I just don't understand your issue of reification of the subject when you are the one that has defined a subject as an object, or a thing. — Harry Hindu

I never said that. Plainly from the perspective of a subject, myself, other beings appear in some sense as objects, but we do not regard other beings as objects, which is why we refer to them with personal pronouns rather than as ‘it’ or ‘thing’. (For that matter, reflect on why humans and some of the higher animals are called ‘beings’.) Philosophy has long been aware of the paradox that we ourselves are subjects of experience, but are also objects in the eyes of other subjects.

The basic principle is found in Indian philosophy, in the Upaniṣads, where it is stated that ‘the hand cannot grasp itself, the eye cannot see itself ’ ( Source). It’s also been articulated in phenomenology. Here’s a reading on it.

Most forms of idealism do not deny the reality of matter, they simply affirm that matter is logically dependent on mind. This is the real issue of modern metaphysics. The laity tend to place matter as first, assuming that mind evolved through some form of emergence. But this illogical position renders the entire universe as unintelligible (cosmological argument being the ultimate demonstration), so the higher educated tend to adopt some form of idealism. You'll see idealism as the most common perspective of physicists, placing the wave function (ideal) as prior to the material object (particle). — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree. I don’t know if it’s the most common, but it’s certainly strongly represented amongst them.

The question never seems to occur to the poor. I guess they’re too busy to worry about it.

But I suppose a less flippant answer might reference Karl Durkheim’s ‘anomie’ - the sense of drift, meaninglessness and absence of purpose that he posits is characteristic of modern cultures on a large scale. It’s almost like we evolved through thousands of generations of incredibly difficult lives to the point where we’ve forgotten why. Perhaps if we had recall of how hard life was for all of those tens of thousands of years we’d be less inclined to take the life we now have for granted.

‘Oh, the same one that gives you a Command-Z in real life.’

Well you or I could be either, the point was they spent their days trying to outwit and beat each other up then walked home together.

I love the eternal Janus @Wayfarer saga. — Noble Dust

Even under the aegis of materialism — Janus

The only reason you say that is because both you and Dennett have the residue of Christian faith.

That's only one aspect of it. Materialism treats humans as objects, rather than recognising them as subjects of experience, which in its view has no particular significance. “I’m a robot, and you’re a robot", says Daniel Dennett, "but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?” I think the answer is obvious, but apparently he doesn't, presumably on account of the blind spot we have discussed before.

(Actually in the following paragraph, he says had he not grown up in an academic household, he'd probably have been an engineer. Now, there's a man who's obviously missed his calling!)

if I am not mistaken believes there is an afterlife — Janus

I don't think I've ever used that as a premise in an argument. But I also don't believe that the human is simply a physical body - I suppose that means, and I will acknowledge, that soul has an actual referent. But then, I'm also coming around to the understanding that nothing whatever is 'purely physical'.

As for materialism, I reject it on these grounds:

The debate between Idealism and Materialism may seem abstract and academic, far removed from everyday life, but on closer inspection the opposite is true. From the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries onward, Materialism has steadily grown into the dominant worldview of Western civilization. As such, Materialism has exerted an enormous – and very harmful – influence in our culture. It is not for nothing that the word “materialism” is synonymous with greed and the exclusive focus on material possessions. The most important cultural consequence of scientific Materialism has undoubtedly been modern individualism, an extreme form of the dualistic belief in the reality of the separate ego.

The seemingly separate ego experiences itself as detached from – and at odds with – an indifferent outside world, in which it must struggle to maintain itself. Materialism naturally leads to belief in separation because this philosophy sees Consciousness as a by-product of the brain. In that case, Consciousness is by definition tied to an individual and mortal body, and thus different from individual to individual. In this way, Materialism is in large part responsible for the suffering that the dualistic belief in separation entails: egoism, greed, exploitation, feelings of inferiority, hatred, abuse, violence… These are all thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns that originate in the conviction that I – as this person, with this body and this mind – am nothing more than this individual being, separate from the other people around me, separate from nature, separate from the Universe, separate from the Divine... — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

I'm going to spend a bit of time reading Kastrup's thesis.

why thanks, Banno, that is very touching for you to say that. Deeply appreciated. :pray:

That book I referred to before, Manjir Kumar's Quantum, is subtitled 'the great debate about the nature of reality'. Many popular books about quantum physics have similar sub-titles. And I would propose that the reason quantum physics is controversial is because it undermines the idea of the atom as the fundamental unit of matter or an eternally-existing material point-particle. And no, I'm not a physicist, but that is a question of interpretation, about what the theory means.

