That presupposes that our minds and reality exist in the same space. Since our minds are not physical objects, that cannot be the case. — Ludwig V

Does the mind, as an activity say rather than an object, not reside within the brain/body?

Right we make "secure" (or not so secure) inferences. But they are not determinations of truth. For example, I get accused of scientism, and yet I don't believe that scientific theories are strictly determinations of truth. Any theory may be falsified.

:up: I think we've reached some consensus, so I'm happy to leave it there if you are.

Isn’t that exactly what the OP was about? The point of the transcendental argument is that there are truths not determined by observation or logic, but by clarifying the conditions that make either possible. — Wayfarer

How do we determine the conditions that make either possible if not by observation and logic? We can reflect on our experience, that is we can do phenomenology, in order to try to determine the essential characteristics of all experiences. Such reflections are not directly testable observations, so there may be disagreement about their findings, but I think that given good will substantial agreement can be reached.

That all perceptions of objects must be spatiotemporal and that embodiment is spatiotemporal are two uncontroversial examples of such phenomenological reflection of the character of experience. I would count phenomenological investigations as a species of observation, and of course logic plays its part in all our judgements.

Other more controversial results such as that consciousness is non-physical because it doesn't seem to us to be depend on the framing. What exactly is meant by "non-ohysical"? Does it mean "not an object of the senses" or "not a function of, and completely independent of, any physical substrate".

Do you have anything to add to that?

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

I have asked questions and posed counterpoints which you have no even attempted to address. Here are two:

Your argument is something like:

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

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

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

You say that you are not saying that nothing can exist apart from its being cognized, and yet that is what saying that any concept of existence only makes sense within the conditions of possible experience amounts to. If we accept a framing that says we cannot possibly experience things-in-themselves, then it follows that things that cannot possibly be experienced cannot exist. This must follow because if they can exist, then it cannot be incoherent to say that they can exist.

Of course I don't accept that framing because I don't accept the notion of "things-in-themselves" I think there are just things that we perceive, and that there is no logical contradiction in saying that those things might (or might not) exist independently of being perceived, and that there may be some things about them that we cannot perceive, given the limitations of our perceptual organs.

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

On reading your response below which apparently occurred while I was editing and adding to my post, I see that you have agreed that phenomenology may be thought of as a species of observation, so I guess we are in agreement there unless you have any further examples of ways of determining truth.

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

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

It looks to me like you are out of answers. You claim that there are ways, other than by observation or logic, to determine truth, but when pressed by questions such as this:

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

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

Surely I am free to raise objections to any OP, or am I allowed, according to you, to comment only on those I agree with?

All of your statements about the 'already existing objects' and 'previously existing universe' rely on that implied perspective which you're bringing to bear on it, without noticing that you're doing it. — Wayfarer

All my statements are expressions of my perspective―so what, that's trivially true. Of course I'm aware of it. I also acknowledge that my perspective is not the reality―you know, "the map (or model) is not the territory".

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

If the existence of the Universe is independent of any particular mind, whether human or animal, how does it not follow that it is independent of all individual minds? Of course there is a perspective involved in saying that the Universe is or is not independent of minds, but it doesn't follow that it is impossible that the universe be either independent or dependent on minds―we just don't know and may only speculate about it.

I'm not going to try to address any purported implications of quantum mechanical experiments and results because I don't have the expertise, and I don't believe you do either. It is arguable that even the experts understand only the math, not what metaphysical implications might be suggested by QM. Wasn't it Feynman who said: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics"?

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

You can't look at your spectacles without looking through them.

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

I didn't address this as thoroughly as I meant to. The claim is that truth is determinable only by observation or logic, and otherwise we can have only beliefs about what is true. A radical skeptic would say that we cannot be certain of the truth even of what is observed or logically self-evident. Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined?

It’s in the link I shared in the OP. Did you read it? — Bob Ross

Can't you just tell me?

If you mean not determinable in principle, then I disagree: there is a fact of the matter about whether categories like “existence” or “mind-independence” are meaningful outside the bounds of cognition. — Wayfarer

What do you mean by "meaningful outside the bounds of cognition"? Let's say for the sake of argument nothing for human discourse is outside the bounds of cognition, are you saying categories like 'existence' and 'mind-independence' can only apply to the objects we perceive?

If so, then it seems obvious that they don't only apply to the objects we perceive when they are being perceived. In my view all our experience, both ordinary everyday observations and science, informs us that there are human-independent things in the Universe now and that
there were before humans existed.

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

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

In the double-slit experiment, whether you get an interference pattern or not depends on whether an observation is made. — Wayfarer

Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. The fact that the behavior of microphysical particles seems counter-intuitive, even paradoxical, shouldn't surprise us given that we have evolved in a macroworld, and our expectations as to the behavior of entities has been conditioned by our experiences of macro-objects.

There is also no clear consensus among the physics community as to the implications of those observed weird results. In any case why deny what science tells us, and then appeal to it when it suits you?

I don't believe you have any real doubt that the everyday objects we encounter constantly have their own existence, which does not rely on our perceiving them. As Peirce said: "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts".

I’ve got a pretty decent telescope, and when I look here, and look there, the space between is full of stuff I don’t perceive without it. — Mww

Right, I haven't claimed there are any truly empty spaces. But then when it comes to spaces that look empty that just speaks to the fact that there are things there we cannot see with the naked eye. It's kind of irrelevant anyway, because all I'm saying is that we can perceive extension, distance, and that counts in my view as perceiving space. You are free to frame it differently.

If you agree all perceptions have a sensation belonging to them…..what sensation does one receive from the perception of space? What is it about your perception which distinguishes the space you perceive from empty space you do not? — Mww

The sensation is one of extension, or distance as a said above. I'm not sure what you are driving at here.

But it still needs to be known the necessary conditions for mass, form and size of a thing, and even more importantly, the necessary conditions by which differences in mass, form and size of different things are related. — Mww

I don't know what you mean―the necessary conditions for the perception of mass, form and size are that they are there to be perceived. The overall form of an object is not dependent on perspective, although of course how it looks from any angle will be if it is not a sphere. Size is relative, and if one object is larger than another, that would not seem to be dependent on perspective either. Same with mass.

But I get the point: the material of my existence is no different from the material of any other existence. What do you intend to be gleaned from such analytical truths? — Mww

Clarity?

That’s a very simplified gloss, and not my argument. I’m not claiming that “nothing exists apart from cognition.” I’m saying that any concept of existence only makes sense within the conditions of possible experience. — Wayfarer

So, you're saying that something might exist apart from cognition, but that it makes no sense to say that? In any case the concept of existence outside of cognition makes sense to me. You can say it makes no sense to you, but that is all you are entitled to say. There is no determinable fact of the matter that that can be used to ascertain what makes sense and what doesn't as a universal rule.

You're saying, there must be a reality outside any consciousness of it. — Wayfarer

No I'm not; I'm saying it seems most plausible to me that there is a reality outside any consciousness of it.

But that’s precisely the point: your criterion itself — “only what can be determined by observation or logic counts” — is not itself established by observation or logic. — Wayfarer

It is established by observing that no other way of determining truth is to be found. If there is another way, then tell us what that way is, and how it works.

But this “real world” you posit beyond appearances is itself nothing but conjecture. You say “all the evidence points to it,” but by definition the evidence only ever belongs to the realm of appearances. — Wayfarer

I don't believe that's true. It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. It's easy to test. That is what is to be explained and I think the inference to a world of mind-independent existence is the best explanation. You don't have to think that―but since it cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by observation or logic it becomes a matter of what each person finds most plausible. That's the way I see it.

Anything we say about things which cannot be decided by observation or logic is a matter of conjecture―I've never denied that.

Your argument is something like:

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

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

What you are offering is a certain perspective on the situation―a certain way of framing it. There are other ways of thinking about it. There is no determinable truth of the matter; so really comes down what seems most plausible as to what you will believe. In other words it is a matter of opinion, or preference, or taste or whatever you want to call it.

If you think otherwise then explain how you think your view could be established to be correct.

But there is not space between objects, only more objects, that's why you said you do not perceive empty space. — Metaphysician Undercover

We perceive the extendedness of objects; that is what space is. It is not an empty container. If you think we cannot perceive space as an empty container, well of course that is true, but irrelevant.

