They can argue that we have evidence of things other than one's self (as the realist does) but also that the notion of material things is nonsense, whereas things like consciousness and sense-data are immediately apparent. — Michael

Okay. So they can made a bad argument which leaves a lot of stuff that wouldn't make sense.

Is it special pleading when the realist says we have evidence of material things but not of magic or the supernatural? — Michael

It was only a suspicion. I could not at that time think of a way in which they would go about that without letting material objects slip in, but that's because I have a bad habit of thinking about things reasonably. You've since explained that they'd settle for a bad argument which leads to further problems of an overwhelming nature. Well, you didn't explain all of that, but I'm connecting the dots.

If someone thinks it's not conceivable that there's a sheep in a field without it being painted blue, I wouldn't say that they're making an assumption.

If someone thinks it's not conceivable that there's a sheep in a field without it being painted blue, I wouldn't say that they're making an assumption. — Terrapin Station

But it is conceivable, just like it's conceivable that it would continue to be the case that planets exist, even if we all died in an hours time, without the addition of nonsensically wondering where what's the case is located. That's as nonsensical as wondering what speed angry tastes like. Tell me, Terrapin! I cannot conceive of angry without it having a speed that tastes a certain way.

I already said that in my view it's not conceivable. That you think it is doesn't help me.

The nature of sense-data (or "qualia") is a difficult subject for both the idealist and the realist (e.g. the "hard problem of consciousness"). And, yes, both sides of the argument should provide a full account of it if they want to defend their position. But that's a separate issue to your claim that idealism entails solipsism, which is the claim I'm addressing. My point is just that one can claim that only mental phenomena exists without having to believe that only one's own mental phenomena exists, and that one can claim that there is direct (or indirect) evidence of other minds without having to believe that there is direct (or indirect) evidence of something like the material things the realist believes in. — Michael

Right, which is why I already pointed out in the same post (because I predicted that you'd make that argument and tried to head you off) that you seemed to have overlooked:

What does the idealist mean with their use of "other" as in "other minds", if not external, or apart from your mind? What is it that separates your mind from others? What is the medium in which all these minds exist, if not some external world? Aren't you confusing anti-realism with idealism? — Harry Hindu

It would help if you take into consideration the entire post when responding so I don't have to repeat myself.

If the alternative to my position which you describe above logically leads to consequences which are far more absurd, which it does, then you should reject or at least revise the premise or premises which lead there. — S

The only objective absurdity I can think of is a logical contradiction and neither realism nor idealism have any contradictions.

How is idealism more absurd than realism?

This is genuinely very funny. But what's interesting is that you don't mean it to be. Do you know that there actually exist driverless cars now? Imagine if a driverless car was set on a course to travel from Manchester to Exeter, and then we all died before it reached its destination. It wouldn't continue to travel in miles per hour? It wouldn't be going, say, 30 miles per hour in an easterly direction? Even if the speedometer displayed "30mph", and even if the needle on the compass was pointing towards "E"? . — S

I don't see how this is relevant. A number printed by a machine is not a measurement. A number needs to be interpreted according to standards before it's a measurement. That's why speedometers need to be properly calibrated. The speedometer reading might be frozen at 30 mph for all eternity, it's really irrelevant to the question of whether an hour is actually being measured.

What about the windshield? Would it not be 1.5m2, even though it was made to that specification? What about the clock? When enough time has passed that the time displayed changes from "18:00" to "19:00", would an hour not have passed? — S

The windshield was measured, and therefore has a measurement. But what I am asserting is nonsense is the supposed hour of time which passes with no one to measure that hour. The clock doesn't measure the hour, for the same reason I explained with the speedometer above. The clock will show some numbers, but those numbers are meaningless without interpretation.

For your "thought experiment' to make sense, someone needs to be able to determine the point of time which marks an hour, and see if there's a rock at that point in time. Otherwise there is nothing to distinguish one point in time from another, or one period of time from all the rest of time.. And with no one to make such distinctions there is no sense in talking about the existence of rocks. There is simply no temporal perspective.

The problem with your scenario is that you are projecting to a future time. This is like saying "noon tomorrow". But any point in time only exists in so far as a human being indicates that point. So if all human beings die tonight, there will be no "noon" tomorrow because there will be no one around to apprehend a particular point in the passing time, as "noon". If you represent "noon tomorrow" as a particular relationship between the earth and sun, and assume that the relationship between these rocks will occur without human existence, then you are just begging the question, and this leaves your scenario as pointless.

