I do not understand any part of it, i.e. the point you are making or its purpose in the train of dialogue.

But it only leads to a contraction if it is assumed that the two are not distinct. That's why it's a contradiction. Which means the claim that B. assumes that there is a distinction is wrong. — StreetlightX

How does it lead to a contradiction only if you assume they're not distinct?

'It is possible to conceive of something no one is conceiving' is a fucking contradiction. As in, put it in the predicate calculus and it can't be true on any interpretation.

Yep, you don't get it. Don't think you will. Good chat.

SX, let's say we assume a distinction between concepts and objects.

Is your claim now that,

'I conceive of something no one is conceiving of'

Is not a contradiction? I would say that you don't understand English if you think that, not that you need to reexamine your metaphysical assumptions.

I believe you. O:)

"SX, let's say we assume a distinction between concepts and objects.

[frames a statement which utilizes no such distinction in any way, shape, or form]

Ha, contraction!!"

Yeah. Don't think too hard, I guess.

Yes. By definition my concept of an object is not the existence of the object. This is a logical expression. This cannot possibly be wrong because to say otherwise would commit a contradiction.

It would be to claim my imagining of a house was the existence of the house. I wouldn't need to do any building to have home...

This is not true. Even if all things are experiential, one can draw a distinction between things imagined and real things, by the differences in their experiential content. That is how we can tell the difference between them to begin with: by experiencing them differently.

No, Berkeley's master argument is not based on a tautology. It is a reductio of the realist's claim that he can conceive of something that no one is conceiving of.

Assumption for reductio: It is possible to conceive of something that no one conceives of.
Hypothetical assumption: Someone conceives of something that no one conceives of.
But by hypothesis, someone is conceiving of it.
Therefore, someone does not conceive of something that no one conceives of.
Therefore, by discharging of the assumptionL it is not possible to conceive of something that no one conceives of. — The Great Whatever

This supposed "reductio" of Berkeley's is based on an equivocation between conceiving of the possibility of an object and conceiving of the object, and it is tautologous insofar as its conclusion is entirely based on a tendentious definition of the terms. Put in different terms there is no contradiction and hence no reductio:

Assumption: It is possible to conceive the possible existence of some object of which no one conceives .
Hypothetical assumption: Someone conceives the possible existence of some object of which no one conceives.

There is no contradiction here because the object that no one conceives of is not being conceived. It is the possibility of its existence that is being conceived.

I'm not sure what it means to conceive of the possibility of an object. I'm trying to do it and I don't know what it is.

The problem with that argument is it's still obsessed by "real" and "imagined" in the nonsensical Cartesian sense. Hallucinations are real. Someone who hallucinates actually experiences what they do. It isn't "fake" in the sense of not meaning anything. Everything is real in this sense. Dreams, hallucinations and "the real" are all things which exist.

The "real" and "imaginary" discintion has never been about what is outside the conceptual, but rather what is within it. "Real" points of things which exist (something thinking of an object, dreams, perceptions, hallucinations). "Imaginary" points out meanings (e.g. identity) expressed be states existence. -e.g. the hallucination of the dragon is "real" but the notion there is a dragon who will eat and kill me is "imaginary (as no such dragon exists)."

And we can't tell the difference be experiencing the "real" and "imaginary" differently because both do not describe anything. Neither has any sort of feature which makes it distinguishable. Dreams can appear just as real as reality, to a point where we can mistake dreams of reality and vice versa. "Real" and "imaginary' are their own logical expressions which we have to experience in themselves. Else we are stuck with no clue as to which is which.

A hallucination of a tiger is a real hallucination; it is by definition not a real tiger. What makes it not a real tiger is that it does not experientially cohere in the way a real tiger does.

OK, I wasn't being sarcastic, but whatever.

Indeed. But the "experimental coherence" is NOT given by any aspect of the experienced tiger. Seeing its claws, hearing its roar, touching its fur doesn't give us that coherence. It's its own experience. Someone has to literally think "that's is real" or "that is imaginary." Even "falsification" doesn't circumvent this because it requires someone to make the logical distinction between what is real and is imaginary.

Someone might put there head through a hallucinated image of a tiger'e mouth, not get eaten and still think they were putting themselves in danger. All it takes is the thought: "The tiger exists (i.e. is real) and is going to eat me."

(and this is why you see "real"/ "imaginary" has a close connection with doxa. Since it is a logical distinction, one which is not drawn through an observation, people have to rely on specifying rules to indicate it. )

Are you seriously claiming that you can't conceive of the possibility that there might be things in the universe that no one will ever know about?

