally starts with the firm belief that the 'sensory domain' (a.k.a. 'the natural realm') is inherently real. They're never sceptical about the obvious reality of the sensory domain in a manner that is very different to ancient scepticism, which would call the reality of the sensible world into question. I think that's because the juggernaut of modern Western culture has demolished all the alternatives. The world of the ancients had another dimension - nowadays politely described as 'mythological' - which embodied a dimension of depth. Whereas, as one of the Vienna Circle positivists put it, 'in science there are no depths - there's surface everywhere' ~ Rudolf Carnap.

'Ordinary language' philosophy is not, so far as I understand, a form of linguistics. Ordinary language philosophy wants to illuminate philosophical problems and concepts by examining how language is used in everyday situations, in order to promote clarity and dissolve misunderstandings that may arise from philosophical speculation and abstraction - hence its rejection of for instance idealism and metaphysics. But you can have analytic philosophers that explore metaphysical questions - such as those I mentioned.

//although when I read that essay again, it tends to merge them. In re-reading that essay, I'm less impressed, in light of the criticisms offered above, although still learned a few things from it.

But your approach would also fit ↪Wayfarer's love-hate relationship with analytic approaches. — Banno

'Analytic' is a method, not a philosophical stance per se. As you know, I frequently cite Thomas Nagel, as he's regarded an exemplary analytic philosopher and is one who expresses what I consider an important philosophical critique of scientific materialism. I believe there are many others who follow an analytic method in defense of the kinds of philosophical views that I'm supportive of (Richard Swinburne and Jerrod Katz come to mind, although I haven't read either of them yet.) Whereas the 'ordinary language' philosophers tend to have some characteristic meta-philosophical attitudes.

Republicans want to spend more for the military, and cut more elsewhere.

I watched a US 60 Minutes segment last night, about rorting and gouging in the US Defense Establishment (below for anyone interested). One of the interview subjects had been a top contract negotiator for the Pentagon and widely despised by the aero-space industry for calling out their predatory and monopolistic pricing practices. One example was a part that was generally available on the open market for $350 odd bucks, for which the Pentagon was routinely paying 10 grand. But the clincher was an episode during the Iraq war. It was discovered that one of their helicopter models needed an urgent parts replacement or could literally fall out of the sky. The supplier of said part immediately put an enormous premium on the thousands of units that would have to be supplied. The procurement teams said words to the effect of 'we're not paying that!' To which the response came, 'well, let them crash, then.' They paid. Obviously the Freedom Caucus guys have taken a leaf from their book. So all these extra billions that the GOP wants for 'defense' will simply line the pockets of lobbyists and military-industrial executives. It is all entirely corrupt.

How it appears to me might be different from how it appears to you. How it appears might be different under different conditions. Are we talking about the same object or different objects when there is a difference in appearance? — Fooloso4

That’s the whole point - you can't get outside the appearance to see it as it 'truly is'. But it's a more subtle question that whether an object really exists or is 'only in the mind'. My view is that it really exists, but that the very notion of existence always implies an observer for whom it exists, in line with the 'Copenhagen interpretation' of physics (and with Schopenhauer's philosophy). And that furthermore, the observer is not, as it were, in the frame.

I think the central issue here is in how we separate objects from their environment. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thoughts? — wonderer1

The mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts: At the most fundamental level, we can say that external reality is a continuous flow of ongoing cosmic process. Consequently, facts or events in the sense of individual happenings do not exist in the universe at large. When you speak of a fact or event, you mean something bounded that has been lifted out of the flow of continuous activity. Since a fact must be very precisely extruded from the background, this requires that the observer who lifts it out have a purpose—a motive for undertaking to extract this one particular thing. In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p92)

It seems to me that at back of modern physicalism/materialism was the conviction that what can be specified in terms of those primary qualities are the only objective existents, while everything else belongs to the subjective realm of appearances. Which brings us back to:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36

which in turn gave rise to the 'Cartesian anxiety'

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

Phenomenology seeks to remedy this condition by returning attention to the primacy of being - the reality of lived experience - *not* as something to analyse through science or metaphysics but through attention to 'what is’ - ‘dasein’.

