If science says something that is obviously wrong philosophically, follow philosophy because it can define what truth is and science can't. — Gregory

Has philosophy settled the question of what truth is? Last I checked there were several positions still being argued for. Unless the deflationary one won out, but then I doubt there would be a conflict between scientific claims and philosophy if that were the case, since truth claims depend on the domain in a deflationary account.

You are confusing idealism with anti-realism. They are not the same thing. There is an entire subset of idealism called "objective idealism," that accepts the reality of external objects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But there is also a subjective idealism that rejects objective reality since they don't locate ideas in the mind of some supreme or universal mind. It's just individual subjective experiences. We've had some on here before.

Earl Gray? — Banno

Best way to drink it (minutes brewed, cream, anything to eat with it, etc)? I'm not Aussie or British, so forgive the ignorance.

But any object that is extended in space will be infinitely divisible. Yet nothing can be infinitely divisible, for that would involve it having infinite parts - which is to posit an actual infinity. There are no actual infinities in reality, thus there are no extended things. — Bartricks

There's no reason an extended object in space needs to be indefinitely divisible. Atomic theory would say atoms making up the object are indivisible. Today it would be subatomic particles. Or even possibly space itself is atomic. At any rate, length below the plank level is considered meaningless. This is where armchair philosophizing by first principles gets philosophers in trouble. The world need not play by our rules.

I'm skeptical of actual infinities, but what makes Berkeley so sure? What about the argument that space extends forever? That would constitute an actual infinity.

So I have to do homework in these threads now? I can't just react?

They don't have the shade of gray in common?

Let's try a harder one. Do two electrons have the same charge in common? Is the problem with the phrase, "in common"? So two electrons have the same charge, but it's not in common?

Do you have an explanation why there are philosophers who disagreed with Berkeley's arguments to this day?

self evident truths of reason. — Bartricks

They don't seem self evident to me. What then?

So to do philosophy, one must start by assuming idealism is true? This argument has turned into sophistry. Nobody is forced to accept Berkeley's premises, and plenty of philosophers haven't for whatever reasons.

So I reject that premise.

I said I disagreed that sensations only resemble other sensations. Why must I accept that premise?

Oh do pay attention. That is NOT what I said, is it? — Bartricks

I didn't quote you?

But what you're doing is assuming the truth of a worldview and then rejecting premises that imply its falsity. That's dogmatism. — Bartricks

I didn't assume the truth of idealism. I said Berkeley's idealism is internally consistent.

He's saying: you assume the reality of the objects of experience, but what are 'objects', unless you've assimilated them into your mind via the synthesis of data, sensation, perception and understanding? — Wayfarer

The things which are responsible for your mind having something to assimilate. Also that which you ends your experience. How does Schopenhauer account for death? Should we bring Meillassoux and fossils into the discussion? Evolution has already been mentioned.

Now, Berkeley concluded that the sensible world is made of another mind's mental states. He didn't just assert it. He arrived at the conclusion from apparent self-evident truths of reason alone. — Bartricks

So if one doesn't accept Berkeley's "self-evident" truths, one is guilty of dogmatism? One wonders why all philosophers aren't idealists then!

And sensations can only resemble other sensations, yes? — Bartricks

I would disagree there. Sensations resemble physical things, or at least real things which are not always sensed by some mind. Because we have real bodies in a real world that produce those sensations.

That tells me you didn't understand the point of my post, but I've been down this rabbit hole umpteen times in the past, so I'll leave it there. — Wayfarer

You're right I don't understand the point of what Schopenhauer is trying to say. It doesn't explain the end of experiences, and how we have objective explanations for them. I'm definitely in the realist/objective camp.

otice that your question assumes a perspective outside that of the subject of those experiences. — Wayfarer

Yes, and it's this sort of implied idealism I was wanting to criticize. If there is no perspective outside our subjective experiences (like God or the universal consciousness), then idealism is put into an awkward position of explaining why covid or evolution are explanations for our experiences. And why experiences tend to end when a subject falls off a cliff.

But if God or the universe are there to experience covid and people falling to their deaths, then that's not an inherent problem. I understand that a Kantian discussion of noumena would take this to a different place about whether we can say reality (noumena) is anything like covid or cliff falls. Cue questions of space and time and the wavefunction, lol.

For the record, I tend to think reality is something other (more than?) the physical.

So Berkeley's version? I said in another post that's consistent. God keeps covid in mind as an idea. I'm an atheist, so I don't find that very convincing, but it's at least internally consistent.

You don't know what idealism is, do you? — Bartricks

There's only kind of idealism? Tell me what it is then, and what it means for covid to exist for an idealist.

Do you think an idealist denies that covid exists? — Bartricks

Depends on the idealist and what is meant by "covid exists". I would ask you how covid exists outside sensible experience and it not be material/physical.

What do you think an idealist will say about covid? That there is no covid? — Bartricks

That covid is a theoretical explanation under a materialistic framework for pandemic experiences. This isn't my first idealist rodeo on here. Granted, the idealist arguments have varied from a Kantian to anti-realist to subjective.

