They're all nevertheless dependent on perspective. Things are only nearer or further away with respect to some other thing, and someone has to be measuring that.

'Mind-independent' is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical principle. Crucial to see that distinction.

Mind-independent' is a methodological assumption, — Wayfarer

I'm against any method. They can be useful, but there is no such thing as The Method. What has this assumption to do with a method? I just think they exist outside of us, independently of what I think about them? Don't you agree the space you walk in is real? Why shouldn't it exist if there are no observers? There would be no perception of it, but space would still be there. As we perceive it.

Is "the observer" real? If not, then the (OP) question is incoherent. If yes, then the (OP) question is moot. :point:

Why shouldn't it exist if there are no observers? There would be no perception of it, but space would still be there. As we perceive it. — Raymond

What I'm drawing attention to is that what we presume is real independently of any observers, is still very much a construction of the mind. Any judgement about what exists, whether space or anything else, is a judgement, and the mind is inextricably part of that. Helps to know the fundamentals of Kant in this respect.

I see "mind-independence" as theoretical equivocation that results from ignoring praxis, because whilst theories can be presented aperspectivally, the use of a method cannot be.

For instance, traditional theories of causality identify the causal order with the temporal order. And yet methodologically speaking, I usually observe effects before their causes.

What I'm drawing attention to is that what we presume is real independently of any observers, is still very much a construction of the mind. Any judgement about what exists, whether space or anything else, is a judgement — Wayfarer

Agreed. But does that mean they don't exist independently of us? Different people have different things they think to exist observer independently. You claim there is actually one observer independent reality that we can't know. I think the observer independent reality depends on the observer (which sounds self contradictory but actually isn't).

What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. — Werner Heisenberg

Heisenberg was right to a certain extent. I think he refers to the scientific method and scientific questions asked. If we ask mathematical questions nature will reply in that language. Or else we force her to fit the math as is done in experiment surrounded by measuring devices. We expect that what we think to exist, be it an object under scientific investigation (in which, to a certain degree, we create the object and its surrounding), the god talking to us, or the ghosts in the forrest.

. :up:

Seems like all questions in philosophy reduce to the nature of reality and if, how, or what we can know about it, are there gods, can we know them, what is good or bad, who are we, and is it all determined?

Is idealism the claim that reality is a dream?

Emphatically not. My view is not that 'reality requires an observer', as this is an anthroporphism. But I think that reality has an ineluctably subjective pole or aspect.

Consider when you point towards any object, be that a rock, an apple, a distant star, or whatever as an example of an object external to yourself. What you know of that object is due to the sensory information that you receive from it. That is combined - synthesised - with what you already know, to judge it as a rock, apple, star, whatever. (Infants, for example, are not able to do this, as their minds are not yet sufficiently mature.) But this is an action on the part of the conscious mind - it's not as if the mind is a passive recipient upon which data is impressed, even though impression is part of it. The mind puts all of the impressions together along with judgement. That is fundamental to the nature of experience and therefore it is what 'reality' means for us. In that sense, knowledge of anything is a product of the observing mind, not something which the mind, like an empty vessel, simply receives.

There's massive misunderstanding of philosophical idealism in my view. It's about having insight into how the mind works. Most people start from some form of uncritical realism, that the external domain, the world of sensory experience, is the real world and that our experience of it is just in our own minds. From that perspective 'idealism' seems like a fantasy - but it's not what idealism really means. Idealism is the understanding of how the mind structures experience and so reality itself. But that is not an easy thing to understand, it takes a shift in perspective. See this interview.

Thanks. The Kastrup interview is bound to irritate some people. His approach often seems to me to be a more sophisticated Don Hoffman.

I the way he put this. If more philosophy could be written with clarity I'd be pleased.

Kant in the Western tradition was the first one to point out that space and time are not the objective scaffolding of the world but cognitive categories – our own way of taking things apart so we can comprehend them more easily.

In this discussion and so many others here, we keep coming back to such simple building blocks of understanding, namely can we know reality and how so?

