there is an obvious difference between something existing at a time, T and something not existing at that time. — PossibleAaran

No, there is no difference to us, the observer. In order for your position to be tenable, the paper's lack of existence has to make no difference at all because if it made a difference we would know it was still there by the difference it makes.

There are plenty of good counters to the argument against verificationism, but that would be completely off topic. What would be on topic would be if you could provide a quick outline of what it means to you. What would it mean to you if you had it proven either way?

In another sense, I 'know' that P only if there is some reliable method by which I could establish that P. Note that reliability is a de facto concept. A method can be reliable even if I have no way of proving that it is reliable to anyone who doubts it, and even if I couldn't prove it to even a single person. For a method to be reliable is merely for it to be a method which, when used in the right circumstances and in the right way, produces beliefs which are true more often than not. — PossibleAaran

Do you consider the scientific method to be "reliable" in the sense you describe above? If yes, then it seems you could stake a claim to "knowing" that objects exist unperceived on the basis that it is assumed by the models of classical physics.

Also we should remember Berkeley’s original aphorism was esse est percipe, to be is to be perceived. The word ‘exist’ doesn’t come into it. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer is quite right here, which is why the following statement misses the point about idealism:

if the object didn't exist, our present experience wouldn't be the way it is — gurugeorge

Idealists do not dispute the existence of objects, they simply give a unique answer to the question of what objects are. Instead of being a collection of mind-independent bits of physical matter, the idealist will say that objects of experience depend upon the mind for their content (an epistemological claim) or that they are ideas in the mind, whether my mind, other people's, or God's (an ontological claim). The idealist, in other words, is not committed to the notion that our knowledge of objects is illusory, i.e. unreal. They are real, but their reality is in some sense dependent on the mental or composed of the mental.

They are real, but their reality is in some sense dependent on the mental or composed of the mental. — Thorongil

Yes, they are real in the sense they are vibrating waves that are forming patterns probably similar to a holographic pattern. But that is all they are. The mind forms shape and qualia as it senses the patterns. What I might sense actually may be quite different from what someone else might sense, but the underlying pattern we are both sensing is the same. As an example, the holographic pattern formed by the interference pattern is nothing like the image that is seen once a reconstructive wave is passed through it. Our brain is creating these reconstructive waves?

Three holographic model of the universe is being embraced by many physicists:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2824/subjective-realism-in-a-holographic-universe#Item_1

As I have said to Banno, perceive the piece of paper as many times as you like, this is never sufficient to show that it exists unperceived. Perception is only a reliable guide to things that are actually perceived, and obviously nothing is ever perceived while unperceived. So in answer to your question, any actually reliable method would be what I imagine available - not a method for which it is contradictory to suppose it could reveal the alleged fact. — PossibleAaran

Previously you said this:

Any reliable means of determining that things exist unperceived is fine with me. It doesn't have to be a perfect method or a guaranteeing method or what have you. Just a plain old trustworthy method that gets things right more often than not. — PossibleAaran

There is no knowledge of the world apart from perception. How could there be? So, if perception, in the cumulative, rather than in the immediate, sense, doesn't tell us that objects exist apart from perception; what else could? So, perception and the understandings that develop naturally from perception constitute the only possible "plain, old trustworthy method" when it comes to the kinds of questions you are asking. To be blunt, I think this line of enquiry is a complete waste of time.

As I have said to Banno, perceive the piece of paper as many times as you like, this is never sufficient to show that it exists unperceived. — PossibleAaran

Even perceiving the piece of paper is insufficient to convince some folk that it exists - they suggest brain vats and daemons and such.

What you are convinced by, and what you believe, are up to you. If you refuse to believe that the cup was still in the kitchen that's entirely up to you.

Be aware of what your rejection of such obvious stuff tells us about you. You are one step away from Bedlam. Given your opinion on such arguments as this, we should take care with whatever else you say.

You are following a classic philosophical garden path. It leads to much more poor thinking.

So why should we pay you any attention?

