Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, the conscious cognition of an individual human. Of course, within that picture, the individual is indeed only a phantasm. — Wayfarer

Yes, agreed. This problem is ignored and considered unimportant until our perception -- being an abstract model itself -- suffers from a serious abstraction leak, which inevitably, occasionally happens.

In the movie, The Matrix, taking the red pill even causes a permanent abstraction leak.

The individual in the blue-pilled world is, in fact, just a fantasy.

But then again, the world that they consider "real" after getting red-pilled actually has the same problems as the blue-pilled world that they then consider to be fake, the only difference being that they are not aware of that.

They never ask themselves the question if the red-pilled world is also not just a fantasy?

Not asking this question is a weakness in the movie. But then again, the audience which already has to get used to the idea of one fake world, could get badly confused by the idea of having landed in yet another fake world.

The audience watches all of that in a movie theatre screen which is specifically constructed to display pretty much fake worlds only, aka, "fiction".

The point I'm trying to make, is that there is an inextricably subjective pole or aspect of all experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, that is self-evident.

This applies even to the objects of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer

The object is what the analysis is about. The analysis is subjective in so far as (a) there can be no analysis without a subject to analyze, and (b) the analysis is limited by the state of our understanding, our instruments of observation, our methodologies and models, and so on. The object, however, is not subjective. Further, the analysis is not subjective in that it is not independent of the object. (See below on carbon dating). It cannot ignore or contradict the facts as we know them.

This realisation has been more or less forced on science by the conundrums associated with quantum mechanics. — Wayfarer

We simply do not understand quantum mechanics.

Even the scientific picture of the world, which I am not suggesting is fallacious, is still a construct or representation — Wayfarer

Yes, a picture, in so far as it is a picture of something, is a representation.

Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, — Wayfarer

You could suggest that but it is not what I am saying and does not follow from what I said.

... world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles, we have a shared world of meanings and common facts within which we all dwell. — Wayfarer

I cannot accept the notion that world arises together with mind. There is solid evidence that the earth was here prior to any mind that we know of. And here is the claims about the subjectivity of science becomes problematic. Radiocarbon dating works because we know the half-life of the carbon isotope C14. The decay is independent of any subject. It is in this sense objective.

In whatever way we may be conscious of the world ... — Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences p108

This begs the question. The issue is not our consciousness of the world but whether the world exists independent of our consciousness. Husserl avoids addressing this question via the epoche or bracketing of the question, that is, putting it out of bounds of his investigations.

This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things." — Valentinus

Profound saying. There's an ancient tradition in philosophy of 'man as microcosm' which is not too far removed from that insight.

In the movie, The Matrix, taking the red pill even causes a permanent abstraction leak. — alcontali

Right! Actually when I saw that film, it rankled me a bit because of the high-handed way they dealt with what is really a profound idea.

Years ago, I read a really interesting online article about why movies like Matrix, Inception, and others of that genre are so powerful - that they play to our sense that the world might be an elaborate illusion. I notice that sober scientific types will happily speculate about the 'holographic universe'. It's a theme in many kinds of literature.

But then, the Analogy of the Cave conveys something similar - that the ordinary man - that's us - is entrapped or enchanted in an illusory domain, from which the philosopher has ascended. But in that case, as is also the case with ancient Indian philosophy, there is a sense of a 'domain of reality', compared to which ordinary life is illusory.

I cannot accept the notion that world arises together with mind. There is solid evidence that the earth was here prior to any mind that we know of. And here is the claims about the subjectivity of science becomes problematic. Radiocarbon dating works because we know the half-life of the carbon isotope C14. The decay is independent of any subject. It is in this sense objective. — Fooloso4

I understand scientific realism. I already addressed this in this post. We can't ignore facts, and indeed I don't. I'm not questioning scientific method, what I'm doing is questioning the sense in which it conveys or results in or approaches an ultimate truth. Which is, I believe, the purport of the above-mentioned Allegory of the Cave, where the concluding argument says that:

the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the Idea of Good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellect; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

That is one of the ancient sources of what was to become modern science centuries later; but what was lost, meanwhile, was just the sense of the need for a kind of intellectual and moral enlightenment, due first the absorption of Greek philosophy into Christian theology, and then its rejection by scientific materialism.

One can accept all of the empirical facts revealed by the scientific account of existence without however coming to any conclusions about the overall meaning of the same, whether there is one or is not.

This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things." — Valentinus

Can you provide a reference?

