Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)?

@bert1

hmmm, deep question. I'll come back to this one.

Twenty four responses. That might be enough to make some observations.

The obvious one is that the number of folk advocating realism is half that of the PhilPapers survey. This corroborates what was claimed elsewhere, that the population here is somewhat different to the norm for those interested in philosophy.

The next obvious thing is that 17% here thought the question too unclear, but only 2% in the PhilPapers survey. Indeed, in the local survey half of respondents chose outside of realism, skepticism or idealism, while in the PhilPapers survey that number was about 12%.

And at 24 votes, one would have expected one or two folk to have chosen idealism. None did, despite their rejection of realism.

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians?

Your prejudices are showing.

The Black and White Minstrel strikes again!

Your prejudices are showing. — Mww

Doubtless. And it is apparent that my prejudices are not as uncommon as it might seem, were one the think of the folk hereabouts as "normal".

Very droll.

my prejudices are not as uncommon as it might seem — Banno

Nope, hardly uncommon. Everybody’s got ‘em, maybe not so overtly….you know…contrarian.

Interesting that folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally, rather than the topic at hand.

folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally, — Banno

It is, admittedly, a bit unusual to address a potted plant.

As to

only 2% in the PhilPapers survey — Banno

Hard to avoid the ruts. I suspect the survey results differ over time.

Keep the aspidistra flying.

I suspect the survey results differ over time. — Fooloso4

Why?

The longitudinal results are there, too, for the PhilPapers survey, showing a tiny swing since 2009 away from idealism and skepticism, towards realism. "Undecided" went up slightly, too.

We could do the survey on this forum again later, if you like. Seems overkill.

We could do the survey on this forum again later, if you like. — Banno

I am referring to larger historical time frame, but we need not go back too far. To Bradley and McTaggart, for example.

Ok, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

Again, this thread was simply to reinforce the point that the forums are not representative of present philosophical thought.

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians? — Banno

There. Happy now?

:grin: Thank you.

I have repeated a passage in Bryan Magee's 'Schopenhauer's Philosophy' many times here: — Wayfarer

No disrespect but I'm going to argue against the source. Magee is absentmindedly stupid in some important ways.
That's my impression of the passage you provided.
Get this:

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

The claim that it is impossible that we know that the earth has existed for a long time even before the perceiving subjects is itself a claim about thing-in-itself, about what actually is. But Kant cannot make this claim because he doesn't know what actually is.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time:

If Magee endorses Kant's argument, then Magee cannot make this claim that it is what actually is in the world. The whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding?. Okay. Fine. But Magee is making this statement under the assumption of idealism. So he doesn't know either.

Twenty four responses. That might be enough to make some observations. — Banno

No it isn't if you're making an important comparison with the PhilPapers results.

I appreciate the citations and your reflections on (transcendental) idealism. Still, there's that confusion, or conflation, of ontology with epistemology, which plagues even Kant-Schopenhauer-Magee, that yields conceptual incoherences such as (e.g.) — 180 Proof

:100:

Ok, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that. — Banno

Perhaps that in philosophy there are fashion trends.

Again, this thread was simply to reinforce the point that the forums are not representative of present philosophical thought. — Banno

Okay, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

No it isn't if you're making an important comparison with the PhilPapers results. — L'éléphant

As I agreed, it is not enough for a statistical analysis. There are some differences I find interesting, though. Again, it gives some perspective to the apparent prominence of the rejection of realism.

And at 24 votes, one would have expected one or two folk to have chosen idealism. None did, despite their rejection of realism. — Banno

Now the survey has 25 votes and appears a vote to idealism. I don't know if it is just coincidence or the fact that an user is trolling us... :chin:

IT was apparently , being the contrarian's contrarian.

Magee is absentmindedly stupid in some important ways. — L'éléphant

I'll favour his account over yours in this case.

Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)? — 180 Proof

Are you referring to the distinction between 'ontological' and 'epistemological' idealism. The former is said to hold that 'mind' or 'consciousness' is a literal constituent of the world (in a way analogous to electrical fields or as an attribute of fundamental constituents). This is something like Galen Strawson's and Philip Goff's panpsychism, which I don't subscribe to. It is an attempt to characterise 'mind' as an objective existent which I don't think can be done. (I critiqued one of Philip Goff's essays here and much to my surprise, he responded although I don't think any kind of conclusion was reached.)

'Epistemological' idealism is said to hold that mind (or experiential states) are fundamental in the sense that everything we know is experiential - knowledge of (x) is a state of experiencing x. It is actually close to some forms of empiricism - Berkeley is considered an empiricist.