I think you already admitted that you disagreed with Berkeley that unconceived things are impossible; presumably that means you think they are (or at least might be) possible. If so, then you are conceiving of their possible existence.

Congratulations, it appears you have a skill you were previously unaware of.

No, that's not what I'm claiming. I was claiming that while I know what it means to conceive of an object, I don't know what it means to conceive of 'the possibility of an object.' An object's possibility is not like its color, or something like that.

I know you weren't. I was. O:)

If you now want to distinguish between 'conceiving the possible existence' and 'conceiving the possibility', then your objection

I'm not sure what it means to conceive of the possibility of an object. I'm trying to do it and I don't know what it is. — The Great Whatever

is inappropriate since I was talking about the former:

Assumption: It is possible to conceive the possible existence of some object of which no one conceives . — John

in the passage you were objecting to.

I don't know what you're talking about, so I'm not going to respond.

That's convenient...

The fact that existence isn't a property makes this a fairly straightforward point, no? Allowing for at least a minimally charitable reading of @John here.

Again, I don't know what he's talking about and don't think engaging in the discussion would be fruitful. What it has to do with existence being a property, or how you concluded that, I have no idea.

If I could return us to the Brassier essay...

Aaron kindly directed me, the other week, to an essay that I think relates to the Brassier project. It's by Peter Wolfendale, a 'transcendental realist', which is here: https://deontologistics.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/essay-on-transcendental-realism.pdf

My struggle is that to me this new approach to 'realism' in Brassier and in Wolfendale among others puts the cart before the horse. In para 4 of his essay for instance Brassier says:

We gain access to the structure of reality via a machinery of conception which
extracts intelligible indices from a world that is not designed to be intelligible and is
not originarily infused with meaning. — Brassier

It does seem to me that if this among our presuppositions, if we think this to begin with, we will inevitably end up with this gulf between concepts and objects, and an underlying notion of the 'reality' of 'objects'.

I have an eccentric fondness for Nelson Goodman's irrealist views. As I read it, Goodman's arguments are that there are 'many worlds' in an intellectual sense - all of which acknowledge an Otherness but don't find a unifying theory-of-realness - so we may posit that there are different world-views, where concepts vary from view to view. But at the same time we don't fall into the potential cess-pool of postmodern anything-goes, because each world-view requires intellectual rigour and a unity of its own.

But whether you like Goodman or no, I would like to ask that we get back to Brassier. Has he pre-decided his metaphysics with the para I mention above? More generally, is this object-oriented approach the way to go? There are some sideswipes at 'process' views which aren't backed up by any specific argument, and I haven't understood just what is such a good idea about renewing our focus on 'objects'. As compared say to 'events': for any object left out in the sun for long enough transforms in concert with what's around 'it' :)

, I think the point of Brassier's paper is precisely emphasizing the importance of attempting to get clear about the relationship between concepts and objects; which of course involves clarifying what is meant by the terms 'concept' and 'object'.

When TGW says this:

The claim is that it is not possible to conceive of something that no one is conceiving of. But this is precisely what the realist calls for, — The Great Whatever

and this:

Realists are not interested in what is conceived of to be unconceived; they are interested in what is unconceived. — The Great Whatever

he shows that he misunderstands the realist claim (at least the relevant versions of it in any case, and there are a few) ; which is precisely not that what is being conceived (the object) is just the same as how it is conceived to be or what it is interpreted as.

In the second quote from TGW the misunderstanding he has is very clearly shown. He admits that there is "what is conceived of to be unconceived" and (rightly) distinguishes that from "what is unconceived". He then makes the mistake of thinking the realist is interested in, or believes in the possibility of, precisely conceiving the latter (as we would a familiar object), which would of course be an absurd contradiction, because the unconceived cannot be precisely conceived but may only be conceived in the roundabout way of 'conceiving of the unconceived', i.e. abductively. Realism will always consist in exercising the imagination; there is no question of being able to precisely conceive the Real. Any realism that espouses the latter is a naive realism.

Why do you think Brassier is "putting the cart before the horse" in the passage you quote? As I read it, he is merely saying that our ways of conceiving the world are pre-conceptually conditioned by an actual "machinery" and that whatever that machinery might be it has no inbuilt purpose in so pre-conditioning us.