We cannot 'know' anything about the 'ontological status' of the entities we conceptualize other than they are 'useful' in our epistemological quests to 'predict and control'. Now it may be that from a transcendent pov that 'life' per se is part of a macro system, since the 'nesting concept' has no theoretical limit. (See second order cybernetics, but note that at least one 'systems' advocate, Bernard Scott, has proposed a limit that he calls 'God').

An indirect reference via Aquinas:

Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively (i.e. in themselves) the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of knowledge as he possesses the Form of the object

From http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/cognitn.html


Underline added. This is consistent with the medieval principle that the soul 'receives' knowledge of things:

the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters.

https://thomasofaquino.blogspot.com/2013/12/sensible-form-and-intelligible-form.html

This is 'hylomorphic' (matter-form) dualism, whereby the material body is perceived by the material senses (e.g. eye, ear etc) but the 'form', which is the thing's species or type is perceived by intellect (nous). It is different to Cartesian dualism.

So, a chair is a physical object, but the language expression "chair" is not. — alcontali

I will try and explain very briefly how the above applies to what you've been saying:

In hylomorphic (i.e. Aristotelian-Thomistic) dualism, we recognize a chair because it is a form or a type. So there's the gross matter of the chair, the actual physical thing - that is what the material senses absorb. But at the same time, intellect/nous/mind sees and identifies the form, which is how we know what it, or anything, is. And we know that with a kind of mathematical certainty, because the mind knows mathematical truths, and the forms of things, with a far higher degree of certainty than it does mere sense impression.

Now, for the ancients, sense objects and the sensory domain were in some fundamental sense illusory. (In this respect, the Greeks weren't vastly different from the Hindus with the idea of 'maya', the cosmic illusion, for which see Thomas McEvilly, The Shape of Ancient Thought; the Greeks, however, had the vital ingredient of mathematical and a more scientific orientation, as opposed the purely religious mysticism of the Hindus.) So while the ordinary man mistakes illusion for reality, the 'philosopher', i.e. one who has been trained through the exercise of reason, sees the 'essential' nature of things, 'what makes things as they are'. In Aristotle, this was expressed as the fourfold scheme of material, efficient, formal and final causes, which was what was required to say what anything really is (what it was made from, what made it, what form it took, what it was for.) But since the 'scientific revolution', then the whole schema was changed to the 'primary objects' which could be quantified in terms of Cartesian algebraic geometry and Galileo's and Newton's new sciences; hence the origin of modern scientific materialism/naturalism.

What we see, i.e. the input signals we receive, create some kind of model in our heads, i.e. an abstraction of the physical world. With all complex abstractions being leaky, this process inevitably, occasionally produces unexpected results, i.e. situations where the perception as a model is out of sync with what it is trying to model. — alcontali

So, it's not as if the ancients didn't go through this same kind of analysis, albeit from a perspective which we now regard as archaic. BUT, I think they were far more aware of the sense in which the mind misconstrues the nature of reality/experience than we might give them credit for.

Modern naturalism, by contrast, more or less starts with the assumption that 'the sensory domain' is basically real. For example:

Quine’s belief that we should defer all questions about what exists to natural science is really an expression of what he calls, and has come to be known as, naturalism. He describes naturalism as, “abandonment of the goal of a first philosophy. It sees natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method”. .... Quine assumes that ordinary objects exist. Further, Quine starts with an understanding of natural science as our best account of the sense experience which gives us beliefs about ordinary objects. Traditionally, philosophers believed that it was the job of epistemology to justify our knowledge. In contrast, the central job of Quine’s naturalist is to describe how we construct our best theory, to trace the path from stimulus to science, rather than to justify knowledge of either ordinary objects or scientific theory.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/indimath/#SH2a

But naturalism is not at all critically self-aware in the sense that traditional philosophy actually was*. And it's also forgotten what it has excluded. This was one of the consequences of the attempt in the Enlightenment to discard metaphysics in favour of what was purportedly "really there", the so-called 'real world' as object of scientific enquiry. But in so doing, the West abandoned some essential and fundamental aspect of their intellectual heritage.

---

* Kant definitely was critically self-aware in that sense. But that's a whole other thread. I'm trying here to create a kind of thumbnail sketch of what is actually a vast issue in history of ideas.

