I actually think your view is bread-and-butter nominalism. — Leontiskos

The first thread I created on the forum that was predecessor to this one was an exploration and defense of platonic realism. I say that universals are 'the ligatures of reason' - that they are what enable abstract judgement. I'm intending to start another thread on that so I won't go into too much detail.

Funny thing is, ChatGPT gets this right, particularly in its first two responses to you. — Leontiskos

I felt the salient part of the response was this:

Modern empirical philosophy grants particulars a kind of primary status. These particulars are real, and our task is to observe, measure, and understand them. The inherent reality of these objects is, in many ways, taken for granted.

Eckhart’s view, on the other hand, suggests that the inherent reality of particulars is derived and secondary. They are "mere nothings" compared to the greater, all-encompassing reality of God. — ChatGPT

For Aquinas, all material particulars owe their existence to God. He posits that not only did God create the world, but God also continually conserves it in existence. Without God's sustaining power, material things would revert to nothingness. Accordingly, in Aquinas, the ontological status of material particulars is contingent, dependent on God's creative and conserving act. My argument is that materialism grants material objects inherent existence, sans any 'creating and conserving act' of God. Is that not so? Furthermore, that with empiricism, objects are accorded a kind of absolute status that they would not be granted in A-T philosophy. That is what materialism means. (By the way, I recall in our first conversation, I referred to Jacques Maritain's essay, the Cultural Impact of Empiricism. I look to that for understanding of and support for my view of universals.)

Note that Scientism is closer to Realism than Nominalism — Leontiskos

I believe the exact opposite. It was the rejection of universals first by nominalists such as William of Ockham that was the predecessor to later empiricism. I've put the argument for the reality of universals many times on this forum. There's an academic paper by a scholar called Joshua Hocshchild, who writes from within the Catholic Intellectual tradition, called 'What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West' (available on academia). He quotes Richard Weaver's book Ideas have Consequences, which is also about the rejection of universals and the decline of metaphysics, who says:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

I see the decline of the belief in universals as the immediate precursor to materialism in the modern period. This is because it results in the inability to conceive of different modes of existence, such as the reality of intelligible objects. A compelling case is made for this in the 2009 book Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie.

As for Charles Pinter and realism v nominalism, the subject doesn't come up at all. But I am inclined towards the view that what he views as 'gestalts' - fundamental cognitive wholes - might have a relationship with the Forms or Ideas. It is something I'm intending to explore.

Finally, after 20 odd pages of discussion, you still seem to think idealism is saying that 'without an observer reality does not exist'. I do not say that.

"Fact" is an ambiguous word in that it can be taken to signify a statement of an actuality or simply an actuality; — Janus

Disagree. A fact, as the argument states, is specific.

Perhaps I don't! This is new territory to me - having been studying philosophy under my own steam for a good while, the fact that I find A-T philosophy persuasive has come as something of a surprise. Anyway, carry on, I hope there are others here who will provide further comment, I will continue to read.

But 'exists' means 'to have an identity' - to be this, as distinct from that. And I can't see how you can have that, without an observer. I mean, if you make any claim about existence, the first question is 'what do you mean by that?' And it's game over at that point. Again:

A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words.

This echoes the measurement issue in quantum mechanics - it's not until you make a measurement, or specify an outcome, that the object of analysis comes into existence. That is the thing that realists can't handle, so they invented the many-worlds interpretation just to avoid it.

If the "principle" has a separate existence can't we call it a "thing"? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm dubious about that but I won't divert DFpolis' thread until he's responded further.

a separate thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or ‘principle’. Beware reifications in this matter.

I have been exploring this question from the perspective of Aristotelian-Thomist (A-T) philosophy. I have been introduced to that by readings of Edward Feser and Jacques Maritain among others. I agree with your criticism of Cartesian dualism, which posits two fundamentally different kinds of substances. This dualistic framework, while addressing certain epistemological concerns of Descartes' time, inadvertently raised further metaphysical issues. Specifically, if the mind and body are so fundamentally different, how do they interact, especially in a mechanistic universe? The conflation of the Latin 'subtantia' as a translation of Aristotle's 'ouisia' with the everyday meaning of 'substance' has also been calamitous, giving rise to the oxymoron 'spiritual substance'.

