:up:

You said "certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences." I would think that includes everything involved in the internal combustion engine. — Patterner

I don't think so. The working of the engine can be observed directly―transparent models have been constructed. It's like saying that we don't really know how clocks work―we do know.

What emergent system that doesn't involve consciousness can't be explained in terms of physics? — Patterner

Biology cannot adequately be explained in terms of physics.

Not a source of wonder?

I still don't see an argument that supports a conclusion that any particular metaphysics or presupposition is needed in order to do science. — Janus


Clearly, I disagree, although many people feel is you do. — T Clark

I don’t see it that way. Science looks for knowledge—not the same as truth. And as Collingwood wrote: — T Clark

Knowledge sounds too subjective and loose. Science is a rigorous subject which pursues verified truth on reality and universe. My knowledge on Astronomy is rudimentary. I wouldn't say it has much to do with Science. — Corvus

I agree with T Clark that science is the search for knowledge―for knowing how things work―and not for truth. This is so because scientific theories cannot be proven to be true, and even whether they can be definitively falsified is apparently a matter of debate among philosophers of science. By "theory" I am not referring to observational posits. If I say "all swans are white" that can be falsified by discovering one swan of a different colour. If I say "there are black swans" that can be verified by discovering one black swan.

So, it seems we can say that the observation of nature is concerned with what appears to be the case, and that could count as a search for truth. With complex theories like relativity, and QT, it seems to be more about a search for what works. We cannot directly observe the warping of spacetime or the collapse of the wave-function, and it seems that what is the case, or truth, is relevant only to what can be confirmed or dis-confirmed by direct observation or mathematics and logic.

If we understand science to be simply involved in coming to understand how things seem to work, then what would you cite as being a necessary presupposition underpinning that investigation?

Sure. But we don't say, "Well, we can't prove the combustion engine works the way we think it does for the reasons we think it does, so there's no point in making any. After all, what reason do we have to think the next one we make will work? — Patterner

The internal combustion engine is well understood. The understanding of its workings were not the kind of thing I had in mind when I spoke of scientific theories.

We certainly are not aware of the existence of the former without the latter. — Patterner

We are in vivo, and until modern times always were altogether, unaware of neural activity. We don't directly perceive neural activity giving rise to consciousness, we correlate the two on the basis of neural imaging and first person reportage.

When it comes to your example, the internal combustion engine, we do directly see the combustion of the fuel giving rise to motion.

They make clear that everything is not reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. — Patterner

I think it is undeniably true that most of human life cannot be explained in terms of physics. On the other hand physics certainly seems to be the basis of chemistry and chemistry the basis of life and life the basis of consciousness, and even if this is so it still doesn't follow that emergent systems can necessarily be understood comprehensively in terms of the systems they emerge from. Try understanding poetry, art or music in terms of physics, or even biology, and see how far you get.

it reduces (or tries to reduce) consciousness, intentionality, rational inference, and so on, to the level of the so-called 'hard sciences', where absolute certainty is thought to be obtainable — Wayfarer

The irony is that certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences. No scientific theory can ever be proven to be true. While many people fail to understand this fact, it may be that many, or even most, scientists do not fail to understand it.

In one sense we know that consciousness, intentionailty, rational inference and so on are not neural activity, because they are simply different ideas. We consciously experience the former and not the latter. On the other hand it is possible, although it can never be proven, that the former exist only because of the latter. It is also possible that the former somehow, in some way we cannot really fathom, have their own existence, and that the latter is just what they look like to the senses. That also can never be proven.

It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it. — Ludwig V

Yes, what it is like cannot be subject to ontological analysis, even though we may be able to give inadequate verbal descriptions of it. The descriptions, if they are to be intelligible, are always in terms of sense objects and bodily states, sensations and feelings.

