I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes. — Wayfarer

Cool. Nice to see a definition. I also think that this self-knowledge is being aware of and being able to manage flaws or patterns in one's thinking and behavior. It seems to be a synonym for a type of self-improvement. This does not necessarily track back to philosophy from what I can see. Although @Joshs made an interesting point about the arrogance of not seeing one's own unexamined and unprovable presuppositions. We are often keen to share our values with others without the benefit of having scrupulously examined those values.

I also think that this self-knowledge is being aware of and being able to manage flaws or patterns in one's thinking and behavior. It seems to be a synonym for a type of self-improvement. This does not necessarily track back to philosophy from what I can see. — Tom Storm

I think it belongs to the therapeutic aspect of philosophy. Did you ever have that 70's perennial The Road Less Travelled? Very much along those lines. (Actually the Wiki entry on 'Know Thyself' is really not too bad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself)

:up:

(Because, as Wittgenstein says, even if a lion could speak, we would not understanding him.) — Wayfarer

I think cultural differences are overblown and that Wittgenstein's comment about not being able to understand the lion is ridiculous. What language is the lion speaking? If the lion speaks our language of course we can understand it. If the lion speaks an unfamiliar language of course we cannot understand it.

But this is also why my approach is not solipsistic. When I say the world is 'mind-made' I don't mean made only by my mind, but is constituted by the shared reality of humankind, which is an irreducibly mental foundation. — Wayfarer

As far as we know humankind does not have a collective mind. So, it depends on what you mean by "mind". It also depends on what you mean by "world". The everyday world is, as I often say, a collective, in the sense of conventional, representation; it is not something any of us actually experience. It's like the world of fashion or the world of business.

So, the everyday world is convention-created, I would say, rather than mind-created; there are collective conventions, but there does not seem to be any collective mind.

The actual world, that within which we exist pre-cognitively speaking and by which we are pre-cognitively affected does not depend on the human for its existence, or at least all the evidence suggests that it does not. It's perhaps not impossible that it is mind-created, but how could we ever know? And if we cannot ever know, then how could it ever matter?

That said, even though the question is unanswerable, I think the fact that we can ask it matters, even though the question itself, per se, is useless to us.

I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes. It doesn't necessarily pre-suppose a 'real self' that needs to be known, except maybe as a figure of speech. Self knowledge as an important aspect of wisdom and maturity. — Wayfarer

That notion of self-knowledge is unproblematic—it is a matter of developing awareness of what is being felt, thought and done and how those feelings, thoughts and doings are affecting personal happiness and health, one's own and others'.

What do you mean by "put back the subjectivity"? — wonderer1

It was actually @unenlightened's phrase. It was meant to express what the op was about. The issue is that to get a true representation of reality we must include the subjective aspect, which is an essential part of any such representation. So in other words "objective reality" is a sort of falsity because it is an attempt to remove the subjective aspect, which cannot possibly be done. Therefore, in creating a representation of reality we need to "put back the subjectivity" which the misguided attempt to produce an objective reality has removed. This I believe is the point of the op, we cannot produce a true "objective reality" because subjectivity is an essential aspect of any representation of reality.

o, the everyday world is convention-created, I would say, rather than mind-created; there are collective conventions, but there does not seem to be any collective mind. — Janus

I don't think that this is very accurate. Conventions do not create anything, they are passive, inactive, and minds, which are active, may follow them like rules. It is minds which create rather than conventions.

We follow a convention and accept a taken-for-granted everyday world. But that world is not created by anyone since it doesn't actually exist.

That notion of self-knowledge is unproblematic—it is a matter of developing awareness of what is being felt, thought and done and how those feelings, thoughts and doings are affecting personal happiness and health, one's own and others'. — Janus

That's a pretty good definition. It does (to me) slot into a psychological zone as much as, if not more than, a philosophical one.

I can also see how an enhanced awareness of epistemology might lead one away from, let's say, Islamic fundamentalism and into a more nuanced, allegorical read of the Koran. This could make you a better person - more aware of and accepting of other ways of living and the benefits of diversity and non-dogmatic, less judgmental modes of living. Or something like this.

We follow a convention and accept a taken-for-granted everyday world. But that world is not created by anyone since it doesn't actually exist. — Janus

"The world" as abstract theoretical construct exists, and it is mind created.

Nice piece. It's a clear framing of a problem that is at the heart of modern "popular metaphysics." I find myself agreeing with what I took to be the main thesis here:

By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums.

