This is such a parlor game answer.

Come, join, we have cake and beer.

What is there if there is not the real?

I agree that it doesn't make a difference what one names the "stuff" that one is talking about, but I don't buy any of the following: that in lieu of realism/antirealism being a consequence of other views, it's typically just a nominal difference; that the non-nominal difference is not (an issue of engaging in) "actual ontology"/an issue of addressing what sort of thing we're talking about (a la "what it is") or the "nature of things"; or that a stance on realism/anti-realism amounts to "really arguing for" how that stance can account for (other) things.

On the other hand, I do find it odd and frustrating that realism/anti-realism discussions under various guises (ostensible perception discussions are popular approaches lately) occupy so much real estate on boards like this, and I'd agree that it probably often indicates a relative "philosophical sophomore" status. But if I had to guess reasons for it, I'd guess a variety of them, including (a) that Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is typically one of the first things that philosophy students (whether "formal" or self-taught) read that has "mindfnck"/pre-philosophical-paradigm-breaking qualities, (b) that those pre-philosophical-paradigm-breaking qualities make it seductive to present general anti-realism as one's view on philosophy boards, (c) that one hasn't gotten far enough along in one's philosophizing that one realizes that there's no privileged epistemic basis for general anti-realism, and (d) I think that quite a few people are rather ad hoc motivated in seeing a general anti-realism as a support for their religious views/as a counter to what they take as attacks on those religious views sourced in realism.

I think that quite a few people are rather ad hoc motivated in seeing a general anti-realism as a support for their religious views/as a counter to what they take as attacks on those religious views sourced in realism. — Terrapin Station

The tenor of a great deal of modern philosophy is antagonistic not only to religion, but to any spirituality within philosophy. The Enlightenment sought to sweep metaphysics off the table, to concentrate on the reality of 'this world', that which traditional philosophy characterised as an illusory realm.

Thus they arrive at their stupendous concept, "God." That which is last, thinnest, and emptiest is put first, as the cause, as ens realissimum. Why did mankind have to take seriously the brain afflictions of sick web-spinners? — Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

I think that question has an answer, but I'll leave it at that.

But if I had to guess reasons for it, I'd guess a variety of them, including (a) that Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is typically one of the first things that philosophy students (whether "formal" or self-taught) read that has "mindfnck"/pre-philosophical-paradigm-breaking qualities, (b) that those pre-philosophical-paradigm-breaking qualities make it seductive to present general anti-realism as one's view on philosophy boards, (c) that one hasn't gotten far enough along in one's philosophizing that one realizes that there's no privileged epistemic basis for general anti-realism, and (d) I think that quite a few people are rather ad hoc motivated in seeing a general anti-realism as a support for their religious views/as a counter to what they take as attacks on those religious views sourced in realism. — Terrapin Station

Ironically, I reckon the largest impetus that fuels such debates is nothing less than the spirit of modernity itself, with it's concern over epistemic certainty and the quest for an encyclopaedic grasp of the universe. One imagines a Plato or an Aristotle scratching their head over why in the world this was a problem at all. The modern forms of the anti-realist debate - which tend to turn over the absolute triviality that is consciousness (trivial from the ancient POV anyway) - would be total, absolute anathema to them.

So despite some pretending to be defenders of some long-lost ancient knowledge in the face of the onslaught of the Enlightenment, the concern with anti-realism is exactly co-extensive with it as sheer and utter reaction: it's only with the concern over absolute certainty does mysterianism and anti-realist sentiment gain any traction whatsoever, disfiguring the history of philosophy by transposing it's thoroughly modern concerns onto it and colouring it with a reactionary and regressive nostalgia that wishes for a time that never was. Realists, who tend to be even worse in their ignorance of philosophical history, at least acknowledge the modern providence of their views.

I don't buy any of the following: that in lieu of realism/antirealism being a consequence of other views, it's typically just a nominal difference; that the non-nominal difference is not (an issue of engaging in) "actual ontology"/an issue of addressing what sort of thing we're talking about (a la "what it is") or the "nature of things"; or that a stance on realism/anti-realism amounts to "really arguing for" how that stance can account for (other) things. — Terrapin Station

If one doesn't have an account of individuation or ontogenesis that couples with one's stance on anti/realism, frankly, one ought to count oneself out of the debate.