The common rejoinder then becomes…yeah, but it’s fun to play with, right? But no, it isn’t, if it follows that your consciousness has anything whatsoever, in any way, shape or form, to do with mine, which seems plausible given its ground as a universal condition. I summarily reject your consciousness as having anything at all to do with mine, simple as that. Easy to see that if I reject yours, I must also reject anyone else’s, which is to reject every instance of it except my own, which just is to reject the universality of it. — Mww

Are you rejecting the existence of other consciousnesses or just the idea that they have any actual connection with yours, as distinct from merely a similar constitution to yours? Kant would seem to espouse the latter, while Schopenhauer would seem to espouse the former. Kastrup follows Schopenhauer in saying that we do know something of the noumenon in that we are instances of it, and in that we know ourselves both form the outside, as manifest entities and form the inside via introspection.

That said, he doesn't claim that we know for sure what the nature of the noumenon is; he says that he sees no reason why evolved earth monkeys such as ourselves should be able to know with certainty the ultimate nature of reality. He says instead, that the something we do know of the noumenon via inner experience allows us to make educated guesses as to its nature, but we can never be sure those guesses are true.

Personally, I'm not convinced that consciousness is universal and fundamental, but as I've said many times, I think that any coherent ontological idealism cannot do without universal consciousness as a substitute for actual existents, to explain the obvious fact that we all perceive the same things at particular spatiotemporal locations.

Or, how about this: is it just me or is there a teeth-grinding contradiction in “extrinsic appearance of inner experience”? Have we not yet come to grips with the certainty that no experience is ever of appearances on the one hand, and no experience is itself an appearance, on the other? — Mww

So, experiences are of things not appearances? And experiences are not appearances but experiences of what appears? Language gets tricky in these kinds of matters.

True enough, for folks like us. On higher levels, alternative turns of phrase lead to completely different philosophies, in which case the philosopher’s alternative conceptualizations revert to the Everydayman philosophiser accepting them, which then very well could be his mere misunderstanding.

Like, me, and, universal consciousness. Extrinsic appearance.

And those thinking Kant a phenomenologist. (Sigh) — Mww

By "higher" I take it you refer to professional philosophers? I don't think their insight is necessarily any greater just on account of their more elaborate and systematic grasp of philosophical systems (except of course their insight into those systems). The basic ideas that philosophical systems elaborate are quite simple and are part of the common currency of "Everydayman" in my view.

I've been reading a study by Iain McGilchrist calle The Master and His Emissary that elaborates on the findings of studies investigating the differences between right and left hemispheres. I'm on board with the idea that we have two modes of attention and understanding. The more diffuse, holistic, synthetic and metaphorical understanding being the function of the right hemisphere and the more focused, reductive, analytical and literal understanding being the function of the left.

We need both, but McGilchrist thinks the right is the master and the left the emissary. He also thinks that there have been three periods in human history where the left came to dominate, and that since the Enlightenment we are in one of those periods. He think the instrumental nature of left hemisphere thinking is largely the cause of the terrible, dire situation humanity finds itself in today.

I still don't see an argument that supports a conclusion that any particular metaphysics or presupposition is needed in order to do science. Science, as I understand it, is about observing empirical phenomena, imagining causation-based hypotheses that are consistent with currently accepted science to explain what has been observed and then proposing predictions that seem to be entailed by the hypotheses and experiments to test whether the predictions are observed or not.

Where is the need for any metaphysics (in the traditional sense) or even in the Collingwood sense (of absolute presuppositions)?

Insofar as I could understand it, I think I agree with most of what you say there, and I think disagreement often hinges on an alternative turn of phase or two.

As to JRTs and dogs in general, I shared a life with two of the former for 15-16 years until they died, and now with two cattle-type dogs. When they tilt their heads like that they are wondering what the sounds or the gestures we are making signify―we can read their body language, and they ours since they are not so different from us. Go with your intuitions and don't overthink it.

You don't bug me, so no need for that New Year's resolution. I do wish you luck in whatever other tasks you may have set yourself, though.

The issue remains the same: you're treating anthropomorphic descriptions as if animal behavior shares our phenomenology. — Manuel

No I'm not and that's not what I've been saying at all. Anyway I think I've reached the point of diminishing returns so I'm happy to leave it where it is.