This leads directly to criticisms like Ryle's "ghost in the machine" argument. By positing the mind (or soul) as a distinct substance, Cartesian dualism opens itself up to the critique of introducing an inexplicable, ethereal entity within the machine-like workings of the physical world.

So far, so good. But I'm not entirely on board with your description of physics and maths as being solely grounded in abstraction. Of course, abstraction is involved, but there is more to both than only that.

I've learned that hylomorphic dualism offers a different perspective. The soul is not a separate "thing" or "substance" in the way Cartesian dualism conceives it. Instead, it is the form of the body—a principle of organization, a blueprint. The rational element of this soul (nous) is dynamic, intimately involved in the act of knowing. When the intellect grasps the form of a particular, it is united with it (in the sense of knowing its essence). So in hylomorphic dualism, there's no need for an ethereal, ghostly substance to interact with the physical world because the soul, especially its rational component, is already intimately intermingled with the world through the processes of cognition and understanding. The soul's entwinement with the body doesn't necessitate a metaphysically problematic "interaction" because they aren't two completely separate realms to begin with.This makes the hylomorphic conception of the soul much more integrative and less prone to the pitfalls of Cartesian dualism.

It also depicts the intellect (nous) as that which is capable of grasping meaning. It is not a kind of 'substance' but a type of ability - unique, as far as we know, to h. sapiens (if present in rudimentary form in some other species). And it is an aspect of that intellectual faculty which enables mathematical abstraction in the first place, which is what has made mathematical physics so powerful and predictive. (On these grounds, I'm not persuaded by the various relativist or fictionalist accounts of mathematics.)

In the picture I'm drawing, abstractions (such as number) are indeed real - but they're not phenomenally existent. Rational sentient beings are able to grasp these ideas due to their power of insight and intelligence. But through that faculty, they are able to gain insight into a realm above and beyond that defined by the laws of physics alone. (This is reason why naturalist philosophers will generally deprecate platonic realism concerning number.)

So I'm in agreement in some respects, but not in others. I basically agree with your diagnosis of the shortcomings of Cartesian dualism, and its consequences, but I think there is an alternative philosophy of mind that also does justice to the power of mathematics and science, without succumbing to materialism.

Peter Hartcher, international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, puts a persuasive case that the motivation behind the Hamas invasion is actually to derail the prospect of a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This deal would threaten to encircle Iran, as the Saudis and Iran are sworn enemies. But in light of what is happening, the Saudis will have no choice but to postpone any such proposal.

...under Washington’s aegis, Israel has been negotiating a normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia, bringing the two traditional foes together.

This is a nightmarish prospect for Tehran. Friendly ties between Israel, the Saudis and the Americans would represent an entente cordiale between Iran’s three greatest enemies. Or, from Tehran’s point of view, it would be an axis of its enemies.

Iran’s ambitions to become the dominant power in the Middle East would turn to ash. So the ayatollahs decided to wreck the plan by launching a massive attack on Israel. Not directly, but by using Iran’s proxy forces abroad. ....

If there were any shadow of doubt that Hamas was acting hand-in-glove with Tehran, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad on Saturday told the BBC “that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran”. And in Tehran, Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Iran would continue to support Hamas “until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem”.

Four days before Saturday’s invasion, the supreme leader himself said: “The usurper regime is coming to an end. Today, the Palestinian youth and the anti-oppression, anti-occupation movement in Palestine is more energetic, more alive, and more prepared than ever during the past 70 or 80 years. God willing, the movement will achieve its goal.” ....

