Science is a combination of observations (of what appears to us, obviously) and inference to the best explanation for those observations. It says nothing, and can say nothing, about how things are in any absolute, non-contextual sense. There is no such sense―not for us anyway―how could there be? — Janus

I agree but I would just say that science is a reliable pathway to doing/achieving things in the world. But it makes no truth proclamations and provides tentative models that often become obsolete; our scientific models constantly being revised.

That leaves room to ponder what we actually know of reality. Or even if this thing called reality is just a placeholder construct we use to pragmatically go about our business and solve problems. The human urge is for sense making and getting to the bottom of things. But what if there’s no bottom?

I basically agree with what you say about science, but there are two points that came to mind. First, I see science as an extension of ordinary, everyday observation, and I think those observations, if accurate, will remain true as long as the things observed don't change their behavior.

Second, another part of science is inference to explanation, hypotheses, which are subsequently tested by observing if what they predict obtains. The theories that becomes accepted parts of science as a result of this process of testing cannot ever be proven to be true, and as you say, some of them have become obsolete, because further observations which no longer accord with them have arisen.

There are classic historical cases of this, but the fact of the being past falsifications of theories does not guarantee that all or even any of the current accepted theories will be falsified in the future.

As to what we know of reality, I would say that we know what we are able to observe, and nothing more, when it comes to "knowing that". "Knowing how" is of course a very different matter. We don't know of our theories, for example relativity and quantum are certainly true, but we certainly know how to apply them to achieve incredibly accurate results. What conclusions can we draw from that is the question.

The objective world of science is only one half of human life. The other half is the world of dreams, feelings, visions, the world of the arts, literature, music, religion — Janus

There’s the Cartesian division again.

Cool. We mostly agree.

Curious, if someone tells you there are ghosts, is your response:

Bullshit: science hasn’t demonstrated their existence and souls most certainly can’t be demonstrated..
Or
We can’t rule ghosts out as yet and while I am unconvinced so far by any evidence, I am open to changing my mind if fresh evidence is forthcoming.

There’s the Cartesian division again. — Wayfarer

What makes you think it is a Cartesian division rather than just the acknowledgement that there are different spheres of activity and inquiry in human life? Do you think science has anything much to say about art or love or religious feeling?

Curious, if someone tells you there are ghosts, is your response:

Bullshit: science hasn’t demonstrated their existence and souls most certainly can’t be demonstrated..
Or
We can’t rule ghosts out as yet and while I am unconvinced so far by any evidence, I am open to changing my mind if fresh evidence is forthcoming. — Tom Storm

I think there is ample evidence that ghosts are real psychic phenomena. Do they have an independent existence? How would we know? Is that question very much different in the strictest sense from the question as to whether the world as it appears has an independent existence?

I certainly don't claim that only that which can be observed can possibly exist. Of course it many people, even everyone, observes the same things in the same places at the same times that does seem to lend some weight to the idea that the things have some kind of independent existence―unless of course our minds are at some unconscious level conjoined, and I don't rule that out, even though it would seem to be something impossible to prove.

How do we know that what we call reality and math’s aren’t simply the contingent products of cognition, culture and language. — Tom Storm

Because they enable discoveries about nature that would otherwise be completely imperceptible to us. They account for the discoveries which make the platform on which this conversation is being conducted possible, among many other things.

What makes you think it is a Cartesian division? — Janus

That is just the division between the quantitative, material, extended, objective, and the internal, qualitative, subjective.

Because they enable discoveries about nature that would otherwise be completely imperceptible to us. They account for the discoveries which make the platform on which this conversation is being conducted possible, among many other things. — Wayfarer

I'm not confident of this. Saying that maths must be independent of us because it leads to discoveries and technology doesn’t really settle the issue. Of course it helps us uncover things we couldn’t see before. We built it precisely to find patterns, make predictions, and extend our reach. The fact that it works so well shows it’s a powerful human tool shaped by long interaction with the world, not that it floats free of our ways of thinking and describing things. We could say that success proves usefulness and reliability, but it doesn’t prove that maths or even “reality” as we describe it exist independently of the cognitive and cultural frameworks that make them intelligible in the first place.