Likewise, evolutionary theory. I'm not pushing any kind of ID barrow, just finished reading Cro Magnon by Brian Fagan (recommended!) But again - what does evolution mean? Is it really just the output of dumb stuff that became combined under certain circumstances, like a kind of runaway chemical reaction. That's what Daniel Dennett says. The contrary to that is not necessarily creationism.

So the question 'what from?' has to take all of those kinds of sub-questions into account.

I ask "what from?" — Banno

Ask almost anyone, and they will say, 'from atoms'. That is the view of the proverbial man in the street isn't it? So I suppose to really get down to tin tacks, that's where the question starts, isn't it?

And that thing seems to be not too dissimilar to what Hello Human called the "external material world". — Banno

But that is not an explanatory principle.

I'm still puzzled by your idealism that is apparently the same as realism. — Banno

That's because you're still criticizing a strawman version of idealism. What I believe idealism argues is that the fundamental constituents of reality are experiential. Not inanimate material entities, and not objects - there are no fundamental objects, as such. Whereas the mainstream view of neo-darwinian materialism is that objectively-existent material entities are fundamental and that the mind is a product of that, which has evolved through a fundamentally physical process. Hope that is clear.

There are some descriptions that are much more important than others. When I used to debate on Dharmawheel, there were Buddhist scholastics who would often insist that, in line with their doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) that 'on analysis, [any object] is lacking in essence'. I would ask them, say you have ingested a poison, and you're presented with two identical bottles, one of which contains the antidote, the other only a placebo. Surely in this case even though both bottles may be 'devoid of essence', one of them contains something important, and knowing which one it is, is of the utmost importance at that time. Never did get a satisfactory answer to that question.

The point of idealism is that the things that exist are the things we are conscious of, isn't it? — Banno

Not quite. It's more that facts exist for a mind, which picks out something specific or particular which is designated a fact or an object. 'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations' says Kant. But I think this 'vanishing' also has to be interpreted carefully: it's not that the world suddently ceases to exist, but the nature of existence is within the conception that the mind has of it. The sense in which the world exists outside of that is by definition unknown to us (Kant's (in)famous 'things in themselves'.)

Numbers and other objective facts are uniform and invariant structures in the mind. In this, they, along with many other artifacts of language, science and culture, are held in common with other like minds. (However, 'if lions could speak' .....)

The subject is third-person when referred to in the third person.

What is an experience? Would it be fair to define experience as the information of the subject/object/person relative to the world? — Harry Hindu

I don't know if it can be defined as that, but certainly experience implies the subject for whom, or to whom, it occurs.

that there are things outside of our minds, or not? — Banno

Where, precisely, is the boundary?

That's why I made the point, x pages back, about the emergence of consciousness as being marked by the boundary between self and non-self. That awareness is one of the fundamental constituents of consciousness, it is also something that exists within mind.

All philosophy is about sentences to you. It's just language-games.

Minds, tables , bodies , quarks and chairs are all contestable realities, conceptual abstractions that we make use of in various ways , which differ in ways subtle or profound from occasion to occasion, from culture to culture and from era to era. — Joshs

In Charles Pinter's book these are all gestalts. They are the way the mind organises inputs into wholes - all minds, not just human minds, but even insect and reptile minds. In this view, the physical world really does exist outside that but in a manner which is by definition unknowable as it contains no features, structure, or objects. In this sense, creatures being order and meaning to the physical universe, but that order and meaning is wholly the function of the mind,

I think there are things that are the case and yet are not believed (held to be true) by any mind. — Banno

Surely - as a surmise. But by definition, you will never know that, because if you did know it, then it would be beheld by a mind.

So over to you to explain what "mind-independent reality" might be. — Banno

Scientific realism is the view that the physical universe is an objective reality that exists independentl of any cognitive or intellectual act on our part. It exists independently of anything going on in our minds. Realism often includes the idea that it is a pre-existing reality, that is to say, pre-existing our observation of it. Einstein captured this last idea by saying, “I like to think the moon is there even if I’m not looking at it.”

