There is a subject smuggled in, by the very nature of the experiment, because someone is being asked if there are still rocks after what would be the observing subjects have been rendered dead!!!!!!

YOU are smuggling, and everyone else is trying to unsmuggle themselves by telling you there’s no one that capable of answering the question. And THAT is why the experiment is irrational. Or more correctly, that is why the experiment has only irrational answers if the answer is required to be affirmative in any way.

Mic drop

This argument was never refuted because it was never presented.

There is EMR throughout the Universe, passing through or by any and all other objects in space. The EMR is indiscriminatory, insofar as it is precisely the same for any object of contact, and even without. Yet, as far as we know, only one species with a certain sensuous receptivity has the sensation of “blue”. Therefore, it is not a matter of frequency or wavelength alone that satisfies the sensation, they being merely the conditions required for the sensory apparatus to give the sensation. There would be no “blue” if eyes and the human optic system didn’t translate specific EMR physical properties as they do.
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Yes, and I agree on moral subjectivism. Because the name itself makes it explicit, nobody can be a moral subjectivist without the employment of pure practical reason, no matter what moral theory or disposition is in play. Nobody can employ pure practical reason or construct a moral theory or have a moral disposition without being an idealist of at least the transcendental denomination. End of story.

Mic drop.

All good. Half of irrational is still irrational.

‘Tis a hollow laugh, my friend. “Rock” is nothing but a human-developed word contained in a human-developed language given to a human-developed concept given to a human-perceived real thing. “rock” is only rock because we say it is, and we say it is only in order to not confuse it with “bicycle”.

There are things outside the human mind; there are not rocks. This is true because “rock” presupposes the thing represented by “rock”, the thing must be antecedent to its conception.

I say that there would be a rock. I say that it's reasonable to believe that there would be a rock. — S

Either you agree or you disagree. Which is it? — S

I agree with half, disagree with the other half.

The two propositions are mutually exclusive, because only one or the other can be the case. The former is a statement of affirmation, the latter is a statement of possibility. Only one can be the case because the criteria for their respective determinations are categorically opposed, insofar as knowledge absolutely requires an object but belief only requires a possible object or no object at all.

If I was a rock in a world where humans had just disappeared, I would ask myself...how am I to be known? I can be remembered, sure, but what intelligence is there that knows of me now? And to be remembered is to be known as I was, not necessarily as I am. If I should be buried in an earthquake, the humans that were here wouldn’t know what happened to me, so why is that any different from not knowing about me if there wasn’t any earthquake to begin with?

Woe is me....without something that knows, I am unknown. Here in my world, or anywhere else.
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My metaphysics has no problem with allowing the existence of objects without experience of them. Just like you, I find it reasonable to think those rocks are going to be there all else being equal. I said as much way back in the beginning, sentience is not a requisite for existence. Dunno why you can’t get that through your head. My metaphysics does not allow empirical knowledge of conditions for which any experience whatsoever is impossible, re: the future, impossible or inconceivable objects, spiritual objects, supernatural objects. If you agree with all that, yet insist you know rocks will still be there, or it is in fact true rocks will be there, in the future, then your metaphysics is catastrophically wrong.

I still see consciousness as being in separable from the objects of consciousness that we call the world. But we cannot reduce the world to 'mind' any more than we can reduce mind/consciousness to the objects it experiences. I would say they are mutually interdependent modes of being. — Ryhan

Agreed, consciousness is inseparable from the objects of consciousness that we call the world. However, there are objects of consciousness that are not objects of the world, re: beauty, liberty, particular colors, shapes. That is to say, those conceptions understanding thinks for itself a priori. As such, there are interdependent modes of being, the empirical given as phenomena and the intellectual given as thought.

And no, we cannot reduce the world to mind alone.

Good call.

Yeah, well, the counter-argument’s going to be...it’s a hypothetical scenario and as such, POOF!!! All the humans are gone, so nobody is there to set a clock anyway. But if that’s true then what does an hour have to do with anything. The only way it could mean anything is from the perspective of a third party observer who CAN tell time.

The scenario would be exactly the same if it had been stated as, POOF!!! All humans are gone. Are there still rocks and do rocks have the same meaning? That would have saved exactly half the argument’s intrinsic irrationality.

Watch out for tomatoes!!!!! Talk like that’ll get you pummeled from the balcony. Look at me; I’m fairly dripping with ‘em. (Grin)

Not rejecting subjectivity shows hope.