You say we ‘built’ mathematics to find patterns. But that gets causation backwards. We discovered mathematical patterns were already there, and then developed formal methods to study them more systematically. The number π didn’t start existing when humans defined it — circles had that ratio before any minds existed to notice it. What we built were notations and proof methods, not the mathematical elements themselves.

And the point about ‘cognitive frameworks’ actually supports my view, not yours. Why are our cognitive frameworks capable of grasping mind-independent mathematical truths? If mathematics were just a human tool, there’d be no reason for it to work outside human-scale experience. The fact that it does suggests something deeper: that rationality isn’t just ours, but is somehow implicit in the fabric of the Cosmos.

But again the point about the mind-independence of mathematics is that while they’re not dependent on your mind or mine, they are only perceptible by reason. Which is the ground of intelligibility.

P1: Saying that reasoning is normative suggests that it is socially or culturally constructed. — Janus

Hart is using the word "normative" in a different way. To say reasoning is "normative" is to acknowledge the possibility of error. The distinction between successful and unsuccessful performance comes "baked in".

P2: The only ought I see in logic is that if you want your thoughts to be more than arbitrarily related to one another, orderly instead of chaotic, and pragmatically insightful, then you ought to attempt to think consistently, validly and justifiably. — Janus

Yes, but also there is an "oughtness" to logical implication itself (e.g. one ought to accept the conclusion of a deductive argument that is both valid and sound).

P3: It is simply not true that human (or animal) thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations. To think this would be to posit strict determinism and the impossibility of novel insight. — Janus

Hart's argument is targeted toward eliminative materialists such as Rosenberg, Chruchland, etc. who do argue that human (or animal) thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations.

P4: What if believing the conclusion because it follows just is neurons firing in a certain appropriate sequence or pattern of relations? — Janus

It's hard to see how the former is reducible to the latter. The "oughtness" or "normativity" described above seems to drop out of any purely causal analysis.

P5: The physicalist worldview does not necessarily, even if certain versions of it may, render rational warrant impossible. This is a strawman. — Janus

Again, Hart's argument is targeted toward eliminative and strongly reductionistic versions of physicalism.

You make it sound as though there could be an alternative. — Janus

This was a response to Srap Tasmaner who was less convinced.

naturalism isn't a theory that explains how we come to know the world, and neither is NeoPlatonism, from my perspective, but these are the myths which help us to make collective sense at all. — Moliere

I think that’s a very clear statement of your stance, and I get the appeal: naturalism (or Neoplatonism) functions more like an orienting picture than a theory we could straightforwardly verify or falsify. And I agree that metaphysics doesn’t behave like empirical inquiry with crisp criteria of confirmation.

But I wonder whether this quietist framing can really be maintained without smuggling in metaphysical claims. For example, “reality is still there” and “our stories do not capture it” already look like substantive theses about the relation between mind/language and world. If those aren’t truth-apt claims, what are they? And if they are truth-apt, then it seems metaphysics hasn’t been bypassed so much as relocated.

Also, I’m not sure Hart’s challenge is that metaphysics can “mimic the forms” or capture reality in itself. The claim is much weaker: that inquiry is norm-governed and truth-aimed, and that this only makes sense if reality is intelligible enough to constrain us. That’s compatible with fallibilism and with the idea that our frameworks are always historically mediated.

So I’m happy to grant the mythopoetic dimension, but I’m not sure it dissolves the underlying question: are we genuinely answerable to what is the case, or are we only ever elaborating internally coherent pictures?