De Anima, 431b20

I'm not questioning scientific method, what I'm doing is questioning the sense in which it conveys or results in or approaches an ultimate truth. Which is, I believe, the purport of the above-mentioned Allegory of the Cave — Wayfarer

If you accept facts then I assume you accept the fact that the world existed prior to man. But if you accept Forms then those facts are just images. And yet in the Theaetetus, the Platonic dialogue about knowledge, there is no mention of Forms. In the Republic, a dialogue about the politics of the soul that requires the mythologies of the poets to be replaced by a philosophical poetry, the Forms play a central part in the education of philosopher; but if one takes the image of image of that education seriously then it is only those who have actually ascended from the cave who know anything about ultimate truth. The image of the cave we read about is just another image on the cave wall.

We cannot 'know' anything about the 'ontological status' of the entities we conceptualize other than they are 'useful' in our epistemological quests to 'predict and control'. — fresco

What reason do you have to doubt the abundance of evidence of life before man? Do you doubt the fossil record? Radiocarbon dating? Do you think the dinosaurs are products of the imagination?

In what way is a paleontologist on an epistemological quest to 'predict and control'? The desire to know is not the desire to predict and control, although that may be one motivation and end.

I know nothing about second order cybernetics and cannot comment.

Thanks.

I suppose that what reminded you of this is the idea that things are not in the mind in the sense that the actual physical object is in the mind, but as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles.

You don't understand. I am not 'denying' common human scenarios like 'dinosaurs before humans'. I am saying that the act of constructing such scenarios is part of a cognitive process which is particular to the needs of humans In their quest to 'predict (or retrodict) and control' what constitutes their 'lives'. Such a quest involves concepts like 'causality' and 'time' which have dubious 'physical status' from a scientific pov. Maybe they are Kantian a priori's i.e. 'hard wired' aspects of our cognitive processes, but from a philosophical pov, it raises the issue of anthropocentrism colouring what we like to call 'reality'.
That is where non-anthropocentric 'systems theory', for example, could offer an alternative approach to ontology and epistemology, or indeed completely deconstruct them.

I am saying that the act of constructing such scenarios is part of a cognitive process which is particular to the needs of humans In their quest to 'predict (or retrodict) and control' what constitutes their 'lives'. — fresco

Well, it does seem to be particular to humans but I don't buy this stuff about predict and control as it pertains to all endeavours to know.

Okay...define 'knowledge' without reference to 'prediction and control'.

Okay...define 'knowledge' without reference to 'prediction and control'. — fresco

Tell me what the paleontologist expects to predict and control. Seems a little late for that.

There are some who desire to know in the same way that others desire to create music or art or poetry. There is for them nothing pragmatic about it. It is, rather, aesthetic or spiritual, a sense of wonder.

I did include retrodiction, which would cover your paleontology query. That is a process where proposed antecedents predict/explain current observations.
But you have avoided my question. The 'desire to know' is clearly advantageous in potential control of one's life, even from the trivial povs of 'being respected' or 'self confidence'. And I suggest 'objects or processes of aesthetic value' always have an element of organizational complexity associated with them which by definition involves 'control'.

did include retrodiction, which would cover your paleontology query. That is a process where proposed antecedents predict/explain current observations. — fresco

You'd have to de-Matrix yourself to see that dinosaurs are fictional. Your opponent also lacks a vantage point to allow any more than conditional confidence. Think of science as a gigantic if-then statement. If blah blah blah, then there were dinosaurs.

Heidegger takes care of this vantage point issue (in What is Metaphysics?), doesn't he?

The 'desire to know' is clearly advantageous in potential control of one's life, even from the trivial povs of 'being respected' or 'self confidence'. — fresco

Yes, it can be but that does not mean that one desires to know in order to control her life. It may be the case that one sacrifices control of one's life in order to follow the evidence.

And I suggest 'objects or processes of aesthetic value' always have an element of organizational complexity associated with them which by definition involves 'control'. — fresco

Making music or art need not be for the sake of control. It is often the other way around, one exerts control in order to make music or art, but as every accomplished musician and artist knows once the technique is mastered one must relinquish control. The sheer joy of play is an end in itself.

And we know that with a kind of mathematical certainty, because the mind knows mathematical truths, and the forms of things, with a far higher degree of certainty than it does mere sense impression. — Wayfarer

The term "mathematical truth", with the term "true" being defined by the correspondence theory (CT) of truth, is actually an oxymoron. A mathematical theorem will be "provable" from its axiomatic context, but never CT-true (about the real, physical world). Therefore, "provable" necessarily implies: not CT-true.

Mathematics is not CT-true by design.