What argument? I haven’t seen subjectivity mentioned once in 12 pages.

I asked “what is blue” and got a bunch of scientific fluff. What will I get if I ask “what is subjectivity?”

I’ll be damned. That paragraph right there, is a synopsis of what I and U.M have been saying for 6 pages. Rough around the edges, but that’s to be expected from one thinking like an idealist of some degree but refusing to admit to being one. Failure to grasp the understanding that EVERY rational human is just that. It is the dualistic, comparative nature of the intellectual beast. Get used to it.

This part hasn't been neglected. Go back and count the times I’ve said it doesn’t matter.

Correct; it is possible to be right on one level and wrong on another about the same thing. You’re doing it. Wrong on a whole ‘nuther level. The subjective level, where a priori knowledge lives, and resides over knowledge not given from direct experience. The a priori allows retention of knowledge of rocks after the experience of them, but not the existence of rocks without the experience of them, which is empirical knowledge. The a priori domain is the exact OPPOSITE of “extreme empiricism”.

The way things are going, the longer M.U. and I keep pissin’ you off, the closer you’re going to get to seeing we are right. But again......it doesn’t matter.

Set an alarm clock of some kind for an hour, kill off all the humans.......what does the alarm sound or look like?

If the alarm is not sensed, the indication for the duration of an hour is not intelligibly given. If there is no intelligible indication given for an hour, there is no reason to think there would be an intelligible indication given for the duration of a day. If not an hour or a day, then no intelligible division of time at all follows. If no division of time, then there would be no indication of time itself. Humans “tell” time; no humans, no time “telling”. No time “telling”, no temporal reference frame, time itself becomes nothing.

A theory predicated on spontaneity isn’t going to have any mechanics behind it’s causality. The mechanics follow from it, re: will, maxims, imperatives, volitions, and so on.

Ehhhhh.....it’s just a theory.

You mis-read.

I don’t think a theory of spontaneous causality is indeterministic. Freedom doesn’t determine anything, it is the condition by which the will is enabled to determine.

Still, it does presuppose an ontological dualism which empirical determinists don’t embrace.

Interesting read, but I gotta tell ya, man......

“....All I hear is
Radio ga-ga
Radio goo-goo
Radio ga-ga....”

....not quite, but you get my drift, right?

Anyway. Leading on, re: pg 8. You reject idealism in any way shape or form, so do you reject subjectivity as well? If not, what is it?

Can anyone here present a theory of causation that allows for libertarian free will? — Walter Pound

Because the notion of free will is metaphysical, the derivation of its origin should be as well.

Enter the notion of freedom in the metaphysical sense.

If there is a casualty that spontaneously instantiates a series of events, therefore not under the constraints of time necessary for antecedent cause, then there exists the notion of an uncaused cause, which disinterests will from determinism. If it is conceivable that the natural constraints of time relative to cause and effect can be replaced with the concept of spontaneity, then it follows the sequence of willful volitions is possible without a determistic naturalism.

All that’s required is the recognition that humans actually do act without thinking, and without willing themselves to do so. If acting without thinking is acting spontaneously, then the notion of spontaneity as a uncaused cause is justified, and the assignment of the denomination “freedom” does nothing to contradict the notion itself.

I have those, but in my Critique of Kant, there are those Latin phrases that don’t come with translations, so I’m missing a lot of the particulars of S’s meanings. I hate it when that happens!!!

I understand consciousness itself is still present, wondering more about the “I” missing from your dissertation, whether there is room for it and if so what it’s job would be.

Yes, K used will only for morality, whereas S used will for everything.

Why wouldn’t it be reasonable to separate understanding from sensibility when there is nothing present for understanding to work with presented by sensibility? When understanding works with that which is present from itself alone, why not be separate from sensibility, which is giving it nothing? While it is true the two cannot be separated In the case of phenomena of empirical objects, it is reasonable they could be in the case of phenomena of transcendent objects.

Yeah, the bit on schemata is DENSE, barely comprehensible. I can see why S would consider it insufficient for uniting phenomena with conceptions, that is, the faculty of sensibility with the faculty of understanding, but nonetheless, it was done. And he did it with the faculty of imagination, with which everybody is familiar in some way.

Reasonable to believe...certainly;
Set the bar higher.....ditto.
Problems for myself.....not from where I sit.
Reasonable to say we believe something about the rock is very far from reasonable to say we know something about the very same rock under the very same conditions. How do we tell which leads to fewer additional questions?