Does mind correspond to 'Being' - not sure - I thnk 'being' is a more general term - mind indicates self-awareness.

Don't know if this addresses your questions.

Oh yes! I didn't see his post:

There. Happy now? — Metaphysician Undercover

So, we can interpret that the vote comes from him. :eyes:

I'll favour his account over yours in this case. — Wayfarer

As someone who has 16.9K posts, you can do better than this to respond to my response to Magee's claim.
But you are maybe consistent in your claim if you also subscribe to idealism -- you don't know.

:up:

I asked because I'm interested in what you understand your own 'commitment to idealism' to presuppose and imply. I'm familiar enough with many historically prominent idealists. To sum up my previous two questions (please address them in the following): What exactly do you, Wayfarer, mean when you say "I am an idealist"?

I've often heard the view I subscribe to called model-dependant realism, but I don't know if that's the right term. It's interesting to me that most of what comes out of discussions like this seems to hinge on the significance of the extents to which our understanding (our models, in my terminology) are constrained by external forces. The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit. Each, I'd venture, has their reasons for wanting to highlight their particular favoured aspect, probably the one they feel has been most maligned (or simply sidelined) by the culture they find themselves in.

The realist gets the certainty they're looking for. There's a lot of anti-religion campaigning (Dawkins et al), but also fights between realists over what is real where one side want the bigger stick and the last thing each want is a truce. But the ultra-realists (my made up term here) will be dissatisfied with model-dependant realism because science thereby ends up far more Kuhnian than Popperian. It looks more like each new competing theory might simply be better defining the space of constraints than approaching some ultimate truth.

On the other hand, I think the Idealist is no less dissatisfied. They regain their God, their 'soul' or their charkha healing because their dismissal by science now looks less strict. But they too lose their claim to the ultimate truth. One can hardly invoke the unavoidable subjectivity of interpretation to regain access to the mysterious, yet at the same time claim access to a single ultimate truth via the most subjective means out there. If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.

Both, I think, ultimately (assuming model-dependant realism) find themselves in the same statistical quandary of wanting to associate truth value with popularity. The scientistic wants the 'consensus' theory to have more weight, the religious want the 'serious' religions to be taken...well, more seriously. But neither can have what they want out of this model (and so both are dissatisfied). Despite intuitions which may seem to tell us the opposite, there's no mechanism (in this model) to connect popularity with truthiness. We can show this with a simple thought experiment.

Probably excessive armchair psychologising (so sue me), but I think that's why these debates go on so, and possibly why nuanced alternatives to hard-realism or hard-idealism are increasingly popular, yet still argued as vehemently.

OK, I will try again. The point of the 'everyone knows' statement is to depict the apparently-obvious fact that the Universe pre-existed h. sapiens by billions of years, as is common knowledge. So this is a frequent objection to any form of idealism - 'if you say that the world is "created by the mind" then how do you account for the fact that it existed a long time prior to any conscious rational mind?' But your selective quotation of the passage then omits the grounds of Schopenhauer's 'defense of Kant', as he puts it. You then go to a peremptory dismissal: 'Obviously Kant doesn't know either'. But I don't think the 'sage of Konisburg' can be dismissed so easily.

I think the point of the argument is the reference to Kant's view that time and space are fundamental intuitions of the mind - *not* things that exist in themselves. In other words, space and time are not purely objective in nature but are grounded in the observing mind. And this has also dawned upon at least some scientists. (Andrei Linde is a scientific cosmologist.)

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

I don't know if "dead" is the right word, but I think the basic thrust of this paragraph tends to support the Kantian view. The observer has a fundamental role - but s/he is not part of the objective picture. That happens to be a different version of the same overall 'observer problem in physics'.

What I mean is that our understanding of ‘the external world’ as something completely separate from ourselves is mistaken. That's why I keep referring to the cognitive science perspective - their realisation of the role the mind (or brain) plays in constructing what we instinctively understand to be external to us. One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism. So, forgive the New Age connotations, but the fruit of the idealist quest is 'the unitive vision' - which I believe is something your philosophical inspiration, Baruch Spinoza, also considered:

Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” (I would prefer "subject") underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you. — Peter Sas

The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit. — Isaac

Very good post, really brings out the issue.