Richard Rorty doesn't come up here much and I know many people disparage his work (he seems to be the wrong kind of postmodernist). However on this subject of reality I have always had a view that the following idea has legs and then I saw Rorty addresses it in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.

Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.

For me the problem with the philosophical onion is that you can peel away layers of accepted beliefs to reveal something new underneath, but there are always more layers to peel away and then finally you are left with nothing. :wink:

Emphatically not. My view is not that 'reality requires an observer', as this is an anthroporphism. But I think that reality has an ineluctably subjective pole or aspect. — Wayfarer

Why would you say that idealism understood as reality requires an observer is anthropomorphism? Are you saying consciousness is exclusively human? Somehow I don't buy that. However, given epistemological limitations, it's provisionally true.

Consider when you point towards any object, be that a rock, an apple, a distant star, or whatever as an example of an object external to yourself. What you know of that object is due to the sensory information that you receive from it. That is combined - synthesised - with what you already know, to judge it as a rock, apple, star, whatever. (Infants, for example, are not able to do this, as their minds are not yet sufficiently mature.) But this is an action on the part of the conscious mind - it's not as if the mind is a passive recipient upon which data is impressed, even though impression is part of it. The mind puts all of the impressions together along with judgement. That is fundamental to the nature of experience and therefore it is what 'reality' means for us. In that sense, knowledge of anything is a product of the observing mind, not something which the mind, like an empty vessel, simply receives. — Wayfarer

Yup! In what we (think we) know, there's a little bit of us in it. I say "there that's an apple" and though there really is an apple, that apple has me in it. The reflection of a mirror depends on the qualities of the mirror (JWST vs. HST).

There's massive misunderstanding of philosophical idealism in my view. It's about having insight into how the mind works. Most people start from some form of uncritical realism, that the external domain, the world of sensory experience, is the real world and that our experience of it is just in our own minds. From that perspective 'idealism' seems like a fantasy - but it's not what idealism really means. Idealism is the understanding of how the mind structures experience and so reality itself. But that is not an easy thing to understand, it takes a shift in perspective. See this interview. — Wayfarer

I prefer the original idealism (the mind creates & sustains reality). In the weakest sense, without an observer we can say goodbye to imaginary entities and dreams (a part of reality wouldn't exist).

Why would you say that idealism understood as reality requires an observer is anthropomorphism — Agent Smith

Because requirement implies someone who requires something. I'm not saying that consciousness is exclusively human.

I prefer the original idealism (the mind creates & sustains reality) — Agent Smith

Any examples in mind?

Truth is a property of sentences — Tom Storm

That does away with all the spooky implications of metaphysics, doesn't it? I really don't buy it. What is, is not dependent on our say-so.

The Kastrup interview is bound to irritate some people. — Tom Storm

I would annoy materialists. Donald Hoffman is an academic advisor to the organisation he’s set up, the Essentia Foundation. I think Kastrup is pretty good, he’s putting together a solid portfolio of books and articles.

They're all nevertheless dependent on perspective. Things are only nearer or further away with respect to some other thing, and someone has to be measuring that. — Wayfarer

This is not true: Proxima Centauri is further away from Earth than the moon is from all possible perspectives.

Yes, all possible perspectives. And perspectives are only brought to bear by a mind.

Again, you're speaking from a perspective which imagines the universe with no observer in it, but that itself is also a product of your mind. The mind furnishes the conceptual framework within which all judgements of 'it exists' or 'it does not exist' are made. Apart from that conceptual framework, nothing exists, nor does it not exist, as existence and non-existence are also conceptual judgements ¹ .

I've said it before but I think it is spelled out with exceptional clarity in the opening paragraphs of Schopenhauer:

§ I. "The world is my idea" — this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth ; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this : for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it; and each of these, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable.