But I agree with the thesis for some different reasons I will touch on.

But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective.

I agree that reality is not "straightforwardly objective," but more because of general confusion over what the term "objective," means. It seems to me like there is a strong tendency to conflate the "objective world," with something like Kant's noumenal realm. Thus, you might see a claim that the "objective world is reality-in-itself." This, paired with the positivist idea that "objectivity becomes equivalent to truth at the limit," unhelpfully muddles a number of concepts that are better left separate.

"Objectivity" only makes sense if there is the possibility of subjectivity. If there are no experiencing subjects, then there is no objectivity. If objectivity is not defined within the context of the possibility of something not being objective, then it is a term that applies equally to absolutely everything, making it entirely contentless. Truth is similar in this respect. What is the content of saying anything is "true," if "false" is not a possibility?

"Objective" is not a synonym for "real," "true," "noumenal," or "in-itself," and a close examination of how the concept has historically been used will demonstrate this, conflations notwithstanding. Objectivity is what we hope to arrive at when we try to eliminate the (relevant) biases of any particular point of view. But the "objective view," is still a view; it is not what we arrive at when we have no point of view (as you point out, this makes no sense). When we want an objective view of a phenomena we try to observe it in many different ways, using instruments, creating clever experiments, trying to overcome biases. If the objective view we were after was "what phenomena are like without a mind," scientists could just shoot up anesthesia and achieve something to that effect.

Objectivity also doesn't equate to truth either. Subjective experiences are part of reality and smoothing them out to create a more objective view is itself an alteration of our view of reality. The truth of the horrors of the Holocaust wouldn't best be described by a phase space map of all the particles in Europe for instance.

Further, these conflations are a problem regardless of whether one embraces idealism, physicalism, or dualism. I'd argue that it only seems to be a particular problem of physicalism because popular versions of physicalism seem to be particularly prone to falling into this bloated definition of "objectivity as truth," and as "the world as seen from everywhere and nowhere."

That all said, I think an objective view of existence is quite possible (views can be more or less objective of course). The mistake is simply to assume the objectivity makes any sense divorced from the concept of mind.

It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.

I'm not totally sure what is meant here. Are minds not objects that have relations, or is it only the individual's mind that is not an object to itself?

I might disagree if I am understanding you correctly here. While I tend to want to view the universe as one unified process, it does seem like some subsections of that process are far more directly involved in causing minds to emerge than others. That said, I agree that there is an inextricably mental aspect to all experiences of the world. This aspect is implicit in their existence as experiences.

However, it doesn't seem like everything that is experienced is necessarily all that closely related to the emergence of the mind doing the experiencing. Obviously, there is a relation, else how are the things experienced? But the relation between a person and a bag of drugs on a table versus a person and a bag of drugs they've just ingested is quite different because in the latter case the drugs are now much more deeply involved in the processes from which mind emerges. I suppose the thing that is missed in the prevailing view that you are commenting on is that even the drugs on the counter are part of the process that results in mind. Just because we can abstract the functions of a central nervous system from a specific environment does not mean it will function without an environment.

But this is where I might disagree: everything we experience is causally connected to mind, by definition. However, it seems possible to me that there might be distant processes that are far enough away from any minds that the goings on within them are quite irrelevant to any experiences. But I would still say its possible for these processes to exist. Now these processes are, of course, part of the larger, universal process that minds do experience, so their "separation" from processes that involve mind is an abstraction, subjective. But because this separation can be tied to causality, it isn't arbitrary, and seems as "real" a separation as any of our "natural kinds." It's in this sense that I would say "mind independent things" can be said to exist, although this independence isn't absolute.

Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.

I'm not sure of this. It seems we can observe our own mental processes, making ourselves, or parts of ourselves, an "object of analysis." But mental life itself is a process, so I like to think of it more as sub processes looping around on a larger stream of process, sort of a fractal recurrance of the way in which mind itself is a process looping around in the wider universal process. And group minds might be thought of as another such "looping."

A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.

Right. Moreover, people often fail to realize how our discrete characterization of things into "objects" is itself the result of the mind. Empirically, the universe looks like a single process. There are no truly isolated systems. The "objects" we understand well appear to actually just be long-term stabilities in process.