Logically true (L-true) is also not CT-true, because L-true is just an arbitrary value in an algebraic lattice that represents a particular axiomatization of logic. Gödel's incompleteness proves the existence of knowledge that is L-true but not provable from any sufficiently-complex arbitrary axiomatic context. Hawking therefore says that this implies that there exists knowledge in the ToE that is CT-true but not provable from the ToE.

Traditionally, philosophers believed that it was the job of epistemology to justify our knowledge. In contrast, the central job of Quine’s naturalist is to describe how we construct our best theory, to trace the path from stimulus to science, rather than to justify knowledge of either ordinary objects or scientific theory.

Quine's naturalist's approach is actually epistemologically sound. If the purpose of some type of knowledge is to say anything about the real world, then it can only be justified by correspondence with the real world. A mathematical theorem does not seek to say anything about the real world, but only about its abstract-Platonic context, and is therefore entirely exempt from this requirement.

Hence, mathematics is not CT-true but is certainly provable.

The terms "true" and the term "provable" uncannily exclude each other.

Not all knowledge is about the real world (a posteriori). Kant already pointed that out by deriving the existence of synthetic statements a priori.

But naturalism is not at all critically self-aware in the sense that traditional philosophy actually was*. And it's also forgotten what it has excluded. This was one of the consequences of the attempt in the Enlightenment to discard metaphysics in favour of what was purportedly "really there", the so-called 'real world' as object of scientific enquiry. But in so doing, the West abandoned some essential and fundamental aspect of their intellectual heritage. — Wayfarer

Science, which is the exponent of naturalism, is by design, not possibly critically self-aware. The reason for this, is merely formal, and even purely mechanical.

We can define the term "science" as statements about (physical) observations, for which we can look for counterexample (physical) observations.

So, statements about (physical) observations (=science) can never be statements about statements about observations (=statements about science).

Therefore, statements about science are necessarily not scientific.

Hence, science cannot possibly say anything about itself, while such ability to say things about oneself is a prerequisite for critical self-awareness.

A mathematical theorem will be "provable" from its axiomatic context, but never CT-true (about the real, physical world). Therefore, "provable" necessarily implies: not CT-true. — alcontali

What about applied maths, and what Eugene Wigner calls the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'? On a really basic level, how come maths works in the real world, if it has nothing to do with it?

What about applied maths — Wayfarer

"Applied math" is not math.

If the object of mathematical language is the real world, it is not math. It is something else that merely uses mathematical formalisms to maintain consistency in its own statements, such as for example science.

what Eugene Wigner calls the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' — Wayfarer

Yes, mathematics is unreasonably effective in maintaining the consistency of natural-science theories.

However, math is not natural science itself. As soon as you say something about the real world, it is not math, but something else.

On a really basic level, how come maths works in the real world, if it has nothing to do with it? — Wayfarer

Math is consistent by design. The real world is consistent by assumption.

If you use math in modeling the real world, mathematical consistency and assumed real-world consistency will tend to be isomorphic with each other. The semantics of the rules with which you model the real world will have to come from elsewhere than math, but the syntax will indeed be guarded effectively by math.

In that context, math is just a set of bureaucratic formalisms that prevents the real world modeler from contradicting himself or otherwise making inconsistent claims. However, the real world modeler will have to provide the semantic "meat" from a non-math source. Math simply does not provide semantic "meat" about the real world.

"Applied math" is not math. — alcontali

Well, according to the definition:

Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as science, engineering, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge.

---

If the object of mathematical language is the real world, it is not math. It is something else that merely uses mathematical formalisms to maintain consistency in its own statements, such as for example science. — alcontali

Thanks, that's very instructive, but I think it's an artificial distinction. It glosses over most of what I find philosophically interesting about it.

as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles. — Fooloso4

The expression 'co-arising' is Buddhist rather than Aristotelian. However, I would argue that the modern notion of there being a 'mind-independent reality' was alien to pre-modern philosophy.

Again, I am not arguing that 'the world exists in your mind'. What I'm arguing, however, is that there is an ineluctably subjective pole or aspect to all of our knowledge of the world, including scientific theories about the age of the world, and so on. The belief that scientific naturalism depicts the world 'as it is in itself' independent of any act of observation, is fallacious, as explained in detail in the essay The Blind Spot of Science:

We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience.