If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.... If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement. — Isaac

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined. But they're not within the ambit of 'the objective sciences' in the modern sense. Quite why that is, is not so much a matter of philosophy so much as cultural dynamics. Modern scientific method, and 'Enlightenment Rationalism', embody a kind of stance which is historically conditioned by the emergence of individualism and the dominance of technology. There's nothing from within that milieu which can provide a normative framework for judging what is of greater or lesser value, in the grand scheme. That's why I think there has to be a 'soteriological' element - excuse the jargon, but it means 'concerned with salvation', although in Eastern religions, the term is not 'salvation' but 'liberation'. In any case, it means some ultimate reason or ground, some pole star against which to set your moral compass. But then our secular culture has been innoculated against any such ideas as a consequence, again, of our cultural dynamics. Which is why people such as myself have had to search outside the framework of Western culture for resolution.

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined. — Wayfarer

Oh, indeed. I wouldn't want to be read as denying that. But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment...

The point I was making is that there's no connection between the methodology, no matter how strict and disciplined, and 'truthiness' because there cannot be (under a model-dependent realism). Any mechanism, be it empirical theory-testing, or some deeply disciplined religious practice can only ever be used to check constraints because it is only constraints that we are able to become aware of (like a blind man can only tell by bumping into a wall that he has come to the edge of the room).

A revelation from some deep meditative practice may find an 'edge' that empirical science cannot find, but what it can't do (as with empirical science) is show, merely by methodology, that the model it's come up with using those edges is more of less likely to be true.

The religious (or otherwise spiritual) have not found any way past the fundamental problem that no matter what method we use to obtain data (sensory inputs or 'revelation') we still cannot verify the accuracy of the information thereby gained by anything other than simply 'more of the same'.

The point I was making is that there's a tendency to try and get around this problem by claiming consensus, or popularity (or I suppose in religious terms, tradition) all get at the truth better. But they don't. There's no intrinsic connection (as my thought experiment was designed to show).

I can't see a way around the problem, myself. Certain methods of dealing with data qualify as being 'connected' to the world and so produce what we might call 'reasonable' theories - as opposed to merely guessing, or making stuff up. But within that canon, there doesn't seem to be any reliable process for choosing between them. If they meet the criteria of not being overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, then then seem to all be equally fair game.

The fault of many, if not most, philosophies is that they start with thinking and not with things. The Kantian question, for example, what can I know, places the human being as an abstraction, as it were as a pure spirit that, like a machine, can think about God and the world in a pure form. This idealized, individualized fictional human does not exist.
The starting point of every discussion must be the human being that has become biologically and socially.
Then the Kantian question is posed in a completely different way, and so is the answer to it.
So there is not man per se, but a priori the biological and social man. And this must be used as the starting point of all thinking.
While abstractions are possible a posteriori in science, as a prerequisite of an ontology they are not.
Man's biological dimension means that his relationship to the world is not that of a reader to a book. We transform the world into a neural modality and construct it with it, i.e. not only do we write this book ourselves, we also make the ink for it ourselves.

4% Philosophers voted in favor of Idealism. That is alarming especially when those who don't believe in an external world are the "authors" of a poll result where the main competing thesis has much higher percentage.

But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment... — Isaac

Well indeed I would agree that if you equate enlightenment and data-harvesting then there is probably no enlightenment to be had.

That is alarming — Nickolasgaspar

Look out! Idealists under the bed!

The Kantian question, for example, what can I know, places the human being as an abstraction, as it were as a pure spirit that, like a machine, can think about God and the world in a pure form. This idealized, individualized fictional human does not exist. — Wolfgang

Kant may have shortcomings, but he doesn't reduce mankind to abstractions. (My forum name is not 'wanderer' although it might be a nice alternative should I decide to change it.)

:fire:

One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism. — Wayfarer

Again, thanks for the clarifying response. The question remains though: is "reality itself" ideal? Anyway, your conception of idealism, Wayf, seems fairly idiosyncratic to me as nonduality (e.g. Advaita) contrasts profoundly with the transcendental schools of idealism which are dualist. I find nonduality quite congenial with my own conception of naturalism (which has strong affinities with Spinoza as well as Nietzsche, neither of whom I consider 'idealists').

However, nonduality does not imply "the world is the idea of mind" but rather, IMO, that "world" and "mind" are complementary ways (yinyang) of experiencing (e.g. "I-It" / "I-Thou" ways of encountering). Not so unlike Spinoza's post-Cartesian parallelism, or property dualism. "Mind" is just one way of talking – relating – and "world" is another way of talking – relating; and understood as such makes explicit the ontologically inseparable plane of immanence (Deleuze) or Brahman (à la natura naturans (Spinoza)) encompassing (Jaspers) "reality itself". I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world" "object" "thing" as transcendental idealism does, Wayf, so maybe you can explain to me. :chin: