Good reply.

1. Entirely ignores the problem posted in the OP. It's head in the sand philosophy.
3. Deflates to a position indistinguishable from anti-realism (or at the very least, a positon that is not realist, since being realist entails mind-independence).

2. Is a bit more promising.

I was really not trying to cast aspersions. — Wayfarer

No worries, I was just being a bit cheeky.

2. Transcendental Realism - try to show that realism falls out of an analysis of thought/reason itself. If you can show that the very act of making of an assertion or the asking of a question presupposes realist premises then the idealist is check-mated from the very start! — Aaron R

Pretty much the only way to go about this. The OP's options for response all pretty much begin with 'The world is...' - but forget the world: we can begin and end with thought itself: thought as sheerly 'realist' from the get-go. Idealism is thoughtless about nothing less than thought itself.

My point though was that if you think of evolution as a structure or process, that has determined the way we see the world; then you must be thinking of that evolutionary structure or process as being actual and comprehensible; which means that your thoughts about that structure or process are inescapably being assumed to be at least isomorphic enough with the actual structure or process to make them coherent and intelligible thoughts about something that is presumed to have actually happened; that is to be part of a reality which has formed us.

This is in line with Aaron's option 2: transcendental realism.

Whether and to what extent quantum mechanics supports any particular philosophical outlook is a hotly contested question.... — AaronR

I'm coming back to this point, because I was referring to something more specific than the general (and vexed) question of 'philosophical implications of quantum mechanics'. The particular point I was making was that Einstein advocated a view which is very much in line with transcendental or scientific realism - that the real objects of scientific analysis must exist independently of observation. But this is precisely what was called into question by Bohr, Heisenberg, and others (albeit in slightly different ways.) And with their emphasis of the role of the observer in the determination of the experimental outcome, and their contention that nature 'reveals herself in accordance with the kinds of question you ask of her', I think overall that Einstein's opponents were much nearer to some form of Kantian philosophy than to realism. And furthermore, that I think their attitude has been borne out by subsequent developments in that discipline.

David Chalmers in a conference on consciousness briefly discussed why he rejected idealism. It was because it left the structure of experience unexplained. I agree with that. There is something beyond our experiences which is the reason for our experiences. What we experience is a world much bigger and older than us mere humans. Even the fact that I have parents which gave birth to me is enough to doubt idealism (I wasn't experiencing anything as a zygote). — Marchesk

That's not a good response, since it just raises the question as to why one thing is in need of explanation or not another, along with the question of how something in principle beyond what is in need of explanation is itself supposed to serve as an explanation. I have never seen a realist argument that gave any reason why 1) realist objects don't have to be explained, but experiences do (this is special pleading), or 2) realist objects, being in principle totally separable from experiences, do anything to explain experiences even if posited.

Yeah, I'm with Marchesk on this one: 1) is an admission that one would prefer not to do philosophy, which is fine, but then it's not an appropriate position for a philosophical conversation, but rather an anti-philosophical screed that opts for some sort of traditionalist line on accepting a cultural dogma. That's fine on its own terms, but it isn't philosophy, or really any sort of inquiry, and presumably the latter is what we're interested in, not just claiming things, but having reasons for claiming them, and interested not just in pronouncing them to be true, but in why they're true.

2) is something lots of people have claimed to do, but I've never really seen any good arguments to this effect, and lots of it seems to be rhetorical/ideological rather than genuinely persuasive on any philosophical grounds (cf. SX's post above).

3) seems to me to be a parlor game, played by people who are interested in looking clever, and the easiest way to do that is to claim the whole thing's a sham, or that all arguers are equally stupid and confused, and that you have a magic bullet for 'deflating' the issue. These games become less interesting the more one plays them, and the thirst for genuine insight comes back. The questions are perfectly coherent, just difficult.

... if you think of evolution as a structure or process, that has determined the way we see the world; then you must be thinking of that evolutionary structure or process as being actual and comprehensible. — John

While I agree with some aspects of what Hoffman is saying, I think there's an underlying inconsistency, which is this. If you argue that the real determinant of knowledge is what facilitates survival, then you have no real grounds for claiming that anything you believe is true. After all, what you think is 'true' might just be the ruse of the genetic algorithm, the sole concern of which is (to be blunt) the Four F's. So if you claim to underwrite the validity of reason in evolutionary terms - that is, effective because it promotes survival - then you're undermining the sovereignity of reason.

This, of course, is also the basis of Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, which is a variant of the argument from reason - both of which argue that reason points to something beyond itself - something beyond reason, which commands the assent of reason. (I would like to think that is the mainstream view of the Western philosophical tradition.)

I wasn't addressing this point though, but something different, (although perhaps somewhat tangentially related). The point I was trying to make to Cavacava was that if we claim that what we say is not isomorphic with reality, but is rather just what works because it has been selected for by a process of evolution, then there is an inconsistency in that, because we are purporting to be saying something about reality, about something that we think really occurred prior to the advent of humans, and we must be taking what we are saying to be meaningfully isomorphic with that posited real evolutionary process, or we would have to admit that what we are saying doesn't actually refer to anything.

To put it another way, if we claim that what we are saying is not isomorphic with any reality then we cannot say anything that meaningfully refers to any actual process which is purported to have occurred.

But it's a very similar argument. If you say that what humans believe to be true, is simply a consequence of adaptive necessity, then this undermines the means by which one judges theories to be true, as one's judgements about theories is also a result of that process. It's like the mythical Uroborus, the snake that consumes itself - the hardest part is the last bite!

Yes, I agree they are related points, but perhaps I was thrown off because it seemed to me that your response was based on thinking that I was agreeing with the idea that our view of the world is merely a result of what has been selected for by survival advantage. The two points differ in that yours comes at it from the perspective of the undermining of truth and mine from the point of view of the undermining of reference.

You seem to be saying that if the criteria for our acceptance of worldviews is not really truth, but survival advantage, then we can have no confidence in the truth of any of our worldviews including the one that says that the criteria for our acceptance of worldviews is not really truth, but survival advantage.

I am saying that if we want to be able to meaningfully claim that the criteria for our acceptance of worldviews is not really a rational quest for truth but an evolutionary process that selected for survival advantage, and hence that our worldviews are not isomorphic with the world, then we must accept that the world is intelligible to us, and that what we say can be isomorphic with the world; which is a contradiction.

No doubt with a little more work the two points could be woven together as two strands of the same argument.

If you say that what humans believe to be true, is simply a consequence of adaptive necessity, — Wayfarer

We die or fail to reproduce if we get it wrong. Dennett's response is that for bacteria, truth isn't relevant. But for a fox, it needs to know what is a mate, what is prey, and what is predator. It needs to know the truth about such things.

I know perfectly what Dennett says. The only thing I am perpetually bemused by, is why it is considered to constitute philosophy.

The actions of a predator in respect of prey is not comparable to the judgement of the truths of reason; to believe that it constitutes a gradient, with coral polyps at one end of the scale and humans at the other, is to mis-characterise what constitutes rationality.

I endorse what Leon Wieseltier said in his review of Dennett's 'Breaking the Spell' - that:

Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else.

So imagining an empty forest, with no observer to hear the tree fall, still amounts to a perspective. What would any scene or object be like, from no perspective? — Wayfarer

Back to this. Perhaps the realist can say the idealist is making a mistake here in insisting that the realist be able to imagine what something is like independent of perspective. We can't do that because we're human beings who always perceive from a certain perspective. The best we can do is abstract away. But that doesn't mean the tree or the forest or anything else doesn't exist independent of perspective, just because we can't conceive it that way.

IOW, realism doesn't need to be committed to being able to conceive of something (exactly as it is) for that something to exist. All the realist needs is reasonable grounds for thinking so. And the reasonable grounds are an experience of a world that is much larger and older than us. A world that gave birth to us individually and as a species.

In a way, the idealist is criticizing the realist on idealist grounds, in that the idealist expects the world to be entirely conceivable for it to be. But the realist need not be committed to this at all, since by definition, real things are mind independent, and thus independent of conceptualization.

Further, the realist can just say this is a limitation of human minds, not the world, since human imagination is parasitic on human perception. But the world is not limited by human abilities, or lack thereof. Man is not the measure of the world.

So imagining an empty forest, with no observer to hear the tree fall, still amounts to a perspective. What would any scene or object be like, from no perspective? — Wayfarer

This is a very specific kind of formal fallacy, that I fell under for a long time. That you must yourself imagine a situation in order to imagine it without a perceiver does not mean that the situation itself has a perceiver. This is to confuse the imagining situation with the imagined one.

Analogously, in reading a story, it does not follow from the fact that because you must 'watch' the characters in order to conceive what is happening in a fictional scenario, that in the fictional scenario the characters are being watched by you. To think this is not to understand how imagination and fiction work: the reader and characters do not exist on a level material field, so that the reader can literally look at the characters from within the story or from without. Rather, the imagining scenario (reading the book) requires the resder to imagine the imagined scenario: but this tells us nothing about who is imagining in the imagined scenario. It is thus not inconceivable to imagine a situation in which no one is perceiving a forest, and to think this is not possible is to fundamentally misunderstand how imagining scenarios works.

Perhaps the realist can say the idealist is making a mistake here in insisting that the realist be able to imagine what something is like independent of perspective. We can't do that because we're human beings who always perceive from a certain perspective. The best we can do is abstract away. But that doesn't mean the tree or the forest or anything else doesn't exist independent of perspective, just because we can't conceive it that way. — Marchesk

But this admits that the concept of perspective-independent trees is unintelligible. And how can an unintelligible concept be meaningful and veridical?

This is a very specific kind of formal fallacy, that I fell under for a long time. That you must yourself imagine a situation in order to imagine it without a perceiver does not mean that the situation itself has a perceiver. This is to confuse the imagining situation with the imagined one. — The Great Whatever

The point is that when you imagine this situation you're imagining the experience of this situation – and the experience of a situation does require a perceiver. It's a counterfactual; what I would see if I were there. But a counterfactual experience isn't the same as a realist occurrence (unless it is, in which case realism is akin to fictionalism).

I deny that when you imagine a situation, you are imagining the experience of it. You are imagining the situation. You might be having an experience in doing so, but this is not the same thing.

In my opinion these three are the case more or less:

1. The world is pretty much as we perceive it (naive realism, direct realism?)
2. The world is pretty much as science illuminates it. (scientific realism)
4. The world can only be known in its relations. (object-oriented realism) — Marchesk

. . . Which of course implies that I do not believe that those three are incompatible with each other for the most part.

Also re Wayfarer's comment, there are no "perspectiveless perspectives" where, however, I'm not using "perspective" to refer to something necessarily mental, but merely what I refer to as "reference points."

I deny that when you imagine a situation, you are imagining the experience of it. You are imagining the situation. — The Great Whatever

Then the issue is with the truth of Wayfarer's premise(s) rather than the validity of his argument.

Although, your wording is a little ambiguous. According the idealist, the experience of the situation is the situation. According to you, are they different? If so, I'm guessing you prescribe to naive realism?

If so, I'm guessing you prescribe to naive realism? — Michael

No possible way TGW prescribes to naive realism. I would be beyond shocked. That would be like Landru coming on here and explaining why he voted for Trump.

No possible way TGW prescribes to naive realism. I would be beyond shocked. That would be like Landru coming on here and explaining why he voted for Trump. — Marchesk

Then I'm not really sure what he could mean. The situation is different to the experience of the situation but they both have the same sort of qualitative structure (being that when we imagine a situation we imagine it in terms of what it looks and feels and smells like, etc.)?

Even for the idealist, the imagined situation and the situation of imagining must be distinct. Regardless of whether the imagined situation itself is imagined to be one that is solely experiential, they don't collapse, and the argument doesn't go through. The Master Argument, which is what you've essentially presented here, is formally fallacious.

No possible way TGW prescribes to naive realism. I would be beyond shocked. That would be like Landru coming on here and explaining why he voted for Trump. — Marchesk

I think naive realism is not a coherent metaphysical position if one supplements it with the claim that one has some reason to believe it. If one wants to assert it dogmatically, then it's I suppose possible in principle, but by its own logic I think it rules out the possibility of having any evidence for it.

Regarding external world realism, I'm usually what the ancients would call a 'negative dogmatist,' in thinking that we can actually positively ascertain that we do not know whether there is an external world in the way the realist wants, or what its structure is. Though I have sympathies with skepticism as well.

Regardless of whether the imagined situation itself is imagined to be one that is solely experiential, they don't collapse, and the argument doesn't go through. — The Great Whatever

The argument does go through, because what you're imagining is still experiential, not some non-experiential material substance (or whatever the proposed mind-independent thing is).

Imagine if I were to write a book about a book. The book I'm writing about is not the book I'm writing, but it's still a book, and so not the sort of the thing that can exist without being written. Similarly, the experiential thing I'm imagining is not the imagination itself, but it's still an experiential thing, and so not the sort of thing that can exist without being experienced.

No, it doesn't go through, because even if the imagined situation is experiential, it doesn't follow that your conceiving of it means that there is an experiencer in the situation. If you were an idealist, there would have to be an experiencer in that situation, of course, but only because there must be one in any situation, due to your metaphysical commitments. But to appeal to this, you'd have to assume your conclusion: the Master Argument is supposed to establish idealism, not rely on it.

The point is this: it does not follow that from the fact that you have to have an experience, let's say, in order to imagine a situation, that in that situation there is an experiencer.

I think my edit addresses this.

Imagine if I were to write a book about a book. The book I'm writing about is not the book I'm writing, but it's still a book, and so not the sort of the thing that can exist without being written. Similarly, the experiential thing I'm imagining is not the imagination itself, but it's still an experiential thing, and so not the sort of thing that can exist without being experienced. — Michael

Yes, but you can imagine non-experiential things. If you want to deny this, you have to assume your conclusion (idealism). If I imagine a tree falling, I'm imagining a tree, not an experience.

Yes, but you can imagine non-experiential things. If you want to deny this, you have to assume your conclusion (idealism). If I imagine a tree falling, I'm imagining a tree, not an experience. — The Great Whatever

And what does imagining a tree consist of? I would think it's picturing a tree in one's mind (or recallling the things we say about trees). One imagines the look of a tree or the feel of a tree or the smell of a tree. It's a collection of experiential things.

It doesn't matter whether in imagining the tree you have experiences, because you are having those experiences in the imagining situation, not in the imagined situation.

To imagine something experiential in the imagined situation, you would do something different: for example, you might imagine a man by that tree smelling it, and imagine what he smelled.

It doesn't matter whether in imagining the tree you have experiences, because you are having those experiences in the imagining situation, not in the imagined situation. — The Great Whatever

What matters is that the situation you're imagining is just a collection of shapes and colours and smells and whatnot. These aren't perspective-independent things. So what you're imagining is not a realist thing.

Whether or not there's an experiencer in the imagined situation is irrelevant. Just as whether or not there's an author in the book I've written (about a book) is irrelevant. The thing I've written about (a book) isn't the sort of thing that can exist without being written. And the things I'm imagining (the look and feel of a tree) aren't the sort of things that can exist without being perceived.