We think them up, yes. It doesn't follow that they're actually present in our minds, as though they have an actual location. Some of our language is metaphorical. The sun doesn't literally rise in the morning. What I'm saying isn't literally going over your head in a physical trajectory. — S

So you don't believe that your mind has a location, either?

There is a rock, but no one is there to perceive it, because we all died an hour previously. — S

We could call this a premise, okay.

Is there a rock? Yes or no?

Followed by two questions . . . Which is fine, but of course questions are not logical entailments.

Yes, a rock is an object,

That doesn't follow from anything above, it's just another claim.

and the existence of objects don't depend on us being around perceiving them.

Again, this doesn't follow from anything above it. It's just another claim.

It is not the case that to be is to be perceived.

Doesn't follow from anything above. Another claim.

To be is to be

Doesn't follow. And it doesn't actually exclude "to be is to be perceived."

and that's that.

The stylistic gesture we mentioned earlier.

Some people, however, believe that there isn't a rock

Doesn't follow from anything above (it's probably not supposed to, but I'm just making sure we know that).

because that would be a contradiction.

Doesn't follow from anything above. Also, they don't believe that there isn't any real rock because of any contradiction, by the way. It's rather just that their belief contradicts your belief.

But there isn't a contradiction unless you go by an idealist premise,

This doesn't follow from anything above, and as a claim, it also doesn't make much sense. Again, the only contradiction is that their belief is the negation of yours.

an idealist premise which is demonstrably false

There were no demonstrations above, no argument--nothing followed from anything else. It was just a series of claims.

as it leads to absurdity, as per the above scenario.

But you showed no absurdity at all.

Per the online etymology dictionary, the "literal" definition of "unnatural" is "not in accord with physical nature," where the etymology of "nature" is wrapped up with "life"/living things from the start. Per that, everything would be natural.

In the early 1500s, we see a usage of "unnatural" a la "at variance with moral standards," and the "artificial" sense apparently doesn't pop up until the mid 1700s.

I consider any organized control by (at least threat of) force to be sufficient for government. Given that, I don't believe that anarchy is possible. Some group of people would always organize and take some control via threat of force.

I accept that, except I'm not merely saying that it is compelling to me. That's a poor way to interpret my argument. Obviously it is compelling to me. It is also compelling to many others, but perhaps not all. — S

it's irrelevant how many people something is compelling to. Appealing to that is the argumentum ad populum fallacy. And the person who is claiming something different has no need to explain a common alternate belief unless they're interested in some sort of psychology/sociology project. Alternate views aren't made true by explaining how a belief that's wrong got popular (or made false by failing to explain that).

The point is that you didn't set forth an argument, and you didn't at all estbalish a reductio ad absurdum--an argument is necessary for that.

That idealism or antirealism on something is unusual may very well be the case, but that has no implications for its truth or falsity.

Here's a simple formalization of a reductio ad absurdum:

Assume P is true.
From this assumption, deduce that Q is true.
Also, deduce that Q is false.
Thus, P implies both Q and not Q (a contradiction, which is necessarily false).
Therefore, P itself must be false.

God could exist timelessly. — Devans99

If god exists and then the rest of everything does (your options are either that, or god existed and everything else did, too, or everything else existed and then god--there's no other logical possibility), then god--part of everything, either began acausally or always existed. Once again, we can't escape the two possibilities. Either something began acausally or it always existed.

Can you explain how exactly the universe can begin truly acausally? — Devans99

No one could explain either how anything can begin acausally--any explanation would imply a cause, or how anything could always exist (since that's completely counterintuitive).

Would you exist if you were not born? — Devans99

If I always existed, yes. I'd necessarily exist without being born. That's what the words "always existed" conventionally refer to.

My reduction to the absurd demonstrates objective meaning — S

You set forth your view in a number of claims. The claims weren't an argument (nothing followed from anything else). You didn't state a reductio ad absurdum. You simply claimed that believing other than you do is a "contradiction" and an absurdity.

You agree that meanings are present in minds. That's the case when we "think them up" as you said. It's the case when we "perceive" them (in your view), and so on. I'm saying that meanings are present in minds, too.

But you're saying something additional. You're saying that meanings are also present in other things. I'm not claiming anything additional.

The burden of proof convention, if you care about that, applies to the person claiming something additional.