If knowledge doesn’t require certainty or at least very strict criteria, how do we trust our theoretical science? How do we know it’s dangerous to step into a lion’s cage at the zoo? Sometimes reasonable to believe is all we have and other times reasonable to believe might just get you killed.

When I think about dinner tomorrow I am thinking NOW about dinner tomorrow. The other context is thinking TOMORROW about dinner tomorrow, which is meaningless. That’s what you wanted us to do....think rocks TOMORROW (because we were deleted an hour earlier is the same as thinking about something an hour later) about rocks tomorrow (an hour later).

If I do interpret statements in a way that lead to a falsehood, the falsehood belongs to me or the statement. If the latter, the onus is on my co-conversant to rectify it, if the former the burden is to inform me of my misinterpretation and the onus is on me to rectify it. Six of one etc, etc, etc......

What I’m doing is a problem for the experiment, granted. That I’m over-analysizing, probably. But you did ask for opinions, after all. And yes, I know what opinions are like......

Anyway. Ever onward.

You may well call time a dimension but Kant does not follow; he calls it a pure intuition, one of two, the other space.

Dimension is not what makes time ideal. Thinking away every possible property belonging to an object, such that all that is left of it is the time of it......that’s what makes time ideal. Same for space. The two things that cannot be thought away. The reverse works just as well: before any object can be thought there must be a place for it to be thought in and a time of its being thought.

Agreed on monism, unequivocally.

Most people (...) would then respond with (...) it's a bit ridiculous — ZhouBoTong

Sure they would. But considering the medium we’re using for our conversation, here and now.........
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I am not saying you don't have a point, but I am very confused as to how it matters? — ZhouBoTong

If I have a point, THAT is the matter. Whatever is said here matters to nothing but whatever else is said here. But I understand you to mean how does it matter in general, and of course, it doesn’t. Not to say there are not those who would claim if everybody thought his way there wouldn’t be any wars, deforestation or blue jeans with the knees ripped out. A car in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Jimmy Page would always be ranked #1.
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Well then how come 2 kilograms + 2 grams does not equal 4 kilograms or 4 grams? — ZhouBoTong

Nothing wrong with saying that. However, all empirical knowledge absolutely depends on experience for it’s proof, so as soon as you put your mathematical claim to the test, by doing what the math calls for, experience will tell you the claim is false. Then it’s up to you to figure out why.
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So they would have argued that this
We have knowledge our sun is a star, stars are known to supernova
— Mww
is subjective and can't be known for certain.[/

Knowledge is always tentative, so that takes care of the “can’t be known for certain” part, but blanket all-encompassing subjective idealism is pretty much defunct, so to say empirical knowledge is entirely subjective is pretty much passé. Dunno what that has to do with definitions, or how definitions are objective facts, but....if you say so.
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— ZhouBoTong

I think I see our problem. I think every time you use the word "true", you mean something like "it can only be that way 100% of the time in any situation that anyone can conceive of" which I will think rarely occurs (I would say definitions and math is about it - language itself creates ambiguities, — ZhouBoTong

On the word “true”...correct. Gotta be a bottom line someplace, right?
On definitions...not. Math and logic alone, because only those are susceptible to proofs. You said it yourself....language creates ambiguities, and nobody wants their truths ambiguous.
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we just mean "true enough for all practical purposes."]what are the possible harms that could be caused by us summarizing the "truth" in this way? — ZhouBoTong

Generally, there aren’t any. Everydayman thinks from a practical point of view. Philosophers and critical thinkers in general don’t. Even wannabe armchair philosophers like us......

Say what???? You must be WAAAYY undercover not to accept the ideality of time. All the cool kids are doin’ it, doncha know. (Kidding.....it’s a tough pill to swallow)

Dimensions though, are just standards of measurement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is that what they’re calling it these days? Height, width, length, seconds, light years, dimensions? I’m too old-fashioned for that, I guess; to me dimensions are what make standards of measurement possible.

Done deal.

Keeping mind it is quite murky down here in the weeds.

Where did the Kantian “I”, the thinking subject, the unity of apperception, the representative of consciousness, go?

controlling configuring agency (the will) — charles ferraro

Is that what it’s become?