How does this help the ayatollahs in Tehran? The moment Israel’s air force began its reprisal attacks on Hamas, with missiles striking the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, it became untenable for Saudi Arabia to be seen cosying up to the “Zionist regime”. For now, at least, any rapprochement between Riyadh and Jerusalem is impossible. Iran, as a result, is no longer in imminent danger of encirclement. ....

He then talks about the possibility of Hezbollah becoming involved:

Amin Saikal says that Israel will be in dire straits if even just one more Iranian-backed guerrilla force attacks it now. “The risk of encirclement of Israel is there only if Hezbollah...enters the fight. It is in possession of more than 100,000 missiles, some quite sophisticated, long-range missiles. And we know that in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel tried to destroy Hezbollah but it only emerged stronger.

“So far, the exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah on the weekend has been very carefully calculated to not lead to a major conflict. But if the Hamas war with Israel goes on for more than two or three weeks, Hezbollah will come under pressure from its own fighters to join the war.” ...Iran also has other forces at its disposal, including militias in Syria, that it can activate without having to directly engage Israel. The ayatollah is in a strong position to escalate should he choose to do so. Israel could be at risk of dismemberment under assault from multiple sides.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/think-this-is-just-a-savage-new-round-of-the-israel-palestine-struggle-think-again-20231008-p5eams.html

Yes, who can forget Sharpiegate.



Beats even the Disinfectant Injection stand-up routine at the COVID briefings.

My approach is more influenced by Buddhist Studies in not positing unknowable entities, such as 'ideal minds' and assigning roles to them. That said, Peirce's intuition that the Universe itself is 'mind-like' - that our minds mirror its workings in some fundamental way - is persuasive to me. Peirce supported a modified form of scholastic realism concerning universals.

Absolutely. It's amazing how far he's gotten without, I think, any real strategy. I saw an interview recently with an ex-staffer who had been involved in briefing then President Trump on the logistics of the Afghan withdrawal. Of course, he would read absolutely nothing, so this staffer had to put together a Powerpoint which was more or less a comic book, with 'bad guys' and 'us' - Bam! Kapow! - otherwise Trump showed neither any interest nor comprehension (and as we all know now, that sad decision finally fell to Biden.)

Typical q-anon drivel. This is what Trump has helped usher in - the total disregard for fact. He had to, because if he were judged against the facts - which finally appears immanent - his entire schtick would evaporate. He lives in a fantasy world and persuades millions of others to be part of it. Too much television, I say ;-)

So Berkeley demonstrates that "matter" as a concept of something which exists independently of human minds is no more justified, nor even better than the concept of "the Mind of God". — Metaphysician Undercover

In passing it is worth noting that the current understanding of matter is represented by 'the standard model of particle physics.' And where do models exist, if not in minds? Hence, Richard Conn Henry's The Mental Universe and Bernard D'Espagnat, What we call Reality is Just a State of Mind.

if there isn't such a definition, then it's unclear to me exactly what objective idealists are arguing against or what their critics are arguing for. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you have any representatives of objective idealism in mind? Perhaps this snippet from the Wikipedia entry might provide grist for the mill:

Objective idealism starts with Plato’s theory of forms, which mantains that objectively existing but non-material "ideas" give form to reality, thus shaping its basic building blocks.

....

The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce defined his own version of objective idealism as follows:

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (Peirce, CP 6.25).

By "objective idealism", Peirce meant that material objects such as organisms have evolved out of mind, that is, out of feelings ("such as pain, blue, cheerfulness") that are immediately present to consciousness.[8] Contrary to Hegel, who identified mind with conceptual thinking or reason, Peirce identified it with feeling, and he claimed that at the origins of the world there was "a chaos of unpersonalized feelings", i.e., feelings that were not located in any individual subject.[8] Therefore, in the 1890s Peirce's philosophy referred to itself as objective idealism because it held that the mind comes first and the world is essentially mind (idealism) and the mind is independent of individuals (objectivism) — Wikipedia

Peirce's vision is congenial to my way of thought. What you see with the appearance of the first organisms is also the appearance of subjective awareness albeit in rudimentary form.

I take the term 'objective' at face value, that is, 'inherent in the object'.

This seems to be a definition of objectivity that requires too many metaphysical assumptions for me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I acknowledge that mine was an idiosyncratic definition, that 'inherent in the object' is not, in fact, the definition of 'objectivity'. But I still maintain that there are more and less objective ways of understanding. I referred above to the efficacy of the scientifically-developed COVID vaccines opposed to quack cures like hydrochloroquine - the scientifically-developed medicines are objectively more effective. I don't see how that can be disputed.

The philosophical issue I see with 'mind-independence' is this: Natural science might be perfectly justified in attempting to attain the hypothetical 'view from nowhere', that is, an understanding free of subjective, cultural, personal and other forms of bias. That is what I would designate 'methodological naturalism'. However, to make of that a metaphysical axiom - that science really sees 'the world' as it is and would be in the absence of any observer - is another matter entirely. In doing this, empiricism attempts to assign an absolute value to the objects of perception which are necessarily contingent. So trying to assign 'mind-independence' to the sensory domain is a performative contradiction, as any perception of it is necessarily contingent upon the senses and intellect (per Kant).

It's worth recalling that, in the classical tradition, objects of perception were regarded as being near to non-existent - they are ephemeral fleeting instances of the Forms. According to Afikan Spir, neoKantian philosopher, 'the empirical world has an illusory character, because phenomena are ever-changing, and empirical reality is unknowable.' Which, again, seems to find plenty of justification in the current state of physics!

Maybe 'minding' isn't right either but (a) it's a process, and I feel that much of what you write about is about process; (b) it relates to 'thinking' without imprisoning that thinking in a particular pseudo-place, allowing the body as well as the brain to get a look-in, indeed perhaps allowing the process to be free-floating in a Hegelian way as plaque flag references; (c) it's got an element of attention or caring in it, 'Yes I do mind', a touch of Heidegger's 'sorge' if we're prepared to mention the old Nazi - and for me that helps, we're talking about creatures who go about the world and aren't necessarily sitting back in their armchairs, puffing on their pipes, reflecting on great Matters, they are rather coping in the here and now with what matters to them, inventing ideas to explain what happens as they move around, improvising, improving, bouncing ideas off each other. — mcdoodle

Nice to see you back, and well said! :clap:

Is there another reason you do not agree with indirect realism? Or is it simply that I’m misconstruing what you meant by it? — Mww

No, that's a pretty good analysis. Bernardo Kastrup will say that 'tears' are the 'external appearance' of sadness, but that they are not, in themselves, the actual feeling of sadness. They are how my sadness appears to another, whereas I experience it first person. I suppose that is dual-aspect monism isn't it?

The analytic dudes got ahold of it, sent it off into the metaphysical puckerbrush. — Mww

:lol:

If the brain is itself mere appearance, then of course the brain-created world no longer makes sense. — plaque flag

The brain doesn't appear at all. Not unless you're someone who is studying brains.

Yes, commonsense tends to forget or not notice the transparent subject, which I equate with the very being of the world. — plaque flag

Well, that's what I meant from the outset.

But do you get the drift of the argument?

But aren't you explicitly positing two things ? The representing and the represented ? — plaque flag

No. If the world as it is in itself is unknown to us, then it's not a thing. It neither exists nor does not exist.

But you seem (to me) to be flitting from position to position. — plaque flag

When you made that remark, I had copied in a section of Pinter's text, which, incidentally, was introduced by him referring to Wittgenstein's dictum that 'the world is the totality of facts', to wit:

In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed*. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.

A fact does not exist if it has not been articulated, that is, if it does not exist explicitly as a verbal entity sufficiently detailed that it can be made to correspond (approximately) to something in the external world. Facts don’t exist in the absence of their statement (because a statement cuts the fact out of the background), and the statement cannot exist apart from an agent with a purpose. When an intentional agent sets out to carve a specific object from the background world, he has a Gestalt concept of the object—and from the latter, he acts to carve the object out. Thus, a fact cannot exist in a universe without living observers.