Basically you're saying that it's subjective, a matter of opinion. 'It's OK if you see it that way, but I see it a different way'. It's not 'determinable' because it can't be validated empirically. Whatever is not determinable by science is a matter of personal preference. — Wayfarer

No, whatever cannot be determined by observation or logic is a matter of opinion. You tell me how it might otherwise be determined.

But you're still positing a real world beyond what appears, as if that is the criterion of realness, when it is the very point at issue. — Wayfarer

Yes, I'm positing a real world beyond what appears, because I think all the evidence points to that. You are positing that there is not a real world beyond what appears because (apparently) you think all the evidence indicates that to be the case. Neither of us can demonstrate that we are right, so it is a matter of opinion. That's plain to see, but you apparently cannot accept that.

BTW, I'd rather just discuss this with you―there is little point quoting entries about Husserl or other philosophers I am well enough familiar with to know that I disagree with them and why. Invoking authority figures just doesn't cut it for me.

The truth concerning what is neither empirically nor logically demonstrable is not strictly decidable and so is a matter of what each of us finds most plausible or in other words a matter of opinion...call it what you like. And of course a dogmatist won't want to accept that.

This is going nowhere so I'm going to leave you to it.

Got it...Cheers.

The separation of objects just is the space between them.

Our space and time is not perceptual, meaning our senses do not perceive them, for that would be the same as space and time being appearances. — Mww

That's one way of describing the situation. On the other hand I can say I perceive the space between objects, albeit usually more or less filled up with other objects. I do perceive space but I don't perceive empty space.

It follows that Kant’s proof of the non-existence of things-in-themselves in space and time is predicated on the tenets of his theory, which states, insofar as they are strictly transcendental human constructs, space and time cannot be the conditions for existence of things, but only the conditions for the possibility of representing things that exist. — Mww

So, to refer to things-in-themselves as "strictly transcendental human constructs" is again a particular way of framing, not an expression of any determinable fact of the matter. If things are human-independent existents that have mass, form and size then space and time would be the condition for their existence, just as they are the conditions, not just for our cognition, but for our very existence. In our material existence we are not different than other things.

“….To think an object and to cognize an object are by no means the same thing….” — Mww

Of course I cannot disagree with that. Since it is true by definition. On the other hand, some might say that for God to think an object and to cognize an object are one and the same.

As already stated, 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 totake 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.
— Wayfarer

It's this taken-for-grantedness that is the main target. — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you keep repeating this when I have long acknowledged that the world as perceived is (you might even say by very definition) mediated by the nature of bodily organs and processes. Science can study this and even model what the world might look like to different animals given the different ways the perceptual organs of individual kinds of animals are constituted.

Maybe this is more toward the restrictive version Wayfarer has made sure I stick to. That meaning, what i've said relates to the fact that for humans the "world" is irrelevant, but our perceptions are. So in "our world" our perception differentiates to create entities. — AmadeusD

The issue is as to whether it is more plausible to think that we carve nature "at the joints", so to speak or arbitrarily. If it were arbitrary we would not all perceive the same things. Our bodies with their perceptual organs, or minds if you prefer to frame it that way, cannot be the sole determinants of how we differentiate nature or we would not all see the same things. So differentiation is down to real patterns and regularities that are independent of us in nature or some kind of collective or universal mind. Choose your poison.

But the whole point of the essay is what we know of what exists. When I say the world “relies on an implicit perspective,” I mean the world-as-known. To speak of what lies entirely outside that perspective is already speculative. Better to call it “purported” or “imagined” existence. — Wayfarer

I was editing as you were responding apparently. Anyway I'm sayin that we can sensibly say that the things we perceive have their own existence independently of us, period. You say we cannot sensibly say that except within the empirical context. Then I respond that everything we say is from within the empirical context. So, what are we disagreeing about?

To call it “something” already applies a category it doesn’t yet have. That’s why I said: it is not some-thing. But I'm also not saying it is simply non-existent. This is what you keep insisting is 'nonsensical', but when the context is understood, it is really quite straightforward: it is neither a “thing” nor “nothing,” but precisely what lies beyond the scope of those categories. — Wayfarer

You are again confusing what we say with the things we are talking about. The things we talk about only "have categories" insofar as they are talked about―it doesn't follow that they are such that they cannot be thought to be fit or not to be included whatever category we are thinking of. You are thinking in simplistic terms here. You say it lies beyond the scope of the categories―if we haven't perceived it yet, it may or it may not. Say there is a cat behind a tree―you haven't seen it yet, but you imagine it is a dog. Then you go around behind the tree and find it is a cat. If you had thought it was a cat, then it would have fitted that category before you perceived it, but it didn't fit that category because you mistakenly thought it was a cat.

There is no division between the empirical and the world as it is in itself. The world known by empiricism is simply the universe as it appears to us. To speak of “the world in itself” is not to posit a separate domain, but to point to the condition that makes the empirical world possible in the first place. — Wayfarer

The world known by us is simply the world―there is no other world for us. We know the world, but we do not know it completely, obviously. There is always more to learn. There could not be more to learn if there was not more there, presently unknown, to be experienced and to be learned about via that experience. We think there might be things we could never know about the things we know―we can't know for sure, but one thing we do know is that even if we reached the end of knowledge, if we knew everything it is possible to know, we could have no way of knowing that we had reached that point.

Ours — the limits of human cognition. — Wayfarer

The limits of human cognition does not define or determine the limits of what exists.

What has never entered your mind is not anything, obviously. And when it has entered your mind, it has done so via the senses, and has been interpreted by your intellect. What is outside that, neither exists nor does not exist. It is not yet anything, but that doesn't mean it's nothing. This is not dogma. — Wayfarer

You can talk about the situation that way, but there are of course alternatives ways of framing it. So I would say it is something before it "enters the mind" otherwise there would be nothing there to be perceived.

It is not a 'bifurcation'. That term is usually associated with A N Whitehead and is a different matter. In fact, the division is between the world as known to us, and what you think it must be, beyond that. — Wayfarer

'Bifurcation' is a synonym for 'division'. The bifurcation is yours―between the empirical and the transcendental. If all we know is the empirical world, and everything that has evolved out of that experience, and attempting to understand that experience―maths, geometry, science, music, poetry, literature―then we can say nothing about the transcendental other than that it is an idea of the possibility of something beyond.

You bare the one saying what the transcendental must be like―that it cannot exist in space and time, be differentiated and so on. I am saying that the transcendental is just an idea of the possibility of something beyond the empirical world. It's an idea that's been around for a very long time, and for which there can be, on your very own argument, no evidence. You say all we know, all our concepts, mathematics, geometry, science, music, poetry, literature and so on find their sense in the empirical world, so we cannot coherently speak about anything beyond that. because we have no cognition beyond that to give sense to whatever we say.

You admit that we can coherently say, within the empirical context that the world existed prior to humans. I say that is right, and that is where we stop our saying, and don't pretend that there is another context in which it makes no sense to say that. There is your bifurcation. By the way I didn't have Whitehead's "bifurcation of nature" (although I studied Whitehead's ideas quite extensively quite a few years ago) specifically in mind. He was more concerned with bypassing the division of nature into primary and secondary qualities, and of course that is a related issue, but let's not go down that rabbit hole.

I’m pointing out that when we use concepts like “existence” or “independence,” we are already relying on the framework of experience that gives those concepts their sense. That isn’t dogma — it’s analysis. To ignore that is not to be “freer” in one’s thinking, but simply to overlook the conditions that make thought coherent in the first place. — Wayfarer

The terms "existence" and 'independence" are common coin that get used in various contexts. To repeat, you say yourself that we can perfectly sensibly talk about the existence of the world prior to humans with the caveat that it makes sense only within the empirical context. I say there is no other context―so it looks like we are actually agreeing. I say there is no other context in which we can say anything at all, because we don't know any other context

A lot of this makes more sense form a phenomenological perspective (which is how I originally approached academic philosophy). Consciousness is 'of something' (the intentional), so if you follow that line of thinking further down the track you presume a grounding function.