And particularly phrases like "and that's that" aren't going to do anything in an argument.

You might as well say, "My view is that P. I'm right, and that's that."

They're only contradicting the realist view. Which of couse they'll be the first to admit.

And the realist account isn't compelling to idealists--or they wouldn't be idealists in the first place. So "This is compelling to me" doesn't make an alternate view absurd.

"Absurdity" in a philosophical context would normally refer to a reductio ad absurdum, where you assume the opposing argument and then show (via consequences that follow formally) that it leads to an absurd conclusion--but that only works where the person holding the opposing argument would agree that the conclusion is absurd, or more formally, where the conclusion winds up contradicting one of the logically derived, earlier consequences of the premises, an earlier consequence which they do accept (so that then, to accept the conclusion, which would need to be valid, they'd need to accept a contradiction). An idealist about the existence of rocks isn't going to think that "rocks are only in our minds" (or anything like that) is absurd. (Just like as an antirealist on meaning, I obviously don't think "meaning is ony in our minds" is absurd.)

Using the word art is a bit unhelpful, because we generally turn to current or more recent forms of art, — Brett

Music is at least as old as any other sort of art, by the way. Art wasn't always for "communicating" in the practical sense of that term.

So you were talking about your initial post in this thread. What, exactly, is supposed to be absurd about the idealist stance in (1)?

The first part that wasn't clear to me in that section was "Some people, however, believe that there isn't a rock, because that would be a contradiction." What (claimed) contradiction are you referring to?

And then you say "an idealist premise which is demonstrably false, as it leads to absurdity,"--I didn't see you specify any absurdity prior to that. You just stated the basic realist view. It's not an absurdity to not believe the realist view. They could likewise simply state the idealist view and then say that the realist view is an absurdity because it's not the idealist view.

And you caved in when those you were teaching were trying it on, I suppose? Not putting in enough effort, and wanting an easy ride? No? Then don't try that shit with me. — S

If anyone ever didn't seem to understand something, ever asked for an explanation, clarification, etc I explained things again, and in other words, trying different approaches, etc. That doesn't mean it always worked, but it was my job to try, not to chastise them for not understanding something (more quickly, in whatever words I initially chose).

If I would have had any teachers who wouldn't have done that when I requested it, I would have immediately gone to their superiors and complained. .

Then you have more patience than me. I don't like being manipulated into an unfair one-sided relationship, which is what I suspect you of trying to do here. — S

Yeah, I basically have an endless amount of patience, which was beneficial when I taught, which I did for a number of years.

Thinking of conversations as manipulations probably doesn't help get things rolling well.

If you're talking about your comments in the first post of the thread, by the way (why couldn't you just say that if so?), it wasn't at all clear to me from the start what you had in mind re "absurdity." But I don't like to pick apart everything in a long post that anyone writes--neither the person I'd be responding to or I enjoy that, so I didn't bother with it.

I'm not an antirealist on things like rocks, but I don't believe there's any way to "prove" that idealism is wrong. It's just a matter of whether we have good reasons to believe one thing versus another.

If you were interested in me knowing what you're referring to, we could just point to it in some way.

What happened to this subthread, by the way:

"Employs it in any manner. However you want to think of it.

"Do you think that people do not use meaning in some manner?"

You imply it with the application of your terms and the fact that you don't have alternate terms that refer to the planet/non-planet, star/non-star, rock/non-rock, human/non-human, etc. etc. ad infinitum. — Harry Hindu

You might be reading that into it, but I can only keep repeating that I don't at all believe that there's anything "special" about it or anything to say about comparative uniqueness or anything like that. You don't have to believe me, but I'll keep telling you. ;-)

I use lots of synonyms/synonymous phrases for things like logical entailment (implication, following, etc.) versus irrelevance (non sequitur, doesn't follow, arbitrary, etc.) ,because that's a common topic in philosophy, too. Things we talk about all the time tend to have a lot of synonyms or synonymous phrases.

And part of the reason for that is via trying to both clarify and explain something to others. We frequently have to put things in other words for that. Other words can't be the same words. ;-).

I've had to tell Harry what my definitions are about 50 times, and I'm still not sure he gets it. I'll gladly tell him again, in as many different ways as I can think of telling him, because I'm interested in him understanding it and having a conversation about it. I couldn't care less about anyone "winning."