So despite some pretending to be defenders of some long-lost ancient knowledge in the face of the onslaught of the Enlightenment, the concern with anti-realism is exactly co-extensive with it as sheer and utter reaction: it's only with the concern over absolute certainty does mysterianism and anti-realist sentiment gain any traction whatsoever, disfiguring the history of philosophy by transposing it's thoroughly modern concerns onto it and colouring it with a reactionary and regressive nostalgia that wishes for a time that never was. — StreetlightX

Weren't there idealists and skeptics about the external world in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy?

I don't see how the realist/anti-realist debates, or the problems of perception are new. They're rooted in very old concerns about the nature of the world, how we know about said world, and so forth.

TGW is right, concerns about the external world (or what exists) present a hard problem. One that has challenged minds, both ignorant and well read, since people starting doing philosophy.

If one doesn't have an account of individuation or ontogenesis that couples with one's stance on anti/realism, frankly, one ought to count oneself out of the debate. — StreetlightX

Yeah, that's not biased towards your own background, interests and stances. <eye roll>

Weren't there idealists and skeptics about the external world in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy? — Marchesk

Sure, and tellingly, their views tended to be considered rather fringe, to the extent that they challenged not simply 'the external world', but philosophy as such. They generally quite self-consciously sat at the edge of what is considered philosophy, and it's not until Descartes that scepticism finds itself properly allied with 'consciousness' such that the anti/realism debate takes the form it does now. If one tracks the history of terms like appearance, phenomenon, subject, object, or intention, to take some random examples, these often have literally zero to do with our modern sense of 'appearance-for-a-consciousness-or-a-mind-or-subject' or what have you, and generally have to do with (now) obscure understandings of 'Being' for which subjectivity was a frankly trivial issue (in keeping with the Christinization of Aristotle, it is the 'soul' which takes pride of place in those debates). The entire vocabulary by which these debates are played out didn't exist, let alone the problems themselves.

Descartes pretty much fucking murdered anything interesting in philosophy by entirely revamping the scholastic philosophical horizon as part of his general Enlightenment drive, and with it came the floodgates into which anti/realism became a respectable subject of discussion. It's no surprise that along with the Enlightenment came liberal individualism (Locke), and with it, it's attendant obsessions over self-consciousness and subjectivity. Our own obsession with these questions entirely reflects this entirely modern narcissism, and is historically mediated through and through (I mean honestly, it takes an almost inhuman kind of pettiness to even entertain the question 'does the world revolve around (my) experience of it?' - even if to spend the effort answering it in the negative).

And notice too how in these debates, the 'function' of what is being disccused is so little defined that experience, sensation, perception, thought, and mind all basically become synonyms for each other despite despite almost always refering to entirely different things in any serious literature on the subject(s). Literally, no one here tends to care 'what' is it they are talking about: only that, whatever it is, it is Very Important and must be defended against the Other Thing whose functioning is also entirely undiscussed and undisclosed. And I'm somehow the one playing parlour games? Please. The stakes have never been lower than in these kinds of arguments.

Yeah, that's not biased towards your own background, interests and stances. — Terrapin Station

Sure, if my 'background' begins with Plato's doctrine of the Forms and moves forward through the history of philosophy from there.

What's the difference between realism and materialism, btw? — Mongrel

Both believe in the existence of that which is not experienced by their own mind.

One calls it "matter", the other calls it "mind-stuff".

******

I believe that the difference comes down to one's notion of their place in the world. A realist sees him or herself as a (small) part of a wider existence. An idealist sees his or her own existence as primary.

To the realist, we happen to the world. To the idealist, the world happens to us.

I believe that the difference comes down to one's notion of their place in the world. A realist sees him or herself as a (small) part of a wider existence. An idealist sees his or her own existence as primary. To the realist, we happen to the world. To the idealist, the world happens to us. — Real Gone Cat

I also think this is a significant feature of the question's landscape. But isn't it that the idealist believes we shape the world by what we think? That is the issue that buried structuralism. 20th Century people had to believe that the world can be different from what it has been... that the UN can work if we just believe in it, for instance.

Blessed are we who don't fully understand why they had to have faith in that.

But isn't it that the idealist believes we shape the world by what we think? — Mongrel

Which makes it difficult to explain how self-evidently true Euclidean space (as Kant thought) got overturned by General Relativity.

Which makes it difficult to explain how self-evidently true Euclidean space (as Kant thought) got overturned by General Relativity. — tom

Special Relativity is the one that does in absolute space. Kant beat Einstein to it (so did Leibniz, btw.. but that's beside the point.)