If you have literally no interest in phenomenology then I can see how none of the above would serve any purpose nor inspire you to look further. — I like sushi

Phenomenology intentionally brackets the question of the existence of an external world, and concerns itself with understanding the nature of human experience. Phenomenology can tell us nothing about metaphysics, as it is not in the business of speculation. As Husserl declared: "to the things themselves"( the "things" here being 'things as we experience them'. It is the accumulation of scientific knowledge that places us in a better position to make plausible metaphysical inferences to the best explanation.

When Kant says we cannot know noumena or how things exist in themselves as opposed to how they exist for us, he is basing that on a consideration of only what we can via reflection on perceptual experience, establish that we can have direct cognitive access to. And yet he acknowledges, in order to escape Berkelyan idealism or Humean phenomenalism, that in order for there to be appearances there must be "something" that appears. It is the nature of that "something" which concerned traditional speculative metaphysics, which relied on the idea that intellectual intuition as to the nature of things is possible. Kant debunked this idea, and yet still wished to say what could not be the case with things in themselves or noumena.

If we have no cognitive access to that "something" are we nonetheless able to coherently speculate as to the nature of its existence? Of course we are. But what will be the best guide to such speculation? Intuition? Imagination? Common sense? Everyday experience? Science? I would say common sense, everyday experience and science are the best guides as to what metaphysical speculations are most plausible. It remains, though, that metaphysical questions are not strictly decidable, since any proposed thesis is neither logically provable or empirically demonstrable.

Then we can speculate that things in themselves may exist in their own space and time, which cannot be proven but which seems most plausible…
— Janus

Agreed, given the conditions which make that speculation plausible. It just isn’t a Kantian speculation and to which I only object because I think it is being made to look like it. In this particular speculation, while Kant also cannot prove things-in-themselves may exist in their own space and time, he only has to prove they cannot, in order for his entire metaphysical thesis with respect to human knowledge, to have an empirical limit. And he does exactly that, by proving….transcendentally….that space and time belong to the cognizing subject himself, which makes the existence of things in them, impossible. — Mww

I wasn't attempting to make it look like a Kantian speculation. On the other hand, I think there are inconsistencies in Kant. "Things in themselves" is the idea that there is more than just one thing that appears to us as the stupendous diversity of phenomena. Schopenhauer took him to task on this very point ( not saying I agree with Schopenhauer's "solution"). The point is that we cannot make sense of a single something appearing to us as a diversity of commonly perceived phenomena.

You say that Kant "proves" that things-in-themselves cannot exist in space and time, when all he can prove if anything is that they don't exist (and that proof by mere definition) in our perceptual space and time.

All of which is quite beside the point, insofar as all which concerns us as knowing subjects, is any of that which is entirely dependent on the mind. — Mww

I agree that as knowing subjects that is all that concerns us. But we can also know what seems most plausible to us when it comes to questions concerning speculative matters which are strictly both logically and empirically undecidable, since such speculating and weighing of what seems most plausible is also entirely a function of the mind. I say "function of the mind" rather than "entirely dependent on the mind", because the latter formulation may mislead into forgetting of experience.

See above.

I recognize nothing that hints you have considered, so I shall assume you’re not so inclined. Or you have and kept it to yourself. Which is fine; just thought you’d be interested. — Mww

Remember? “…I can think what I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself…”, which is precisely what understanding is doing, when empirical conceptions of possible objects arise from it alone, the empirical representation of which, from intuition, is entirely lacking. — Mww

I did not have the time to address that at the time. I say that speculative conceptions of the kind of bare bones in-themselves nature of the objects that appear to us as phenomena is not at all contradictory. That is just an interpretation-dependent stipulative judgement that I don't accept. It's all about what can make sense to talk about. Juts as I can sensibly talk about the things I perceive having an existence of their own, I can sensibly speculate about what the idea of such things seems to logically entail. "Things" implies differentiation and form, and differentiation implies space and time. If we are going to talk about things at all, then we should be consistent with what logic is implicit in thinking in terms of things. Of course thinking about things is based on concepts formed on account of the actual cognition of things. Then if we posit things beyond cognition we are in speculative territory. But if all such speculation is incoherent, or worse, contradictory, then forget about things in themselves altogether and go with absolute idealism or phenomenalism.

:up:

But the distinction isn’t a matter of “thought-police prescriptions.” It’s a matter of recognizing limits. — Wayfarer

Whose limits, and justified by appealing to what exactly?

When you say “of course things exist independently of any mind,” you’re already employing the categories of existence and independence. The transcendental point is simply: those categories have meaning only in relation to a subject. It’s not dogma, but an analysis of how thought works. — Wayfarer

No, it's a simple truism being unsupportedly amplified into a purported stricture. You simply have no warrant to pontificate on what may or may not have meaning to others. It's dogma, pure and simple, but I can't make you see that, you have to come to that realization yourself.

You even agree that it makes sense to say that things existed prior to humans. Then you go on to say it makes sense in an empirical context, but not in a transcendental context. I don't accept that bifurcation. "transcendental sense" is an artificial construct, which is neither logically nor empirically supported. So what is it supported by? If you say phenomenology I won't agree, because the whole remit of phenomenology consists in reflection the nature of experience. Science consists in investigation and analysis of the nature of the phenomena we experience. Phenomenology='What is the nature of experience ' and science= 'what is the nature of the things we experience'.

So you’re right that there’s no empirical way to confirm or disconfirm claims about noumena—that’s precisely why Kant warns against treating them as if they were positive objects. — Wayfarer

We need not talk about them at all except that it seems obvious, even to Kant, that if there are appearances there must be something that appears. What is the nature of that something about which we only know how it appears? It's not directly subject to investigation. But if there is something that appears we know how it appears.

And we know that the idea of something completely amorphous appearing as a world of diversity seems mighty implausible, actually makes no sense at all. If we want to speculate then I say that's the place to start. But I acknowledge we cannot say much, even about what seems most plausible. I also acknowledge that it doesn't really matter, it changes nothing about how we live our lives.

You keep calling it “dogma,” but it seems to me the real issue is that you’re not willing to admit that our knowledge has limits. — Wayfarer

If you think that it shows you don't read my posts closely. Of course I admit that our knowledge has limits, but I'm not a fan of pre-determining those limits. Of course we can talk about limits in tautologous way―once we conceive of objects as being "appearances for us" and "things in themselves" it is true by mere definition that if we define 'in itself' as what lies beyond 'how it appears' then we cannot have cognitive access to the in itself. But it doesn't follow logically that speculative talk about what it might be is meaningless.

And I suspect the reason you push back so strongly is that you have an instinctive aversion to the very word transcendental—for you it smacks of “God talk,” which is why you keep insisting it must be dogmatic. But that’s really just your pre-existing conception of the question, not what’s actually at stake. — Wayfarer

Here we go again with the psychological explanations! I don't so much object to the word 'transcendental' because we can only really reflect on what we experience and on what we can imagine. "The idea of transcendence just indicates that we must recognize that we don't know everything, and that we are bound to think that there must be something beyond what we experience and imagine. We inevitably imagine a transcendental world or aspect of the world that exists somehow apart from and independently of our world of cognitively apprehended objects.

The natural attitude, based on the fact of everyday experience that we all experience the same objects at the same times and places, is that those objects exist independently of our perception of them. That's really it. We don't know what that independent exist is like, we don't even know that there really is an independent existence. But phenomenalism explains nothing, so we are bound to think of an independent existence in some form or other.

Anything we think about it is more or less underdetermined. What thoughts are more determined and what less is the salient question. As Kant says, and @Mww quoted recently: "we can think whatever we like provided we don't contradict ourselves'. The thought that there is a god in whose mind all the objects we encounter exist is not logically contradictory, and nor is the idea of a mind-independent spatiotemporal world of real existents. Choose your poison. I know which I find the more plausible. But to repeat―it doesn't really matter, what matters is how well we live the lives we know we have.

I don't see myself as one of the thought police on this forum. That honour goes to all of those who squeal every time the word 'transcendent' is so much as mentioned. — Wayfarer

Of course you wouldn't see yourself as one of the thought-police. I have no argument with the idea of the transcendental per se. It's the way that some use it to push their dogma, and try to impose what I see as bullshit limits on what others can or should think that spurs me to respond.