So your scenario is meaningless nonsense any way you look at it. Either you are completely wrong by way of contradiction, as I argue, or else you are making some unjustified assumptions which amount to nothing more than begging the question.

We can say, without doubt, that our exit from life on earth has absolutely no bearing whatsoever upon whether or not 'time passes on'.

What would we use to support a conclusion and/or belief statement either way?

Well, we observe all sorts of people dying everyday. Time passes on. Things continue to evolve.

What's the ground for doubting it? Always... it is always...

Logical possibility alone based upon more inherently inadequate notions/conceptions than one can shake a stick at.

I already said that in my view it's not conceivable. That you think it is doesn't help me. — Terrapin Station

How would you help the sheep-and-blue-field guy?

The only objective absurdity I can think of is a logical contradiction and neither realism nor idealism have any contradictions.

How is idealism more absurd than realism? — TheMadFool

Because it leads to rocks which suddenly cease to exist the very nanosecond that we all would. Because it can't plausibly explain the world, because it can't explain the world before and after we existed. Did rocks and everything else like them just suddenly spring into existence the very nanosecond that we did?

Do you find that convincing? Or, like me, do you find it way more convincing that that there's something wrong with the premises which lead us here?

I don't see how this is relevant. A number printed by a machine is not a measurement. A number needs to be interpreted according to standards before it's a measurement. That's why speedometers need to be properly calibrated. The speedometer reading might be frozen at 30 mph for all eternity, it's really irrelevant to the question of whether an hour is actually being measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ironically, all of that is irrelevant, and this is going exactly as I predicted. Okay, then by your definition, they don't have a measurement. So what? I don't care if you want to speak dumb. You'd have to make an additional argument that I should speak dumb. Importantly, this still doesn't mean that the car wouldn't be travelling at 30mph in an easterly direction, that the windshield wouldn't have an area of 1.5m2, and that an hour hadn't passed. And your point about a faulty speedometer obviously violates the thought experiment. You think I meant a faulty speedometer? No. Don't assume a faulty speedometer. Assume a working speedometer.

The windshield was measured, and therefore has a measurement. But what I am asserting is nonsense is the supposed hour of time which passes with no one to measure that hour. The clock doesn't measure the hour, for the same reason I explained with the speedometer above. The clock will show some numbers, but those numbers are meaningless without interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay, but you still have the gigantic problem of explaining innumerable things in nature of various sizes, for example in terms of height in metres, which have yet to be measured. It's like you don't even understand the purpose of measurement. The purpose of measurement is to find out what specifications something is. The problem here is your frequent misuse of a term such as "determine". No, not determine, find out. The specifications are predetermined, otherwise there would be nothing to find out, and that obviously wouldn't make any sense. They're objective. It's already of a particular size, say, a specific height in metres. We only measure it to find out the specifics.

The rest of your post completely misses the point yet again, because you fail to realise that you're begging the question by assuming premises I don't accept, and then drawing conclusions from these premises. The problem with that is your premises, and what you're doing in relation to them. It has zero effect on my argument. If you want to validly argue against me, then you cannot beg the question. If you want to be unreasonable, then please continue doing what you're doing.

You do this with such frequency, it's as though you're a robot who has been programmed to behave in this way, even when it is explained and strongly discouraged. Please try your hardest to understand the error in doing that, and that it only wastes both of our time.

Then the idealist is simply wrong. One can demonstrably conceive of an unconceived object. I can, at least. Why should I believe that anyone else is so different from me in this respect?

I can also predict where this is going to go, and that the idealist will make an error in his or her reasoning here. "But you're conceiving of it!". Yes. Yes I am. — S

Yes, i believe you. And i would even argue that it is obligatory when following the logic of idealism for the idealist to accept any realist claims to the contrary of allegedly "conceiving of an unconceived object", as contradictory as that might sound. For the idealist can always interpret the realist's statements in a way that satisfies idealistic logic.

For example, when a realist is asked to explain himself, he might say "When I say that I am conceiving of an unconceived object, I have this particular image in mind". All that the idealist can say in response is "I wish you wouldn't name that experience "unconceived"!"