A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

What do you make of this?

The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself ~ Kant — plaque flag

that's more or less what I'm arguing in the OP.

I don't agree with 'indirect realism' because it posits two separate things - the reality and its representation. As if we could compare them.

Of course you can compare a photograph or a painting with the actual subject that it's supposed to represent, but that is not at issue.

I see no advantage in introducing the term, 'indirect realism'.

Which 'primary source' describes Kant as an 'indirect realist'? Is it something Kant says about himself? The primary source I'm referring to is this:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. — CPR, A369

Having distinguished between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, Kant then goes on to introduce the concept of empirical realism:

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. — A370

"The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility" - you will observe that this is the view almost universally defended by others in this debate.

But you offer some kind of Kantian indirect realism — plaque flag

But Kant doesn't call himself, and is not referred to, as an indirect realist. Kant's position is known as transcendental idealism.

But maybe saying mind is 'foundational' to existence is a little misleading ? — plaque flag

What I'm arguing against is the commonly-held view that mind is a product of physical causes. That is the general view of evolutionary naturalism, is it not? I hold to a view that the mind transcends physical causes. But I'm also not wishing to appeal to theism.

I don't think it does. Equations are forms; Classificatory systems are forms. They use another language is all. — unenlightened

That's an idea that I'm pursuing; that what Plato called 'forms' are really more like 'intellectual principles' and the like. But still, science generally, since Galileo, has strongly rejected anything sounding like Aristotelian matter-form dualism, and there's nothing corresponding to the Scholastic idea of the 'rational soul' in scientific theory. It's grounded in naturalism, and the existence of 'soul' is rejected as a matter of definition.

Some kind of elusive urstuff is Really Out There --- as in Kant, who does not want to be mistaken for an idealist. — plaque flag

As the cognitive scientists say, in that video presentation I mentioned, of course there is an external world, but we don't see it as it is.

The reason I don't call that, or my view of that, indirect realism, is because that posits two things - one, the real world, and two, the representation or image of it. But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'.

The Mind and Cosmic Order intro again - 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer.'

My argument is simpy that the mind or brain assimilates sensory and rational information and from this constructs what we understand as 'the world'. I'm not denying that there is a world apart from the mind, but saying that whatever we think or say about that purported world absent any mind is meaningless. I'm struggling to understand what about this is controversial or confusing, it seems very straightforward to me.

Kant... does not want to be mistaken for an idealist — plaque flag

In the second edition of the CPR, Kant took pains to distinguish himself from Berkeley, because critics accused him of being like Berkeley, whom Kant described as a 'problematic idealist' on account of Berkeley saying that a world outside himself is dubious or impossible to know. But Kant described himself as transcendental idealist, and differentiated that from what he described as 'problematical idealism'. You can find details here.

saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it — Angelo Cannata

Time comprises the duration between instances, space the distance between points, right? So, how can those have objective reality without an observing mind that perceives the relation between given instances and specific points? It seems to me that as all of these require the connection of points in space and instances in time, that it is only a mind that can ascertain these relations, as without there being a scale or perspective, what is nearer and further or smaller and larger, sooner or later, an immense period of time, or a minute period?

As Kant puts it at the beginning of his critique:

What then are time and space? Are they real existences? Or, are they merely relations or determinations of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or, are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any object.'

He concludes 'Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other'.

I take it from this, and please correct me if I am wrong, that Kant denies to space and time a purely objective reality; that, in other words, space and time have an inextricably subjective ground. Hence perspective can't really be avoided.

This translates in my mind into a description of the scientific method. — unenlightened

Except that scientific method eschews the notion of there being intelligible forms, per se.

It doesn't really matter if the distinction is artificial, so long as an appreciable number of designata are understood by the term, and able to be spoken about. — Leontiskos

One of the themes I'm studying in Aristotelian-Thomist (A-T) philosophy, is of the way that the intellect (nous) knows the forms or intelligible principles of things. I will probably start a thread on this topic, but here is a passage in a text on Thomist psychology that I find highly persuasive.