The problem is that if objects exist in God; then that is a mind-independent existence, and objects do exist when we are not perceiving them, just as surely as they would if they were merely brute physically existent objects. In fact, under that view, to be a physically existent objects just is to be an idea in God. God thinks the world, including us, into existence according to Berkeley.

This view, that "everything is connected" blatantly assumes that things exist unperceived. Take the drone of an electric motor example. When I hear the noise, if I come to believe that anything more than the noise exists at that time I will have to assume that the cause of the noise exists unperceived, since the noise and the motor are not the same thing. By what argument can I move from the noise to the motor? — PossibleAaran

How is that any different from saying that when you see a table in front of you, you 'blatantly' assume that the table exists - that you assume that there is a cause of the visual sensation that you have of a certain shape, because the visual sensation and the table are not the same thing? By what argument can you move from the visual sensation to the table?

Taking that approach, one has to conclude that every non-mental thing is unperceived, because we only ever perceive the phenomenon, not the noumenon 'behind' it.

The infatuation with doubt exhibited by @PossibleAaran is perhaps a necessary step in the development of a more mature philosophical position. At any one time there will be one or two threads here in which some neophyte explains patiently to we dullards that we can't prove anything.

Idealists do not dispute the existence of objects, they simply give a unique answer to the question of what objects are. Instead of being a collection of mind-independent bits of physical matter, the idealist will say that objects of experience depend upon the mind for their content (an epistemological claim) or that they are ideas in the mind, whether my mind, other people's, or God's (an ontological claim). The idealist, in other words, is not committed to the notion that our knowledge of objects is illusory, i.e. unreal. They are real, but their reality is in some sense dependent on the mental or composed of the mental. — Thorongil

(Y)

But this conflates epistemology with ontology. Just because there is a process by which we come to know about the world doesn't mean the world is constituted of that process. — Marchesk

Fair comment, but ‘whatever it is constituted of’ remains something observed. You’re still instinctively perceiving the question from the realist perspective but that perspective is also a mind-map, a representation, within which there are ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’.

I do take the scientific method to be reliable (dropping issues about "the" scientific method). But it seems to me perfectly possible to interpret the findings of science in an Idealist way, without doing anything that contradicts the evidence. That classic scientific theories assume that things exist unperceived is a kind of bias of those theories. It isn't needed to make sense of them, so far as I can tell. It just requires imagination and the willingness to entertain views which are different to what we ordinarily accept.

There is no knowledge of the world apart from perception. — Janus

Inference from sense perception.

Even perceiving the piece of paper is insufficient to convince some folk that it exists - they suggest brain vats and daemons and such.

What you are convinced by, and what you believe, are up to you. If you refuse to believe that the cup was still in the kitchen that's entirely up to you. — Banno

I know some folk say "well but what if we are brains in a vat", and this possibility is supposed to be an obstacle to my knowledge that there is a piece of paper at the very moment when I am looking at it. Those arguments always assume either (a) a very high standard of knowledge - either absolute certainty or proof from no assumptions, or (b) the veil of perception doctrine. Assuming that we aren't adopting a very high standard, but are sticking to simple de facto reliability, I say that brain-in-a-vat arguments will always presuppose the veil of perception doctrine, and that doctrine is false. Once that is put aside, there is no issue with knowing that there is a piece of paper. The piece of paper is immediately there before my consciousness. When I can see the paper so plainly and clearly in good light at a reasonable distance, I can reliably determine that it is there. I am aware that there are sceptics who question the reliability of sense perception, but I don't do so in this thread. I grant the reliability of sense perception with respect to things perceived, and I say even still there is a difficulty - which I have tried to bring out.

Be aware of what your rejection of such obvious stuff tells us about you. You are one step away from Bedlam. Given your opinion on such arguments as this, we should take care with whatever else you say.

You are following a classic philosophical garden path. It leads to much more poor thinking.

So why should we pay you any attention? — Banno

Take care what PossibleAaran says - he's a real crackpot! Anyway, it isn't 'obvious stuff' at all, except in the weak sense that you and I both believe it with conviction. I asked what reliable method there was for determining it to be true. I still haven't been told what that method is.