To use your train example, the passengers absolutely would observe the wheels disappearing if they did disappear when everyone stops looking. They would feel their train derail and go skidding across the ground, which presumably people can see out the windows. The universe is interconnected. We don't have to directly observe things to have them be relevant to our observations. I have never directly observed two atoms fusing, but I see starlight almost every night, I've read plenty of books mentioning astrology, the history of the world I live in is shaped by people with political power making momentous decisions based on the movement of stars, etc. Thus, fusion, even that occurring many light years away, hundreds of millennia ago, is still something I observe the effects of. To paraphrase Bonaventure, 'an effect is a sign of its cause." Distant instances of fusion explicitly effect our experiences every time we even remember seeing stars. If you recognize how intricately connected cause and the process of local becoming is, it becomes silly to talk of things we know to exist "not being observed and so disappearing."

This is also a good example . We don't need to be able to observe photons in fiber optic cables to "observe" them. We would observe them doing their work or not doing it when we go to refresh our browser and it either loads or gives us an error.

I also don't know if I would agree with the "idealism" route though. Lately, I've been trying to figure out if there is even a distinction between "physicalism" and "idealism" once one steps outside of the box of substance metaphysics. If we accept that there is only "one sort of stuff," then process does all of the explanatory lifting, substance nothing, since it is uniform. Things being "physical" or "mental" substance becomes irrelevant. Nor does it seem like creating a distinction between "physical" and "mental" processes will add any sort of extra explanation if the two types flow into one another.

This does not mean the battle of the big 'isms is a "pseudo problem." But there is a posterior problem of determining if stability or change is fundamental. If change/process is fundamental, which I think appears more likely, then these old distinctions lose the purpose they were created for. If the universe is truly one unified process, and the universe clearly has minds, then it is trivial that there are no absolutely mind independent entities just as there are no truly isolated systems. "Mind creating nature" versus "nature creating mind" becomes simply an error of projecting artificial distinctions onto a unified causal process (although this doesn't negate the relevance of many philosophically interesting issues related cognitive science).

There is still the hypothetical question of: "Could a different universal process have come into being, such that it produced no minds," but this seems to be a different question. This isn't physicalism versus idealism, but rather the "problem of first cause," which remains for either ism.

Objectivity is what we hope to arrive at when we try to eliminate the (relevant) biases of any particular point of view. But the "objective view," is still a view; it is not what we arrive at when we have no point of view (as you point out, this makes no sense). When we want an objective view of a phenomena we try to observe it in many different ways, using instruments, creating clever experiments, trying to overcome biases. If the objective view we were after was "what phenomena are like without a mind," scientists could just shoot up anesthesia and achieve something to that effect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Great article. Well done sir.

Two things.

But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis ¹. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.

Is this not assuming the subject/object dichotomy? I have a feeling you’re quite beyond that, but this paragraph left me unsure.

Secondly, a lot of this sounds like Kant, who you reference and credit as developing this “central insight.” Can you flush out a little more how what you’re saying differs from him?

I can also see how an enhanced awareness of epistemology might lead one away from, let's say, Islamic fundamentalism and into a more nuanced, allegorical read of the Koran. This could make you a better person - more aware of and accepting of other ways of living and the benefits of diversity and non-dogmatic, less judgmental modes of living. Or something like this. — Tom Storm

Yes, that makes sense to me.

"The world" as abstract theoretical construct exists, and it is mind created. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd say there are as many conceptions of "the world" as there are people. The basic idea "the world" is culturally learned, it is now a convention, and who knows who it was that first articulated it?

However, it seems possible to me that there might be distant processes that are far enough away from any minds that the goings on within them are quite irrelevant to any experiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sounds like you are probably talking about almost all of the universe, at least with reference to human experience.

I also don't know if I would agree with the "idealism" route though. Lately, I've been trying to figure out if there is even a distinction between "physicalism" and "idealism" once one steps outside of the box of substance metaphysics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Have you ever looked into Mach's The Analysis of Sensations ?