This doesn’t mean that scientific knowledge is arbitrary, or a mere projection of our own minds. On the contrary, some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.

but as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles. — Fooloso4

In the matter of Aristotle saying " Actual knowledge is identical with its object" (431a1), the "potential" knowing is the absence of the object until it is present. In the comparing of perception and knowledge, Aristotle focuses on our capacity for the actuality of the object to be the cause of perception in time:

"It is clear that the object of perception makes that which can perceive actively so instead of potentially so; for it is not affected or altered." (431a4)

If this wasn't the case, perception would not help the ensouled being survive. The universe would just be fake news.

Building on the element of being actualized, Aristotle says:

"To the thinking soul images serve as sense-perceptions (aisthemeta). And when it asserts or denies good or bad, it avoids or pursues it. Hence the soul never thinks without an image. " (431a8)

To complete the comparison, Aristotle says:

"Knowledge and perception are divided to correspond to their objects, the potential to the potential, the actual to the actual. In the soul that which can perceive and that which can know are potentially these things, the one the object of knowledge, the other the object of perception. These must either be the things themselves or their forms. Not the things themselves; for it is not the stone which is in the soul but its form. Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form objects of perception. (431b24) All above translated by D.W. Hamlyn.

The distinction between objective and subjective is treated here as the illusion. The range from living with only the capacity to feel touch to knowing other beings as they really exist points to our capacity in a different way than reflecting upon limits we cannot be on both sides of.

What I'm arguing, however, is that there is an ineluctably subjective pole or aspect to all of our knowledge of the world, including scientific theories about the age of the world, and so on. — Wayfarer

I agree with this, but I also maintain that the world is as it is independent of our knowledge of it. We do not know the world as it is but as it is for us. It is here, the world as it is for us that we find the two poles. Most of what is going on in the universe we know nothing of. Some of those things we will come to discover but others we will never know anything of given the vastness of the universe.

One question that remains is whether our knowledge must always be as it is because we are as we are. Is it possible to know at least some things as they are? We know, for example, the results of what happens when chemicals combine. A chemistry text book will tell us about atoms and molecules and chemical bonds, but is this just "our ways of seeing and acting on things"? We have images of molecules breaking chemical bonds. These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level?

Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form objects of perception. — Valentinus

I saw this when I found the other passage. I wonder how far he intends for us to push the analogy. The tool requires the hand to manipulate it. If the intellect is analogous that suggests that the reception of forms by the intellect and senses is not passive.

Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge.

The term "mathematical science" is an oxymoron.

A theorem is either mathematics or science but can never be both simultaneously. The two epistemic methods are so diametrically opposed that it would not be possible.

In mathematics, claiming anything at all about the real world is a constructivist heresy.

Thanks, that's very instructive, but I think it's an artificial distinction. It glosses over most of what I find philosophically interesting about it. — Wayfarer

That is unfortunate, because the problem is caused at the level of epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge, which is in my opinion the most interesting subject in philosophy.

The existence of different epistemic methods gives rise to the existence of different epistemic domains: mathematics, science, and history. Other subjects may not even be powered nor delimited by an epistemic method, and therefore, have no standard justification method. Such subjects are therefore not even knowledge.

For example, what is the epistemic method of sociology or economics? If there isn't one, these subjects can be suspected to be mere conjectures.

The theory of knowledge is a powerful tool.

It suggests that 90% of what the academic world is doing, is not knowledge but just a haphazard collection of worthless conjectures. The national education systems are globally wasting trillions of dollars on teaching matters that are inherently worthless. Only the theory of knowledge is able to give us that important insight.

These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level? — Fooloso4

The oft trotted out 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' would seem to suggest the latter. :wink:

So, be careful what you cite:

What about applied maths, and what Eugene Wigner calls the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'? On a really basic level, how come maths works in the real world, if it has nothing to do with it? — Wayfarer

it may show that you are, despite and unbeknownst to, yourself, a realist after all.

it may show that you are, despite and unbeknownst to, yourself, a realist after all. — Janus

I've never denied it. I've said already a number of times, I don't assert that the world "exists in the mind". What I argue is that all knowledge has a subjective pole or aspect which is itself never visible to empirical observation but which is still fundamental to the act of knowing. That's how I read Kant. I think Kant's insights are fundamentally true, but in my experience most scientific realists don't understand him. Kant himself was also a lecturer in science, a practical man, but he well understood the ethical implications of the scientific revolution in a way that many others seem not to.

Remember the thread on 'eliminative materialism' - the point I was trying to make there, even though nobody seemed to get it, was that it's because of the fact that the subjective pole of knowledge/experience can never be made an object of knowledge that 'eliminative materialism' is able to deny its reality in the first place. 'The mind' is not something known to empirical science at all! This leads to the so-called 'hard problem' and all the interminable blather that those academic philosophers carry on with about a pseudo-problem that they have created purely as a consequence of the inherent contradiction in their attitude. (They're at it again in a new thread now.) Basically they're terrified of the mystery of existence; they would rather believe they're animals, machines or robots than face up to that.

The existence of different epistemic methods gives rise to the existence of different epistemic domains: mathematics, science, and history. — alcontali

All part of a larger whole, in my view.

The distinction between objective and subjective is treated here as the illusion. — Valentinus

I think it's more that such a distinction was not part of Aristotle's lexicon. No philosophers of his day expressed their ideas in terms of "objective" and "subjective", it's much more characteristic of the modern period, although the significance is more than just lexical.

I agree with this, but I also maintain that the world is as it is independent of our knowledge of it. We do not know the world as it is but as it is for us. It is here, the world as it is for us that we find the two poles. Most of what is going on in the universe we know nothing of. Some of those things we will come to discover but others we will never know anything of given the vastness of the universe. — Fooloso4

I think the subtle point you're not seeing here, is that even 'this vast universe' you speak of, is still considered here from an implicitly human perspective. After all, science measures time in units relative to the rotation of the earth around the sun and distances of kilometers and so on. So that provides the framework, as it were, within which we picture the 'vast numbers of forever unseen things'. But the reality is vaster than even that, because it is not constrained by our human sensory and intellectual faculties. It's 'vast' in a way that even science can't imagine!

Key passages from Kant:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, 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 called '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. — Critique of Pure Reason A369-370

Emphasis added to draw out the point that Kant sees empirical realism and transcendental idealism as compatible and not contradictory. I know this is a really counter-intuitive point but I think it's really important. (Incidentally there's a really good short essay on the continuing relevance of Kant that I like to draw attention to from time to time.)

We have images of molecules breaking chemical bonds. These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level? — Fooloso4

I'm not sceptical in the sense of doubting scientifically-established facts as we rely on them every day. So for example, if I were studying chemistry, then text books on that subject would be the authoritative source and what I would endeavour to learn and understand. We apply such knowledge and pragmatically benefit from it. So I really don't want to disparage science. But philosophically speaking, the issue is rather different. What I'm drawing attention to is the distinction between scientific and philosophical analyses, because the latter encompasses value, meaning and purpose, which are generally omitted in scientific discourse.

Nowadays it is a widespread belief that evolutionary processes are physical in nature, that humans are a kind of by-product of a random process in an inherently and factually meaningless cosmos. This is supported with reference to scientific knowledge; but I'm questioning that, by pointing out the sense in which even so-called objective or value-free scientific knowledge is still ultimately a human endeavour (among other reasons). Scientific materialism tends to 'absolutize' the scientific perspective, whereas I can accept it as a pragmatic fact, but whilst being aware of the continuing mystery of existence.

And it's the fundamental ambiguity that turned up at the 'heart of matter' via the discoveries of quantum mechanics that has really driven this point home. The main difference between Bohr and Einstein seemed to me that the former was accepting of it in a way the latter couldn't be.

Good analysis !
(...irrespective of my reservations about putting 'existence' on a pedestal !)

I think the subtle point you're not seeing here, is that even 'this vast universe' you speak of, is still considered here from an implicitly human perspective. — Wayfarer

I don't think the point is subtle at all.

... science measures time in units relative to the rotation of the earth around the sun and distances of kilometers and so on. — Wayfarer

This is simply not true. Physicists use light. The geological time scale is based on prior events of earth's history.

But the reality is vaster than even that, because it is not constrained by our human sensory and intellectual faculties. It's 'vast' in a way that even science can't imagine! — Wayfarer

And this shows the limits of the subjective pole and why it is only related to our limited understanding and not to what is.

I'm not sceptical in the sense of doubting scientifically-established facts as we rely on them every day. — Wayfarer

What I am getting at is whether these facts are artifacts. Do molecules break atomic bonds or is it this just a "mere representation"?

The word 'fact' comes from the Latin facere -to construct. Facts are human consensual constructions based on their expected interactions with what we call 'the world'. Bohr can be paraphrased as saying, ''atomic particles' are the names we give to particular types of expected interaction we have as observers'. There is no 'representation' implied. If 'breaking atomic bonds' is a concept which observers find useful to predict further observation, then it is adopted until found to be inaccurate in that respect. (Consider the demise of 'the aether').