But I think many scientists are nowadays aware of the dangers of metaphysical realism, the antidote to which is simply circumspection. 'We don't say this is how the world really is, but that is surely how it appears to be.' — Wayfarer

I agree with the call for circumspection — but I don’t see circumspection as being at odds with metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism, at least in its minimal form, is simply the claim that there is a mind-independent reality that constrains our judgments. Circumspection is the epistemic recognition that our access to that reality is fallible, mediated, and historically conditioned. I think the strongest versions of metaphysical realism are the ones that acknowledge the conditioned nature of inquiry while maintaining the real intelligibility of being.

No.
How do we know that what we call reality and math’s aren’t simply the contingent products of cognition, culture and language. In other words the patterns and regularities are in how we see not what we see. There are significant philosophers who hold this in post modernism and phenomenology. And no doubt there are other explanations we haven’t thought of. — Tom Storm

So you are not OK with metaphorical philosophical answers to the Intelligibility question on a philosophy forum? Do you think Math (logic), and other nonphysical aspects of the Cosmos, is not Real, simply because we can't see or touch it? If so, then it's Ideal, and physical science will not answer your question.

"the patterns and regularities are in how we see not what we see".
I doubt you would be asking the OP question if you were satisfied with empirical science's physical mechanical description of how we see*1 (rods & cones, etc). Are you aware of a scientific analysis of the "contingencies"*2 in how the human mind cognitively interprets "patterns & regularities in the environment? Ironically, I think you are asking a philosophical question, but denying the validity of philosophical methods. :smile:


*1. Philosophy explores how we see through theories of perception, debating whether we directly experience reality or construct it mentally. It distinguishes between raw sensory input (2D colors/shapes) and interpreted perception, shaped by experience, context, and "seeing as" (cognitive interpretation). Key views include direct realism (seeing reality itself), indirect realism (seeing mental representations), and the role of action/movement in building a 3D world
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=philosophy+how+we+see

*2. Contingent products of cognition, culture, and language refer to mental habits, behaviors, and knowledge systems that are not universal, but rather arise from specific, interconnected developmental, social, and environmental contexts. Culture and language act as "cognitive tools" that restructure the mind (cognitive retooling), creating unique cognitive phenotypes in different populations.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=contingent+products+of+cognition%2C+culture+and+language&zx=1771088983923&no_sw_cr=1

That is just the division between the quantitative, material, extended, objective, and the internal, qualitative, subjective. — Wayfarer

Division or distinction? Unlike Descartes i am not claiming a division. Are you saying there is no such distinction?

I think the strongest versions of metaphysical realism are the ones that acknowledge the conditioned nature of inquiry while maintaining the real intelligibility of being. — Esse Quam Videri

I find that hard to disagree with. I think what you’re describing maps against Kant: empirical realism combined with transcendental idealism. Empirically, we’re realists — there’s a mind-independent reality constraining judgment. But the conditions that make that reality intelligible (the framework of space, time, causality, mathematical structure) aren’t among those empirical facts. They’re conditions of consciousness.

I think there is ample evidence that ghosts are real psychic phenomena. Do they have an independent existence? How would we know? Is that question very much different in the strictest sense from the question as to whether the world as it appears has an independent existence? — Janus

That's an interesting comparison. I'm not sure if I would have put those two ideas together, but I see what you mean. Both appear to be unverifiable. I'm not convinced people see ghosts even though I have heard some stories (from folks I know and trust) which are ball-tearers. I've always believed in haunted minds not haunted houses.

You say we ‘built’ mathematics to find patterns. But that gets causation backwards. We discovered mathematical patterns were already there, and then developed formal methods to study them more systematically. — Wayfarer

And the point about ‘cognitive frameworks’ actually supports my view, not yours. Why are our cognitive frameworks capable of grasping mind-independent mathematical truths? — Wayfarer

To be clear, it's not actually my view as such, I'm trying to put forward what post modern perspectives seem to be saying. Although I am sympathetic and am open to this view.