Is there a rock? Yes or no? — S

The issue you're dealing with is your innate realism. Yours is the so-called 'argumentum ad lapidium' used by Johnson against Berkeley, who said of Berkeley's idealist arguments, 'I refute it thus!' whilst kicking a stone.

What you're not allowing for, is that the very notion of 'existence' is what is at issue.

From a naive realist viewpoint, of course the Universe is populated with all manner of things that nobody has ever seen yet. The alternative appears absurd, not to say monstrously egotistical.

But the question you're dealing with is the question of the nature of knowledge itself. How do we know about stones (and quasars and the rest) ? Why, it's through a combination of the reception of sensory data, with our reasoning capacity. That is the very substance of knowledge itself. We are sensory and intellectual beings, and our knowledge is derived from the combination of those capacities - capacities which are themselves dependent on the abilities of the knowing subject - the very factor which the so-called 'objective sciences' always want to leave out.

Now the Kantian form of idealism argues that in some fundamental respect, knowledge of anything whatever is inextricably bound up with the apparatus of the understanding. Even those things which apparently, and empirically, exist independently of us, are only known to us, by virtue of the organs of knowledge and the capacity of reason, about which Kant says

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

Now, lest you dismiss this all as philosophical claptrap, do take the time to peruse this article which asks a very similar question to that posed in the OP, as considered through the perspective of the hardest of hard sciences, to whit, physics. And it is precisely this issue which has been thrown into sharp relief by the so-called 'observer problem' in physics.

How would you help the sheep-and-blue-field guy? — S

Try in various ways to explain how alternatives make sense to me, via various ways of characterizing, detailing what I'm talking about, what properties I'm referring to/how those properties can obtain, what it amounts to for them to obtain, etc.

Ironically, all of that is irrelevant, and this is going exactly as I predicted. Okay, then by your definition, they don't have a measurement. So what? I don't care if you want to speak dumb. You'd have to make an additional argument that I should speak dumb. Importantly, this still doesn't mean that the car wouldn't be travelling at 30mph in an easterly direction, that the windshield wouldn't have an area of 1.5m2, and that an hour hadn't passed. And your point about a faulty speedometer obviously violates the thought experiment. You think I meant a faulty speedometer? No. Don't assume a faulty speedometer. Assume a working speedometer. — S

That the car is moving at 30mph is a judgement. Do you understand this? And a judgement requires a decision. Without any human beings, who makes that judgement?

Here, you have made that judgement, you have stipulated the speedometer reads 30mph. When I explained to you that the reading on the speedometer doesn't necessitate that the car is moving at 30mph, then you simply stipulated that the speedometer is working. Do you not see how this is begging the question? Your thought experiment asks whether such things as rocks, cars, and speedometers exist after there are no humans, yet to defend your position, you simply stipulate that they are there. How can we properly carry out your thought experiment with such manipulative interference?

That's why the whole thought experiment is nonsense. Unless you quit begging the question, the thought experiment is meaningless. If you quit begging the question, you get the result you do not want, that it's senseless to talk about the existence of things without any perceivers.

Okay, but you still have the gigantic problem of explaining innumerable things in nature of various sizes, for example in terms of height in metres, which have yet to be measured. It's like you don't even understand the purpose of measurement. The purpose of measurement is to find out what specifications something is. The problem here is your frequent misuse of a term such as "determine". No, not determine, find out. The specifications are predetermined, otherwise there would be nothing to find out, and that obviously wouldn't make any sense. They're objective. It's already of a particular size, say, a specific height in metres. We only measure it to find out the specifics. — S

The "specifics", what we "find out" about things, is the properties which we attribute to things. This is what we assign to the thing in measurement. it has such and such size, speed, etc.. Since the properties, or attributes, are what we assign to the thing, give to the thing in our descriptions, it makes no sense at all to say that the thing has those properties without being given to them by us.

I already stated the accepted definitions of "measurement", which clearly indicate that a thing must have been measured in order to have a measurement, but you simply ignore this, going off in your own fantasy land, where size is somehow something which exists in the object, and when we measure the object, its size magically jumps from the object to exist as something in our minds.