(Things are falling into place…..)

Ron DeSantis - There could be a charming, easy-going lad hibernating under all that permafrost, a Republican Mister Rogers who wants to be your friend and neighbor. But reporters must rely on what they’ve seen and heard during his stint in Congress and over the four years he’s occupied the Florida governorship. He looks and acts like the guy who would confiscate the ball kicked accidentally onto his lawn by kids playing on the sidewalk. Aloof and distant, as if nursing some eternal grudge, DeSantis seems as tightly wound as a fishing reel and a better candidate for residence on a desert island than the White House. — Politico

Maybe Elon should invite him on a rocket launch next.

(It’s probably that sense of harbouring a grudge that makes him most like Trump. (He would resent that.))

Guns are often justified for 'self protection', but:

I was going to say something about that, but thought it might muddy the waters. But yes, that is what I had in mind.

What I'm arguing is that 'how the object appears' is dependent on the observer. 'What it is' can be specified in the case of physical objects, in terms of its quantifiable attributes, which appear to be observer-independent, but may better be thought of as 'measurably consistent for any observer' (since their observer-independent nature has been called into question by quantum physics.)

as per the quote provided by Tom Storm:

Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned. — Dan Zahavi (quoting Hillary Putham)

Zahavi is a phenomenologist, and this, (along with 'enactivism' and 'embodied cognition') brings home the fundamental importance of the subject as subject - not as an object of analysis by biological or neurological sciences, but as a subject who brings a perspective to the world. By contrast, many forns of naturalism presumes that 'the world' exists just as it is, whether observed or not, outside of any perspective (which, I think, is Sellars’ ‘myth of the given’). That is the conceit of naturalism, with it's appeal to common sense and the implicit reliance on what 'everyone knows must be true'.

Hosting Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, in a Twitter audio event on Wednesday to announce his presidential run was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter.

Instead, the event began with more than 20 minutes of technical glitches, hot mic moments and drowned-out and half-said conversations before the livestream abruptly cut out. Minutes later, the livestream was restarted as hundreds of thousands of listeners tried to tune in. Mr. DeSantis had not said a word at that point.

“That was insane, sorry,” Mr. Musk said. — NY Times, Elon Musk’s Event With Ron DeSantis Exposes Twitter’s Weaknesses

These two really deserve each other. :lol:

I can hold that thing and bring it to you, but cannot hold what appears in your experience. — Fooloso4

But the object is what appears in experience - what you and I see, touch, hold, carry, and so on. Hence it is designated a 'phenomenal object' existing in both your experience and mine. The question is the sense in which the object exists apart from or outside of that. I think what you're wanting to say is that the object persists in the absence of any observer, which is what I am saying is a presumption. How do you differentiate between the object as it is in itself, and as it appears to us? That is the question.

Distance between Moon and Earth is in our heads...? :chin: — jorndoe

take the time to watch Andrei Linde, above.

The things shown and their appearance in your experience are not the same. The phenomenal experience is of the thing shown. — Fooloso4

How do you differentiate between the thing shown and the thing as it is in itself?

Some old guys doing it - Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, Boz Skaggs

He’s an amazing talent, that’s for sure.

:lol: :lol:

A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape. — Fooloso4

The stone either moves along with the current or not. This happens whether we observe it or not. — Fooloso4

I've thought some more about this. The same principle applies to all phenomenal experiences whatever. Stones move, mountains form, things get taken from the fridge. Philosophical idealism plainly has to be able to account for the fact that things appear to exist in our absence and without our knowledge. The basis of the idealist argument is all such phenomena still occur within experience - including the objective evidence of the age or location of the object. If you show the same things to to me, then they will also appear in my experience, and I can validate what they are along with any number of people (although not necessarily with other kinds of intelligences, which I'll leave aside). That is inter-subjective agreement, and a highly effective heuristic.