At any one time there will be one or two threads here in which some neophyte explains patiently to we dullards that we can't prove anything. — Banno

I never called you a dullard, nor even implied it, and I never maintained that we can't prove anything.

No one is forcing you into this thread Banno. If you don't think the topic is worthy of discussion, you don't have to discuss it. If you think people who discuss it are poor thinkers on their way to bedlam; or crackpots whom you should pay no mind; or worse still, neophytes who aren't as wise as you; there are plenty of other interesting threads.

How is that any different from saying that when you see a table in front of you, you 'blatantly' assume that the table exists - that you assume that there is a cause of the visual sensation that you have of a certain shape, because the visual sensation and the table are not the same thing? By what argument can you move from the visual sensation to the table?

Taking that approach, one has to conclude that every non-mental thing is unperceived, because we only ever perceive the phenomenon, not the noumenon 'behind' it. — andrewk

Thanks for this Andrewk. I think this is an important topic.

You are assuming the veil of perception in these remarks. When the table is in front of me, it is given to my conscious awareness, or more plainly, I see it. I don't merely assume it to be so. Assuming that sense perception is reliable, I can reliably tell that it is there. My point in the OP is that, even assuming that all of our usual methods are reliable, there is still no way to tell that anything exists unperceived. So that's the difference.

That you have assumed a veil of perception is shown by your thought that the table is the "cause of my visual sensation of a certain shape". I don't see a visual sensation of a certain shape. I see a table and the mental process I undergo in seeing it is called a visual experience. And again in your last sentence, "every non-mental thing is unperceived, because we only ever perceive the phenomenon, not the noumenon behind it". But the whole sentence is a mistake, because I can perceive tables and tables aren't mental. There is no noumenon 'behind' the thing which I see, because the thing I see isn't just a picture on a mental screen behind which may or may not be the 'real' table. The veil of perception doctrine - a fascinating doctrine held by many great philosophers. I think it was Austin who said in another context, "it is a very great mistake, and it took a very great philosopher to make it". I apologize if these remarks come across as only cursory. I am happy to have a more lengthy discussion of the veil of perception if you want to defend it, or if you think you haven't presupposed it in the above remarks. For now I am just pointing out what I take to be the difference between scepticism about the objects of sense perception in general and scepticism about things which exist unperceived. The former requires the veil of perception doctrine. The latter doesn't.

Best,
PA

. I asked what reliable method there was for determining it to be true. — PossibleAaran

I italicised your error.

What you are doing is asking for a justification for your belief, and following each suggestion with "But I am still not convinced".

Your failure to be convinced is not our problem.

Inference from sense perception. — PossibleAaran

So, what difference does that qualification make?

You are assuming the veil of perception in these remarks. When the table is in front of me, it is given to my conscious awareness, or more plainly, I see it. I don't merely assume it to be so. Assuming that sense perception is reliable, I can reliably tell that it is there. My point in the OP is that, even assuming that all of our usual methods are reliable, there is still no way to tell that anything exists unperceived. So that's the difference. — PossibleAaran

I am not assuming anything. I'm asking whether you regard seeing something as perceiving it, but do not regard hearing something as perceiving it. That seems to be implied by your statement (at the top of this post: ) that we do not perceive a motor that we hear, but that we do perceive a table that we see.

If that is your position, do you think it stands up to scrutiny? I wonder what a blind person would think about the suggestion that they don't perceive anything.

If that is not your position then which side would you alter? Would you agree that we do perceive things that we hear, or that we don't perceive things that we see. I can see no other way out of the difficulty, than one of those two options, although I am open to suggestions.

A note on ‘noumena’ - the root of this term is ‘nous’, the Ancient Greek term for ‘mind’ (with the caveat that the ancient understanding of ‘mind’ is worlds apart from the modern.) So what is ‘noumenal’ is actually ‘an ideal object’, something which is actually slightly different from ‘a thing in itself’ (whatever that is supposed to mean!) I think ‘the noumenon’ actually carries echoes of the Platonic ‘ideal object’ - bearing in mind that ideal forms of things are truly intelligible in a way that sensible objects are not. And they’re intelligible, because in knowing them, the mind grasps their entirety without residue; for example when we grasp a mathematical proof or a geometric form, the mind is united with the object of its understanding, in a manner in which it cannot be with respect to sensible objects.

In the philosophy which has nowadays been designated ‘hylomorphic dualism’, particular beings are the union of form (which is intelligible) and matter (which is accidental). So to truly know something is to understand its form, which is what makes it real (the ‘esse’ of the being). That act of intellectual apprehension is to understand its ideal nature.

However Kant’s use of the term ‘noumenon’ was inconsistent, and whether ‘the thing in itself’ and ‘the ideal form’ are the same or different is a bit unclear. And also, the word is not at all related to ‘numinous’, with which it is often confused, but which is derived from a different root altogether.

@AndrewK - the question I have for you is, is ‘the real table’ the cause of ‘the perception of the table’? If that is so, how do you distinguish them? How can you demonstrate what ‘the real table’ is, as distinct from the perception of the table which you and I have, when we look at it?

The problem is that if objects exist in God; then that is a mind-independent existence — Janus

No it's not. They exist outside of my mind, true (which is why Berkeleyanism isn't solipsism), but they still exist in a mind, namely, the mind of God.

The method I am accepting is quite straight forward. When I look at the piece of paper its existence is something of which I am immediately aware. It is there right before me in conscious view. When this is so, I have reliably established that the paper exists. I am tempted by the thought that this is more than reliability, and more like certainty, but I feel like that might be problematic and so I hesitate. Let's just say that when the paper is right before my conscious view, it is more likely than not that the paper exists. — PossibleAaran

But is immediacy really important for determining the existence of things reliably?

Perhaps for you it is... still, it seems to me that doubting the existence of the paper I put in my desk vs. the paper I have in my hand isn't really much different. That is, the likelihood of one isn't more likely than the other. The paper in my hand could very well be a dream paper, after all, which doesn't exist. But it can seem very real. The possibility of error -- the probability -- is close enough to the same (I'm not sure how we could even come up with an actual number here, but just by judgment on my part) that there isn't a difference.

If it is certainty though, wouldn't the persistence of objects without perception be just as certain too? Depends on how you go about thinking of certainty, of course. But if certainty differs from probability, at least, as it would seem to when you're making a distinction, what kind of certainty would actually make the existence of the perceived any more certain that the existence of objects after they have been perceived?

hat classic scientific theories assume that things exist unperceived is a kind of bias of those theories. It isn't needed to make sense of them, so far as I can tell. It just requires imagination and the willingness to entertain views which are different to what we ordinarily accept. — PossibleAaran

Not sure how you can accept chemistry as scientifically valid without conceding the existence of the atomic world which makes the periodic table what it is. Same with the germ theory of disease, cell biology or neuroscience.

Sure, we have equipment that can make those things perceivable to us, but most of the time atoms, microbes and cells are unperceived. The molecules science says you are made might never have been perceived by anyone.

In one sense the question is meaningless in that we can't prove existence without perception. Look at ALL claims of existence we make of the world. They all require proof through perception/senses and their extensions, instruments. So, to remove perception from the meaning of existence seems to cut off the branch you're sitting on.

From another point of view the question is asking whether existence itself depends on perception. Do things cease to exist when we don't observe them? This is impossible to determine because, existence of an x requires perception of x. We haven't taken a single step from where we started.

This question is an unanswerable the way I see it.

Let me turn the tables and ask this ''can nonexistent things be perceived?'' This question exposes the limits of perception itself. Is perception a, as you put it, reliable method for judging existence? It isn't right? Radio waves can't be perceived through the senses. It takes instruments to detect them. Go a step further and we can raise doubts about the most complex instruments we've invented. So, no, our senses or instruments aren't very reliable methods for determining the existence of things.

So, your question looses some of its oomph in a manner of speaking. Why question existence based on perception, an unreliable method?

Idealists do not dispute the existence of objects, they simply give a unique answer to the question of what objects are. Instead of being a collection of mind-independent bits of physical matter, the idealist will say that objects of experience depend upon the mind for their content (an epistemological claim) or that they are ideas in the mind, whether my mind, other people's, or God's (an ontological claim). The idealist, in other words, is not committed to the notion that our knowledge of objects is illusory, i.e. unreal. They are real, but their reality is in some sense dependent on the mental or composed of the mental. — Thorongil

Oh yes, I agree, but the question is whether they can actually do that - whether a) they have good reason to doubt the usual backstory for objects, and/or b) whether it's even possible for them to coherently make the claim they think they're making.

Is there a distinction between something existing in God and existing in God's mind? Is God a mind or does he have a mind.

In any case the salient point of the idea of mind independence is independence from the human mind.

AndrewK - the question I have for you is, is ‘the real table’ the cause of ‘the perception of the table’? If that is so, how do you distinguish them? How can you demonstrate what ‘the real table’ is, as distinct from the perception of the table which you and I have, when we look at it? — Wayfarer

I think I would distinguish the table from my perception of it, but I don't think I would necessarily distinguish it from all perceptions of it. Maybe references to the table are to the set of all perceptions that ever occur of it, past, present and future, by anybody that ever perceives it.

I don't think one can sensibly talk about anything that is not mental, since the mental is all we can know, and all we can refer to. I don't go all the way with Berkeley in his proclamation that there is nothing non-mental, because to even state that proclamation requires that the notion of something mental mean something and I cannot see a way of making it mean something, whether to affirm it or deny it.

I like the idea that the table is a player in God's dreams. In most dreams it does not appear. In some dreams it is a bit player that is constructed, sat at and eaten upon, and finally broken up for firewood. But in one of the dreams it is the lead role - the first person experiencer.

I do take the scientific method to be reliable (dropping issues about "the" scientific method). But it seems to me perfectly possible to interpret the findings of science in an Idealist way, without doing anything that contradicts the evidence. That classic scientific theories assume that things exist unperceived is a kind of bias of those theories. It isn't needed to make sense of them, so far as I can tell. It just requires imagination and the willingness to entertain views which are different to what we ordinarily accept. — PossibleAaran

But wait, you asked for a reliable method regardless of whether it could be proven to anyone or not. Now that one's been provided you're backpedalling!

Yes, the idealist can always find a way to make the evidence consistent with his/her position. That's an easy thing to do, as any conspiracy theorist well knows. It's certainly possible that objects pop in and out of existence in just such a way as to be consistent with the predictions of classical physics. Or maybe, just maybe, classical physics works so well precisely because its assumptions about macroscopic objects are accurate!

There's no strictly logical way to decide the matter, and reasonable people can disagree. We can start wheeling out concepts like "parsimony", "simplicity", "explanatory power" to argue our respective cases, but at the end of the day it really just comes down to aesthetics and choice. You seem to be haunted by the the prospect that you might be wrong. Get used to it. Such is life!

Is there a distinction between something existing in God and existing in God's mind? Is God a mind or does he have a mind. — Janus

Invoking God to make idealism work because of epistemological concerns over unperceived objects is hugely inconsistent.

Invoking God to make idealism work because of epistemological concerns over unperceived objects is hugely inconsistent. — Marchesk

Berkeley, for one, does not do that, though. He provides arguments.

Berkeley, for one, does not do that, though. He provides arguments. — Thorongil

What sort of arguments does he provide for God's existence? That God is necessary for the tree to remain in the quad unperceived by us? How is that fundamentally different from saying the unperceived tree must exist?

Are you saying you reject a position you haven't actually read anything about?

Are you saying you reject a position you haven't actually read anything about? — Thorongil

Fine, enlighten me. What was Berkeley's argument for God's existence?

I agree that it would be more parsimonious simply to assume the independent existence of objects...unless you had other reasons to believe in God's existence.

I don't think that there can ever be reasons to believe in God's existence that are amenable to intersubjective corroboration, reasons, that is, that could persuade an impartial subject. On the other hand the same is probably true of the materialist thesis.

You seem intent on making me do your work for you. My comment was an attempt to persuade you to go read Berkeley himself and examine his arguments, as I myself don't have the time, or really the interest, to do so at present. I just don't recall that God is "invoked" or assumed to exist, as you suggest.