A common and popular way of thinking and speaking is to contrast " appearance " with " reality." A pencil held in front of us in the air is seen by us as straight; dip it into the water, and we see it crooked. In the latter case we say that the pencil appears crooked, but is in reality straight. But what justifies us in declaring one fact rather than another to be the reality, and degrading the other to the level of appearance ? In both cases we have to do with facts which present us with different combinations of the elements, combinations which in the two cases are differently conditioned. Precisely because of its environment the pencil dipped in water is optically crooked; but it is tactually and metrically straight. An image in a concave or flat mirror is only visible, whereas under other and ordinary circumstances a tangible body as well corresponds to the visible image. A bright surface is brighter beside a dark surface than beside one brighter than itself. To be sure, our expectation is deceived when, not paying sufficient attention to the conditions, and substituting for one another different cases of the combination, we fall into the natural error of expecting what we are accustomed to, although the case may be an unusual one. The facts are not to blame for that. In these cases, to speak of " appearance " may have a practical meaning, but cannot have a scientific meaning. Similarly, the question which is often asked, whether the world is real or whether we merely dream it, is devoid of all scientific meaning. Even the wildest dream is a fact as much as any other. If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us. In our waking hours the relations of the elements to one another are immensely amplified in comparison with what they were in our dreams. We recognise the dream for what it is. When the process is reversed, the field of psychic vision is narrowed; the contrast is almost entirely lacking. Where there is no contrast, the distinction between dream and waking, between appearance and reality, is quite otiose and worthless.

The popular notion of an antithesis between appearance and reality has exercised a very powerful influence on scientific and philosophical thought. We see this, for example, in Plato's pregnant and poetical fiction of the Cave, in which, with our backs turned towards the fire, we observe merely the shadows of what passes (Republic, vii. 1). But this conception was not thought out to its final consequences, with the result that it has had an unfortunate influence on our ideas about the universe. The universe, of which nevertheless we are a part, became completely separated from us, and was removed an infinite distance away.
...
As soon as we have perceived that the supposed unities " body " and " ego " are only makeshifts, designed for provisional orientation and for definite practical ends (so that we may take hold of bodies, protect ourselves against pain, and so forth), we find ourselves obliged, in many more advanced scientific investigations, to abandon them as insufficient and inappropriate. The antithesis between ego and world, between sensation (appearance) and thing, then vanishes, and we have simply to deal with the connexion of the elements a b c . . . A B C . . . K L M . . ., of which this antithesis was only a partially appropriate and imperfect expression. This connexion is nothing more or less than the combination of the above-mentioned elements with other similar elements (time and space). Science has simply to accept this connexion, and to get its bearings in it, without at once wanting to explain its existence.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm

Did you ever have that 70's perennial The Road Less Travelled? — Wayfarer

Did you read The Different Drum?

I think this gels with what you are saying.

Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

But it may be said that this view is directly opposed to the abstract definition which we have given of reality, inasmuch as it makes the characters of the real depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks. Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. Yet even that would not change the nature of the belief, which alone could be the result of investigation carried sufficiently far; and if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and disposition for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ultimately come to. — Peirce

The truth (or rather its best surrogate) is belief which is objective and bias-transcending as possible. The world exists meaningly [only ] 'for' an articulate (and therefore social) creature. C. S. Peirce calls it the 'settlement of opinion,' which I think of in terms of the evolution of perspective. Wittgenstein wants to [help us] 'see the world aright' (properly, correctly.)

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

The real is the world as [linguistically] grasped by the ideal point-of-view, which is also a point-at-infinity, a goal on the horizon. So the 'mental' (meaning, culture, science, rationality, normativity, spirit) is indeed fundamental and irreducible here.

I agree that reality is not "straightforwardly objective," but more because of general confusion over what the term "objective," means. It seems to me like there is a strong tendency to conflate the "objective world," with something like Kant's noumenal realm. — Count Timothy von Icarus

First, thanks for the positive feedback. :pray: You've covered a lot in your comments, I will do my best to respond.

I take the term 'objective' at face value, that is, 'inherent in the object'. Seems to me that estimation of objectivity as the main criterion for truth parallels the emergence of science, which really is kind of obvious. Remember Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos is all there is'? By that he means, I think, the Cosmos qua object of science. So the overestimation of objectivity in questions of philosophy amounts to a bias of sorts (per Kierkegaard 'Concluding Non-scientific Postscript'.) At any rate, as far as today's popular wisdom is concerned, as the domain of the transcendent is generally discounted, objectivity is presumptively the only remaining criteria. I don't hold to relativism, I think objectivity is extremely important in many domains but that there are vital questions the answer to which may not necessarily be sought in solely objective terms. So anything to be considered real has to be 'out there somewhere', existing in time and space. (This shows up in debates of platonic realism.) The ways-of-thought that accomodate the transcendent realm have by and large been abandoned in secular philosophy.