Now the philosophical problem is that you can't therefore say with absolute certainty that there is something beyond that experience, beyond the phenomena, which is the source of, and independent of, your experience of it. Materialism accounts for that, by saying that there is something called matter that is the cause of all these experiences, that exists independently . But what matter is, as distinct from what it appears to be, is the point at issue! If we break anything down - the stone or whatever - the we see the fragments it breaks into, but these too appear within experience. We can assume that all those things exist outside experience - when nobody is looking - but it will only ever be an assumption drawn from experience. This, as one of the sources I noted above mentions, can also be regarded as a strict form of empiricism (namely, phenomenalism, of which Berkeley is an example.)

But as we're talking about the real existence of material objects, then plainly the arbiter of that claim must be physics. And that is precisely where the assumption of an independently-existing domain of real objects has been challenged (torpedoed, many would say). Why was Albert Einstein obliged to ask Abraham Pais, 'does the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' Of course, he believed it did and it was a kind of rhetorical question - but what compelled him to have to ask it? (There's a very big story behind that.)

It is not coincidence that in all traditional metaphysics you see the theme: The truth that is spoken is no longer the truth. — TheMadMan

Would make for a very sparsely populated philosophy forum, however.

This is worth a watch. At 6:30 he addresses the pre-existence of the Universe.

Two weeks after mass shootings shook their country, Serbians have surrendered more than 15,000 weapons, more than 2,500 explosive devices, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, as part of a month-long amnesty announced by the government. — CNN

Something similar happened in Australia in 1996 after the Port Arthur Massacre.

Other countries respond to mass shootings in a way that the USA never does - because of the dogma about the right of gun ownership being equated with freedom.

Ideas have consequences.

I'll put it this way: there can be matter without mind but not mind without matter. — Fooloso4

But then, one of the factors that has undermined materialism in the 20th Century is that science has not really been able to arrive at a definitive account of matter. And that furthermore, the attempt to do so opened the whole can of worms that is quantum theory and its related 'observer problem'. As is well known, even early in the last century James Jeans and Arthur Eddington interpreted these discoveries as more supportive of the primacy of mind - you know, 'the stuff of the world is mind-stuff', and 'the world seems more like a great mind than a great machine'. Werner Heisenberg argued that the implications of quantum physics were more suggestive of Plato than Democritus. And so on. As I said, a can of worms, although Bernardo Kastrup has quite a bit to say on it - see his Physics is pointing inexorably towards mind (which incidentally takes a shot at the much touted 'information realism')

Thank you. I see that question as the basic issue in this debate.


I have a reference which is originally from an essay about Buddhist philosophy but which provides, I think, a useful summary of the background of the debate between idealism and materialism (with some comments added in parentheses).

The Term 'Idealism'

The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating one as the primary substance while reducing the other to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley's esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.). Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant "idea-ism," frequently in the sense Plato's notion of "ideas" (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure. Before long there were many types of materialism and idealism.

Idealism, in its broadest sense, came to encompass everything that was not materialism, which included so many different types of positions that the term lost any hope of univocality. Most forms of theistic and theological thought were, by this definition, types of idealism, even if they accepted matter as real, since they also asserted something as more real than matter, either as the creator of matter (in monotheism) or as the reality behind matter (in pantheism). Extreme empiricists who only accepted their own experience and sensations as real were also idealists (Berkeley being a notable example). Thus the term "idealism" united monotheists, pantheists and atheists. At one extreme were various forms of metaphysical idealism which posited a mind (or minds) as the only ultimate reality. The physical world was either an unreal illusion or not as real as the mind that created it. To avoid solipsism (which is a subjectivized version of metaphysical idealism) metaphysical idealists posited an overarching mind that envisions and creates the universe. (This is the 'mind-at-large' posited by Bernardo Kastrup.)