How does following one's own private rules differ from mere accident? — Banno

The following of rules requires a faculty or source of principles such that following rules doesn’t disempower the source of the rules. There can’t be such a thing as morality if rules are constructed without both the means and a reason to follow them. If there is such a source, and it is employed as intended, accident is prevented.

Enter deontology. Like it or not, subscribe to it or not, it does answer the question.

I don’t have any problem with the idea I can’t dream except for what resides in consciousness, even understanding the vagary and ambiguity of consciousness itself. But you’re right, insofar as my personal biases in regard to it are concerned.

I don’t think I can dream impossibilities either, under those same conditions.

Understood.

What do you think of the proposition we can’t dream anything we haven’t already experienced, either directly or indirectly, that is, what is said to reside in consciousness? Can we dream impossibilities?

First, I was leaving the argument with that as the major premise to you because you brought it up, and second, I don’t think S is ready to accept the absolute ideality of time with respect to human experience.

Still, scientists nowadays are attributing to time a reality most philosophers are reluctant to admit. Hell, they’ve even made it a dimension, of all things. Can you believe it????

Agreed.

I can smell bacon in life; I cannot smell bacon in dreams. I can dream I am smelling bacon but that is not a sensory experience.

But that doesn’t remove the possibility that life itself is a dream that includes sensory experience. In which case.....so what?

Intervention?

A.) It can still be said, and unknowingly be true.
B.) There's an issue about what makes something knowledge, and what's reasonable. But there's a separate issue about what is or isn't true. And these issues seem to be getting a little muddled. — S

A’) It can still be said is the epitome of speculation. While it is true such speculation can be unknowingly true, because it is speculation, at the time of speculation, that which is being said has equal opportunity of being unknowingly false. If the speculation rests right there, at merely being said, it is impossible to determine which it is.
B’) It is NOT a separate issue. Unknowingly true makes explicit the truth is NOT known as such. It’s right there in the language. The only possible way to prevent an unknown from being false is to KNOW it is impossible for it to be false and the only way for it to be impossible to be false is for it to be.......well....known to be true.
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believing that there would be a rock is the best explanation, then why shouldn't I believe that there would be a rock? Why wouldn't that be what's reasonable to believe? — S

That’s perfectly agreeable, but it is not what you said.

you can't recognise the reasonableness in my argument that rocks would exist, — S

To be is to be and that’s that, is what you said about rocks post-human. Rocks before means rocks after, without regard to any other conditions. Period. That’s that. I didn’t recognize the reasonableness of the argument because the reasoning is irrational, insofar as no room is allowed for explanatory or logical alternatives.
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I'm a rational agent. — S

You admit to being a rational agent but deny your idealism. There is no philosophy that allows that, except.......an extreme empiricist. But if you were an extreme empiricist, you wouldn’t know enough to know because you could not possibly explain certain aspects of human cognition by means of mere brain states. Not at this time in our intellectual development anyway. Which includes you and me and everybody else. So you could speculate about it and might even be unknowingly correct. We’ll just never know about it.
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If you think that I would need to actually be in the scenario, then that's where these problems of yours stem from. — S

You ARE in it, however indirectly. Hence my reference to “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. Einstein’s thought experiment, just like yours, presupposes a third party observer, separate from the participants in the experiment. Because the experiment had to come from somewhere, the experiment requires an observer outside a world, seeing that world with no observers of its own. You, as the presupposed third party, then demand the missing observers make a determination about the world they no longer inhabit, which is necessarily different than yours as the outside observer. Such requirement is irrational.
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But there are rational agents. And we can speculate. — S

Not in the experiment there aren’t; you got rids of us an hour ago. You’re still on the outside looking in, forcing your perspective on those not even there. There is no rational agent in it, but there absolutely must be a rational agent because of it.

Otherwise, in general, of course there are rational agents, and they do speculate.
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If you were to take everything that we've speculated to date, then how would you know that it contains not a shred of truth? How could you know that? — S

I know speculation contains not a shred of truth iff I know the speculation has been proven false.
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If you fail this test, then your position is untenable. — S

What we know about rocks historically can pertain to what we think of rocks in the future, but how we came to our knowledge historically cannot obtain in the future. In one word...experience. Even if we don’t experience rocks historically, we experience the remnants of their existence and deduce factual, that is to say, non-contradictory, information therefrom. If we’re not around, we have no experience, hence no knowledge can be given from experience we don’t have. Claiming we don’t know enough to claim facts about the future is not an untenable position.
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realism has the lead in the poll for both Part 1 & Part 2, although it is tied with idealism in Part 2. — S

Might wanna re-think that.
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It is concerning that out of 11 people, there are so many idealists. Don't they realise that idealism is a load of bollocks? Why is it so popular — S

It’s not a matter of being popular; it’s a matter of being absolutely necessary. If you think, you’re a idealist of some kind, in some degree. It is not enough to claim intelligence is nothing but brain states without explaining how such is necessarily the case at the exclusion of any other possibility. Idealism DOES explain how, and not at the expense of empiricism but in conjunction with it, and even if it is wrong, empiricism in and of itself as yet has no means to refute it.