If you recognize how intricately connected cause and the process of local becoming is, it becomes silly to talk of things we know to exist "not being observed and so disappearing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, true enough, but let's not forget Samuel Johnson's 'argument from the stone' - when he kicked a stone to purportedly demonstrate the falsehood of Berkeley's arguments for immaterialism. Even though it has been pointed out ad nauseum that Berkeley doesn't deny the apparent reality of stones, but only their existence independently of the perception of them, the 'argument from the stone', or similar are frequently used against idealism. I know there are many here who can't see how idealism doesn't imply things going in and out of existence depending on whether they're perceived or not, which is why I made a point of mentioning it.

"Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis."

I'm not totally sure what is meant here. Are minds not objects that have relations, or is it only the individual's mind that is not an object to itself? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm inclined to say that the mind is never an object, although that usually provokes a lot of criticism. I've long been persuaded by a specific idea from Indian philosophy, namely, that the 'eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself. The 'inextricably mental' aspect is simply 'the act of seeing'. Perhaps I might quote a translation of the passage in question. This is from a dialogue in the Upaniṣads where a sage answers questions about the nature of ātman (the Self).

Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object. — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad

I'm not advocating 'belief in ātman' but as I say in the OP, it's a matter of perspective - the mind is never something we can get outside of or apart from. But I understand that this is difficult perspectival shift to make. It's something very like a gestalt shift. It might have been owed in part to my long-standing practise of zazen, Buddhist meditation, by which means insight arises into the world-making activities of the mind. This point is also central to the 'argument from the blind spot of science' that I often mention - no coincidence that Adam Frank, one of the authors, is a long time Zen practitioner.

However, it seems possible to me that there might be distant processes that are far enough away from any minds that the goings on within them are quite irrelevant to any experiences. But I would still say its possible for these processes to exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But notice that as soon as you invoke them or gesture towards them, then already 'mind' is involved. All such conjectures are variations on the sound of the unseen falling tree.

But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.

Is this not assuming the subject/object dichotomy? — Mikie

First, thank you for the positive feedback.

The subject-object relationship is a fact of life, even in simple life-forms. Individualism tends towards a kind of atomised individuality, we're all separated selves and everything is interpreted through the subject-object dichotomy. What I'm proposing is aimed at transcending that divided way of being by getting insight into it and the role of the mind in engendering it.

As for Kant, I always feel as though my understanding of him is incomplete - there's so much more to know about him. I first encountered Kant through a mid-20th century book The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, which has extensive comparisions between Buddhist philosophy (specifically Madhyamaka or 'middle-way) and Kant, Hegel, Hume, Bradley and others. According to Murti, the parallels between Kant and Buddhist philosophy are especially striking. It was one of those books which was formative for me, because it enabled me to understand Kant on a kind of experiential level at the same time I had a conversion experience to Buddhism.

Did you read The Different Drum? — wonderer1

No, that one passed me by. I did read part of his follow-up, People of the Lie, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the first.

Thanks for those passages, as you say, these questions have occupied many a philosopher. I do see some parallels there.

What do you mean by "put back the subjectivity"? — wonderer1

Simply that there is a prevalent view that physics is all there is, and that this is mistaken. When something is called "subjective" or "a social construct", it is usually dismissive to some extent, and sometimes completely. Organisms respond, rather than merely react to the environment. For example, yeast cells need water, sugar, oxygen and various salts to reproduce but in the absence of oxygen they adapt by turning the sugar into alcohol instead of CO2, and in the absence of water they go into a sort of hibernation.

There is a selective response to the environment even at the simplest level, that becomes more complex in plants that respond to seasons and climate. It is impossible to understand what is happening without recourse to the fact that the cell treats itself as a separate whole in its responses. It is already the subject of its actions. Note that nothing has been said yet about awareness or experience; theses are other levels of complexity that can only be built upon an organisms pre-existing and more fundamental subjectivity. We can say, fairly uncontroversially, that yeast needs sugar, where we cannot say that granite needs anything at all, and that which has needs of its own is a subject, and its needs are subjective. The philosopher's need to understand is built upon this, and so the notion of the objective world can only be a lifeless fragment.

It is impossible to understand what is happening without recourse to the fact that the cell treats itself as a separate whole in its responses. It is already the subject of its actions. Note that nothing has been said yet about awareness or experience; theses are other levels of complexity that can only be built upon an organisms pre-existing and more fundamental subjectivity. — unenlightened

Very well said. That's the sense in which otherness is fundamental to any kind of life-form. Because it essentially recognises in some basic way the distinction of self from other. 'Alterity is the basic condition of existence'.