To hark back to your 'boulder' example - I suspect that, if we peruse the texts on classical epistemology, we won't find any passages that concern the reality or otherwise of boulders. I would further suspect that this is because 'a boulder' is simply the accidental form of the idea 'stone', the essential characteristics of which are impenetrability, heaviness, and so on. But the nature of stones has not been something of much discussion, I don't think. It reminds me of the question in The Parmenides as to whether 'hair, mud and dirt' have forms.

As I mentioned above, one of the hallmarks of modern philosophy is that objects come to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the pre-modern point of view, they have no real being of their own. As Meister Eckhardt said, 'beings are mere nothings'.

I put this to ChatGPT4. You might be interested in perusing the dialogue.

I happened on this presentation about the 'Register Theory' of Jacques Lacan. In it, there is, I think, a particularly vivid depiction of 'the Real'. The accented voice-over might be a little grating, but I for one learned a lot from it, never having encountered Jacques Lacan previously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD9rMahFFHc

My objection is that it seems to me like the influence between the supposedly "mind independent" objects and phenomenal experience is a two way street. E.g., you don't like how your wall looks so you paint it, people think mountains are pretty so they photograph them, etc. The two causally flow into each other without distinction, which is what monist naturalism seems to suggest should happen.

Any division seems artificial to me,conflating a epistemic distinction with an ontological one. To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In my view, there's a very deep and profound underlying reason behind this conundrum. I think it has to do with the fact that in earlier times, as the world was seen as an expression of the Divine Will, then humans understood the world in a more personalistic way - there wasn't the same sense of separateness and 'otherness'.

One of the key quotes I often hail back to is the 'Cartesian anxiety' which 'refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other" (From Richard J Bernstein Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, 1983).

Thomist philosophy did not suffer from this 'anxiety' because it had preserved the sense of the 'union of knower and known' from Aristotelian philosophy. But remember, this union was on the immaterial plane, the union of the intellect with the Forms of particulars. With the nominalist/empiricist revolution of late medieval and early modern periods, and the abandonment of scholastic realism, objects came to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the earlier point of view, they have no real being of their own.

That's the longer thesis that I'm working towards.

I understand that, but if he is writing a book on the mind-world relation then in my opinion he is a philosopher. — Leontiskos

Oh, and yes, I grant that, and also that I'm obviously putting forward his argument as a philosophical argument.

Going back to:

If [abstruse theory], then [boulders cannot have shape]
[Abstruse theory]
Therefore, [Boulders cannot have shape] — Leontiskos

The reason that I compared it to Johnson's 'argument from the stone', is because the argument is predicated on the assertion that 'boulders obviously do have shape', meaning that the [abstruse theory] is required to deny an apparently obvious fact. That's the sense in which this argument is like 'the appeal to the stone', the difference being, instead of kicking the stone, you simply gesture towards it. But it is basically the same argument, with the difference that instead of appealing to the stone's hardness, you're appealing to its shape. The reason it is said not to be an effective response, is that it does not counter the claim that what we experience as an external shape is actually an idea or sensation generated in our sensory-intellectual system. What Berkeley actually denied was the existence of material substance that exists independently of being perceived. In other words, he didn't deny the existence of the rock as an idea or perception in our minds. He denied the existence of the rock as an independent material entity outside of our perception. (For Berkeley, a rock "exists" insofar as it is perceived by a mind. If no one is perceiving the rock, God, who perceives everything always, ensures its continuous existence by constantly perceiving it.)

The point at issue is that one cannot simply <present a theory as a justification for excluding facts>. — Leontiskos

As noted previously, it is the nature of 'facts' that is one of the points at issue (if not the main point!) But part of Pinter's case is that there are no facts in the absence of the observer (as detailed in this earlier post.) That is the point at issue.

which part of the mind does the creating the world process? — Corvus

If you mean, how does the mind (or brain) create or construct the world - isn't that pretty much what the whole brain is involved in? There are many things the brain does beneath the threshhold of conscious awareness - particularly the brain-stem and autonomic systems in the brain. We're not aware of growth, metabolism, and many other functions, not to mention the sub-conscious activities of the mind. The processing involved in conscious attention is only one part of what the brain does.

This leads to a particular set of functions that I think is philosophically interesting. That is the ability of the brain to maintain the 'subjective unity of experience'. We are self-aware as a unified whole - perception of shape, colour and movement appear to us as a unified whole (or gestalt) even though the sub-systems of the brain which process these are separate. Neuroscience hasn't identified the particular brain system that provides for this unification. It's called the 'neural binding problem' and is recognised as a scientific validation of the hard problem of consciousness (note the reference to Chalmers below):

There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons and Rensink 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries 2009; Engel and Singer 2001).

Traditionally, the NBP (neural binding problem) concerns instantaneous perception and does not consider integration over saccades. But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. As is well known, current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience and this discrepancy between science and experience is also called the “explanatory gap” and “the hard problem” (Chalmers 1996). There is continuing effort to elucidate the neural correlates of conscious experience; these often invoke some version of temporal synchrony as discussed above.

There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.

But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the NBP really is a scientific mystery at this time. — The Neural Binding Problem(s)

Philosophers like Pinter — Leontiskos

Charles Pinter is not a philosopher - he's a mathematician with a long interest in neural modelling; all of his previous books were on algebra. And as I said, I can't do justice to all the material in his book with a few extracts. But his basic idea, and that of the neuro-scientists in the Big Think video that I posted, is not that difficult to state: that the brain/mind receives input from the environment and then constructs its world on that basis. This complex neural construction is what constitutes reality for us. These scientists do not deny that there is an external reality, but show that this is only one aspect of the totality of experience. This is why the neuroscience of cognition has something in common with Kant's philosophy (although they will also differ in important respects). Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object!


----

Actually, a rather poignant note - I have just found that Charles Pinter died, aged 91, in July 2023. After reading his book, I emailed him via his website (now apparently taken down) and received this reply, in June 2022:

Dear Wayfarer

I thank you very much for your kind letter about my book “Mind & the Cosmic Order”. As you wade further into the book, I hope you will find it clear and comprehensible. If I make any claims in the book that you would like to question or challenge, please feel free to write to me, and I will carefully think about your point of view and will respond as best I am able.

I am happy to learn that you are a student of Buddhism. I personally have been deeply influenced by Buddhist teachings, and the cornerstone of my own personal ethic is to recognize the absolute value of every sentient being.

If you have any general comments about the book as a whole, it would be very kind if you could send a brief review to the Amazon review page of my book. And once again, please feel free to write to me if there is any issue in the book that you’d like to discuss further.
Cordially,
Charles

I did indeed write an Amazon review, which can be found here. (There is also a review by one Barry N. Bishop who indignantly rejects Pinter's idealism. It is and always will be a perennial dispute. The review above mine, by McIntyre, is a good synopsis.)

When I'm working with another carpenter and I ask her to pass me the saw, she does not pass me the router. When I throw the ball for my dog he sees it as a ball to be chased, not a food bowl to be eaten from. No social coordination at all would be possible if humans and animals did not see the same things in their environments. — Janus

:up:

S(b): The boulder has shape in itself

S(b) can be known. It is known via a contingent and finite perspective. Therefore contingent and finite perspectives do not prevent us from knowing reality in itself. — Leontiskos

But you're simply appealing to some fact or other. That a particular thing has a particular shape. But as already stated, 'In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. ...a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.' You can't argue from outside that framework, as you're trying to do. As I said before, we need to take off our spectacles and look at them, and it's a difficult thing to do.

And there you go, patronizing me again. — baker

I'm attempting to moderate a thread by keeping it on track. There's a very long multi-year thread about DJT, let's keep comments about him in that thread.

Talk about upholding taboos! — baker

I think you're capable of highly insightful and incisive contributions but right now you're just firing off random questions, dragging Trump in for mention, for instance.

That makes two of us :brow:

Even the "extinguishment" of the grasping mind (as in Nirvana) would leave us without the means for knowing what lies on the other side of the closed door. — Gnomon

Steady on, old chap. 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'.

The idea was to create a discussion on my essay. I tried to post it here but it was too long. Do you have any suggestions that would enable me to post my essay of 6 pages here? Thank you — Garvin Rampersad

Indeed - just pick one or two of the most important themes and provide them. Certainly not all six pages, but you ought to be able to produce some kind of abstract or summary, or even 'part one', submit it for discussion, and then either start a new topic or keep building on this one to introduce further material. Forums don't do well with large walls of text, but maybe 1000-1400 words would be ok. Use plenty of paragraph breaks.

So when people talk about politics, they don't have perception? — baker

You're muddying the waters :rage:

The disagreement is always over their precise nature. One groups says that the rational entity prevents us from knowing reality as it is in itself; the other group says that it does not. — Leontiskos

The problem there is that you're trying to assume a perspective outside both, in order to arrive at which one of the two is correct. And I don't think that can be done, in this case. (Oh, and Plaque Flag and I go back at least 10 years now. He's a very interesting contributor, although somewhat prone to digression ;-) )

What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution....
— Wayfarer

I think this is so by design, because otherwise, any kind of normativity is impossible. — baker

Not so. It is specific feature of modern and post-industrial culture with its emphasis on scientific instrumentalism. In earlier cultures, the 'is/ought' gap had not yet appeared, because it was presumed that what one ought to do, and what is the case, are connected: 'In the Indian context it would have been axiomatic that liberation comes from discerning how things actually are, the true nature of things. That seeing things how they are has soteriological benefits would have been expected, and is just another way of articulating the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ dimension of Indian Dharma. The ‘ought’ (pragmatic benefit) is never cut adrift from the ‘is’ (cognitive factual truth).'

but that, absent an observer, whatever exists is unintelligible and meaningless as a matter of fact and principle.
— Wayfarer
How do you propose to build a system of morality based on the above idea? — baker

Many pre-modern moral systems never doubted it - the idea that the universe comprises dumb stuff directed solely by physical forces is a very recent one. (It has always been around, but had never before become dominant.)

Husserl's notion of the transcendence of the object is helpful here. — plaque flag

As also his depiction of 'the natural attitude', which I see as the basis the objections thus far:

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etc. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. — Key Ideas in Phenomenology

I explicitly disagreed with Pinter's claim that objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, and you agreed with my argument. We agreed that unobserved boulders have shape. Or rather, so as not to put words in your mouth, you said, "It's safe to assume." — Leontiskos

'No features', is the expression Charles Pinter uses - shape being one. Features correspond to functions of the animal sensorium, but this thesis is developed over several chapters, and not one I can summarise in a few words.

I acknowledge at the outset that the universe pre-exists us: 'though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective.'

I think it's the idea of 'an implicit perspective' that you're calling into question.

But Pinter's featureless stuff here is empty of content — plaque flag

Of course! That's the point!

In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed*. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.

A fact does not exist if it has not been articulated, that is, if it does not exist explicitly as a verbal entity sufficiently detailed that it can be made to correspond (approximately) to something in the external world. Facts don’t exist in the absence of their statement (because a statement cuts the fact out of the background), and the statement cannot exist apart from an agent with a purpose. When an intentional agent sets out to carve a specific object from the background world, he has a Gestalt concept of the object—and from the latter, he acts to carve the object out. Thus, a fact cannot exist in a universe without living observers.

A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

*That is what I mean by 'existence being complex'. It's a manifold, not an off/on phenomenon.

So, facts come into being with us. Not 'the universe', but there is no meaningful sense of existence in the universe prior to this act of formulation (as naturalism never tires of telling us).