I am asserting that there are people who misunderstand the difference between 'things-in-themselves' and 'noumena'. — I like sushi

What is the difference between noumena and things in themselves according to you?

I am also asserting -- having read Kant quite thoroughly -- that it makes no sense to talk of a 'bifurcation of nature' between 'phenomena and noumena'. That is very much a gross misunderstanding, but a very common one. — I like sushi

A bare assertion is not sufficient. Why does it make no sense to talk of a bifurcation of nature between phenomena and noumena? You say to think that is a common misunderstanding―do you mean among the population of amateur philosophers or do you mean among Kant scholars. Are you a Kant scholar?

If a 'two worlds' reading of Kant in regards to things as experienced and things in themselves is a coherent and consistent interpretation of Kant's philosophy, then as far as I can that would entail a bifurcation of nature.

I don't care so much about the fine points of Kantian terminology, I am more interested in the substance of his arguments. If a world of things in themselves gives rise to a world of things as they appear to us, then that would seem to posit two very different worlds―one we cannot have access to at all, and one we do access. If the world we inhabit (the empirical world) is an "idea" or "representation" as Schopenhauer reckons is the logical conclusion of Kant's system even though Kant may not have explicitly said so, and the world we have no access to is the objectively real world in itself, then which is the real world and which the ideal. I always thought Kant had this backwards, and I have also read a considerable amount of, and about, Kant.

If we want to say that the world of appearances just is nature (for us at least) then we do find a bifurcation even in the 'two aspect' interpretation, or so it seems to me. I say this because, unless we opt for sheer phenomenalism or Hegelian absolute idealism, we are positing that nature is for us divided into what we have access to and what we don't, and this is still a kind of dualism for all intents and purposes.

I don't know. I'm wracking my brain. — Patterner

You said the discursive intellect might be a better approach. I presumed you meant the discursive intellect alone. But does it ever work alone? Can it generate its own material to analyze or are experiences and empirical data not required to provide the material?

It is not measurable or detectable in any way. — Patterner

Perhaps not measurable, but not detectable....? Can we not tell when people are conscious of something by observing their behavior or asking them? Can we not make a person conscious of something by drawing their attention to it?

What if? What if it's not? — Patterner

Well, it seems most plausible to me that it is, but of course one person's plausibility may be another's incredulity.

You say, "All explanations are given in causal terms," but you're thinking of a type of common physical/scientific explanation. Is the explanation of the Pythagorean theorem a causal one? Surely not. What about an explanation of how football is played? — J

Yes, I was referring specifically to scientific and physical explanation. If course we have explanations of behavior couched in terms of reasons, and as to geometry and football, in terms of rules. I guess what I meant is that all explanations are reductive in the they tell one story, where others might also be told, analyze things in terms of their components (causal processes, reasons or rules) and none of them go anywhere near to capturing the whole picture or covering all the bases.

A reductive explanation of consciousness would not only show how it comes to occur, but also why it is identical, in some significant sense, to its physical components, just as water reduces to H2O. I'm suggesting that explaining consciousness may not fit this model. — J

I cannot imagine what any other non-reductive kind of explanation could possibly look like. Could not a reductive explanation of consciousness possibly show why (if such were the case) it is not identical to its physical components. For that matter are there any explanations at all which are not given in terms of components? Would understanding consciousness even conceivably be possible if it could not be analyzed in terms of components?

Consciousness is not trying to explain itself―it is reason, the discursive intellect, that is trying to explain consciousness.
— Janus

That's an interesting move. Again, it seems to hinge on what the activity of explanation consists of. — J

If we are undertaking an investigation into consciousness, what could we be doing if not looking at behavior and neural activity (anything else you can think of?) using observation and reasoned analysis? I say consciousness, while obviously involved in observation and reasoned analysis, is not identical with those processes. Consciousness is an umbrella under which many different processes can be possible that arguably would not otherwise be possible.

In a way, it is that simple -- for now — J

I think it is generally understood that we are conscious during REM sleep. We may remember dreams, which suggests that they have entered conscious attention, while at the end of a day, we may be able to recall only those things which have impressed us sufficiently to become part of memory.

That sounds right to me. I don't think reason and intellect are parts of consciousness, so it's not even a case of something examining itself. Which I don't think is impossible on principle, as J just noted. I think consciousness is not physical, so it's not going to be explained in physical terms. Reason, the discursive intellect might be a better approach. — Patterner

What evidence can the discursive intellect alone give us? What do you mean by saying that consciousness is not physical? What if discursive reasoning just is a certain kind of neural activity, and consciousness is also a kind of master neural process, a condition, that is necessary (or perhaps not?) in order that discursive reasoning be able to occur?

no objective, third person account of the workings of the mind capture the lived nature of experience. — Wayfarer

Can any account of anything capture the actuality of the thing?

Here you are assuming that space is mind-independent. There is no need to do that for a 'realist' IMO. — boundless

No that assumption is not necessarily entailed by what I said. I said the thing that calls for explanation is the undeniable fact that we see the same things in the same places and times, even down to the smallest details. The question is as to what is the most plausible explanation for that fact.

To make a crude analogy... think about the Matrix. Alice and Bob visit a city in the virtual reality of the Matrix. The buildings are not really there. — boundless

The you come up with―a fictional scenario, which it would not be implausible to think could not actually exist.

Ok. What are these laws and regularities in physical terms? — boundless

They consist in the patterns and behavior manifested in the things. What's the problem?

Not only that, however. When I, for instance, make a calculation I am not aware of any bodily processes. I am aware of a relation between concepts. — boundless

What, you are not writing down your calculation or being aware of thoughts within your body, manifesting as sentences or images?

Let's take again the Matrix example — boundless

Let's not―the Matrix is not a feasible scenario, and hence cannot serve as a relevant examples in my view. You would need to convince me that it warrants being taken seriously in order to interest me in it.

So, is the 'mind-independent reality' more or less the same to the 'phenomenal world'? We do not a way of know. And we can't neglect the fact that our mind has an active role in shaping the 'phenomenal world'. — boundless

Sure we and the other animals have somewhat different ways of perceiving the phenomenal world in accordance with the different structures of our sensory organs and bodies. But I think it most plausible to think it is one phenomenal world for all, even given different ways of perceiving due also to size differences, and animals' attention being directed at different things according to their needs.

Observing animal behavior shows us that they see the same thing in the environment, and any differences in ways of perceiving across the range of animals can be studied by science to gain a coherent and consistent understanding of those differences. We see dogs chasing balls, cats eating out of their bowls and climbing tress. We don't see animals or people trying to walk through walls.

I almost agree with this. But I am open to the possibility of things like 'revelations', 'insights via meditative experiences' and so on that can allow us, in principle, to get a 'higher knowledge'. I do recognize that there are good reasons to be skeptical of these things, however. — boundless

I see no problem in believing in such things, but they cannot serve as a foundation for clear and consistent rational discourse, since they are by general acknowledgement ineffable, and what people say about them is always interpretive, and generally interpreted in consonance within the cultural context in which people have been inducted into religious or spiritual ideas.

Whereas, if one assumes that some kind of 'fundamental mental aspect' or 'Divine Mind' etc is fundamental, it's easier to understand why these properties are present even in matter. — boundless

Okay, fair enough, but for me it is far more difficult to understand what a "fundamental mental aspect" or "divine mind" could be

This is a gross misunderstanding if you are referring to Kant. There is no bifurcation at all. — I like sushi

This is a gross, unargued bare assertion. Do an internet search on 'two worlds theory vs two aspects theory in Kant scholarship'. You might learn something.

I would like to offer, for your consideration, the idea, the interpretation, that Kant isn’t talking about noumena at all. He is talking about the faculty of understanding, and its proclivity for exceeding its warrant, such warrants having already been specified in preceding sections of his critical theory. — Mww

It is a tautology that we cannot know things in themselves if 'thing in itself' is defined as what we cannot know, which is the same as to say that all we can cognize are phenomena, and the idea of noumena represents the 'ultimate or true nature of things', which we cannot perceive, but can only speculate about.