I'm inclined to say that the mind is never an object, although that usually provokes a lot of criticism. I've long been persuaded by a specific idea from Indian philosophy, namely, that the 'eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself. The 'inextricably mental' aspect is simply 'the act of seeing'. — Wayfarer

I like to read this in terms of the famous ontological difference, in terms of being itself not being an entity ---though of course the concept of being itself is indeed an entity.

Central to Heidegger's philosophy is the difference between being as such and specific entities.[48][49] He calls this the "ontological difference", and accuses the Western tradition in philosophy of being forgetful of this distinction, which has led to misunderstanding "being as such" as a distinct entity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology

I mention & quote Wittgenstein again (emphasis mine), because his presentation is so concentrated.

In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself.

That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world. The world and life are one.

I am my world. (The microcosm.)

Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.

That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world.

Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world".

The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.

https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(tree-like_view)

Note the connection of language and solipsism. My belief is the structure of the world itself, but from my perspective. I am this world-from-a-perspective. My beliefs about the world are not 'inside' me. They are simply [ the 'conceptual aspect' of] the world itself --- as it is given to a 'me' that vanishes or melts into this perspectively given world, as its form.

I understand that the lived body looks to be a sine qua non of experience of the world, so it's tempting to make mind fundamental, but I think 'being' is the deepest term, and that the deepest term ought to be radically 'empty' or 'neutral' and before all division.

I take the term 'objective' at face value, that is, 'inherent in the object'. Seems to me that estimation of objectivity as the main criterion for truth parallels the emergence of science, which really is kind of obvious. Remember Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos is all there is'? By that he means, I think, the Cosmos qua object of science. So the overestimation of objectivity in questions of philosophy amounts to a bias of sorts (per Kierkegaard 'Concluding Non-scientific Postscript'.) At any rate, as far as today's popular wisdom is concerned, as the domain of the transcendent is generally discounted, objectivity is presumptively the only remaining criteria. I don't hold to relativism, I think objectivity is extremely important in many domains but that there are vital questions the answer to which may not necessarily be sought in solely objective terms. So anything to be considered real has to be 'out there somewhere', existing in time and space. (This shows up in debates of platonic realism.) The ways-of-thought that accomodate the transcendent realm have by and large been abandoned in secular philosophy. — Wayfarer

I cannot follow your use of "objective" here. You define it as "inherent in the object". But according to the article of the op, the human mind has no access to what is "inherent in the object". As per Kant, the mind only has access to how the object appears to it, through the medium of sensation and intuition. But then you go on to discuss the objectivity of science, as if "the objectivity of science" is a valid concept by that definition, which it is not. Science cannot provide for us "objectivity" by that definition, what is inherent within the object, due to the problem elucidated by Kant.

So you have demonstrated an inconsistent use of "objective" which needs to be sorted out. Either we adhere to your definition, and recognize that it is beyond the capacity of science to actually be "objective", and say that this is just an ideal which science strives for (an "objective" used as 'goal'), like a guiding light which will never actually be reached, or we must look to a different, a compromised definition of "objective".

The latter appear to be what most participants in this thread opt for. They would prefer to define "objective" as "consistent with convention". But this definition is extremely problematic. First, and principally, it removes the necessity of "the object" from "objectivity", by basing "objectivity" in a sort of inter-subjective agreement. This means that "objective" is defined by what is agreeable rather than by "inherent within the object". This effectively circumvents the necessity of correspondence with observations, "truth" in that sense, as an essential feature of objectivity, by replacing "within the object" with what is agreeable. That actually allows for other, chiefly pragmatic, principles to take priority over "truth" as the defining feature of "objective". And when pragmaticism takes hold of "objective", the definition is more closely aligned with "the goal" than with "inheres within the object".

n object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman. — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad

A shallow objection to this involves handing the seer a mirror, but I think that something like being is intended, and that seeing is a metaphor for being. Presumably the dead don't see (have no world), so it's not absurd to reach for eyes and ears as a metaphor. Yet we obviously we see the eyes of others seeing, and our own in the mirror, so the intention must be metaphorical.

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
...
The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.

To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology. — Wittgenstein

I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes. — Wayfarer

…..which, of course, presupposes knowing what they are, by the subject, or self, effected by them.