A more limited type of idealism is epistemological idealism, which argues that since knowledge of the world only exists in the mental realm, we cannot know actual physical objects as they truly are, but only as they appear in our mental representations of them. (This is near to how I (Wayfarer) understand it.) Epistemological idealists could be ontological materialists, accepting that matter exists substantially; they could even accept that mental states derived at least in part from material processes. What they denied was that matter could be known in itself directly, without the mediation of mental representations. Though unknowable in itself, matter's existence and properties could be known through inference based on certain consistencies in the way material things are represented in perception.

Transcendental idealism contends that not only matter but also the self remains transcendental in an act of cognition. Kant and Husserl, who were both transcendental idealists, defined "transcendental" as "that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience." A mundane example would be the eye, which is the condition for seeing even though the eye does not see itself (a philosophical axiom of the Upanisads. This is also the reasoning behind the argument about the 'blind spot' of science). By applying vision, and drawing inferences from it, one can come to know the role eyes play in seeing, even though one never sees one's own eyes. Similarly, things in themselves and the transcendental self could be known if the proper methods were applied for uncovering the conditions that constitute experience, even though such conditions do not themselves appear in experience.

Even here, where epistemological issues are at the forefront, it is actually ontological concerns, viz. the ontological status of self and objects, that is really at stake. Western philosophy rarely escapes that ontological tilt. Those who accepted that both the self and its objects were unknowable except through reason, and that such reason(s) was their cause and purpose for existing - thus epistemologically and ontologically grounding everything in the mind and its ideas - were labeled Absolute Idealists (e.g., Schelling, Hegel, Bradley), since only such ideas are absolute while all else is relative to them. — Dan Lusthaus

(The essay then goes on to differentiate Western and Indian philosophy, which is based more on epistemology, but which is not directly relevant to the above.)

I am not a connoisseur or anything (I don't even know who Steely Dan is), but wow! — SophistiCat

Here's the original (oh, and I'm a Steely Dan tragic.)

And the counter-argument is that because things are different they interact in different ways. We can observe this and describe this but these interactions occur whether we identify them or not. — Fooloso4

Do you think the mind is a product of such physical interactions?

[crossed-fingers emoji]

Something you could point at which purportedly ‘falsifies idealism’.

I had in mind something like dharma - which is at once ‘purpose’, ‘law’ and ‘duty’. If described as ‘cosmic’, it is on the basis that human beings are microcosms - the universe in miniature. So individuals realising their purpose - if they do it truly, in accordance with moral principles - just is a way in which the cosmos realises its purpose.

House Freedom Caucus members, such as Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), warn they won’t accept anything less than the House-passed bill [which Democrats have said repeatedly is DOA].

That leaves McCarthy with strikingly little room to maneuver.

The House bill cut discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels and then caps domestic discretionary spending to 1 percent growth over the next decade. It also expands work requirements for federal social aid programs and rescinds $30 billion in unspent COVID funding.

House Republicans are also pushing for energy permitting reform, measures to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and to block Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt relief.

Biden is holding fast against many of the Republican demands, which Democrats warn would hurt American families across the nation by cutting an array of federal programs, expecting McCarthy will back down. l. — The Hill

Still reckon, depending on the outcome, it's quite possible that McCartney will loose his gavel over it. Those Freedom Caucus types are ruthless ideologues.

It might be something engrained in life. It might be like 'fulfilling your destiny' or carrying out the role you have in the grand scheme, even if it appears insignificant to others.

This from page 7 of the 'Being No-one' precis. It confirms the same point the Feldman paper makes about the lack of a scientific account of the subjective unity of experience.



It's an interesting paper, with lots to consider, but settled science, it ain't.

Say there is a cosmic purpose; how could we ever discover it; — Janus

By doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, I would hope.