Either get used to it, or convince yourself you think about the world as it actually is.

Accepted, with all due respect to your humility.

So, "the sun will rise tomorrow is an absurdity"? — ZhouBoTong

Depends on your philosophical preference. It is usually considered irrational to claim a truth that is technically merely a possibility.
A.) To say an empirical event will occur implies irreversible factual causality. We have knowledge our sun is a star, stars are known to supernova, therefore......you get the picture.
B.) To say an event will occur implies the negation is impossible. If the negation is possible, the statement is false. The correct simple proposition is, the sun should rise tomorrow. Or, simple with qualifiers, all else being given, the sun will rise tomorrow.

Aren't you (any sort of strong idealism) just pointing out that we all might be living in The Matrix — ZhouBoTong

While it is more than likely a strong subjective idealist might claim, or at least argue in the affirmative for the Matrix scenario, or the philosophical zombie kinda thing, re: Nagel (1970) and Chalmers (1996), almost no one does anymore after Kant set the academic world on fire. Still, even now, we have no means to prove definitively we do not live in a Matrix or whatever, even if we can posit some strong arguments against it, re: Dennet (1999). My position is, it doesn’t matter. If we are, we always were, so nothing’s any different than we’ve already seen. If we suddenly discovered we were, that’s a whole different story.

A.) So aren't you saying we can speculate on a future with no rational agents, but it would be meaningless?
B.) Well since we can't know for sure there will be rational agents tomorrow, it seems all future thought is just meaningless speculation? — ZhouBoTong

A’) Consider the rest of what I said: speculate from knowledge vs speculate from belief. We know from the past what it’s like out there without humans, so speculation about the future without humans can be reasonable. Simple: there will be a whole lot more buildings and a whole lot less forest.
B’) All future thought, that is, thinking in the future, is indeed meaningless to us in the present, yes.
As I said, THAT I will think tomorrow, all else being equal, is most probable, but it is impossible to claim as true WHAT I will think tomorrow.

Who ARE you???? That was the most interesting read I’ve had in ages.

You’ve taken the mind, the reality of which nobody knows anything about, and transferred its operational predicates to the brain, the reality of which nobody can deny.

Excellent work, I must say. Tomorrow I’m going to poke the hell out of it, see what happens. You OK with that?

So knowledge that something will happen does not make it "true"? — ZhouBoTong

That something will happen is fine, one could say he knows something will happen, because it is impossible nothing will happen, barring extremes, which would make the whole thing moot anyway. But it cannot be said it is true that any particular something will happen without reasoning from induction, which is insufficient causality for knowledge, or, merely speculating, which has no claim to knowledge at all. It helps to have an idea of what one thinks knowledge actually is. This philosophical reasoning shouldn’t be confused with scientific causal necessity, as in that old, worn out, “I know the sun will rise tomorrow because it has always risen”, which is categorically false informal inductive reasoning, but rather that if the sun doesn’t rise in the morning the world is over anyway because natural law has been falsified. So if causal necessity of natural law holds the truth about the sun rising will also hold. Regardless, we won’t know the truth about the sun coming up until it isn’t dark anymore.

But if there are no rational agents (S's hypothetical) then no real objects? — ZhouBoTong

Who knows? Without rational agents, whose left to say anything about anything? Whether objects remain is certainly more than likely, because rational agency is not casual necessity for existence. It’s not a question of existence anyway, it’s a question of rationality. Correct reasoning. One cannot say with absolute certainty that which was left behind when observers are vacated remains in the same condition it was in when there were observers. The planet those rocks were on could have exploded vaporizing everything for light years around. That’s no more unlikely than having all observers just up and vanish.

if there are no rational agents then we can't even begin to speculate on anything? — ZhouBoTong

Yep. Notice the lack of philosobabble on my part. Pretty cool, ain’t I?