Modern naturalism on the contrary starts with the assumption that what is known by the senses and scientific instruments is inherently real - that is, I believe, what you mean when you use the term 'immanent'. What is 'transcendent' is rejected on account of it's putative association with metaphysics and religious ideas (as we see all of the time in debates on this Forum. 'Transcendental' in the sense implied in Kant and later philosophy is held to describe what is necessary for experience but not revealed in experience i.e. it indicates an inherent shortcoming in the ideology of empiricism precisely insofar as it fails to accomodate the contribution of the observing mind.)

My view is that the elimination of the subjective in naturalism is a methodological step so as to arrive at an analysis which is true for any and all observers. But that is a methodological step, not a metaphysical axiom. It's the inability to understand that distinction that results in 'scientism'.

I anticipate from previous experience that none of my attempts to explain these points will be successful, that instead I will be accused of 'being evasive' or 'not answering the question' or 'living in the past', so I will provide this as one last (if vain) attempt to make what I consider a fundamental point of philosophy as distinct from science.

Is idealism the claim that reality is a dream? — Agent Smith

Worse than that, I suspect:

(something like) "reality" consists of only whatever I/we "know" (or can "know"), that is, my/our (i.e. subjective / intersubjective) ideas and experiences

Re: Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel ...

...'philosophy', generally.

Again, you're speaking from a perspective which imagines the universe with no observer in it, but that itself is also a product of your mind. — Wayfarer

That is a trivially true and irrelevant. Of course what I say is being said and what I think is being thought. The point is that your statement that a perspective, that is a view from a particular location, is required for one thing to be further away from something than another is simply incorrect.

What you fail to realize it seems is that I completely understand Schopenhauer's argument having read both volumes of his magnum opus and McGee's exegesis. I understand Schopenhauer, but do not agree with his conclusions; which seems to be something which you simply cannot comprehend, when it pertains to something you personally believe.

Modern naturalism on the contrary starts with the assumption that what is known by the senses and scientific instruments is inherently real - that is, I believe, what you mean when you use the term 'immanent'. What is 'transcendent' is rejected on account of it's putative association with metaphysics and religious ideas (as we see all of the time in debates on this Forum). — Wayfarer

What is known by the senses and their augmentations is that from which the very notion of reality is derived. What is known by the feeling of being is life, and is immanent and ineffable. It is a matter of phenomenology, not metaphysics, and has nothing to do with empirical concerns. But you seem to fail to understand that and see science, particularly science of the mind, as the enemy.

I completely understand Schopenhauer's argument — Janus

I see no evidence of that.

I see no evidence of that. — Wayfarer

You see only what you want to see it seems. Saying that I don't understand those arguments is pretty rich coming from you, given that when I first started posting on forums I used to present the very arguments you continue to, and you used to agree, approve and applaud vociferously. But you couldn't handle it when I changed my mind, and began to see large holes in the very arguments you are so enamoured of.

This isn't an attack or anything, but, since I'm roughly a Schopenhauerian, can you tell me or if not, share a post in which you say why you think he's wrong or in what parts?

I'd be interested.

I think the argument that the world must be mind-dependent because a world cannot be imagined except by a mind is specious. The fact is that we can imagine a world without minds. We can imagine two possibilities; either the things we encounter via our senses have their own existences, and are not dependent for their existence upon us encountering them, or the things we encounter are dependent on us encountering them.

These are metaphysical questions, and I cannot see how there could ever be any demonstrably correct answer to them. Schopenhauer's strategy is to mount what I see as a facile argument, more or less following Kant, that because we are encountering and imagining objects they cannot be independent of us. This simply does not logically follow.

In any case I don't think such questions are really important to us, except insofar as they reveal what possibilities are imaginable to us. I cannot help myself weighing in though, when I see others rehearsing Schopenhauer's specious argument; an argument which amounts to fallaciously claiming that anyone thinking that objects could have a mind-independent existence is indulging in a performative contradiction just because they are thinking it.

It also seems to me that those who mount arguments akin to Schopenhauer's very often do so for religious reasons, which indicates to me that they comprehensively misunderstand the relationship between logic, science and religion. The atheists also, ironically, misunderstand the relation between science, the empirical, and religion. Rightly understood religion (if it is not fundamentalism) is not a matter of believing any empirical propositions; it is purely affective, and responsive to the felt sense of life and being.