So in pushing back on you, could we simply say that “π existed before minds” assumes exactly what it is trying to prove? Circles in nature existed, yes. But π is not a physical object in the world. It is a concept that arises when a rational agent defines “circle,” “diameter,” and “ratio” within a particular symbolic framework. Without those conceptual operations, there is no "π "only physical shapes. The claim that π “was there anyway” quietly smuggles in human abstraction and treats it as mind-independent reality.

Secondly, the move from “math works” to “rationality is built into the cosmos” is a leap. Mathematics works because it evolved as a tool for modeling stable regularities in experience. It has been refined precisely to fit the kinds of patterns we can detect and formalize. Its effectiveness doesn’t prove cosmic rational structure any more than language proving that the universe is inherently grammatical.

Thirdly, the idea that mathematical truths are “perceptible only by reason” does not establish their mind-independence. It shows the opposite: they are accessible only within rational systems. Reason is the condition under which mathematical objects appear at all. That doesn’t make mathematics arbitrary, but it does make it framework-dependent.

So the likely post-modern reply would be not that “math is phoney.” It is that mathematics is a powerful human structuring of reality, not a window into some pre-existing Platonic realm.

So you are not OK with metaphorical philosophical answers to the Intelligibility question on a philosophy forum? Do you think Math (logic), and other nonphysical aspects of the Cosmos, is not Real, simply because we can't see or touch it? If so, then it's Ideal, and physical science will not answer your question. — Gnomon

All I did was ask the question, "How do we know...? why would you jump straight to me being not OK with something?

A post-modern view of mathematics would seem to say that it is a human practice that develops within shared languages, rules, and historical traditions, rather than a set of timeless objects existing independently of us. Its objectivity comes from the internal consistency of its systems and our agreement on their rules, not from access to a separate mathematical realm.

I'm asking how do we know this is not the case? I don't know the answer and I am not a post-modernist or active reader of the oeuvre.

doubt you would be asking the OP question if you were satisfied with empirical science's physical mechanical description of how we see*1 (rods & cones, etc). — Gnomon

I’m asking the question because it struck me as a curiosity and I didn’t understand the argument. Unlike some others, while I have my sympathies, I’m not here to promote a particular philosophical view, I’m simply curious about different positions and their critiques.

@Joshs I’m wondering if you could help me articulate a position I have some interest in but can’t fully articulate. The idea that mathematics describes the structures and truths of the universe because rationality is built into it seems potentially misleading, since mathematical realists would hold these structures exist independently of us. I'm interested in the idea that the regularities and patterns we see are shaped by the ways we interact with the world, and that our perception and interaction with the world co-create the intelligible structures we study. Can you explain what a postmodern perspective (recognizing there are various approaches) might say in response to Platonism or the idea that science describes or maps on directly to a reality “out there”? Happy to be corrected on my take.

But π is not a physical object in the world. It is a concept that arises when a rational agent defines “circle,” “diameter,” and “ratio” within a particular symbolic framework. Without those conceptual operations, there is no "π "only physical shapes. The claim that π “was there anyway” quietly smuggles in human abstraction and treats it as mind-independent reality. — Tom Storm

The symbol is a human invention. But the value isn’t created by the naming of it, any more than Mt Everest came into existence by being christened.

As for the ‘physical shape’ - a circle is not just a shape. A circle is defined by a bounded space with each point equidistant from the centre. Does this purported ‘physical shape’ have a determinate ratio between their circumference and diameter?

If they do, then that ratio is π, whether anyone has conceptualized it or not. The mathematical relationship exists in the physical structure itself.

If no — then it needs to be explained why circular objects behave as if that ratio constrains them. Why do soap bubbles, planetary orbits, ripples in water all exhibit this same ratio? Is that just coincidence?

Abstraction is not imposed on an otherwise formless reality. It abstracts from. (The fact that mathematical abstractions are reified and treated as real in their own right is another matter.)

I'm interested to read what @joshs has to say about this.

Hart is using the word "normative" in a different way. To say reasoning is "normative" is to acknowledge the possibility of error. The distinction between successful and unsuccessful performance comes "baked in". — Esse Quam Videri

I take the normativity of reason to be relative to its form, not its content. Valid reasoning may lead to unsound or even meaningless conclusions if the premises are unsound or meaningless. Error in reasoning I understand to be error of method, not a matter of the truth or falsity of its content. What do you take the possibility of error to be dependent upon?

Yes, but also there is an "oughtness" to logical implication itself (e.g. one ought to accept the conclusion of a deductive argument that is both valid and sound). — Esse Quam Videri

The problem is that the premises are taken for granted not supported within the argument itself. The requirement is only that the conclusions follows from the premises. So, there is no requirement that one should accept the conclusion of a valid deductive argument unless one accepts the premises, and there is no way, from within such an argument itself that one is constrained to accept the premises.

Hart's argument is targeted toward eliminative materialists such as Rosenberg, Chruchland, etc. who do argue that human (or animal) thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations. — Esse Quam Videri

I haven't studied Rosenberg or the Churchlands, but I find it hard to believe that they would be stupid enough not to allow that there is a semantic overlay to neural processes. I suspect their position gets routinely strawmanned by its opponents.

It's hard to see how the former is reducible to the latter. The "oughtness" or "normativity" described above seems to drop out of any purely causal analysis. — Esse Quam Videri

It is not necessarily a matter of the former being reducible to the latter. The "oughtness" is obviously not a part of any causal analysis―however i don't see any reason to think a causal model rules out, as opposed to simply does not include, the semantic―why, that is, they could not exist "in parallel", despite the fact that we cannot unite them conceptually in a single account.

That's an interesting comparison. I'm not sure if I would have put those two ideas together, but I see what you mean. Both appear to be unverifiable. I'm not convinced people see ghosts even though I have heard some stories (from folks I know and trust) which are ball-tearers. I've always believed in haunted minds not haunted houses. — Tom Storm

As I go on to say, the fact that we all see the same objects in the same places at the same times does strongly suggest even if it doesn't strictly prove that objects are independently existent of human and animal minds assuming no connection between human and animal minds.

I believe people think they have seen ghosts, but I don't believe that what they have seen, or thought they have seen, are really ghosts as in disembodied spirits of dead people. The fact that people have seen something commonly referred to as ghosts is the reason I say that ghosts are real psychic phenomena.

If they do, then that ratio is π, whether anyone has conceptualized it or not. The mathematical relationship exists in the physical structure itself. If no — then it needs to be explained why circular objects behave as if that ratio constrains them. Why do soap bubbles, planetary orbits, ripples in water all exhibit this same ratio? Is that just coincidence? — Wayfarer

Any shape at all if perfectly repeated at different scales would always have the same relative proportions. How could it be otherwise? Soap bubbles, planetary orbits and ripples are not perfect circles or spheres so the ratio would differ in each individual case.

I find it hard to believe that they would be stupid enough not to allow that there is a semantic overlay to neural processes — Janus

Their materialism is monistic: there is only one real substance, and that is matter (nowadays matter-energy.) Everything arises from matter and returns to it, and has no reality independently of it. Whenever I point this out of, say, Daniel Dennett, you say, he couldn’t believe that, he couldn’t be so stupid. But he really did say it. A characteristic snippet from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, speaking of the metabolic processes of organic molecules:

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

It’s not a straw man depiction. Materialism is materialism, and it’s not hard to discern its genealogy in the recent history of Western culture.

I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance. Amen. — Gagdad Bob

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

It's clear in that quotation that he's not denying the reality of agency. consciousness and meaning― but by all means continue with your self-righteous crusade astride your mighty strawhorse.

I agree that validity is formal and conditional: logic doesn’t force assent unless one is already committed to the premises. But once one takes the premises to be true, acceptance of the conclusion is not optional—one is rationally "bound" to accept it. That “boundness” isn’t social; it’s just what it means see that the conclusion follows from the premises.

And I also agree that a causal description doesn’t mention normativity. The question is whether normativity is merely a parallel “semantic overlay,” or whether it has real explanatory authority in why we believe what we believe. If it’s only parallel—i.e. if the complete story of belief-formation is entirely causal—then it becomes hard to see how rational warrant is anything more than an after-the-fact gloss. But if warrant is real, then physical causality can’t be the whole story.

That “boundness” isn’t social; it’s just what it means see that the conclusion follows from the premises. — Esse Quam Videri

Right, the conclusion follows from the premises in that it must be, at least implicitly, saying the same thing. So, I would say it is a matter of semantics. The "should" in the "should accept the conclusion if we accept the premises" of a valid deductive argument, for me just seems to be a matter of understanding of what is being said. I think it could be expressed as "would" in other words, as in "would accept the conclusion if the premises are accepted and understood" (and given good faith, of course).

And I also agree that a causal description doesn’t mention normativity. The question is whether normativity is merely a parallel “semantic overlay,” or whether it has real explanatory authority in why we believe what we believe. — Esse Quam Videri

Why can in not be both ? Perhaps the word "overlay" led you think I was counting it as secondary?

But if warrant is real, then physical causality can’t be the whole story. — Esse Quam Videri

Right, not the whole story, but then neither would the semantic side be the whole story, either. Sellars attempts to address these questions. Spinoza too, in a kind of tangential way.

The difference is that Kant’s transcendental idealism isn’t just the claim that inquiry has conditions; it’s the stronger claim that the fundamental intelligible framework (space, time, categories) is contributed by the subject and is therefore constitutive of objects only as they can appear to us.

The view I’m gesturing at is closer to a post-Kantian critical realism: yes, intelligibility is disclosed only in and through acts of knowing, and yes our access is conditioned — but the norms and structures that govern knowing are not merely subjective “forms of consciousness.” They function as constraints that inquiry discovers and revises in response to being.

Put differently: Kant makes the conditions of intelligibility primarily conditions of appearance; the realist alternative treats them as conditions of judgment and truth, and therefore as answerable to reality rather than merely imposed upon it. That’s why the possibility of error and correction becomes central: we can’t simply legislate the framework, because reality can force its revision.

. A circle is defined by a bounded space with each point equidistant from the centre. Does this purported ‘physical shape’ have a determinate ratio between their circumference and diameter?

If they do, then that ratio is π, whether anyone has conceptualized it or not. The mathematical relationship exists in the physical structure itself.

If no — then it needs to be explained why circular objects behave as if that ratio constrains them. Why do soap bubbles, planetary orbits, ripples in water all exhibit this same ratio? Is that just coincidence?

Abstraction is not imposed on an otherwise formless reality. It abstracts from. (The fact that mathematical abstractions are reified and treated as real in their own right is another matter.) — Wayfarer

Merleau-Ponty would say we constitute the ideal circle in stages. First, within shared, intersubjective embodied experience, we constitute stable forms out of the changing patterns we encounter, some of which are more or less round. These round forms are neither strictly in the world nor just in our heads, They are ways of interacting with experience. Next, we stabilize an ideal geometrical structure, which we call “the” circle , and discover within our construction invariant relations within that ideal structure, such as the constant ratio between circumference and diameter. Finally, we produce a symbolic condensation of that invariant into a sign (π).

The fact that there are no perfect circles in nature doesnt mean that real world shapes are approximations of ideal geometrical truths which are themselves properties of the real world external to minds. It means that the concept of a circle is the product of a genesis of constitution starting from the noticing of relatively stable patterns in our interaction with aspects of the world and leading to the deliberate flattening of variations for to serve our purposes. Pi is one result of this.

Husserl describes the advent of pure geometric idealities this way:

"In the life of practical needs certain particularizations of shape stood out and that a technical praxis always aimed at the production of particular preferred shapes and the improvement of them according to certain directions of gradualness. First to be singled out from the thing-shapes are surfaces—more or less "smooth," more or less perfect surfaces; edges, more or less rough or fairly "even"; in other words, more or less pure lines, angles, more or less perfect points; then, again, among the lines, for example, straight lines are especially preferred, and among the surfaces the even surfaces; for example, for practical purposes boards limited by even surfaces, straight lines, and points are preferred, whereas totally or partially curved surfaces are undesirable for many kinds of practical interests. Thus the production of even surfaces and their perfection (polishing) always plays its role in praxis. So also in cases where just distribution is intended. Here the rough estimate of magnitudes is transformed into the measurement of magnitudes by counting the equal parts."

“Out of the praxis of perfecting, of freely pressing toward the horizons of conceivable perfecting "again and again/' limit-shapes emerge toward which the particular series of perfectings tend, as. toward invariant and never attainable poles. If we are interested in these ideal shapes and are consistently engaged in determining them and in constructing new ones out of those already determined, we are "geometers." In place of real praxis—that of action or that of considering empirical possibilities having to do with actual and really [i.e., physically] possible empirical bodies—we now have an ideal praxis of "pure thinking" which remains exclusively within the realm of pure limit-shapes.

Through a method of idealization and construction which historically has long since been worked out and can be practiced intersubjectively in a community, these limit-shapes have become acquired tools that can be used habitually and can always be applied to something new—an infinite and yet self-enclosed world of ideal objects as a field for study. Like all cultural acquisitions which arise out of human accomplishment, they remain objectively knowable and available without requiring that the formulation of their meaning be repeatedly and explicitly renewed. It is understandable how, as a consequence of the awakened striving for "philosophical" knowledge, knowledge which determines the "true," the objective being of the world, the empirical art of measuring and its empirically, practically objectivizing function, through a change from the practical to the theoretical interest, was idealized and thus turned into the purely geometrical way of thinking. The art of measuring thus becomes the trail-blazer for the ultimately universal geometry and its "world" of pure limit-shapes.

Galilleo took for granted, as a 'ready-made truth', the ideality of geometric concepts. Thus , he established an approach resulting from the invention of "a particular technique, the geometrical and Galilean technique which is called physics. " What was concealed from Galileo was the practical activities of the life-world making possible the abstractions of modern science.

But objects are contingent by nature - no really mind-independent object has ever been identified — Wayfarer

I feel like here, and throughout the site really, you are wont to derive marquee headlines from fairly prosaic conclusions. Of course, we have identified mind independent objects: objects which we have very good reasons to believe behave in a way much like we understand them to, whether or not we are watching them.

It's just that we cannot apprehend them as such. An object without quality, without perspective, is impossible to conceive. But, to ask anything other from a mind isn't fair. A mind can't help but apprehend mindfully.

I feel you have made the systematic mistake of transposing a limitation of minds onto a feature of the world. That a mind must apprehend the world by mind does not imply the world is mind dependent.

I feel you have made the systematic mistake of transposing a limitation of minds onto a feature of the world. That we must apprehend objects mindfully does not imply the world is mind dependent. — hypericin

If you remove all of the idealizations that minds impose on the world of appearances, there is not much to say about the nature of what is mind-independent. What is left of an object without mathematical properties, or at bare minimum, self -identify over time?

I agree that deductive implication is a matter of semantics: to grasp validity is to grasp what is being said. But I don’t think that dissolves the normativity — it just relocates it. “Good faith” understanding already presupposes that one is answerable to logical implication, and that this answerability is precisely the “oughtness” at issue.

And yes, I agree it can be both causal and semantic. But that’s exactly where the pressure point lies: if the semantic/normative side is genuinely real, then physical causality can’t be an exhaustive account of thought. The remaining question is what kind of ontology can accommodate both without collapsing the semantic into the causal or turning it into a merely epiphenomenal gloss.

I think that’s why this debate ends up being metaphysical rather than scientific.