Doesn't this reduce any and all speculation about the future to meaningless nonsense? — ZhouBoTong

Nope. We humans speculate about the future all the time whether we’re included in it or not. One can speculate from reason, relating knowledge to possibility, or he can speculate from imagination, relating belief to illusion. Some speculation is fascinating and leads to great discoveries; some speculation is irrational and leads to absurdities

Your latest post is exactly what I’ve been saying about your thought experiment since pg 5. You demand acceptance the rock will still exist, but here you merely agree the pencil will fall to the floor because there’s no good reason for it not to. What’s the difference between you saying, “will the pencil drop to the floor? We don’t know for sure....”, and me saying, “will the rock still exist? I don’t know for sure....”. You say it, it's correct; I say it, it’s extreme empiricism.

I deleted my comment on your big long comment when I saw your comment to Janus. Homie don’ play no schoolyard gangsta games, first of all, plus you’ve completely misunderstood my entire argumentative domain. Where I’m coming from, in case you missed that too.

Here’s how this is going to play out. You’ll say all sorts of mean nasty ugly stuff about me and my pathetic inability to use reason and logic correctly, and I’ll just sit here and think.....oh. Ok. So be it.

You aren’t hearing me. You said of blue, the measurable properties x and y means it’s blue. That doesn’t make any sense at all to a guy who claims a thing is blue for no other reason whatsoever than he sees it as blue. I see an object as blue therefore that means it is a blue object no matter it’s properties. How could what I see as blue mean it’s red? Hence, while discoverable properties describe something, such discovery does not always lend itself to meaning.

What you’re saying by measurable properties x and y means it is blue, is actually x and y are the conditions under which some part of the visual spectrum of EMR must be identified as the same as the sensation of “blue” that is perceived by humans. That spectrum has the exact same conditions for blue but may not identify as blue to an animal lacking the similar receptor system as the human animal that labels that part of the visual spectrum “blue”.
(Example only; it is a categorical error to suppose anything with certainty regarding non-human animals.)

So if there's a shape that has four equal sides and four equal angles, then it's a square. It's the shape that has those properties. — S

Do you see that the subject of your proposition is “shape”? That makes explicit some arbitrary extension in space is necessarily presupposed in order for the conceptions in the predicate to be thereafter associated to something as a means to identity it. It follows if the arbitrary shape is constituted by four equal sides and four equal angles contained in those sides, THEN it is labeled “square”. It is not always necessary to actually quantify anything to perceive a square, insofar as natural knowledge evolution accepts the general conception of “square” without recourse to rulers, but there are still conditions where it is required in order for the label “square” to be at the negation of the possibility of all other shapes, i.e., construction trades, very great or very small distances, etc., or to falsify an optical illusion.

From this, it is clear that a necessary truth such that any extended shape with its own identifying consistently attributed constituents must be a square. A necessary truth needs no confirmation, it will be the case whether confirmed or not. An unconfirmed truth suggests a possibility of falsification, which requires a means of identity to apodectically resolve.

Yes, understood and agreed, in principle. Nonetheless, if we were herein engaged in common meanings, we would be writing newspaper articles instead of delving into metaphysical particulars.

The dropped pencil argument is straight out of Hume’s claim of epistemological knowledge given from mere habit or convention. The pencil will fall to the floor because it has always fallen to the floor, but that says nothing whatsoever about why such should be the case, and if sufficient reason should be given, that serves as argument the pencil will never do anything BUT fall to the floor. But sufficient reason is not proof, sufficient reason here being gravity, or the mass of the pencil, but that doesn’t say what gravity is or why it acts on objects the way it does.

Even the rabid subjective idealist grants the existence of real things, even if those things are said to be real in a categorically unsubstantiated way. No rational agent can deny the existence of real objects; if he does he cannot explain his own body as a spacetime object without immediately contradicting himself.

I think the antagonist approach in this multi-logue is, not so much that without observers nothing exists, but rather, the idea that because existence in general can only be examined, understood, cognized and known from a human perspective, without all that nothing can be said about it with the same certainty and logical consistency as the original expositions gave to it. So it isn’t so much about the negation of existence as it is about the negation of the observer with respect to existence. It’s the same error as defining a word and using the word being defined in the definition.

You have GOT to be the WORST epistemological realist EVER!!!