Where this falls foul of empiricism is the belief that the world is strictly mind-independent, that it exists as it is independently of the mind. — Wayfarer

The world as perceived is obviously not independent of the perceivers. But it seems obvious there is a "contribution" to what is perceived from a perceiver-independent reality that ensures the possibility of a shared world among perceivers. That "reality" could be mental or physical or neutral in ultimate constitution, and that is a separate question (probably unanswerable).

That dogs avoid running into walls or urinate on the trees only implies things like avoiding pain or easing discomfort, etc. But it is precisely when you say that the behavior of a dog in relation to a tree or a door is evidence of a shared structure, you are smuggling in what you are trying to prove: — Manuel

That's not true, I'm not smuggling anything in, but just making simple observations.. I'm not talking about structures I'm talking about trees. The fact that the dog urinates on trees consistently shows that it consistently sees something I call a tree at the same location I do. When I throw the ball for the dog it watches me intently and when I raise my arm it begins to run anticipating that I will throw the ball. It sees my body and can read the body language. It sees the ball going in the same direction as I see it. If I throw a brick instead of a ball he will not chase it or if he does he will not try to pick it up when he gets close enough to see it is too big for him to pick up. Just as I see it as 'not-to'be-picked-up-by-the dog, so he also see it as not-to-be-picked-up. This consistency demonstrates clearly that the dog and I share a world at least at the most basic level.

I'm not overly convinced by the idea that a dog sees a fish just as we do. The phrase "just as we do" seems unproven. Does a dog see a fish? Obviously not: it has no language. It perceives "prey" in some form, perhaps. But does it interact with a conceptual world or an instinctive one? I'd suggest the latter. — Tom Storm

What you're missing is that the dog undoubtedly sees what we call a fish, because we observe him picking it up and eating it. It is also undeniable that the dog recognizes the fish as food, just as we do, although obviously not in a linguistically mediated way. The salient point is that the dog sees the fish at the same location in space and time as we do, and from that it follows that "something", mind-independent ontic structures which are either fundamentally physical or mental or neutral (it doesn't matter), ensures there is a shared world as perceived. Science tells us that dogs see only in shades of yellow and blue, so of course things are not going to look just the same to a dog as to a human. And when we consider insects, of course the differences could be vast.

You are misunderstanding the point. I'm not saying animals

individuate, discriminate or make attributions to things in a way that resembles our experience. — Manuel

I don't even understand what you mean exactly by "individuate, discriminate or make attributions to things". For example do you think doing those things would require language?

I'm saying that observation of dogs, the animal example I've been using, shows they see much the same environmental features: doors, balls, walls, stairs trees to piss on etc as we do. Their behavior demonstrates this. They don't see a wall where I see a door, or vice versa, otherwise they'd be bumping into walls trying to get outside, and failing to see exists where they are available.

Anyway, the point is very clear to me. If oy disagree then I would like to see a cogent explanation for their behavior towards the things we see in the environment being consistent ours. To be honest I have not been able to understand at all what you objections to this have been.

Let’s flip the argument: why wouldn’t consciousness have discrete offshoots that closely share experiences? Here's one idea. If we all participate in an overarching pattern, our experiences would naturally be shared. Even if individual consciousnesses are separate, they all operate according to the same structural constraints, which include time, space, causality, and patterns of experience. Because these constraints are likely to be universal and experiences are mutually coherent, the stable patterns that constitute objects tend to align across minds, producing a shared world in which everyone sees the same table, the same details, and the same relations. — Tom Storm

What you are saying is of the same kind as what Kastrup is saying and what I said is the only explanatory idealist model. You say consciousness has "offshoots", and the point is that they would all be offshoots of the one consciousness and so not really separate at all.

On the view I sketched out, the world appears the way it does because consciousness is self-organising: it stabilises itself into regular, repeatable forms rather than remaining a formless flux. What we call material objects are the way this self-organisation presents itself in experience, giving consciousness a structured, usable world. We all partake in this share reality, it just isn't what we think. Or something like that.