In contrast, idealism is the view that the physical universe exists within the mind - a mind, or the minds of all beings, or some variety of that. Regardless of which conception of mind, the key idea of idealism is that mind is fundamental and does not derive from matter or from physical universe energy.

The 'great debate' between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, which continued for decades after the 1920's, revolved around this question. It was Einstein's scientific realism, the assumption of a world existing independently of any mind, that was called into question by quantum physics. (See Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality.)

But of course it goes without saying that as soon as reference is made to physics, you'll duck the conversation because 'we're not physicists'. Note that if you try and discuss these questions on Physics Forum the thread will be locked immediately 'because they're not philosophers'. It's a very convenient way of avoiding one of the fundamental philosophical questions of the modern age.

We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices. — Bryan Magee, Schoenhauer's Philosophy

I'm merely asking what you mean by YOUR use of the scribble, "subject" — Harry Hindu

By subject, I refer to the subject of experience. Conventionally, the person, the being, to whom experiences occur.

As I've explained previously, Kant's transcendental idealism does not deny the existence of the material world. Indeed most idealisms that I'm interested in do not. They don't propose that the material world is 'merely' or 'only' a product of one's individual mind, or that it's a fantasy or an illusion, in any gross sense.

In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant included a 'critique of problematical idealism' to distance his work from Berkeley's. (This is the item I had said was 'too technical' in a previous discussion. A summary can be found here.)

So Kant doesn't deny the existence of the material world but I think he rightfully denies what we would call the 'mind-independent reality' of the material world. That is the gist of his 'copernican revolution in philosophy'. So he acknowledges the existence of the world but denies that it has intrinsic or inherent reality.

That is why it is possible for Kant to be at once an empirical realist and a transcendental idealist. He doesn't deny the facts of empirical science - Kant was extremely diligent in attempting to accomodate them. It should be recalled Kant's theory of nebular formation (modified by LaPlace) is still part of current science, and that he lectured in scientific subjects (then known as natural philosophy).

I've just now found Bernardo Kastrup's doctoral dissertation on analytical idealism. It was supervised and critiqued by Galen Strawson, David Chalmers, Daniel Stoljar, and many others. Kastrup is, I think, a credible exponent of idealism in the modern context (if you're interested.)

(I should note that I'm in agreement with many aspects of Josh's criticisms but not all. My orientation in philosophy has always been shaped by the acceptance of the tenets, or the idea of, a perennial philosophy, and you won't as a rule find that in post-modernism.)

But money is real, as are mortgages and property. Yet all are conventions. — Banno

Of course! Many items of the furniture of our minds are real.

And we are back to the still unanswered question: constructed from what? — Banno

Atoms? The fundamental particles - or is it fields now? - of physics? What do you think?

Empiricism rejects the reality of number on the basis that numbers don't exist within the time-space framework
— Wayfarer

That's not right, of course. — Banno

Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all? — What is Math?

And again the question arises, what is it you mean when you say that numbers are real? Real as opposed to what? — Banno

Real as opposed to useful conventions.

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. ...Some philosophers, called "rationalists", claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. ...The indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics is an attempt to justify our mathematical beliefs about abstract objects, while avoiding any appeal to rational insight. — The Indispensability Argument in Philosophy of Mathematics

Yet idealism holds as a minimal position that reality is mind-dependent. Reality is of course what is said by true sentences. — Banno

You're interpreting that too literally. It doesn't mean the existence of the summit of Mt Everest doesn't exist because you yourself have never seen it. In this context, 'mind' is not 'the contents of your conscious or discursive thought'. Idealism refers to the process by which the mind generates or constructs the totality of your understanding, including the subconscious, unconscious and parasympathetic processes that give rise to your conscious awareness. There are any number of facts that one may be completely unaware of and this remain true.

Typical of you - when argument fails, resort to ad hominems.

So, my premises are rock solid. — Bartricks

They are vacuous. Your op says nothing.

Do you think that others do not deserve respect, good will and happiness? — Bartricks

Very cunning. If I don't agree with you, then I'm culpable, I believe the innocent ought to suffer.