There are some unconfirmed truths; but these are necessary truths, the contradictions of which are impossible. To say

....knew enough to make a prediction or a guess about the properties of blue objects or geometric shapes, then I could speak unconfirmed truths about them. — S

.....has no greater power than mere conjecture, a contingent possibility, because no conditions are given to sustain any prediction. Because of the technical difficulty intrinsic to color, simply observing one of them enables no predictions whatsoever about their physical properties. You couldn’t even ascertain the fact color is EMR, much less predict anything about the behavior of it from the observation of rainbows. Even saying if you knew enough is catastrophically inept, because it raises the question....how much is enough. If you knew x and y and from those predicted z, z remains no more than reasonable expectation until some other condition is satisfied, as in, experiment or accident. A caveman sees green grass and predicts it is fresh, but only because he has seen brown grass that deer never eat. Just because he knows the grass is green at night, does not allow him to predict the sun is partly responsible for fresh grass. Faraday might have the unconfirmed hypothetical for electric lines, but without the rational appeal to a very specific experiment, he would have had no reason to suppose them. And even then, he got it wrong by requiring a medium.

if I knew that the colour blue consists in visible light from within a certain range of wavelength, and I knew that we could measure wavelengths in nanometres, then I could make a complete guess and say that the colour blue has a range of between 450 and 495 nanometres, and if I said that, then I would be speaking a truth prior to the discovery of that fact. — S

Yeah, so what? That’s what every theoretical physicist says, but I betcha a Benjamin he never calls it a “truth” before it is proven to be one. After the fact he can say such and such is true, thus beforehand it was an unconfirmed truth, which is exactly the opposite of what you say.

Unconfirmed truth is a contradiction in terms. No truth is unconfirmed and that which is either rationally or empirically unconfirmed cannot be a truth. That which is true now and will be under congruent circumstance is a necessary truth empirically, or a logical truth rationally. Substantiated hypotheticals can lead to reasonable predictions, but truths absolutely must meet the criteria of knowledge.
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I didn’t say “determine”; I said determinable. Under certain conditions there are things completely undeterminable, and those conditions have to do with human inability.
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This discussion was about realism and possible counter-arguments with respect to it. Knowledge and truth may enter into it but they are qualifiers for what they are. You brought truth here, apparently without understanding what it is.
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A worthy epistemological realist would be quick to realize the limited practical purpose is the sole paradigm from which he can work. The total of practical exercise is indeed very far larger than the arena available to a human, but the totality is quite irrelevant. Hell, we haven’t even got ourselves off this planet yet. But the deeper you go into realism the more you need some kind of idealism, because you’re bound by reason itself to reduce to conditions not met with realism alone.

This thread is called a THOUGHT experiment for a reason.

Before science there were humans that perceived blue things. Before geometry there were humans that perceived equi-sided formations. Even if we can say truthfully the scientific or geometric properties resided in the objects before we knew of them, we can truthfully only say so after The discovery of it. Blue things were blue long before wavelengths and frequencies were determinable, or even practically necessary. Square things were square long before geometers determined what it means to be square.

Because these things were perceived beforehand, the specific properties for these things are not required for them to be understood. That is the same as saying the real parts of these things are not required for the understanding of them, for the knowing of them for what they are merely by means of their appearance. A gal who wants a shade of blue for the nursery doesn’t give a crap about the frequency of it, and the guy setting tile in the hallway doesn’t give a crap about the fact of four equal angles, but both of them know what they want from each of those things, have an expectation from these things because of their appearance and NOT from their respective properties.

There is no suspicion in claiming to be a realist, the negation of which is absurd, but the denial of idealism which necessarily accompanies it, is highly suspicious. As long as an otherwise normally functioning human thinks, he is an idealist of some kind. Simply knowing something about blue and squares and all the rest, that cannot be derived, nor does not need to be derived, from its physical properties presupposes a source of knowledge having nothing to do with the empirical realism, that being merely the occassion.

Yeah, the counterfeiter made the Kantian “better calculation”, and if never found out, there is reason to suspect he was quite thoroughly pleased with himself, and only immoral upon reflection by another.

Nevertheless, the major names in moral/ethical philosophy are usually left with either assuming a naturally innate human quality in order to alleviate rational infinite regress, or, posit an innate human rational faculty with the specific job of alleviating rational infinite regress. For Aristotle, virtue, for Descartes, the evil demon, for Hume sentiment, for Kant the good of the will, Schopenhauer compassion....and so on.