The rest of your post completely misses the point yet again, because you fail to realise that you're begging the question by assuming premises I don't accept, and then drawing conclusions from these premises. . — S

My premises are accepted definitions. Your mode of argument has been to dismiss my definition of :"measurement", which states that a thing must be measured to have a measurement, and instead of offering an alternative definition, you just go off talking nonsense, as if a thing does have a measurement without being measured. The fact that you can say "a thing has a measurement without having been measured", in no way means that this is true.

It has zero effect on my argument. If you want to validly argue against me, then you cannot beg the question. If you want to be unreasonable, then please continue doing what you're doing. — S

I agree, my practise of adhering to accepted definitions has zero effect on your argument. Your argument is all nonsense, and you continue to talk nonsense, refusing to acknowledge that you are.

The rest of your post completely misses the point yet again, because you fail to realise that you're begging the question by assuming premises I don't accept, and then drawing conclusions from these premises. — S

My action of "assuming premises" which you do not accept, is simply a matter of adhering to conventional definitions for interpretation of the terms used in your own premises. And, by the way, adhering to accepted definitions when interpreting premises, when no alternative definitions are proposed, is not a case of "begging the question".

Ironically, not only does Johnson's 'refutation' of Berkeley miss the the point, but his non-representational demonstration of the meaning of "real" by actually kicking a rock is a very acceptable definition of "real" for the subjective idealist. Such a demonstrative definition of "real" doesn't by itself lead to the dualistic notion of mental representation of the physical world that haunts realism.

Yes, i believe you. And i would even argue that it is obligatory when following the logic of idealism for the idealist to accept any realist claims to the contrary of allegedly "conceiving of an unconceived object", as contradictory as that might sound. For the idealist can always interpret the realist's statements in a way that satisfies idealistic logic.

For example, when a realist is asked to explain himself, he might say "When I say that I am conceiving of an unconceived object, I have this particular image in mind". All that the idealist can say in response is "I wish you wouldn't name that experience "unconceived"!" — sime

Okay, but then that's kind of trivial, at least in a sense, isn't it? Because they're not engaging the argument, or rather the claim, on its own terms.

The issue you're dealing with is your innate realism. Yours is the so-called 'argumentum ad lapidium' used by Johnson against Berkeley, who said of Berkeley's idealist arguments, 'I refute it thus!' whilst kicking a stone. — Wayfarer

Um, no. Not quite. In fact, that's a pretty absurd comparison. He simply kicked a rock, whereas I presented a logical argument in the form of a reduction to the absurd. Well, I didn't present the argument in full straight away, but that's at least where the opening post is leading.

They both involved a rock, of course, but you'd still have a long way to go to justify your comparison.

If you want to know my reasoning behind a part of my argument, then just make that request to me.

What you're not allowing for, is that the very notion of 'existence' is what is at issue.

From a naive realist viewpoint, of course the Universe is populated with all manner of things that nobody has ever seen yet. The alternative appears absurd, not to say monstrously egotistical.

But the question you're dealing with is the question of the nature of knowledge itself. How do we know about stones (and quasars and the rest) ? Why, it's through a combination of the reception of sensory data, with our reasoning capacity. That is the very substance of knowledge itself. We are sensory and intellectual beings, and our knowledge is derived from the combination of those capacities - capacities which are themselves dependent on the abilities of the knowing subject - the very factor which the so-called 'objective sciences' always want to leave out. — Wayfarer

You're talking about empiricism, right? You're not the first person to bring that up. TheMadFool brought it up before you, and I gave reason to doubt taking empiricism to such extremes, because of the logical consequences. Again, this is where my reduction to the absurd is relevant. If we assume empiricism is required for all knowledge, including that regarding what would happen if such-and-such, then where does that lead? I've argued that it leads somewhere which, even if not absurd in the strict logical sense, is absurd in that it ends up committed to strongly counterintuitive claims which can't be explained well, or perhaps even at all. Like stuff about rocks, and all of the other things like rocks, and in fact the world itself. What about the world before we existed? How plausible is it that there was no world before us, and would be no world after us? Or if you're a Kantian, then there are similiar questions, like why silence is justified instead of going with the best explanation. How does that compare with what realism has to say?