It is incumbent on you to make a case. You're simply cashing out the generally-accepted notion of human rights - borne of the Christian social philosophy in large part- as it if is a natural law and an obvious conclusion. But you're not offering any grounds for that. Why does anyone deserve anything? And besides, in the Christian religion, there *is* a reason why the innocent come to harm, namely, the doctrine of original sin - you may not agree with it, but it is part of that framework, it provides a rationale for why humans are liable to suffer.

You said:

To procreate is to create a huge injustice. It is to create a debt that you know you can't pay. — Bartricks

Which I paraphrased as

why should anyone be born in the first place, given that life often sucks. — Wayfarer

And it is a direct paraphrase, it simply re-states the sentiment in different words.

OK, then.

A person who has done nothing deserves respect, good will, happiness and so on. — Bartricks

Says who? From whom? On what basis?

You're not focusing on my argument but raising broader questions to do with the nature of morality. — Bartricks

Because your arguments rely on broader issues to do with the nature of morality. It's all about what ought to happen, what should be case, what is deserved, all of which are moral considerations.

So, you're not a Christian, but you believe there's a natural moral law. What is the justification for that? Why do you think it's a matter of what is or isn't deserved, as distinct from something that simply happens through no agency?

So people can't get past the word "deserve" because it sounds like something to do with retribution. — schopenhauer1

It sounds like something to do with agency. Or with justice.

If we all stopped wasting time here the whole place would grind to a halt. :lol:

provide an example of a person who is beyond dispute innocent, yet deserves to come to harm. — Bartricks

You're confusing legal innocence with the natural condition of humans. The natural condition is such the beings - not only human beings - can be subject to harms, such as illness, accident, predation, and so on. There have been countless persons killed or injured through accident or predation or disease throughout history. But that is not a form of punishment, so the question of whether such misadventures are 'deserved' or not is an empty one. Harm is not necessarily a matter of retribution or punishment for wrong-doing, it's something that can happen for a variety of reasons.

Your argument really is more like, why should anyone be born in the first place, given that life often sucks.

OK, but I still didn't get a clear "yes" or "no". — Andrew M

It's the kind of question to which an answer can only take the form 'it depends on what you mean'.

Let me re-iterate - the argument from mathematical Platonism is based on the straightforward observation that numbers are real, but not in the same sense that objects are. They're real in the sense that they're the same for any rational intelligence, but they don't exist as material objects, because they can only be grasped by the mind.

Empiricism rejects the reality of number on the basis that numbers don't exist within the time-space framework. But to me, that simply signifies a basic deficiency in their philosophy. (That is the subject of the articles under 'Philosophy of Maths and Universals' on my profile, especially the last.)

But the criticism of the quantification of nature by modern science is a different matter again. That is the subject of a lot of commentary in philosophy of science. Even though Platonism is involved in both cases, they're separate arguments. The former argument is a rationalist philosophical argument for the reality of intelligible objects, the latter is a critique of scientific materialism.

It seems to me that the way forward is to reject the Cartesian framework in its entirety, not emphasize the subject horn of its spurious subject/object antithesis. — Andrew M

No, don't agree with that, it's a matter of interpreting it correctly. I agree that there are many implicit problems in 'post-Cartesian' discourse. As I said, my view is that many misinterpret Descartes by depicting 'res cogitans' is a kind of spooky substance or actual ghostly thing, and then wondering how 'it' can 'react' with 'physical matter' (which is a problem that was also inherent in Descartes himself, as observed by Husserl). Once you adopt that framework, Cartesian dualism seems clearly absurd - but the problem is one of interpretation. There really are subjects of experience, and objects of experience, you can't simply turn a blind eye to it because it's too hard to figure out.

Again, this is where the book I am referring to, Mind and the Cosmic Order, brings a lot of clarity. See the quotation in the post above. (It doesn't have anything to say on Platonism as such, although it does mention both Descartes and Kant, but it makes a great deal of sense in terms of mind and world.)

Dualism is a useful explanatory metaphor provided it is understood correctly.

'The meaningful connectedness between things — the hierarchical organization of all we perceive — is the result of the Gestalt nature of perception and thought, and exists only as a property of mind.'