We used to have a couple hard core subjective idealists on here that would make rather extreme sounding anti-realist arguments.

Now, you seem to think covid poses a problem. Why? — Bartricks

Do you include viruses in the sensible world outside experience which cause human sickness and death?

I agree that sort of idealism is consistent. It's not that different from Berkeley's God in the Quad argument that God keeps everything in mind, so of course things/processes continue to exist whether we're experiencing them.

Of course it's odd. An idealist might argue that we have centuries of thinking that the material world is a pure representation of reality. — Tom Storm

I'm not a materialist (solely) because of consciousness and abstract objects, but the the problem with idealism in the modern world, is our scientific explanations start with the material and build to the mental once you get to biology and brain processes. So the idealist is put in the awkward position of explaining why the material representation has mind as a latter development on brains, surrounded by a universe of mostly physical things and processes, where mind is a relative late comer, one that we only know about in one little corner of the cosmos.

IOW, why does the world appear to be mostly physical?

I get that. I'm saying that it's odd that we have all those visual representations of mental processes that are said to be explanations for our experiences, such as getting sick, neuroscience, evolution, star formation and death.

So no doubt COVID, or falling off a cliff for that matter, are representations of something happening in consciousness when viewed from a particular perspective. — Tom Storm

But COVID isn't just the symptoms people experience, it's the explanation for the pandemic, and why millions have died. It's also not just the experience of falling off a cliff, but what happens when you hit the bottom.

How does the idealist explain the end of their experience when hitting the bottom or dying from an infection? Because someone else comes along and has an experience of their death? So why does an idealist's experience come to an end? It can't be a material cause such as an invisible virus or the rocks at the bottom.

Can you paint? I ask because if you paint you view the world as sensations rather than as objects. — Bartricks

But then I'd wonder about the chemical makeup of paint, and the atomic structure of the canvas.

It puzzles me why you think idealism is challenged by the existence of any sensible thing or process. — "Bartricks

Many of those things exist outside of human experience much of the time, if not entirely, and are the explanations for the world we experience. We don't perceive atoms (unless when viewed with an electron microscope), but atomic bods are the explanation for chemistry, and chemistry for the experience of ordinary matter and it's many forms and behaviors.

So how do account for evolution, geology and cosmology? Were there always some kind of minds around to have ideas of stars forming, mountains wearing down, and creatures evolving, or did the universe only begin existing as ideas for humans? What happens far out in space where our instruments can't see? What about deep in the Earth? Are all those only ideas to someone as well? Why do we have ideas of such a large universe with such deep time if they're just ideas?

The thing with neuroscience is that the brain is taken to explain the functionality of the mind. But we don't normally have experiences of our brain. Why is it that investigation our head gives us an idea of an organ that's supposed to be responsible for us having those ideas? There's a thousand such questions about everything. How come we find fossils in the ground? Are they ideas of something that lived before we did?

How do you explain pandemics? Is Covid just an idea? People get sick and die because of an idea? What is death to an idealist? How do ideas cause you to die?

I'm not sure about Ryle's assessment of the University. Take the emergent complex behavior of ant colony and apply that to human social structures. There is something more than the organization structure of the colony or the university.

Using your eyes. — bongo fury

You can visualize with your eyes closed. The images don't come from your eyes, they come from your imagination.

Which brings us back to the point you made earlier, of explaining how it is that you and I seem to see the same stuff as we look out of our little cages. Why should that be? — Banno

God? Consciousness collapsing the wavefunction? A glitch in the Matrix? Time travel shenanigans? I do agree the world is what makes the same stuff the same. Not sure the world is entirely material.

Clever.

Disappointed there's no Schrodinger's cat.

Right, it's a body/world collaboration, which we, in our usual dualistic manner, conceive of as an artificial separation between the two. — Janus

Isn't the body/world collaboration a dualism? If we're asking whether there's an external material world, then we have to go beyond just the world as presented to ourselves and ask about the world itself. The world that's presumably much larger and older than we are.

Remember the old adage: "Seeing is believing"? — Janus

Magicians make careers out of that saying.

I'd say we see things as they present themselves to us — Janus

Fair enough, but it's not just the things presenting themselves to us, since we're doing a decent chunk of the presenting.

Netflix could use more excellent series at this point.

Ah, that would make sense. Predestination is the movie name of that story. And the tv show Dark is Predestination on steroids in a German setting. But yeah, there should be more Heinlein screen stories.

Sounds interesting. I take it they're also fine with being amoral.

we just see things. — Janus

Okay, but what is that we're seeing? The world as it is, the world as we see it, a simulated world?

Pictures in the head. Where would philosophy be without them? — bongo fury

Dreaming of pictures in the head? It is kind of odd how much vision is focused on in these kinds of discussions. There are other senses and types of experiences. I do wonder though, what is visualization if it's not "pictures in the head"?