Aagin, I cannot see a difference between this and Kastrup's (and Schopenhauer's) kind of view. It is not that our consciousnesses are completely independently self-organizing of stable patterns of perception, because if that were so it would only result in seeing things in the same kinds of ways, but could not explain seeing the very same things. Of course we are not conscious of being parts of a greater consciousness or mind, and so the separation seems real, but if the separation were real there could be no shared world.

don't see this. I am trying, but I can't imagine it as you describe it. I can't attribute stairs to a dog, surely as you would admit, on a conceptual level, because animals don't have concepts which require language use. — Manuel

I'm not suggesting the dogs have a linguistically mediated concept 'stairs' but merely that they must perceive them, as it is shown by their use of the stairs.

A bird or bee not so much as a stair is not, in its "stairness", an affordance for them.

The point is only that the configuration 'stair' is not dependent on the human mind even if the concept is and that this is amply demonstrated in relation to everything in our environments by all our experience.

What the "ultimate nature" of things is is a separate question.

Cheers, Happy New Year to you as well! Let's hope there is some real progress towards solving the suite of now everlooming problems humanity faces in the coming year. :pray: :strong:

You never fail to get personal when you are out of arguments. It's rather sad...

They're all just perspectives on something we know nothing much about, and all as such more or less inadequate. The only perspectives I consider as worthy of consideration are the ones that demonstrate consistency and explanatory power. Yours doesn't have explanatory power. It amounts, as I see it, to hand waving.

Even if individual consciousnesses are separate, they all operate according to the same structural constraints, which include time, space, causality, and patterns of experience. — Tom Storm

I'm out of time for this so I'll just respond to this for now. I of course agree that all consciousnesses are subject to the same general constraints you listed, but that cannot explain why we all see the same particulars at the same places as far as I can tell. I'm open to hearing how it could explain that, but so far I am yet to hear it.

What you seem to be saying is something like that the stable patterns are independent of individual minds. If so, those stable patterns could be physical or mental, and I would have no argument with that. All you would be saying is that there are stable patterns of something (energy, mind, or whatever) that affect the senses of percipients, but are independent of them. I would have no argument with that.

If that implies that we all see the same structure on a cross-species level is a harder for me to comprehend. — Manuel

I'm out of time so have to be quick. It's not exactly the same structure, but the same things ( although I'm not sure if that is a different claim), albeit seen perhaps very differently. Insects see fruit as food, just as we do. Dogs see fish as food just as we do. Dogs see the steps at the front of my house―they don't bump into them, but climb them to get to the verandah. They see the door into the house at the same location i do.

There are countless examples which prove beyond question that we humans, and even some animals, see the same things in the environment, whatever the explanation for that might be. I'm not claiming we all see things exactly the same way, but we do see the same things. Imagine you and I are looking as a large sheet of paper with little mutlicoloured marks all over it. I ask you to point to one of the marks, and sure enough I will also see a mark at the exact place you point to, If I ask what colour the mark is we will also agree.

By the way I'm not saying I agree with Kastrup, but I do think his kind of idealism at least has explanatory power that most other forms don't. I don't agree with him that physicalism is necessarily "baloney".

Personally, I wouldn’t compare K with S. As already noted, K argues that mind-at-large is similar to Schopenhauer’s Will. But his view is still evolving, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually ends up adopting some form of theism. But I could be wrong there. — Tom Storm

Kastrup says that he is a naturalist and that mind-at-large just is nature. Soinoza says God just is nature―that is the extent of the comparison I was making.

My understanding is as follows: In non-theistic idealism, objects like tables aren’t things that exist outside consciousness, but stable patterns through which consciousness organises itself. — Tom Storm

If we have totally separate consciousnesses then how do the stable patterns through which your consciousness organizes itself accord precisely enough with the stable patterns in my consciousness to explain a shared world wherein we will agree on what is in front of us down to the minutest details?

I'm not taking sides but, is this not solved by us being the same species? As in, when we use medical trials on a few patients, we assume they'll work on all of them- with caveats.

Do these questions arise about dogs? — Manuel

I'm not denying that human bodies have similar enough physical constitutions to enable generalizations form medical trials, and for that matter, general medical procedures which work on most everyone. But I don't see what that relevance that has to the point at issue, because I've been saying that only mind-independent physical existents or shared mind can explain the obvious fact that we share a world. Well, I mean I can't think of, and nor has anyone else to my knowledge presented, any other plausible explanation, but I'm open to hearing something different.