Yeah, the problem would be in knowing how much mind-dependence to attribute to different aspects of the world, as in, obviously other animals would exist and have to be so "minded", but when we get to lower organisms or rocks, there are significant problems here in terms of what sense it makes to say that such things have an independent existence. I'm not saying they don't, I'm agnostic here, I think there's something there, but it's nature is unknown.

I see your point about performative contradiction. It's an extremely obscure territory to me.

In any case, thanks for sharing, interesting thoughts.

l I think the argument that the world must be mind-dependent because a world cannot be imagined except by a mind is specious. The fact is that we can imagine a world without minds. — Janus

More contemporary idealists like Kastrup additionally make the point that materialism or physicalism is false (using a particular understanding of QM) therefore all which exists must be consciousness - ergo idealism.

What do you consider to be the best defeater/s for idealism?

It also seems to me that those who mount arguments akin to Schopenhauer's very often do so for religious reasons, which indicates to me that they comprehensively misunderstand the relationship between logic, science and religion. — Janus

Yep. Nietzsche argues that even the great philosophers are propelled by a particular moral or ethical vision. Their philosophy boils down to a post-hoc rationalisation for their values - the ones they wish to inflict on us all. Doesn't let anyone off the hook that one.

We can imagine two possibilities; either the things we encounter via our senses have their own existences, and are not dependent for their existence upon us encountering them, or the things we encounter are dependent on us encountering them. — Janus

A third possibility: the things we encounter are dependent on human contact to take the form we perceive or imagine them to take.

The things we encounter may be independent of human contact for their existence but dependent on human contact for their particular form.

I think this is closer to what Wayfarer is aiming at. I could be wrong.

I think this is closer to what Wayfarer is aiming at. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:ok: Just so.

As for Schopenhauer and religion, there's an interesting MA thesis, Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Religion and his Critique of German Idealism, Nicholas Linares, from which:

Schopenhauer argues that philosophy and religion have the same fundamental aim: to satisfy “man’s need for metaphysics,” which is a “strong and ineradicable” instinct to seek explanations for existence that arises from “the knowledge of death, and therewith the consideration of the suffering and misery of life” (WWR I 161). Every system of metaphysics is a response to this realization of one’s finitude, and the function of those systems is to respond to that realization by letting individuals know their place in the universe, the purpose of their existence, and how they ought to act. All other philosophical principles (most importantly, ethics) follow from one’s metaphysical system.

Both philosophers and theologians claim the authority to evaluate metaphysical principles, but the standards by which they conduct those evaluations are very different. Schopenhauer concludes that philosophers are ultimately in the position to critique principles that are advanced by theologians, not vice versa. He nonetheless recognizes that the metaphysical need of most people is satisfied by their religion. This is unsurprising because, he contends, the vast majority of people find existence “less puzzling and mysterious” than philosophers do, so they merely require a plausible explanation of their role in the universe that can be adopted “as a matter of course” (WWR II 162). In other words, most people require a metaphysical framework around which to orient their lives that is merely apparently true. Therefore, the theologian has no functional reason to determine what is actually true. By contrast, the philosopher is someone whose metaphysical need is not satisfied by merely apparent truths – he is intrinsically driven to seek out actual truths about the nature of the world. In his 1831 dialogue Religion, Schopenhauer has Demopheles put it thusly:

"Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which by all means they must keep … Just as there is popular poetry, popular wisdom in proverbs, so too there must be popular metaphysics; for mankind requires most certainly an interpretation of life, and it must be in keeping with its power of comprehension."

This passage echoes an unpublished note, from Schopenhauer’s time as a student of Fredrich Schleiermacher, rebuking his professor’s claim that “no one can be a philosopher without being religious,” with the retort “no one who is religious attains to philosophy; he does not need it. No one who really philosophises is religious; he walks without leading-strings, perilously but free” (HN2 243).