Special Relativity is the one that does in absolute space. Kant beat Einstein to it (so did Leibniz, btw.. but that's beside the point.) — Mongrel

Historical revisionism does you no credit. And it is General relativity that curves space-time to the extent that triangle (self-evidently or not) do not in general have internal angles totaling 180degrees, as demonstrated by Gauss in 1820s.

Thus Idealism is refuted.

Historical revisionism does you no credit. And it is General relativity that curves space-time to the extent that triangle (self-evidently or not) do not in general have internal angles totaling 180degrees, as demonstrated by Gauss in 1820s.

Thus Idealism is refuted. — tom

Maybe you could help me understand your argument a little better. Kant noted the intuitiveness of Euclidean geometry. What's the next step in the argument? And what is Kant's conclusion?

Well, anyway. I think Kant is a significant part of the conversation because AP is partly rooted in a reaction against Kant that flowed into an attempt to resurrect Correspondence. And so it is modern. It both celebrates and is afflicted by a modern theme: we can't go back. We can't return to the days when Correspondence was just obvious to everyone. We can't return to the ancient world when the external was alive and partly conscious such that it might hear your prayers if you spoke.

We're confused about what life and consciousness are in a way that people before us just couldn't be. We do have unique challenges.

Quick question: if realism and idealism are secondary, what are the primary questions that generate them?

Literally questions about what it is one is talking about when one takes a side either way. If you say: 'all is thought' or 'you can't get outside of thought' or whatever (or even, 'you CAN get outside of thought' or 'you can get beyond mind/sensation/feeling/life/X/take-your-pick) - then literally: what are you talking about? What is thought? (or X?) How does it work? What account can you give of it? And if, in fact, X is supposed to account for things, then in what way, through what mechanisms or what process is it meant to do so? What kind of thing is X such that it can even be spoken about in terms of an inside and an outside to begin with, or a beyond or not-beyond at all? What difference does the difference of 'anti' or 'realism' make? How can one make sense of the difference? If these elementary questions can't be answered, then the whole debate is an empty shell, fury and thunder over nothing. If there is no account of what is at stake, then there is no stake.

Maybe I'm just not getting it, but it seems as if you're just saying that we ought to define our terms first. Fair enough, but is there a kind of substantive philosophical discussion outside of term-definition that is logically prior to the realism/anti-realism debate?

(It may not be logically prior in a strict sense, but I find that realism about abstracta, or the rejection of same, says a lot about what sort of philosopher one is, and seems to be prior in some way to this discussion. Vague, but it's a long story.)

I

What kind of thing is X such that it can even be spoken about in terms of an inside and an outside to begin with, or a beyond or not-beyond at all? — StreetlightX

I take it that on the account of realism, X is whatever makes up the world regardless of whether we know or perceive it. That could be ordinary objects, matter, information, math, some neutral stuff, whatever. But typically, it's the stuff of physics.

For idealism, it is either the various experiences we have (or any mind has), or the fundamental categories of thought for Kantians which structure or experiences, such as space and time.

I understand the fundamental crux of the debate to be whether man, or some kind of mind, is the measure of what exists, or whether what exists has it's own structure independent of what anyone thinks or experiences.

So for a scientific realist, The Big Bang, star formation, evolution, continental drift, etc. happened regardless of what we think about it, and it gave rise to us, incidentally. So our thinking should conform to how things went down, as best it can.

I take the debate as meaningful in the same way Meillassoux does, in that if idealism is the case, then we can't really mean that there were dinosaurs before us leading up to us. Instead we have to mean that it appears to us humans as if there were these creatures walking the world before us, and something, likely a large rock or ball of ice, killed most of them off, allowing for our small, furry ancestors to get on with it, and now we're here.

But it only seems like that to us, because we're correlated to the world or our experiences based on how we think. That sort of thing is worrisome to me. It means our best scientific theories aren't true. They only appear to be, because of whatever epistemic standards we've adopted in the current age, which cold change (see any of the many Landru posts about this in the previous forum).

It's not just defining one's terms though, as if it were a preliminary exercise to the main event: if properly conducted, realism or anti-realism will always necessary 'fall out' of those definitions. If you have a theory of what thought (or X) 'is', your anti/realism will follow (or not - ideally, imo, your X will be the 'kind of thing' which renders the debate moot because thinking in terms of inside/outside, beyond/not-beyond is vulgar, practically childish philosophy, but that's me sneaking in opinions here). Defining your terms is the main event - or at least it should be.

I take it that on the account of realism, X is whatever makes up the world regardless of whether we know or perceive it. That could be ordinary objects, matter, information, math, some neutral stuff, whatever. But typically, it's the stuff of physics.