So, no one in their right mind would claim that we can know what is defined as that which we cannot know. The thing is though that we can speculate, makes inferences, about the nature of things in themselves or noumena from what we know of phenomena.

So, Kant says that things in themselves cannot exist in space and time. It is true, again by definition, that things in themselves cannot exist in our perceptual space and time, if things in themselves are defined as whatever lies beyond the possibility of human cognition. On the other hand, we can think and speak in a different register and say that things in themselves (things which have their own mind-independent existence) just are what appear to us as phenomena. Interpreted the situation thus we can be said to know things in themselves but only as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves.

Then we are not struggling with an explicitly dualist view, because the things that appears to us are the same things that have their own existence apart from our perceptions of them, it is just that all we can know of them are their perceptible qualities.

Then we can speculate that things in themselves may exist in their own space and time, which cannot be proven but which seems most plausible since an undifferentiated thing in itself that purportedly gives rise to our experience of a spatiotemporal world seems far less plausible than things which have their own existence as different from all other things. For a start "giving rise" implies causation or at least "providing the conditions". How could something completely undifferentiated cause to exist, or provide the conditions for, anything differentiated. To me that idea makes no sense at all.

When it comes down to speculating about noumena or things in themselves there can be no discernible fact of the matter which could confirm or disconfirm any conjectures, so it comes down to what each of us might find to be the most useful and/or plausible way of thinking and talking about them.

My beef is with the dogmatic "thought police" prescriptions about what we can and cannot coherently think and talk about. For me it makes no sense to say "of course things have their own existence independent of any mind in the empirical sense, but not in the transcendental sense'. I see this prescription as dogmatic because there can be no strictly determinable transcendental sense.

If Kant is not positing that there is something which gives rise to phenomena then his position is no different than Phenomenalism.

. I don’t hold beliefs other than what beliefs are necessary to live a life. However I lead a life informed by what I have discovered or adopted as a practice for a period of time. — Punshhh

Without some criteria to determine what belongs in that category I could say that anything I believe is necessary to live a life. Strictly speaking, to live a life all I need to believe are things relating to the "necessities' of life, and spiritual growth is not one of them, certainly not for most people. Of course you can say it is necessary for you―but perhaps that is just because you have come to think it is necessary for you, that is you have come to believe it.

You say you have discovered things and/ or adapted things as a practice, but you wouldn't waste your time if you didn't believe in the truth of those discoveries, or the efficacy of those practices.

Belief is not that hard to define―anything you are committed to holding as being true is a belief.

but that the methodological outlook of modern science brackets the constituting role of the subject, and then forgets that it has done so. Of course that attitude is contested, but it remains the default for many. So declaring that many scientists hold to scientific realism is hardly a 'straw man' :rofl: . — Wayfarer

The natural sciences don't so much bracket the subject as it is the case that the subject is not within their purview. Science is not a human being so it doesn't "forget" anything. Scientific realism is the idea that science gives us real information about, and understanding of, the world. That cannot be proven to be so, of course, as nothing in science is proven, but it is far from an implausible, let alone an incoherent idea. The strawman is that the natural sciences forget the subject, when the reality is that the subject is irrelevant to them.

Precisely the point at issue! What world are you referring to? — Wayfarer

I don't hold to a two worlds conception of nature. There is only one world. As I said before I don't accept the bifurcation of nature into phenomena and noumena.

To say it “would be the same” is to assume what is in question—namely, that the predicates of sameness, objectivity, and existence can meaningfully apply outside the framework of an observer. That’s exactly the blind spot. To which your response is invariably: 'what "blind spot"? I don't see any "blind spot"!' — Wayfarer

I don't question that the predicates you mention can meaningfully apply to what is independent from human perception―to me questioning that is a nonsense. It's not a blind spot, I understand your argument, and I simply disagree with it. I think it is you who has the blind spot in that you apparently cannot imagine that it is impossible that someone might interpret the situation differently than you and being consistent with that different interpretation disagree with you. Apparently you are too mired in your own dogma, your own sense of absolute rightness, to be able to understand that.

I think all language is inherently dualistic and nature, including our perceptual experience, is not. So, in that sense we can say that our language and hence our ideas and models are always more or less inadequate to reality.

As to my own beliefs (I don’t hold beliefs, rather I seek wisdom), part of my predisposition on these issues is formed by spiritual teachings. — Punshhh

You must believe that it is possible to attain wisdom and that some spiritual teaching or teachings can help you with that.

Okay.

I’m not claiming that the thing-in-itself is some ghostly half-real entity. My point is that existence and non-existence are categories that only make sense within experience, within a perspective. — Wayfarer

Yes, but it doesn't follow that they cannot make sense pertaining to things which are inferred to exist outside of experience.

It doesn’t mean the world literally ceases to be, but that the world as knowable is always ordered through the framework of an observer. The realist assumption—that the world would be just the same even if there were no observer—forgets this constituting role of the mind - which is precisely the point of the 'blind spot of science', which regards the world it studies as if it were simply there in itself, while forgetting that the very concepts of objectivity and existence already presuppose the standpoint of an observer. — Wayfarer

If the world doesn't cease to be then it exists, in virtue of the meanings of the terms. Of course the world as known (not as knowable) is always known by a knower―again true by definition. As to the purported "realist assumption" that the world would be just the same if there were no percitpinets, well that's obviously wrong since without percipients there would be no perceptions, and perceptions and the judgements, if any, that grow out of them, are a part of the world. Apart from percptions and judgements, the world would be the same without any observer.

You are presenting a strawman of science―it deals with the world as perceived by us, no reasonable scientists would deny that. A naive realist might think of the eyes as passive "windows" that simply allow us to look out on a world of objects which exists in exactly the same form as our perceptions of them. That is obviously wrong, you don't have to think hard to realize that.

On the other hand there seems to be good reason to think that the way we perceive things is a real reflection of the way the world acts upon us, just as the different ways the world appears to animals is a real reflection of the ways in which the world acts upon them. It seems reasonable to think that objects have mass and shape, for example, independently of our perceptions of them.

Colour is another story, although it seems reasonable to think that the reflection of different wavelengths and intensities of light from different surfaces strictly determines, along with the visual organs of particular animals, what and how colours appear to them. I don't see that we have any good reason to deny those things even if they cannot be known with certainty.

Kant frames Noumena as something only talked about in the negative sense (meaning we cannot comprehend any 'aboutness'). — I like sushi

And yet he talks about them in a positive sense, saying that noumena cannot exist in space and time, while being unable to offer an argument for that, other than that we know space and time only via our experience of phenomena. It just doesn't follow from the fact that we know space and time only via experience that there is no space and time outside that context. It is true to say that there is no space and time as experienced outside experience but that is just a tautology and as such tells us precisely nothing.

I don't know what to make of the rest of your post.

I think I know what are getting at. But if you insist that the category of existence can only pertain to the things we perceive then we can say that things as they are unperceived do not exist. Whatever way you spin to say of something that it neither exists nor does not exist is vacuous.

Added to that I think that if you are speaking about something it is a contradiction to say it doesn't exist. You might say unicorns don't exist, but they do exist as imaginary creatures. Fictional characters exist as fictional characters and so on. To say there is a thing-in-itself and then to say it doesn't exist is a contradiction. We can say it doesn't exist in the same sense as our perceptions of objects do, but to say it neither exists nor doesn't exist is just a conceptually empty self-contradictory statement. What could it mean?

I guess I just don't accept the validity of what you are claiming as the context within which you make such statements. I've said before that I don't think it is the "existence of all such supposedly unseen" things that "relies on an implicit perspective". It is what we say about those things that relies on perspective, not the things themselves. I'm not sure why you added "supposedly" and "implicit", since there can be little doubt that there are always countless unseen things, and no doubt that what we say about them does explicitly rely on a perspective, it is the expression of a perspective. It simply does not follow logically that the existence of the things relies on perspective, explicit or implicit. To say that is just a case of invalid reasoning.