Anyway, just a thought, probably best left aside out of respect for the OP.

There is a selective response to the environment even at the simplest level... — unenlightened

I believe this is a very important point which needs much more respect than it is commonly given. When there is a multitude of possibilities present, what some call "potential", and something "selects" from that multitude of possibilities, or simple potential, then we need to account for the reality of this selection process. The type of words we currently employ to refer to such selections are consistent with the concept of free will, words like "choice", and "judgement".

So this is a good example of that boundary some refer to, as the area of that which we cannot speak of, or where words fail us. If we talk about simple organisms, like the single celled amoeba making judgements, we get ridiculed. This in clearly nonconventional, simple organism do not make "judgements", by conventional use of the term. But if this is not form of "judgement", then on what principles are we going to attempt to understand this "selective response"?

But notice that as soon as you invoke them or gesture towards them, then already 'mind' is involved. All such conjectures are variations on the sound of the unseen falling tree.

Sure, but they might be very different from the abstract idea of "very causally disconnected stuff in deep space," that I have. Since everything is ultimately connected, the separation is one of degree, but it's still useful to distinguish between the stars whose light we see and processes that are much more proximate to the emergence of mind, which seems to have a "nexus" of sorts in bodies.

I'm inclined to say that the mind is never an object, although that usually provokes a lot of criticism. I've long been persuaded by a specific idea from Indian philosophy, namely, that the 'eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself. The 'inextricably mental' aspect is simply 'the act of seeing'. Perhaps I might quote a translation of the passage in question. This is from a dialogue in the Upaniṣads where a sage answers questions about the nature of ātman (the Self).

I agree with this to a certain degree. We're blind to much of our cognitive processes, and far more blind than we tend to think. But I don't know if it makes sense to abstract "that which experiences," from experience in this way, and further to claim that this experiencing entity is a unity, rather than a collection of composite entities. It seems more to me like the unity of "that which experiences," is an illusion created by the same blindness that makes it impossible for mind to ever become fully object to itself.

That said, I think Ātman/Prakriti is a better division than Western "objective/subjective" in general.

Although it comes from a more eliminativist bent, I always found the philosopher/novelist R. Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory," and "Heuristic Neglect Theory," pretty good on this sort of thing. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-archive/the-last-magic-show-a-blind-brain-theory-of-the-appearance-of-consciousness/

Plus, it seems necessary that this blindness must exist. If we had a meta eye that somehow recorded and represented to us everything that goes on in generating our experience of sight then we would still be blind to the activities of the 'meta eye,' and so not understand everything under-girding our experiences. We would need a 'meta meta eye,' for full cognizance of the meta eye, and then a meta meta meta eye, and so on. I think this inability for any one entity to fully fathom the ways in which it is cause while also being a source of effect is bound inextricably to basic elements of reality, the way being has a semiotic element, such that effects are signs of causes and only exist as such signs when they interact with a third system (Rovelli's Helgoland discusses this).

So my disagreement comes more from the idea of mind as being necessarily unified. Mind seems to be able to become, to some degree, object to itself only because the mind isn't an indivisible whole. It emerges from many overlapping levels of communication such that large, "conscious systems," (e.g. whole hemispheres of the brain) are to some degree "other" to each other. But this is a relation that seems to go all the way down to the most fundamental level. "That which experiences," seeming unified seems to be more an issue of how, if one looks into a mirror, one can see what is behind them, but not that which lies behind the mirror.

While it's true that we "can't get around the mind," it seems equally true that we both "can't get to (most of) the mind," and that we "can't get around the world," although we can abstract and retreat from it. It's in this that I worry about straight forward relations, such as "the mind creates the world." This is true, but the world appears to create mind as well," and the separation of the two seems to be, causally at least, more one of degree rather than kind.

If we talk about simple organisms, like the single celled amoeba making judgements, we get ridiculed. This in clearly nonconventional, simple organism do not make "judgements", by conventional use of the term. But if this is not form of "judgement", then on what principles are we going to attempt to understand this "selective response"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Something I only discovered in the writing is that subjectivity is necessarily prior to awareness rather than the result thereof. It is of course a judgement by the organism in relation to itself as to whether a substance in the environment is beneficial or harmful to ingest. I don't know if others have looked at this, but it does seem to turn some thinking about awareness and consciousness rather on its head.