Now the Kantian form of idealism argues that in some fundamental respect, knowledge of anything whatever is inextricably bound up with the apparatus of the understanding. Even those things which apparently, and empirically, exist independently of us, are only known to us, by virtue of the organs of knowledge and the capacity of reason, about which Kant says — Wayfarer

It's arguable whether Kantian idealism is even idealism. It has some things in common with both idealism and realism. Parts of it are fundamentally realist.

Anyway, moving on.

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

Now, lest you dismiss this all as philosophical claptrap, do take the time to peruse this article which asks a very similar question to that posed in the OP, as considered through the perspective of the hardest of hard sciences, to whit, physics. And it is precisely this issue which has been thrown into sharp relief by the so-called 'observer problem' in physics. — Wayfarer

Sorry, but I'm not going to read the article, although I'm sure that it's interesting and of relevance, and I don't mind adding it to my "to do" list, amongst a whole bunch of other things of more immediate concern. But I would rather engage in discussion with you directly, and at present, than to delay engagement in order to read some article that you've linked to. I can read stuff like that in my own time, and whenever I feel like it. There's loads of material out there on this topic.

I gave a point earlier in response to this - again, in reply to TheMadFool. What is it exactly that you're talking about here? I am talking about a rock. Say, this rock I'm holding in my hand right now. I'm then reasoning about what would happen to it. To begin with, are you talking about the same thing as me? The rock?

Is there another way to say “I can conceive an unconceived object”?

Kantian idealism isn’t the idealism of Berkeley or Descartes, but it is a necessary dualism which retains a strictly mental, re: subjectivist idealism, parameter, annexed directly with an empirical realism. Which was the foundation of my comments on the experiment. I’m sure you’re aware of all that.

Try in various ways to explain how alternatives make sense to me, via various ways of characterizing, detailing what I'm talking about, what properties I'm referring to/how those properties can obtain, what it amounts to for them to obtain, etc. — Terrapin Station

Okay, how can I help you without committing what I consider to be a category error? If I can't, then we're stuck, aren't we?

I'm finding it difficult. I'm not even sure where to begin. Do you understand what it means to for something to be the the case? Do we share that basic understanding, despite our differences? It's a fact that there are planets, if there are planets. Yes? And do we both share an understanding of what it means for there to be planets? We're both realists here, right? So it means something along the lines that there are objects fitting the description of a planet out there in space, and the realist would say that this would be the case even if we were all dead.

What next? What else can I say without implicitly committing a category error? For that reason, I can't talk about location, and talk of properties in this context doesn't seem to make sense either.

That the car is moving at 30mph is a judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh dear. We fundamentally disagree on so much. I predicted from the very beginning that I would keep discovering this from just one or two sentences into each reply of yours. It feels kind of like an infinite regress of fundamental disagreements, and we just get deeper or kind of go around in circles.

It feels kind of like if, say, I took that one sentence above - the very first sentence of your last reply - and, say, asked what a car is, you'd say something which is way different to what I'd say. To me, your answers are as absurd as saying that a car is a type of fruit or something. It's like we're from two different planets or speak two different languages which only look similar on the surface. Your world seems crazy to me.

. What is it exactly that you're talking about here? I am talking about a rock. Say, this rock I'm holding in my hand right now. I'm then reasoning about what would happen to it. To begin with, are you talking about the same thing as me? The rock? — S

As I said, you're basically using the same argument as Johnson against Berkeley, but then denying that you're doing so.

I am a realist regarding both the existence of objects and the meaning of words. — S

Right - but this is an exercise in philosophy, and philosophy questions what we normally take for granted. Whereas, you're arguing on the basis of its very taken-for-grantedness - 'why should I not take the reality of 'the rock' (world, universe, whatever) for granted?' And there is no answer to that, other than to say that questioning the taken-for-granted nature of common experience is what philosophy does.

It's arguable whether Kantian idealism is even idealism. It has some things in common with both idealism and realism. Parts of it are fundamentally realist. — S

This is true. Kant was a scientist as well as philosopher. (Actually, a polymath, in the sense that is hardly possible today.)

What about the world before we existed? How plausible is it that there was no world before us, and would be no world after us? — S

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. 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.

Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

As I said, you're basically using the same argument as Johnson against Berkeley. — Wayfarer

That's a really bad reply. It doesn't even try to explain anything or take onboard what I said in reply to you the first time you said that.

Right - but this is an exercise in philosophy, and philosophy questions what we normally take for granted. Whereas, you're arguing on the basis of its very taken-for-grantedness - 'why should I not take the reality of 'the rock' (world, universe, whatever) for granted?' And there is no answer to that, other than to say that questioning the taken-for-granted nature of common experience is what philosophy does. — Wayfarer

That's more words than you needed. You could have just said, "I'm not going to bother to engage your argument. I'm instead simply going to accuse you of taking things for granted and ignore most of what you've actually said".

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. 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.

Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107 — Wayfarer

Less words would have been better, and your own words, and taking one thing at a time, instead of paragraph after paragraph of text. Slow down, please.

Do you want an exchange, or do you want to quote lengthy passages from books at me?

Now, reading only the first paragraph, it suggests that, for a Kantian, time is one of the forms of our sensibility. Now, I'm not a Kantian, and it has been a long time since I've looked into stuff like this. So, a) I'm not going to have as a premise that time is one of the forms of our sensibility, b) I'm not even sure what that means, c) I don't know enough about the demonstration referenced, and d) I am seeking more of a simplified discussion, starting from easier, basic stuff, in plain language, and then building from there. I don't really want to just jump straight into Kant, with all of his complicated arguments and philosophical jargon.

I have some layman's idea that this is basically about time being subjective, although people might get funny if you call it that.

Is there another way to say “I can conceive an unconceived object”? — Mww

Huh? Sorry, but you've lost me again. I'm not sure what you want. Do you want me to clarify how I would interpret the meaning of that?

Kantian idealism isn’t the idealism of Berkeley or Descartes, but it is a necessary dualism which retains a strictly mental, re: subjectivist idealism, parameter, annexed directly with an empirical realism. Which was the foundation of my comments on the experiment. I’m sure you’re aware of all that. — Mww

Yes, I understand that it's not the idealism of Berkeley or Descartes. Whether or not it's a "necessary dualism" is open to debate. We could go into further detail about that if you want to. You lead the way. But can we not jump right into the deep end like Wayfarer has just done? I much prefer your general style of reply. You're usually quite succinct and logical. That's something I can work with.

a) I'm not going to have as a premise that time is one of the forms of our sensibility, b) I'm not even sure what that even means, c) I don't know enough about the demonstration referenced, and d) I am seeking more of a simplified discussion, starting from easier, basic stuff, then building from there. — S

The problems of philosophy are deep problems. They've been argued about for millenia. I appreciate that you're actually trying to engage with them, but you're making it difficult. You're starting from an attitude of common-sense realism - there's no point disputing that, because it is self-evident. Then you're saying 'so why shouldn't I simply maintain that view?' It's very close to a chip on the shoulder, ameliorated by the fact that I think you have a genuine interest in the question, almost in spite of yourself.

I referred to Kant, because my view is that in terms of the subject of philosophy, Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' is the key book of the age. Yes, it's difficult, contentious, and the cause of many arguments, but it's a hard problem, and Kant's analysis of it is pivotal - even now, even after all the subsequent discoveries (and contrary to what a lot of people here think).

The article I linked to makes a point about 'the role of the observer' in physics. Now I bring that up for a very specific reason. Common-sense realism would generally like to leave the whole issue of the role of the observer out of the picture. As far as common-sense realism is concerned, the world simply is the way it is, whether anyone's there or not. But 20th century physics encountered problems which throws that whole assumption into question. That was the 'observer problem' or 'the measurement problem', which is still an open question. (And which is why many of the popular scientific books on the question have references to 'the nature of reality' in their title or sub-title or abstract.)

Now I don't want to steer the thread in the direction of discussion of quantum physics, either, other than to observe that it is a very profound issue which has baffled very many great minds. At the very least, I think an attitude of bafflement, rather than complacency, is a better place to be, for a philosopher. I think we ought not to have the sense that the world isn't a mystery (sorry for the double negative). The philosopher's task is to 'wonder at what most think ordinary'. Not 'to wonder why anyone would do that'.

That works....interpret the meaning of it. You said you could conceive an unconceivable object. I’ve been wondering ever since how I would do that. It might be so simple I just looked right over the top of it....dunno.

I certainly don’t mind talking necessary dualisms, but this conceiving business has got to get fixed first, know what I mean, Vern?