What their existence might be outside any perspective is not "meaningless and unintelligible"―it's a category error to apply those categories to existents, they rather pertain to what is said. We know their existence only via the senses, and what we know of their existence is mediated by the senses as well as by the things themselves. This is shown by the fact that there is always more to be discovered about them. This would be as true if the things are ideas in the mind of God (as Berkeley claims) as it would be if they are simply real existents. I believe that is why Berkeley says he does not all deny the existence of real material objects that do not depend on us for their being. He believes they depend on God for their being, as do we.

I don't know why you keep repeating the same mistaken conflation between the things and what we say about them, when it's been pointed out to you so many times. I put it down to stubbornness and closed-mindedness―it seems you just don't want the world to be a material world. Your position would be more coherent if you argued for the "mind of God" solution, but you just don't seem to want to embrace that either.

This leaves you with a position that has no explanatory power, because the similar constitution of our minds cannot alone explain the fact that we all, and even some animals, see the same things in the same places. That is the weakness in your position that you need to address, if you can. Continual mere assertion, pushing of stipulative definitions and marshalling of stock quotes are no substitute for cogent argument.

Because of recursion: you’re trying to explain that which is doing the explaining. ‘The eye cannot see itself’. — Wayfarer

That's not true. Consciousness is not trying to explain itself―it is reason, the discursive intellect, that is trying to explain consciousness.

(Not, of course, a reductive explanation; that would be to beg the question in favor of physicalism.) — J

Are not all explanations reductive? All explanations are given in causal terms, analysis is always in the form of attempting to establish the interactive relationships between parts, which always seems to end up being couched in terms of mechanism.

Perhaps it isn't possible to give such an explanation of consciousness because it doesn't seem to have any parts, it is thought of as just a general state or condition. So if we are going to explain consciousness it seems it would need to be in terms of an analysis of the neural processes which give rise to it, of how they give rise to it, of what is going on in the brain when consciousness is present.

There is also the problem of getting clear on just what we think consciousness is. We could hardly analyze the neural conditions that are necessary to give rise to consciousness if we don't know what consciousness is definitely enough to decide when it is present and when not. It doesn't seem to be as simple as we are conscious when awake and unconscious when asleep, for example.

How much of our days are spend being conscious? It seems to me that I, at least, am on 'autopilot' much of the time. I have no memory of what I perceived or thought during those times. Can I be said to be conscious when I am on 'autopilot'? Is it appropriate to say that quales exist only when I am self-reflectively aware of my moment to moment experience? Even in moments of self-awareness, it would seem there must be much going on of which I am not conscious.

Potential is a different thing to the noumenal, which is what we have been discussing. If something has a potential it is built into the actuality of the thing, and is real in that sense. So, I would say that actual potential exists, but that what it is potential for does not exist until it is actualized. For example, right now I have a real potential to do many in the next few minutes, but since I can only do one or maybe two things at a time most of those potentials will not be actualized in the next few minutes. For another example, referring back to mass energy, a massive body at rest has the energy potential expressed in the formula E=mc2.

The other thing that comes to mind is the idea of the quantum foam, but in that context the term "virtual" not 'potential' is used. And the virtual particles are said to wink in and out of existence. which would mean that they exist then don't exist, not that they neither exist nor don't exist.

Energy is taken to be equivalent to mass, and mass is taken to be the fundamental, essential property of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read what Russell linked earlier: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/ you'll find that energy is thought to come in two forms 'mass-energy' and 'motion-energy'. When a massive particle and its antiparticle are converted into two photons (photons are understood to be their own antiparticles) then mass energy is converted into motion energy (as photons move at the the speed of light).

The determinist perspective sees the actions of living beings as effects of external causation. The free will perspective sees an internal cause of action which has an effect on what is external. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not true―in the determinist picture there are both exogenous and endogenous causes of action.

But it is a bit of a stretch to say that all 'formal' properties of experience depend on the regulative faculties of our minds. — boundless

More than a bit of a stretch I'd say, there would seem to be no way this could be possible. We see the same things at the same times and places, and since as far as we know our minds are not connected this is inexplicable in terms of just our minds.

To me the problem is trying to make sense of the mind in purely 'physical' terms, once you assume that the 'physical' is completely devoid of any quality that pertains to mind. — boundless

I don't see why we should assume that of the physical. The world shows lawlike patterns and regularities. I think the old image of dead, brute matter died a long time ago, but it still seems to live in some minds.

But the sixth is the 'inner' sense of the mind. So, to a Buddhist when we are aware of a mental content, it's like being aware of a sense object. — boundless

Today that sense is know as interoception―the sense of what is going on in our bodies. We also have proprioception―our sense of the spatial positions, orientations and movements of the body.

I don't think that even Wayfarer reject that. — boundless

He says that there cannot be such existents, that they are neither existent nor non-existent. I think that is meaningless nonsense.

Can we be certain on how the 'external reality' is? I would say no, because our knowledge is limited and imperfect (and not strictly speaking becuase it is mediated). — boundless

I'd say there is no certainty except in tautologies if anywhere. I agree our knowledge is imperfect, but it's all we have.

Note, however, that the epistemic idealist is right in suggesting that we do not have a direct knowledge of 'reality' and our 'phenomenal world' is our 'best guess' of it, so to speak (to borrow a phrase from St. Paul, 'we know as if through a glass, darkly'). — boundless

I don't see the phenomenal world as a guess. If we were all just guessing then the fact that we see the same things in the same places and times would be inexplicable. Perhaps you mean our inferences about the nature of the phenomenal world? Even there, given the immense breadth and consistency of our scientific knowledge, I think 'guess' is too strong.

Given that we do not have a possibility to 'check' how our 'interpretation of reality' corresponds to 'reality', we IMO should grant the epistemic idealist that we cannot make certain claims on the noumenal. The epistemic idealist might say that the 'noumenal' is beyond concepts, beyond intelligibility and we should be silent on it (and you find quite similar claims in some Buddhist and Hindu tradition, to be honest). — boundless

I think it is a kind of artificial problem. We experience a world of phenomena. It seems most plausible (to me at least) that the ways phenomena appear to us is consistent with the real structures of both the external phenomena and our own bodies. We can recognize that this cannot be the "whole picture" and also that, while our language is inherently dualistic, there is no reason to believe nature is dualistic, and this means our understanding if not our direct perceptual experience is somewhat out of kilter with what actually is. I think it is for this reason that aporia may always be found in anything we say.

We can, however, debate on which picture of the 'noumenal' seems more reasonable. — boundless

We can, but experience on these and like forums tells me that people rarely change their opinion on account of debating about what seems most reasonable when it comes to metaphysical speculation.

If physicalism were right, intelligibility of 'the world' seems to that has no explanation at all. Just a brute fact, that allowed our minds to navigate in the world. Note, however, that mathematical and logical laws (the 'laws of reasons' in general) seem to have a character of 'eternality' (or 'time independence') and 'necessity', which both do not seem to be compatible with a view that mind isn't in some sense fundamental. — boundless

I agree. I think a physicalism that allows for the semiotic or semantic dimension to be in some sense "built in" is the most reasonable. However many people seem to interpret the idea that mind in fundamental to entail and idealist position that claims mind as fundamental substance or as some form of panpsychism which entails that everything is to some degree conscious or at least capable of experience and some kind of "inner sense". I don't think it is plausible to think that anything without some kind of sensory organ can experience anything.

Anyway we seem to agree on the major points.

But we were always going to hit this wall once straying into Buddhism. In Buddhism this whole world of appearances is nothing but maya. So how can these appearances, or a being enthralled by them, know, or account for the noumena when they themselves are part of the illusion? — Punshhh

You are assuming this world is an illusion. How could you know that when everything you could possibly know comes form your experience in this world? Something can only be said to be illusory compared to something else that is real, but we have nothing real to compare it a purportedly illusory world to. If this whole world is an illusion then your very existence is itself an illusion, yet to say that makes no sense because your existence is all you have known.

Nonsense! There's something outside those boundaries Janus, or else you wouldn't need to be making those judgements. And dismissing that external world as meaningless and unintelligible, does nothing to propagate understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Explain to me then what it could mean to say that something is, and yet that it neither exists nor does not exist?

Immanuel Kant, said that there are things one cannot experience (noumena), and that we cannot talk about such things. He also explained why this is so: our concepts apply only to things we can experience. Clearly, he is in the same fix as Nagarjuna. So are two of the greatest 20th-century Western philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that many things can be shown but not said, and wrote a whole book (the Tractatus), explaining what and why. Martin Heidegger made himself famous by asking what Being is, and then spent much of the rest of his life explaining why you can’t even ask this question. — Beyond True and False, Graham Priest

And yet Kant talks about the noumena that we cannot experience, cannot know―he says that there are things in themselves that appear to us as things, he says that they cannot exist in space and time, cause anything, or be differentiated or structured in any way. So, he contradicts himself by applying the concepts he says can only be applied to things we can experience by applying them to things he says we cannot experience.

He doesn't really know that we don't experience things in themselves, in fact he says that they are what appear to us as the things of experience, so in that sense we do experience them. It comes down to different ways of taking about it. It is of course simply true by definition that they do not appear to us as they are in themselves, because we can only know them as they appear to us. We also must acknowledge that we do not know everything about them, and could not know that we knew everything about them even if we did. Ignorance is a great part of the human condition.

Our concepts, what we say about things are not the things themselves. Our language is inherently dualistic―whereas we have no reason to think that nature itself is dualistic. The map (our conceptual models) is not the territory. Some things can only be shown, not said. Much is shown in literature which is not explicitly said. Much is shown by body language which is not said. A great part of our everyday experience cannot be captured adequately in discursive words and is better shown by poetic allusion. "A picture is worth a thousand words" and so on. All this is true, but none of it gives us license to speak pretentious nonsense in a discursive context.

I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? — Bob Ross

I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being, unless by that term you mean something like "the totality of what exists" or just the sheer fact that something always exists. The idea of self-existent being meaning a being that exists when nothing else exists makes no sense to me at all. How could our investigation of nature (natural theology) tell us that something could exist when absolutely nothing else exists?

There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person. — Bob Ross

Here again I am left with no idea what it is about nature that leads you to conclude that God is a person.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene. — Bob Ross

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that. Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

To say “nothing can be said about it” is not to claim “it is something that does not exist.” Rather, it neither exists nor doesn’t exist; in fact, there is no “it.” — Wayfarer

Unfortunately that is not a sensible, or even meaningful, thing to say―better just to remain silent. If philosophy is about anything it is certainly not about talking nonsense.

I think the pronoun 'he' reflects a longstanding understanding of God as 'father', while nature is referred to as 'mother'. I tend to think that the idea of animation, and of animating spirits in things (animism) found its genesis in the basic apprehension of the difference between life and non-life, the stationary and the moving. The animate Earth thus might include the wind, water, plants, animals―anything that visibly moves or changes might have been considered to be living in some kind of sense― inhabited by animating spirits in earlier times and then later by the spirit of one god. (That said mountains and other places considered to be sacred were also thought to be inhabited by spirits, spirits of place, which perhaps reflects the effects on human feelings different places can certainly have, and that tells me I'm presenting a somewhat simplified picture).

In any case, according to that understanding the breath of God animates the material world. God is the Father and the material world the impregnated (with the seed or breath of god) Mother. I don't think is any coincidence that there are similarities between mater and matter, material, matrix.

This vision of an animating God is fundamentally a dualistic vision it seems.―God is above and also "inscrutably" within the external matrix―he breathes life into it, so it only finds its being in God.

No doubt there is more complex story to be told than the simple one I have imagined here. The main point would be that God is radically "other', radically transcendent, and that the material world is not God, even though it finds its being in Him. It seems all we can know of God is gained by reading the book of the world and by revelation to human prophets, but what is understood from the study of the world must not contradict the revelations of scripture according to this vision.

So, to repeat what I said earlier, I think this vision of an interventionist God is very much a child of scripture, not of natural theology

Cheers, I found Matt Strassler's article about matter and energy very interesting, as it casts doubt on the assumption that matter is energy. Perhaps the equation of the two is simplistic. I need to explore this question further.

For me the problem with this 'variant' of Kantianism is that it can only explain the form of appearances, not that there are appearances at all. — boundless

Yes, and I would say that it can only explain the general forms that our experiences take, and not the commonality of experiences of particular forms (which we might call the content of experiences).

I do believe that the great merit of Kant (and epistemic idealism in general) is his view that mind isn't a 'passive' recorder of 'what happens' but that it actively interprets phenomena. I also believe that we can't easily differentiate what is 'mind-dependent' from what is 'mind-independent', an antinomy if you will. — boundless

For me the fact that the mind is not "passive recorder" is uncontroversial. We are affected by what is external to our bodies via the senses, and the ways those effects are processed are endogenous functions, and not subject to interpretation right up until conscious awareness occurs. Of course part of that process would seem to consists in processing by neural networks which have been established by past experiences.

So, it is hard to say what we might mean by 'mind-dependent' in distinction to 'body/brain dependent'. When we talk about "mind-independency' (or we might say 'body/brain-independency') the meaning is plain―it simply refers to whatever exists, has existed or would exist if there were no percipients.

That there are such existents is strongly suggested by science and even by everyday experience. Of course as soon as we perceive something it no longer strictly qualifies to be placed in that category.

Well, I am sympathetic to theism, in fact. IMO, our mind can 'produce' the representation because the 'external reality' is itself intelligible. However, we can only know it by interacting with it and producing a representation of it, which is the 'phenomenal world'. It's not a 'deceptive' veil - at least, if we remember that it is also the result of the interpreteation that our mind makes of the 'external reality'. In fact, I think that the act of 'knowing' is always mediated. The 'external reality' is the 'known', our mind is the 'knower' and the 'phenomenal world' (or the 'representation') is the medium by which our mind can know the external reality. — boundless

I agree with most of what you say here, although I'm not clear on how you have related it to theism. In Kant was the problem that the senses might thought to be deceptive veils, and I think Hegel effectively dealt with that error in his Phenomenology.

If we do away with the external world we are left with a mere Phenomenalism, which seems to explain nothing. By "external world" I simply refer to what lies outside the boundaries of our skins. I cannot see any reason to doubt the existence of external reality defined that way. What the ultimate nature of that external reality might be is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It might be ideas in the mind of god, or it might simply be a world of existents.

You seem to allude to the idea that without god the intelligibility of the external world is inexplicable. I don't see that―I think our brains are highly evolved pattern-recognition organs, as are the brains, to a much less sophisticated degree, of simple embrained organisms. I conjecture that once a pattern is cognized a requisite number of times, a neural network that enables re-cognition is established. We can recognize a vast array of forms and regularities encountered in our everyday perceptual experience. That this process is not fully understood is down to the enormous complexity of the brain, and I don't see the fact that it is not comprehensively understood as disqualifying it as the best explanation.

The alternative idea that the things we perceive are ideas in God's mind or some universal mind of collective storehouse of mind and that their intelligibility is thus simply "built in" seems far less comprehensible to me, and also implausible given the unimaginable complexity of the world that God or universal mind or "storehouse" would have to "hold in mind".

But, as I've said many times, what different folk find most plausible comes down to their basic presuppositions, so it seems to me to be almost a "matter of taste". That doesn't mean I don't think those who hold very different views are wrong―I do, but I acknowledge that they likewise think I am wrong. Given the gulf between basic presuppositions I often wonder whether fruitful dialogue between people whose basic worldviews differ radically is even possible. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a polite agreement to agree to disagree.

The problem is that we have every reason to think there is a world prioir to perception, and because it seems impossible to imagine how a perception of vast differentiation could emerge from a featureless mass or from nothing at all, then I see it as most plausible to think that the world was already differentiated long before humans or even percipients arrived on the scene.

Not that I think the question and the answer to it matter that much, at least not to those who just accept that we live in a material world consisting of many, many things which don't depend on us for their existence.

That view would obviously be more bleak, and hence more significant, to those who wish there to be more than just this life.

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?
I agree. — 180 Proof

:up:

Question for @Bob Ross: if god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate? — Bob Ross

The idea of god intervening just is an idea of separation. Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'. Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology.

As photons don't consist of matter, they can be considered immaterial. — RussellA

If matter just is energy then, then photons are material. Are electrons, protons and neutrons material in your opinion?

Conclusion - as some immaterial things have a real existence and as God is immaterial then God has a real existence. — RussellA

That would be an invalid inference.

Yes, I told you, "order" itself. It is value not restricted by spatiotemporal context. It provides the foundation for mathematics upon which spatial temporal concepts are constructed. — Metaphysician Undercover

As far as I know mathematics exists only in the spatiotemporal world. There can be no order without things to be ordered.

It seems reasonable to think that, for example, the visual field is already differentiated for infants n terms of areas of different tones and colours, before they learn to recognize anything as anything. Also they would be aware of different sounds, smells, tastes and tactile "feels" and bodily sensations. Otherwise how could anything stand out for them in the first place?

Selection on someone's part is required for there to be more than one thing.
— Metaphysician Undercover

This too. — AmadeusD

I think this is arse-about. If there were not already more than one thing no selection could ever occur.

:up: I agree with what you say there and you've covered the issue more throughly than I had, so I have nothing further to add at this point.

Differentiation need not be spatial nor temporal. We have differentiation of meaning, intention and value. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do we know of any meaning, intention and value outside the context of this spatiotemporal existence?

we can conclude that differentiation is prior to perception. — Metaphysician Undercover

No argument from me about that conclusion.

If you refuse to uphold a proper definition of "differentiation", as an act which requires selection, just so that you may equivocate, then you make philosophical discourse impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Now you are contradicting what you said earlier. Differentiation just refers to the existence of more than one thing. So "selection" on our part is not logically required for there to be more than one thing.

Well, putting religion and spirituality to one side, no. But is there a good reason not to? — Punshhh

Religion and spirituality are not really discursive endeavors. Is there a good reason not to put religion and spirituality aside when doing philosophy?

I don’t see what belief has got to do with this, surely if something is cogent, it’s not a question of belief. — Punshhh

Cogent means clearly (and thus clearly expressible) and convincing, so I asked whether you had a clearly expressible and convincing reason to believe in a demiurge. Are you suggesting you have experienced the demiurge? When we experience (perceive) an ordinary object, we know what we have experienced because it is most times there, and we can go back and check, and we check with others if we are in doubt, and confirm (or disconfirm) that they also perceive the same object there.

That gives us cogent reason to believe in such objects, but I don't think the same applies with a demiurge. If we have what we think to be such an experience, what it is an experience of remains a matter of interpretation, and I think that should give us pause. If we feel an unshakeable conviction regarding what it was an experience of, it will be enough to non-rationally convince us, but it will not be enough to non-rationally convince others unless they have a will to believe as we do.

the world of experience is constituted through the mind’s forms and categories, not simply received as a mirror of things-in-themselves. — Wayfarer

As usual you go too far―you forget the role of the body and the world. "Co-constituted" would be a better term. Even if our minds were all exactly the same, which as @Wonderer correctly points out, they are not, that alone cannot explain the commonality of experience, even between us and the animals. This is a point you have repeatedly glossed over.

That's true, it is to reject the move Kant's philosophy makes, and I do that because I don't see a cogent argument for the empirical/transcendental distinction―I mean I understand the thinking but I just don't agree with it.

It's a way of thinking about things, about how we can imagine they might be, but I find other ways of thinking more convincing. What I'm arguing against is the notion that the distinction is somehow necessarily true, as opposed to being merely a possible way of thinking about things.

So, I'm fine with others holding to the distinction and organizing their thoughts accordingly, but it's not for me.

Perhaps. Do we have any cogent reason to believe in a demiurge, though, beyond the fact that it's (kind of) an imaginable possibility?

Kant is not making positive claims about what the in-itself is; he is showing what cannot be said of it without misusing our own concepts. To say “space and time are forms of intuition” is not to ascribe a property to the world in itself, but to mark a limit: we only ever encounter things in those forms, so they cannot be applied beyond them. — Wayfarer

I disagree. If Kant is saying that space and time or differentiation could not exist in the in itself then he is making a positive statement about it. To be sure he is defining the limits of certain knowledge―we cannot be certain that space and time and differentiation exist in the in itself, but nor can we be certain that they do not. There is no such thing as any definitive "misuse of concepts". That is purely stipulative. There are no "concept police"―we each decide for ourselves what makes most sense to us. It is just here that I see dogma creeping in―in notions of "philosophy proper" and "misusing concepts" and "cannot be applied beyond them".

If someone doesn't buy the empirical/ transcendental bifurcation of nature (a bifurcation which is certainly not a given) then they will obviously have a different take on what can sensibly be said than someone who does buy that bifurcation. When it comes to philosophy it's a pluralistic world, and all the more so in modernity than ever before. Perhaps you deplore that...in any case I celebrate it.

As I see it, the problems we, as a species, face are not philosophical so much as they are practical. Materialism in the consumerist, not the philosophical, sense is one of the main problems. It's apparent that loss of religion is not much of a contributing factor.

If you want an argument framed in the empirical or inductive terms you're demanding, then you’ll need to keep waiting. — Wayfarer

No, as I said all I want is any actual reasoned argument that isn't mere stipulation.

You have something in mind when you say that. — Wayfarer

So what? I can acknowledge that what I have in mind may have no bearing on the nature of nature―the nature of reality in any absolute sense is something about which we can only speculate. I don't accept stipulative limits on what I may or not speculate about, or what I may or may not find most plausible.

The question then becomes: what must be true for such experience to be possible at all? Kant’s answer is that space and time must be a priori forms of intuition — conditions of possibility for experience, not attributes of things-in-themselves. Without them, there could be no experience of a world in the first place. And this is based on analysis of the nature of experience and reason - not of the observations of the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

How can anything be deduced about the in itself from "the nature of experience and reason"? I cannot see how anything could come from such a phenomenological analysis other than insights into the nature of experience. As I see it this is the weakness in Kant's system―on the one hand it concludes that nothing at all can be said about the in itself, and he proceeds to make claims about it, for example that it could not be spatiotemporal, differentiated and so on.

You still haven't outlined any actual argument to that effect. You say the argument is not inductive or deductive (or I imagine abductive) and that it is "transcendental". Merely labelling it tells me nothing, I want to see the argument laid in whatever terms are appropriate.

That said, all arguments are either deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments are based on premises which themselves are not demonstrated within the arguments themselves. Inductive arguments are inferences to the best explanation―but there province is the empirical, so that won't do according to your own standards. Is the argument merely stipulative?

You want an empirical argument, and there isn't one. — Wayfarer

As I said, I simply want any kind of argument clearly laid out that demonstrates that space, time, differentiation etc. must be confined to the world as cognized. I'm still waiting.

This is why it’s an error to object that “all our science tells us there was space and time before humans.” Of course science presupposes space and time, because its subject matter is appearances; but that doesn’t show that space and time belong to or are caused by the in-itself. — Wayfarer

The existence of anything we can imagine presupposes space and time, and you are right that doesn't demonstrate that space and time exist beyond perceptual experience, or that they are caused by the in-itself. But it also doesn't demonstrate that they cannot belong to or be caused by the in itself.

The whole point of The Blind Spot is not to complain that chemistry or astronomy fail to include the subject, but to highlight what happens when the methods of natural science are misapplied to questions of philosophy. — Wayfarer

I don't think it a matter of the methods being misapplied to questions of philosophy, so much as the knowledge given by science being applied to questions of philosophy. Science has given us a very different picture of the nature of the world as it is experienced than the medieval or the ancients had. We simply don't know how different the philosophies of the greats of antiquity and medieval times would have been if they had been around today.

It all depends on what you mean by "philosophy". Science may not be of much use to phenomenology, for example, although that said the phenomenology of a modern individual will not be the same as that of a medieval or ancient. Gadamer argues that we can only approach an understanding of those times via the texts we have access to hermeneutically.

When it comes to metaphysical speculation, I can't see how we have any better, or even other, guide than science. Science doesn't prove anything metaphysical (or even empirical for that matter) but for met at least, when it comes to questions which are undecidable, because no logical or definitive empirical purchase can be gained on them, science remains the source of knowledge that informs decisions about what is most plausible. As I've said many times, though, what seems most plausible will vary from pone individual ot another, and there is no definitive criteria for what is most plausible.