You're spot on. Unfortunately. :sad:

One of the cuts that the GOP are trying to extort is funding for the Inland Revenue Service to hire more tax agents.

Republicans’ proposal to rescind $71 billion in IRS funding pushed through by Democrats last year would cut projected tax receipts by $191 billion over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The result: The government would find itself an additional $120 billion in the hole.

Republicans, who’ve campaigned hard against the IRS money since last summer, have mostly ignored the budget warnings, arguing they are trying to protect average Americans from zealous tax collectors.

This is bullshit. 'Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted that the new funding [will] not be used to increase audit rates on those earning less than $400,000 a year.' The reason they want to defund the IRS is so that all their rich donor mates can get the tax department of their backs. See this analysis.

As always, GOP cuts will worsen the deficit and benefit the wealthy while the GOP are bleating about 'cutting wasteful spending'.

The paper I quoted about the impossibility of providing a neurological basis for the subjective unity of experience references the science. I'm going to listen to the Metzinger talk a bit later, I'm sure I'll find it congenial.

The philosophical issue is not scientific per se. Analytical idealism is not anti-scientific. It's anti-materialist.

Still no resolution. The Freedom Caucus really might push the US into default rather than back down. They are refusing to even consider tax increases as a means to address the deficit: only cuts to welfare will be considered.

As I understand it default might mean not being able to make some specific payments - but that if Congress then decided to pass the limit increase, payments would be able to resume. By this means, the Freedom Caucus might be willing to indicate it's complete callousness and disregard for the welfare of the nation by engineering a 'limited default' - which would still cause major stock-market ructions and many other unknown consequences. Kind of like cutting off the finger of your kidnap victim and mailing it to the parents, then blaming the parents for not coughing up. I wouldn't put it past those MAGA thugs.

Here is a 'gift' link to the current WaPo coverage for those interested.

The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact, and so on. So the argument is that the features of objects are not intrinsic to them, but imputed to them by the observer, and whether or not they continue to have those features in the absence of any observer, is just the whole point at issue. What is 'trivial' is simply that it is impossible to definitively prove 'object permanence' i.e. that features are instrinsic to the object without any perception, as the object has to be perceived to ascertain what features it has.

Another passage from that book might help to amplify the point. He refers to Gestalts, having previously discussed how the mind instinctively grasps objects as meaningful wholes, or gestalts.

Imagine putting three pennies on the table in a triangular pattern, as suggested below:

In perception, the threesome of pennies has its own identity, separate from that of the individual coins: For instance, the threesome has a triangular appearance in our eyes. Does the threesome exist as a separate unit in the mind-independent world? Are there three things in the world (namely the three coins) or are there four things (the individual coins and the threesome-of-coins)? This is not an easy or trivial question, for it depends on what you understand by "existing". If existence is limited to the material, then you have only three things, because no new material is added when the threesome is formed. However, if reality were limited to what is material, there would be no such things as structure or form, because they neither add to, nor take away from matter. The threesome of coins is a separate reality for us because it has a separate quality in perception. What is there in the mind-independent world to make it something separate? What is there in the material world to make any Gestalt group of objects exist on its own merits, over and above the individual objects in it? There are groups of objects that come together naturally. Think of a table: It has five parts, namely a horizontal top and four legs. However, the table has a proper function which is only achieved by the whole. The same idea applies to living animals, which have numerous organs that work together and jointly make the animal. What distinguishes these examples is that the composite object depends functionally on its parts. It exists only as a dynamic combination of its components. There are many other systems of objects in the world that interact naturally, and by their interaction form cohesive groups. For instance, the planets revolve around the sun and interact gravitationally, thus forming a planetary system. However, material systems which belong together because they function as a unit are few and far between. In contrast with  functionally  related groups  of  things, there  are innumerable random groups of objects which are nothing more than chance combinations, without purpose. Hypothetically, every collection of objects could be separated out of its background and assigned an identity as a group, in which case everything would be a Gestalt. If that were the case, the very notion of Gestalt would be meaningless. This shows that a Gestalt is more than an arbitrary joining together of objects. There must be a reason, a purpose, for bringing particular things together and taking them to form a coherent whole. But in the mind-independent universe, there are no such things as reasons and purposes. We are led to conclude that it requires a living subject to mentally extract a dynamic group of objects from a background in which it is deeply embedded, and make it stand out as something existing. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (pp. 43-44). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