It does seem to me that if this among our presuppositions, if we think this to begin with, we will inevitably end up with this gulf between concepts and objects, and an underlying notion of the 'reality' of 'objects'. — mcdoodle

This is something B. does address, and I quoted it earlier - §§30 is the relevant passage. The idea is basically you have two options: either you begin by assuming that the concept is indistinguishable from the object, or you do not. If you do, you beg the question in favor of conceptual idealism. If you don't, you leave the relation between object and concept 'open' in order to be subsequently elaborated - it may turn out that they are indistinguishable, but this will have to be argued for:

"Contrary to what correlationists proclaim, the presupposition of this difference is not a dogmatic prejudice in need of critical legitimation. Quite the reverse: it is the assumption that the difference between concept and object is always internal to the concept—that every difference is ultimately conceptual—that needs to be defended. For to assume that the difference between concept and object can only be internal to the concept is to assume that concepts furnish self-evident indexes of their own reality and internal structure—that we know what concepts are and can reliably track their internal differentiation—an assumption that then seems to license the claim that every difference in reality is a conceptual difference... Is it is not clear why our access to the structure of concepts should be considered any less in need of critical legitimation than our access to the structure of objects. To assume privileged access to the structure of conception is to assume intellectual intuition. But this is to make a metaphysical claim about the essential nature of conception; an assumption every bit as dogmatic as any allegedly metaphysical assertion about the essential nature of objects."

What the above implies though is that if one wants to contest what Brassier is doing here, such a contestation needs to take place 'one level up' from the distinction between concepts and objects. In particular, one might take issue with the claim that knowledge is ultimately a manner of conceptualization. The relevant passages are as follows:

"The articulation of thought and being is necessarily conceptual follows from the Critical injunction which rules out any recourse to the doctrine of a pre-established harmony between reality and ideality. Thought is not guaranteed access to being; being is not inherently thinkable. There is no cognitive ingress to the real save through the concept" (§§3)/ "We gain access to the structure of reality via a machinery of conception which extracts intelligible indices from a world that is not designed to be intelligible and is not originarily infused with meaning. Meaning is a function of conception and conception involves representation ... It falls to conceptual rationality to forge the explanatory bridge from thought to being. (§§3)/ "To know (in the strong scientific sense) what something is is to conceptualize it." (§§28)

Although what Brassier understands by conceptualization is not too clearly spelled out in the paper, it's safe to assume - given the passing references to Sellars and Brandom, as well as his work elsewhere (the video "How to Train an Animal that makes Inferences" in particular) - that to conceptualize is to be able to make an inferential move in a game of giving and asking for reasons. In other words, to know is to conceptualize, and to conceptualize is to be able to give reasons for a claim about this or that. But I can't help but feel - as do legions of others who have called Sellars out on this point - that this is an incredibly limited, if not debilitating account of what it means to know. I have no doubt that this is undoubtedly a kind, or a 'species' of knowing, but I cannot accede to the idea that it constitutes knowing tout court. In some sense, Brassier does acknowledge this. The knowing he speaks of does in fact seem to be a qualified one: "To know (in the strong scientific sense) what something is is to conceptualize it." Yet elsewhere, this qualification is not found: "Meaning is a function of conception."

It's hard though to mount an effective critique at this level because this notion is in fact not explicitly addressed in the paper, and is more or less deferred elsewhere. Perhaps Brassier does have an adequate answer to this sort of concern, but it won't be found here. What in particular concerns me is the exact status of sensation and affect, and the way in which the sensible relates to the rational machinery of rational conception.

"The articulation of thought and being is necessarily conceptual follows from the Critical injunction which rules out any recourse to the doctrine of a pre-established harmony between reality and ideality. Thought is not guaranteed access to being; being is not inherently thinkable. There is no cognitive ingress to the real save through the concept" (§§3)/ "We gain access to the structure of reality via a machinery of conception which extracts intelligible indices from a world that is not designed to be intelligible and is not originarily infused with meaning. Meaning is a function of conception and conception involves representation ... It falls to conceptual rationality to forge the explanatory bridge from thought to being. (§§3)/ "To know (in the strong scientific sense) what something is is to conceptualize it." — StreetlightX

Doesn't the above presuppose a distinction between concepts (or thought) and objects (or being/reality) (and so run contrary to the criticism he later levies in §§30)? Or have I missed something where the distinction has already been argued for?

§§30 is a defense of the distinction. It criticizes those approaches which do not begin with such a distinction.

It doesn't seem to be. It seems to criticise the assumption that "the difference between concept and object can only be internal to the concept". But that's not a defence of the assumption that the difference between concept and object is external to the concept (i.e. that there is a distinction between reality and ideality).

All he concludes in §§30 is that we shouldn't "assume privileged access to the structure of conception".