For idealism, it is either the various experiences we have (or any mind has), or the fundamental categories of thought for Kantians which structure or experiences, such as space and time. — Marchesk

What is your theory of knowledge? What is your theory of perception? What is your theory of experience? Why are you conflating these things?

Why are you conflating these things? — StreetlightX

So your point is that ontology is the destination, not the starting point, otherwise you end up with intractable disagreements.

Depends what you mean by ontology - I suspect I mean it differently from you: as I understand it, an ontology (roughly) is an account of what is: to account for something is to explain it's 'features': perhaps it's morphogenesis, perhaps it's behaviour under certain conditions, perhaps it's capacity for instigating further processes, or it's capacity for change; perhaps it's historicity, etc etc. This account - whatever it is - can be qualified as realist or not, but ontology (as I understand it) is not about realism or anti-realism. Plato has an ontology, Leibniz has an ontology, Spinoza has an ontology, and only in some cases does the very question of anti/realism arise, and even then in a kind of supplementary, beside-the-point way.

Ontology, understood in this way, is definitely not the destination, provided that it's clear that I'm not talking about ontology being exhausted by the question of anti/realism, which is a tiny pond in a vast ocean of generally far more interesting philosophy. If you begin from anti/realism, nothing of the essential in ontology is touched upon.

Dogmatic Realism?

Sure, why not? Under most circumstances, i would consider myself to be a realist. And Dogmatism is very persuasive. I could totally subscribe to a philosophy by dogs. And maybe even a dog-based spirituality. At this point, there might be little to lose! :D (j/k. sorry for the interruption. Now back to our regularly scheduled thread, already in progress... )

Literally questions about what it is one is talking about when one takes a side either way. — StreetlightX

But questions about taking a side either way would be secondary to taking a side either way.

And while I think it's worthwhile to get into more detail about what we're talking about when we talk about thought and the like, I think it's equally worthwhile to not "play stupid" and pretend that we have no idea what we're talking about when we talk about thought.

'Ontology' is derived from the Greek verb 'to be', specifically, from the first-person present participle of the verb 'to be' (i.e. 'I am'). So it's not the analysis of 'what exists', which is the role of natural philosophy. It is about 'the nature of being', which includes or arises in relation to first-person perspective and experience.

The question of 'dogmatic realism' arises because of the influence of naturalism or natural philosophy in today's thinking. Notice that one of the guiding principles of scientific method is the exclusion of the first-person perspective, so as to arrive at what Thomas Nagel calls in his book of that name 'a view from nowhere'. Naturalism will always tend to try and treat mind as a natural object, which is what is behind a great deal of the debates between materialism and idealism. Materialism must insist that mind is a product of, or consequence of, matter - otherwise, what are they claiming? - whereas idealists will generally try and argue from the primacy of mind, via various transcendental arguments, the argument from reason, and so on.

'Ontology' is derived from the Greek verb 'to be', specifically, from the first-person present participle of the verb 'to be' (i.e. 'I am'). — Wayfarer

I don't know why you keep pushing this line which is simply historically and factually incorrect. Read the Parmenides, or Aristotle's Metaphysics: in no sense is the 'first person' at all at stake in these. Hell, read wikipedia or the SEP: no one but you thinks being has anything to do with the first person. Again, this is you pushing factually incorrect agendas on the basis of shoddy scholarship and bald prejudice.

Hell, read wikipedia — StreetlightX

The compound word ontology combines onto-, from the Greek ὄν, on (gen. ὄντος, ontos), i.e. "being; that which is", which is the present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, i.e. "to be, I am", and -λογία, -logia, i.e. "logical discourse". — Wikipedia

Yes, and one you get past primary school grammar lessons, you can read, say, the list of primary questions that the wiki has on the subject, practically none of which has to do with the nature of being as that which "arises in relation to first-person perspective and experience" - which is an absurdly narrow and extremely idiosyncratic take on a subject for which the first person in actual fact is generally not at all in question. If you think every time Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides refer to Being they are referring to some first-person experience, you need to go back to first year philosophy class.

Quine: "A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo Saxon monosyllables: "What is there?‟ It can be answered, moreover, in a word— "Everything‟—and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is..."

Heidegger: "A few examples should help. Over there, on the other side of the street, stands the high school building. A being. We can scour every side of the building from the outside, roam through the inside from basement to attic, and note everything that can be found there: hallways, stairs, classrooms, and their furnishings. Everywhere we find beings, and in a very definite order. Where now is the Being of this high school? It is, after all. The building is".