'The external universe, outside the scope of observation by any living being, is the residue after all sensable qualities have been taken away. What remain are only formal entities which have no concrete interpretation. Thus, the universe uncoupled from observation is an abstract system in search of an interpretation. ...The material universe, of course, has an independent existence quite apart from observers. But the important lesson for us is that this external universe is very different from the way we imagine it to be. The mind of living beings projects all manner of sensable features onto material objects, hence we perceive the world with all the properties we have projected onto it—but objectively the unobserved universe is formless and featureless.'

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 85). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

OK. So, on your view, a human being is also implicit in mathematical and logical statements? — Andrew M

Interesting question!

Think about what the 'mathematization of nature' that was the basis of the scientific revolution enabled. It was the ability to arrive at constant, mathematically-sound frameworks and descriptions that were universally valid. Newton's laws of motion were paradigmatic. Combine that with the Galilean/Lockean division of the world into the primary and secondary attributes, along with the discovery of Cartesian algebraic geometry. Then introduce Cartesian dualism and you have fundamental elements of the framework of the early modern worldview which was thought to be theoretically infinite and potentially all-knowing. But the problem with it is, there's no actual place in it for humans, as the observing mind has already been tacitly excluded from consideration. So in that context, the idea of the human observer was not even a consideration. In this framework, and after the discovery of the principles of biological evolution, the human is dealt with simply as another object of scientific analysis. That is still very much the view of modern scientific materialism or physicalism.

The role of the subject is was rediscovered in late modernity and the early 20th Century. You in particular would appreciate how that reared its head in respect of the 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which had to consider the observing subject in its reckonings. More generally there has been what's called a 'rediscovery of the subject' through phenomenology and existentialism. But my remark that started this particular digression was about the human 'being eliminated' - which is of course a reference to eliminative materialism. In that view the quantitative, objective framework is the sole grounds of valid knowledge. Even if that's an extreme form, the objectivist framework is still highly influential in modern culture. And in that framework, the role of the subject is always bracketed out or neglected. That is the subject of the essay The Blind Spot of Science in the Neglect of Lived Experience.

Check out http://www.andrewnewberg.com/

Classical philosophy said there are different levels or modes of being. They only understood there are different levels or modes of being if you already agree with the conclusion. Otherwise it begs the question. — Isaac

Correct.

We're asking if there actually are different levels or modes of being, and you're offering, by way of evidence, that somebody once said that there were. — Isaac

Apart from the many other arguments which you here disregard.

What are its merits? — Isaac

It is what philosophy is about. And I completely understand that mine is a minority view.

When you speak of 'evidence', surely you grasp that in this case, empirical evidence is not a question at issue, but that the relevance of it to this issue is one of the claims at stake.

The word that comes to mind most readily in respect of your line of questioning is 'eristic'.

How does something which possesses a "different kind of reality" differ from something which is merely different? — Isaac

At last you see the question I'm asking.

I think that classical philosophy understood there are different levels or modes of being - an hierarchy of being, expressed in The Republic through the analogy of the divided line. And I'm not saying that just out of nostalgia or sentiment - my belief is that this represents a real set of distinctions which has been lost in the transition to modernity. It corresponds with the loss of the 'realm of value' which is the vertical dimension, as distinct from the horizontal dimension assumed by the natural sciences.

What kind of work is this classification doing - essentially is what I'm asking. — Isaac

This is still visible in early modern philosophy, in which the reality of things is judged in terms of their proximity to the source of being. So the aim of the understanding of that is the 'philosophical ascent' to the ground of being. If it sounds religious, that's because Christian theology absorbed a great deal of it from Platonist philosophy, but it's not religious in the dogmatic sense.

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. — IEP

So, the connection I see with Heisenberg's physics, is that it represents the re-discovery of the idea of 'degrees of reality' - which has what had been lost. There is no conceptual scale in modern philosophy, of greater or lesser degrees of reality. Things either exist or they do not. And the loss of that goes back centuries to long-forgotten scholastic debates about the univocity of being (and also the loss of formal and final causation.)

Do you apply that to mathematical and logical statements as well? — Andrew M

The Galilean/Cartesian/Newtonian science that underwrote the scientific revolution concentrated exclusively on the quantitative aspects of bodies - just those attributes which can be represented in Monsieur Descartes' wonderful algebraic geometry. The qualitative aspects were relegated to the subjective consciousness of the observer (as per the last quote on my profile page.) This is the origin of the 'absence of the subject' - the subject was at best a tacit presence, the detached scientific eye, practicing a kind of detachment that was actually inherited from the more religiously-focussed detachment of the mystics, but in this context concentrated wholly on the 'domain of quantity'. But none of that undermines the ability of the rational mind to plumb the depths of reality through mathematical reasoning. It just puts it in a social context.

It's as if the West took all the parts of Plato that were useful for engineering and science, but left behind the entire ethical content of the search for 'the Good'.

Yes, I'd agree they're real, but only in the same way unicorns are real. — Isaac

Fictional creatures and mathematical principles are both things that can only be grasped by a mind, but mathematics possesses a kind of reality which I’m sure you will agree doesn’t pertain to fairy tales.

I think the authors answer that when they say... — Isaac

They add:

Space and time, or spacetime, is something that “emerges from a quantum substratum,” as actual stuff crystalizes out “of a more fluid domain of possibles.”

And even though a measurement is a physical act it’s also a cognitive one.

What criteria does a thing have to meet to be counted as 'real'? — Isaac

‘Quick! What *is* the aim of all science and all philosophy? Your time starts…..now.’

More seriously - consider something like the principles of logic, or Pythagoras’ theorem. We would generally agree that they are real, I hope - that they’re not simply ‘social constructs’ (as some here would say). In that sense, I’m realist. But they’re not material entities, in that they can only be grasped by a rational mind. Ergo - real but not material. That is all I’m claiming, and it’s not that radical a claim.

The argument is that our classification of what is real needs to include possibility. — Isaac

Right. But I think the question needs to be asked, in what sense do possibilities exist? If you’re referring to an actual existent, then it’s not a possibility. If you’re referring to something that might happen, then it’s not something that exists. So the ‘realm of possibility’ is somewhere between existent and non-existent. There are things that are outside the realm of possibility altogether, but there’s a range of things within that realm, but some of which will never materialise. So the interesting question is, in what sense are those existent? I think Heisenberg’s answer is interesting - as he says, sub-atomic particles -and let’s not forget, they are the purported fundamental units of existence - are on the boundary between existent and non-existent. When a measurement is taken, then you have a definite answer - “yes, there it is, it exists”. That is the reason why the ‘act of measurement’ is portentous in modern physics.

Restating without the subject/object terms, aren't you just saying that a human being is implicit in a human being's actions and utterances? — Andrew M

Implicit, and easily overlooked. Or even eliminated.

I would say that your existentialism is of a conservative religious variety , as opposed to the later Wittgenstein’s or Sartre’s existentialism. — Joshs

Fair comment, with the caveat that I don't self-identify as Christian (although sympathetic towards Christian Platonism). But I share (often unwillingly) with many of the perennialists a deep suspicion of modernity. (I think there's a streak of that in Heidegger isn't there?)

Yes, what you call the "genuine conundrum" is metaphysical, not physics. — Banno

So out-of-bounds according to you. But the reality is, metaphysics has a way of forcing itself on us. Heisenberg is quite an astute philosopher concerning the metaphysics of physics, a lifelong student of Plato.

:chin:

The Reductionist ignores the context - the purpose of the buildings and their use. Whereas the Duplicationist supplements the context with an invisible extra thing. — Andrew M

Again I refer to the problem implied in the 'reification of the subject'. To reify is to 'make into a thing', from the Latin 'res' (same term as used in 'res cogitans'). When you look for such a thing, there is nothing to be found, no 'invisible extra thing' - but at the same time, the reality of the subject is implicit in every act and utterance. (That is a topic much more discussed and debated in European philosophy than English-speaking, see this article).

Does a subject or being have uniform properties? — Harry Hindu

That is also a question that tends to reify the subject.

It interest me that in this discussion we get bogged down in parsing notions of realism and rarely explore the idea of mind-at-large, which seems to me to be unavoidable and a god surrogate. And when I say unavoidable, I am not referring to its reality but to it's explanatory power in idealism. Any thoughts on this? — Tom Storm

Related to the above, a difficulty is imposed on this question by 'the objective stance'. The objective stance, which basic to the natural sciences, seeks always to understand in objective terms - it is not concerned with reflective questions about the nature of the observing mind, for example (the extreme form being eliminativism). From within that perspective there's no such thing as 'mind at large' which also sounds suspiciously like a reification. But again, this doesn't consider the sense in which (as Schopenhauer said) that 'objects exist only in relation to subjects'. But to consider that properly means stepping outside the objective stance, which I think is actually quite a difficult thing to do.

Regardless, I'm interested the idea of 'life as the creation of mind'. On the one hand, I don't mean a design engineer deity who painstakingly creates the mechanisms of living things (e.g. Richard Dawkins' God). Maybe it is better understood, perhaps metaphorically, as an inchoate tendency in the universe at large towards self-awareness (although that will generally be rejected as orthogenetic).

On the other hand, the sense in which 'life is the creation of mind' refers to the way the mind/brain receives, organises and synthesises all of the data it receives into a meaningful gestalt. That is the constructive activity which comprises our life-world (lebenswelt or umwelt - compare Schopenhauer's 'vorstellung' or Buddhism's 'vijnana'). That's the approach I've been elaborating in this thread. If you really think it through, there is nothing outside of that, insofar as anything we consider will have been incorporated into it by the very act of considering it!

I don't understand how that citation supports your interpretation. The authors (of the paper) state...

This new duality omits Descartes’ res cogitans

...and...

it should be noted that with respect to quantum mechanics, res potentia is not itself a separate or separable substance that can be ontologically abstracted from res extensa

I'm also interested in how you square your belief earlier that...

I claim that numbers, scientific principles, lexical and logical laws, and much more, are real.
— Wayfarer

...with the author's prescription that...

QP ... do not obey the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) or the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC).

If you believe the laws of logic are real and yet also believe that res potentia are real then it seems you believe two contradictory things. — Isaac

My view of Descartes, as I've said, is the error of making 'res cogitans' a thing - which is an implication of the term 'res'. I agree with the essential argument of Descartes regarding the indubitability of being, but not that being can be conceptualised as an objective reality. (This is in line with Husserl's appraisal of Descartes).

So I'd ask this question:

Kastner and colleagues also reject Descartes’ res cogitans. But they think reality should not be restricted to res extensa; rather it should be complemented by “res potentia” — in particular, quantum res potentia, not just any old list of possibilities.

What is it, then, that creates 'res actual' from 'res potentia' if not 'res cogitans'?


The point I agree with is:

In the new paper, three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. It is perhaps less of a full-blown interpretation than a new philosophical framework for contemplating those quantum mysteries. At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of “reality” is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.

That coheres with the Platonist idea that number is real - not real as an object or 'something in the world' but as what Augustine calls 'an intelligible object'. Whereas there's no provision in materialist ontology for those kinds of realities. That's why I cited that Smithsonian essay on the nature of maths before, which says 'The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.'

As to the sense quantum objects don't obey the 'law of the excluded middle', this doesn't make logical principles any less real in their domain of application - but shows that logic is not all-encompassing or omniscient, that it has limits. But I also note Chris Fuchs Qbism:

Along with the researchers Carlton Caves and Rüdiger Schack, he interpreted the wave function’s probabilities as Bayesian probabilities — that is, as subjective degrees of belief about the system. Bayesian probabilities could be thought of as gambling attitudes for placing bets on measurement outcomes, attitudes that are updated as new data come to light. In other words, Fuchs argued, the wave function does not describe the world — it describes the observer. “Quantum mechanics,” he says, “is a law of thought.”

Which brings us back to Kant.....

I don’t agree with that analysis. It’s an attempt to duck the genuine conundrum which really is metaphysical. My interpretation here with a supporting citation

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/711348

I follow that author on Medium.

We’ll aware of Hempel, mainly via this forum!

A good rule of thumb is that when non physicists start to talk about physics, it is time to leave. — Banno

And a very convenient one. The Enlightenment philosophes had no hesitation in blaring about LaPlace's Daemon when they felt it supported their lumpen materialism. But when Heisenberg and Bohr come along, oh let's keep shtum, we know nothing.

I think a realistic layman's grasp of the philosophical issues suggested by quantum physics is not 'pop science'. There are quite a few worthwhile popular science books on the subject.

Useful discussion of these points here http://www.quantumphysicslady.org/what-is-the-difference-between-philosophical-idealism-and-philosophical-realism