"We think them up"--okay, so you're not saying that meanings don't occur in minds.

So what am I supposed to be "proving." You already agree that meanings occur in minds. That's my view.

We just disagree whether meanings occur outside of minds. So I simply asked what you accept as evidence that they occur outside of minds, a la pointing me (even if indirectly) to any non-mental meaning properties.

Yes you are. You are saying that mind's deserve a special term — Harry Hindu

No, I'm explicitly NOT saying this. It's nothing about "deserving" anything. And I didn't invent the terms. There's nothing special about it. It's just a fact that there are minds and things that aren't minds (and a fact that philosophers talk about all the time in various guises).

I'm not saying anything about comparative uniqueness whatsoever.

All it teaches me is that you don't care enough to not do the same stupid thing everyone does in conversations like this. You don't care about actually discussing it. You only care about "winning."

I'll type the same shit over and over, I'll reexplain things every way I can think of doing so as long as someone seems interested in a conversation.

You don't care enough about it to even post a link to a post you're claiming to want to talk about. You've got to play a stupid game about it.

If you even just give me three or four words from a phrase in the post you're talking about, I can search for it.

So, are you going to address my argument against your position yet? — S

What would be the motivation for not either exerting the massive amount of energy it would take to point to the post or to simply copy/pasting it?

Specifically as "non-planet," not that it just happens to be that.

Whether something is mental or not is an evergreen topic in philosophy.

I'm not making the case that anything is "special" . . . the distinction comes up often especially in philosophy, though.

We could make a distinction for planets/not-planets, too. If people talked about planet versus not-planet things a lot, I'm sure we'd have a variety of synonyms for that.

Mind/not mind

So "objective" is a relationship between brains and "subjective" is a property of an individual brain? — Harry Hindu

What? Where are you getting anything like that from? Could you answer what/why you're asking re "it matters how many brains"?

Your definition isn't relevant here. — S

Harry brought up my views in posts directed at me.

I have no idea what your definition of "objective" even is.

So, no argument for idealist logic so far, just Terrapins fallacious attempt to shift the burden. — S

Re the things that I'm an antirealist on, re the stupid "burden of proof" convention, you're not arguing that we don't think things like meanings, are you?

Right, I didn't answer because I wanted you to just address that first part and not skip it.

Re "Why would it matter how many brains?" I don't understand what you're asking. I didn't say anything about quantity of anything. So from where are you getting the idea that "it matters how many brains" in anyone's view?

Per how I use the terms, how I define them, it's what you said.

And "subjective" would be an objective feature of reality being a function of minds, which are an objective feature of reality. — Harry Hindu

Minds are a non-mind feature of reality?

LOL (quite literally)

Cool.

Right, and planets are objective things that exist independently of not just minds, but everything else. Your mind is external to mine and is therefore as real as a planet and it's unique phenomena. If plate tectonics are an objective feature of reality, then meaning (by your own definition) would be an objective feature of the reality too. — Harry Hindu

Again, I use the word "subjective" to refer to brains functioning in mental ways. (Well, or anything functioning in a mental way, but so far there's only good evidence of brains being able to do this.)

"Real" I usually try to avoid unless the context is clear, because there are technical ways that it's been used in philosophy historically that are very confusing to common, modern usage. So I avoid it unless it's pretty clear that a conversation is using the term in a particular way.

Meaning is not an objective feature by my definition, because objective refers to the complement of brains functioning in mental ways.

Then pay closer attention. I told you that I was talking about the hypothetical scenario and what I conclude from it. — S

Still no idea. You could spell it out (or at least reference what you're talking about so I can look at it again), or I can just not worry about it.

You are being evasive and you seem to be confused about how the burden of proof works. — S

LOL

Employs it in any manner. However you want to think of it.

Do you think that people do not use meaning in some manner?

Meaning does not depend on understanding. That's your burden of proof, — S

"Meaning depends on understanding" is not a view I hold.

I've already ruled out the alternative with a reduction to the absurd, — S

No idea what you're talking about there. So I guess you can't point to the objective properites that are meaning? How surprising.

Well, do you have an idea of what I'm saying if I say that "Joe utilizes meaning"?

So you'd say that there's nothing in the world that doesn't "do" meaning?

Like bacteria deal with meaning all the time in your view?