The form this takes is not something intrinsic to the objects, but is inferred by the mind. The larger argument is that consciousness continuously structures experience this way - as the quote about Thomas Metzinger says:

People are thus what Metzinger calls naïve realists, who believe they are perceiving reality directly when in actuality they are only perceiving representations of reality. The data structures and transport mechanisms of the data are "transparent" so that people can introspect on their representations of perceptions, but cannot introspect on the data or mechanisms themselves.

Your argument is similar to the 'argumentum ad lapidem' of Samuel Johnson based on the instinctive assumption of the independent reality of objects of perception.

Furthermore, that underlined passage which I referred to, links to a paper on the neural binding problem: subjective unity of experience. When I say that there's 'no scientific account' of the subjective unity of experience, this remains the case. Certainly, Metzinger is correct in saying that this is 'generated by the brain' which is exactly what I said here:

all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. — Wayfarer

But the paper I linked to shows that science can't identify which neural mechanism provides for what we experience as a subjective unity. It acknowledges that while there are plausible accounts for the 'stable world illusion', it goes on to say:

But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the neural binding problem really is a scientific mystery at this time.

Capiche?

You are incorrect Wayfarer. Idealism, in the sense that there is no proof of something outside of our perception, has been refuted. — Philosophim

Citations, please. (A lot rides on the meaning of 'outside' in this statement!)

This is not the thread for it, but if you wish to create a Bernardo Kastrup thread: — Philosophim

On the contrary:

By analytic idealism, I take it to be that reality is fundamentally (ontologically) one mind which has dissociated parts (like bernardo kastrup's view). — Bob Ross

You might explain the distinction between this paragraph in the article you link to about Metzinger's 'self model':

People are thus what Metzinger calls naïve realists, who believe they are perceiving reality directly when in actuality they are only perceiving representations of reality. The data structures and transport mechanisms of the data are "transparent" so that people can introspect on their representations of perceptions, but cannot introspect on the data or mechanisms themselves. These systemic representational experiences are then connected by subjective experience to generate the phenomenal property of selfhood. — Wikipedia

And that in my post, which you describe as 'incorrigibly idealistic':

Consciousness plays the central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ and also the coherence and reality of the world of appearance. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves and the objects of our perception to exist is dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, most of which are unknown to us. We have no more knowledge of them than we do of cell division or of our hair growing or our food digesting. — Wayfarer

(There's a video lecture from Metzinger here, which I will find time for later. Interesting that this was filmed at a Krishnamurti Foundation conference.)

I'm meaning to read Metzinger, but at first glance, he seems a rather cold personality. But I don't see any contradiction between the type of constructivism or phenomenology that I'm advocating with science as such. The conflict is with the idea that the world exists independently of the mind, or that the objective sciences can provide a complete account of the nature of being.

Incidentally, there is a Mahāyāna Buddhist school called Vijñāvada or Yogācāra, which is often compared to Western idealist philosophy, although with some caveats.

Which is more about how our subjective experience, perception, and cognition might be emergent factors that we can never find because they're emergent out of the whole body/mind configuration. — Christoffer

Which is pretty what the Phaedo and other ancient sources imply in the analogy of 'the soul as the harmony of parts'.

We are able to describe this shape based on observation, but the shape is independent of observation and judgment. — Fooloso4

You haven't addressed the argument, but I have a sense that nothing further can be added.