I take consciousness to be the awareness of awareness, and perhaps awareness is the judgement of judgement, and judgement is the first responsive action, and the first judgement is the distinguishing of the organism from the environment by the organism itself. (If anyone has been following my thread on the Laws of Form, they will probably notice its influence.)

Something I only discovered in the writing is that subjectivity is necessarily prior to awareness rather than the result thereof. It is of course a judgement by the organism in relation to itself as to whether a substance in the environment is beneficial or harmful to ingest. I don't know if others have looked at this, but it does seem to turn some thinking about awareness and consciousness rather on its head.

Indeed. I think it might be a mistake to think perspective emerges at life in the first place. The idea of a totally distinct "semiotic cut," occurring at the creation of life seems problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the definition of life is incredibly fuzzy. This was the weakest part of Deacon's "Incomplete Nature," for me. The dividing line between autocatalysis and the emergence of autogens seems very hazy. It's not the type of progression that seems to lend itself to the distinct emergence of some totally new thing.

Further, perspective matters in very basic interactions. Scott Mueller uses the example of simply enzymes in his "Asymmetry the Foundation of Information." The enzyme will do its thing, interacting with a chemical the same way, regardless of whether the reagent in question contains isotopes for some of its particular atoms. The process is blind to the difference between isotopes. Such differences are, for this interpretant, a "difference that doesn't make a difference."

Mueller further uses the example of a detective trying to figure out if two diamonds have been switched. The diamonds are identical in every way except for one having a higher share of isotopes. For the detective, using all the regular tools of the jewel trade, the two diamonds are completely indiscernible.

Thus, perspective matters even in the most basic interactions. Entropy is another good example. Some differences make a difference in some contexts but not others. Information as difference is obviously context dependent, as when words are written in white font on an identical white background and fail to convey information.

Carlo Rovelli plays with a similar ideas with his relational quantum mechanics, although I think his model runs into problems if we take objects as fundamental rather than process. If the universe is a collection of substances, then we have a hard time explaining why some properties of objects should "snap into place" during some interactions but not others. This is similar to the problems some people have with idealism. "If things only exist as connected to mind, how do we explain properties coming into and going out of being." I don't know if this is a problem for process. It'd be like asking for (4 * 2) * 6^2, "where does the four go once we've moved on to doing 8 * 36?"

How intentionality and mental life emerges is a great mystery. But how perspective emerges seems less so. It's seems like it might be more something that is so fundamental that it is easy to miss, the way a fish doesn't notice the water in the ocean. IMO, it's been a mistake for people to conflate the "aboutness," of first person experience with the "aboutness," of how a computer interprets code instructions, or how a human organization (which presumably doesn't have its own qualia) interprets signals (e.g. international relations, how does "Iran" view the transit of US warships off its shores, etc.)

The last example is probably the best here. We don't think corporations and states have their own mental life, but they do seem able to posses knowledge and priorities that differ from the sum of their members' knowledge and desires (e.g. when the US security apparatus "didn't know what it knew" re: 9/11, but later uncovered this through intentional reflection). And the existence of such knowledge/priorities entails perspective and a form of aboutness, even though the first person "aboutness" appears to be absent.

Absolutely. At one point, all of the universe was contained in one point, so it's unclear if there can be anything that fails to causally affect our experiences. That said, processes seem like they should be able to be more or less central to the emergence of mind, so the separation is one of degree.



Oh yeah, I like a great deal of what I heard from Mach. That said, I dislike the fact that he was among the progenitors of the big trend in philosophy to claim that "anyone who disagrees with me is saying things that are meaningless, and thus no response is possible." Claims of perfectly intelligible sentences being "meaningless" is a pet peeve of mine lol.

The ways-of-thought that accomodate the transcendent realm have by and large been abandoned in secular philosophy.

Yeah, it's a real problem. If I tried to trace its etiology, it seems to be tied to the drive to deflate truth and turn logic into a sterile study of "closed systems," that resulted from findings in the early 20th century. Faced with having to give up certainty, bivalence, or both, or having to make logic into an almost magical language cut of from the world that floats outside, "out there," we have tended to go with the latter. IMO, this is a mistake. And its funny that this choice was made despite the triumphs of naturalism and scientism, since it directly contravenes core pillars of the former.

---

On this wider topic, I'll have to return to finish Pinkhard's "Hegel's Naturalism," at some point. I recall thinking it showed some pretty good solutions to this whole bundle of problems.