Not sure what your question about dogs is driving at.

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Interesting. I’m not sure I understand how you can have a materialist epistemology but a non-materialist ontology. Can you give me an example of how that might work? — T Clark

Science can only deal with what our senses reveal...with what is measurable and quantifiable. There are other less 'hard' areas of enquiry such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, ethology that require thinking in terms of purpose and reasons rather than or as well as mechanical causal models. So I think it depends on what you mean by "epistemology".

A scientist doesn't even need to think of what is being investigated as physical. They can simply "shut up and calculate" or they could think everything is ultimately mind and still do science perfectly as adequately as they do thinking everything is physical.

I'm very familiar with Buddhist philosophy―I took units in it at Uni and have been interested in Buddhist and Vedantic ideas since the age of 16. Ultimately I didn't find Buddhism philosophically satisfactory. I'm not saying there are not good insights and ethical teachings within Buddhism but it is not really a coherent philosophy or metaphysics at all but rather a soteriology. It is faith, not intellect, based.

Metaphysics, on the other hand, is about explaining as comprehensively as possible what is experienced. You have offered no account of how an explanation for a shared world can do without either mind-independent existents or the connection of what appear to be separate minds. "Similar constitution" has not explanatory power in that regard.

That said in Buddhist philosophy there is the idea of a "storehouse consciousness" (alaya-vijnana) that (given that that Karma is accepted as real) could be used to explain the fact that we share a world with sentient others, both human and animal (and perhaps plants and fungi).

To overstate the case, in order to do physics you have to be a materialist. So...Yes, that does make it an absolute presupposition. — T Clark

I can't see why one would need to be a metaphysical materialist in order to do science. Scince can only deal with what is given by the senses―that is its methodology.

The question that jumps out at me is: are the mathematical laws themselves physical, and, if so, how? I don’t expect an answer to that, as there isn’t one, so far as I know. But it makes a point about an inherent contradiction in physicalism. — Wayfarer

I'm not arguing for physicalism but against the idea that it is inherently contradictory. It can be argued that what we think of as laws are simply the ways physical things behave on the macro level based on what is ultimately stochastic at the micro-physical level. That may not constitute a comprehensive or even satisfactory explanation, but it contains no logical contradiction.

The laws may not be timeless principles but evolved habits as Peirce thought.
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I've also heard it argued that objects persist in idealism (not because a mind is always perceiving them) but because experience unfolds according to stable, law-like patterns — Tom Storm

It's not the idea like Berkeley's that God is always perceiving everything, and that God's perception or thought holds everything in stable existence. Kastrup's idea is that everything is constituted by consciousness that the "stable, law-like patterns" just are the underlying mental nature of things. Kastrup uses the word 'consciousness', but I don't think he believes that the universal consciousness is conscious of anything apart from what all the percipients (the dissociated alters) are conscious of. For him it has no plan, but evolves along with everything―it just is nature in the sense that Spinoza's God is nature.

To say the table is still there when no one is looking means that whenever someone does look again, experience will reliably present the same table in the same place, behaving the same way. — Tom Storm

That doesn't explain why everyone will see the table there for the first time.

I’m claiming that any account of what exists has to start from the fact that the world is first given as a shared
field of perception, not as a metaphysical posit. — Wayfarer

Of course―nothing could be more obvious―that is precisely what is to be explained. You haven't offered any explanation as to how idealism can coherently do without something like Berkeley's God or Kastrup's "mind-at-large".

Good question. Isn't the idea that the “world” we perceive is not independent matter imposing itself on us, but a manifestation of mind, or a universal rational structure, so the consistency of perception across subjects reflects the inherent order of this mind? — Tom Storm

Yes, if they are manifestations of a universal mind. But that seems to be the point that Wayfarer is denying. In fact he has written on here that it is the very point he disagrees with Kastrup about, and yet hat is the very posit, as also with the role of God in Berkeley's idealism that has explanatory power.

But it can, though. We live in a shared world, because we have highly convergent minds, sensory systems, and languages. So we will converge on similar understandings of what is real, due to those shared elements. I mean, genetically, we're all identical, up until the top-most layer of differentiation. — Wayfarer

The fact that our sense organs and brains are similarly constituted can explain how it is that we see things in similar ways, but it cannot explain just what we see. The content of perception, that is what is perceivable which animals also perceive in their different ways, is contributed by the world, whether that world is physical or mental.

If it's physical then the mind-independent physical existents explain how it is that we and the animals see the same things. If the world is mental then the human independent mind that constitutes the things we perceive explains it. If mind is fundamental then all our minds must be connected (below the level of consciousness, obviously) via that universal mind.

We've been over all this many times and you have never been able to explain how just the fact of our minds being similar, but not connected, could explain a shared world.

There is only consciousness; he generally says matter is the extrinsic appearance of mental processes. — Tom Storm

As such matter is real and human mind-independent, as it "mind-at-large". As I read Kastrup, he understands matter to be the "visible" or tangible aspect of mind. It's not as if mind could exist without matter, any more than matter could exist without mind, for Kastrup. It's just mind is the "thing-in-itself" whereas matter is its appearances. I read "appearances" to signify any relation or interaction at all, not just appearances for humans or even animals.

He argues that there is no matter, only mentation. — Tom Storm

I don't think that is what he argues. He argues that matter is what appearances look like to mind. It is the tangible aspect of mind, so to speak, not a separate substance. As I've said on these forums many times an idealism that does not posit universal mind in some form is incoherent and cannot explain what is clear to us from everyday experience―that we live in a shared world.

Kastrup posits universal mind, which then makes it coherent to say that matter exists independently of the human mind and is naturally intelligible and that human consciousness is not central or necessary to existence. It also follows from this that real objects and beings of all kinds can have existed prior to the advent of human consciousness and that we can coherently talk about that existence as being human mind-independent.

Kastrup's philosophy is pretty much Schopenhauer reheated.

@180 Proof

I’m going to say something controversial, another conclusion to the one in bold is that they didn’t co-arise, but that consciousness was introduced, to a pre-existing world. It makes more sense to me than the idea that consciousness was always present, even in the Big Bang. — Punshhh

Yes, we just don't know. It begs the question as to whether the laws of nature were present from the start or whether they are, as Peirce suggested, evolutionarily acquired habits. If the laws, even if only as potentia, came into being with being then they cannot be separated from it and that would suggests the presence of a kind of instinctive intelligence inseparable from being.

What I’m saying is that there is a way of stepping out of this dualistic thought process. To develop a sense of things which can become like an alternative approach, or perspective on an issue. Over time, it becomes like a reference system, but not dualistically based, but intuitive/feeling based. — Punshhh

I agree with that and I think we are always already not in that dualistic mode most of the time; we just may not have learnt how to attend to that intuitive mode, because the analytic dualistic mind demands a kind of spolighted precision which doesn't belong to that intuitive mode, and confusion and aporia follow.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

Our human models of our world express constructed ecosystems of interactions. Each modification in our scientific knowledge constitutes a change in that built ecosystem. The point is there is no one correct map, model or scheme of rationality that mirrors the way the world is. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world. It is an activity that continually modifies the nature of the world in ways that
are meaningful and recognizable to us. There is no intelligibility without a pragmatic refreshing of the sense of meaning of what is intelligible. — Joshs

If the order of the world is infinite and our models finite then there would be infinitely many ways to model its order truthfully, but also infinitely many ways to model it erroneously.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

This is like saying, how could there be consciousness when we live in a temporal world? — L'éléphant

I don't think that is a good analogy. Anyway why change the subject? We were discussing universal moral principles, principles which don't depend on the human, but are laws given from above, I thought.

The universal moral truth, if you agree that there is such a thing, is independent of what we value or do not value. — L'éléphant

Again I say that the only idea of a universal moral truth that I think is coherent would be what most everybody holds to be true, and that it would be true only on account of its being held by most people. This is not an appeal to populism, but to what mentally healthy people instinctively feel is right. So its a truth about the general moral feelings of humanity, not a truth that could be independent of humanity.

It seems most reasonable to me to think that animals of any kind might be considered to be conscious, however minimally. Plants and fungi I don't know. It does depend on what you take 'consciousness' to refer to.

I follow Whitehead in thinking that everything experiences processes and relations with other things, but I don't think it is necessarily conscious experience. I think about 99% of what we humans experience is not conscious experience.

So, I think there is a sense in which everything feels the affects of being acted upon―Whitehead, I seem to recall, refers to this as "pan-experientialism". The other point is that I think everything has a kind of immanent intelligence. I see consciousness, experience and intelligence as three different things that may or may not be connected or operating together depending on what phenomena we are considering.

My guess is that existence, and any related ideas we might explore, are inseparable from consciousness. — Tom Storm

Okay, I don't agree because although 'existence' is an idea, I don't think existence is an idea.

The next question you might ask is, 'Did the earth exist before humans? Did dinosaurs?' My tentative answer is both yes and no. — Tom Storm

If the terms 'Earth ' and 'dinosaur' were understood to most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences then in that sense I agree. However I don't agree that those terms do most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences. They don't refer to appearances but rather to what appears.

Maybe that's what you mean by "yes and no". I don't know.

Anyway, there wouldn't seem to be much point arguing about it, so I'll leave you to it.

But it’s also worth noting that if one tries to conceive of “the world” — a rock, a tree, anything at all — as existing in the total absence of mental processes, one quickly runs into an insoluble conundrum. — Wayfarer


There seems to be nothing without perception and experience; the possibility of meaning depends on it, I would have thought. — Tom Storm

So, do you think as Wayfarer does that it is not merely the possibility of meaning that depends on consciousness, but the possibility even of existence?

Would Kastrup not be operating within a distinction between perceiver and perceived, saying that consciousness is the medium and that the perceivers are conscious while the contents of consciousness, i.e., what is what is perceived, are not themselves conscious?

Since you seem to be incapable of cogent discussion in good faith, I'll leave you to wallow in your confusion.

The point is why bother saying that the mind is immaterial? If the mind is a process of the brain, then it is no more immaterial than digestion. Neither are objects of the senses, and if you are using 'immaterial' merely to indicate that, then sure.

All our thinking is dualistic anyway. As soon as you start talking about all experiences of things being the experiences of a subject, you have already entered Cartesian territory, at least in terms of modes, or distinctions if not substances.

Heidegger criticized Husserl, claiming he never freed himself from Cartesian thinking. If you start trying to pin this idea of different kinds of being (as opposed to different kinds of beings of course) down, you will inevitably end in paradox.

Even saying that we do not see reality as it is in itself is a product of dualistic thinking and cements the dualism even further.

It’s like the goldfish in the goldfish bowl. Wayfarer is saying the goldfish doesn’t realise there’s water there, it can’t see the water and takes it for granted. While you are saying, I know the water is there, but it’s no big deal. But then he says, but without the water you’d be lying on the bottom of the bowl and you say I know I’m suspended in water and it’s primary to me being suspended, but again it’s no big deal. — Punshhh

Perhaps it's like that. The irony is that I see Wayfarer's thinking as dualistic, whereas he claims that I am coming from a Cartesian standpoint, whereas, while I acknowledge that any discursive thinking is going to be inherently dualistic as that is just the nature of our language when it is doing analysis, I'm saying I see no point in claiming the mind is immaterial, even though we obviously have that conceptual distinction between material and immaterial. Every concept automatically invokes and evokes its opposite.

On the contrary, you’re already imagining yourself able to make the distinction between the world as it appears, and how it truly is. — Wayfarer

No, I don't need to imagine myself making a distinction, I simply make the obvious conceptual distinction between the world as it appears and as it is in itself, and that doesn't rely on knowing what or how it is in itself, but only on the fact that I can think it is something in itself. It doesn't even matter that it might not be anything in itself―I grant that possibility, even though I think it implausible. That distinction might not be possible for you because you don't understand it or it makes no sense to you personally―I don't know about that.

Not at all. I put that forward as to why you made the demand to ‘reveal my agenda’ and the insistence that ‘I must believe in an afterlife’ - when none of that is the least relevant to anything that I’ve said in this thread. — Wayfarer

No, the reason I asked is because I believe you do believe in an afterlife because I doubt you have changed your mind since you took Buddhist vows and because you were in discussions always against Bachelor's "Buddhism without beliefs", and I surmise that the reason you are so obsessed with debunking materialism is that you think that if it were true it would discount the possibility of an afterlife. That said, I admit an afterlife is not directly relevant or necessary to what you've been arguing (or more accurately, stipulating) and I'm also not suggesting there is anything wrong with believing in an afterlife by the way. I tend not to believe, but I'm on the fence myself since I believe we all know so little really.

The basic contention of phenomenology and also of transcendental idealism, is that the concept of ‘the world before humans existed’ is still a concept. — Wayfarer

But again this is a mere truism and/ or a conflation―of course a concept of "the world before humans existed" is a concept. However the world before humans existed is (or was, if you like) not a concept. This is so self-evident I cannot understand why you apparently fail to grasp this.

Accordingly, we are not really seeing the world as it is (or would be) without any consciousness of it. Put another way, we are not seeing it as it is (or was) in itself, but as it appears to us. That does not make it an illusion, but it qualifies the sense in which it can be considered real. — Wayfarer

As you should know, I don't deny that we see and understand the world only as it appears to us, and that this is not, by any stretch, the whole of the world. We can never know the world in its entirety. There are also countless other creatures that presumably see and understand the world more or less differently than we do. And it seems obvious that the totality of that animal experience does not even come close to exhausting the nature of the world.

As you also should know, I favour a process metaphysics, so I see the world as fundamentally relational, but I don't see relationailty as confined to us or even to animals, or plants or even cells or molecules. On the other hand the world as it appears to us is as much a part of the world as any other of its relations or processes. As such it is not an illusion―the world (of which we are an integral part) reveals itself to us truly. That said, dualistic thinking can move us away from that primary participatory knowing.

You say that the fact that we don't see the world as it is unperceived qualifies the sense in which the perceived world can be considered real. I think that unless you mean that the perceived world cannot be considered to be the whole of reality, then what you say is a kind of nonsense. Our experience of the perceived world tells us that our perceptions are not the world, but on the other hand all we can directly know is the perceived world. Regarding how the unperceiveable aspects of the world might be, we can only surmise based on our perceptual experience, so it can never be perceptually real for us, even though we know it must be real in itself.

This is why I said that this question originates from the sense we all have (not unique to Janus), of the ‘real physical world described by science’, on the one hand, and the ‘mental picture of the world’, private and subjective, on the other. That is like a ‘master construct’, if you like, and very much a consequence of the Cartesian division between matter and mind. It is part of our ‘cultural grammar’, the subject-object division that lies at a deep level of our own self-understanding.

So I’m saying that the question comes out of ‘cultural conditioning’, and this is what happens when this is challenged. — Wayfarer

It is not only the real physical world as described by science but the real physical world as revealed by perceptual experience and our feelings of embodiment (our bodies obviously being part of that world). I don't think in terms of "mental pictures of the world" at all, although I acknowledge that we work with models of the world whenever we think discursively (i.e. dualistically) but that is not what our primary experience of the world is at all―that is it is not an experience of "mental pictures".

Your saying it is a "master construct" is just another just-so story for me. Humans are diverse, and the ideas of each should be addressed on their own terms, not shoe-horned into some psychologistic narrative about "cultural conditioning" or dismissed by categorization. The "subject-object" division is just another distinction made possible by dialectical, discursive thought or logic, if you like.

Your last sentence, for me, seeks to dismiss any disagreement with your ideas as being merely a product of cultural conditioning. If you want to challenge or refute what others say, you should, in my view, have enough good faith to believe they are just as capable of thinking for themselves as you think you are, and then if you disagree address their arguments in their own terms by cogent counterarguments, or if you cannot find such counterarguments, then admit as much.

I disagree―I think discussion benefits from bringing unacknowledged assumptions and premises to light.