But you won't find out why I think as I do, until you study special relativity well enough to know what you are talking about. So get back to me if that happens. — wonderer1

If you think one has to do the math to understand special relativity, you clearly haven't read Einstein's book. This is a ridiculous conversation. But you're making it fun for me, so carry on please.

↪Gnomon
My approach is more influenced by Buddhist Studies in not positing unknowable entities such as 'ideal minds' and assigning roles to them. That said, Peirce's intuition that the Universe itself is 'mind-like' - that our minds mirror its workings in some fundamental way - is persuasive to me. Peirce supported a modified form of scholastic realism concerning universals. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the Peircean position on "ideal minds". My personal approach is more like that of the Greek philosophers, who posited "unknowable" entities --- such as Logos, First Cause & Form --- and assigned functional real-world roles to them. Apparently, the Buddha also posited at least one hypothetical unknowable entity -- Nirvana -- and assigned a functional role to that imaginary state of mind : cessation of Duhkha (suffering). :smile:

Nirvana Unattainable? : hence unknowable (except possibly by dis-embodied spirits)
Nirvana is unattainable because you can't be completely desireless because you will still want to reach Nirvana and become Enlightened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/1b8v0v/nirvana_unattainable/

What is nirvana? :
Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment ... impossible to describe.
https://tricycle.org › Home › Level 1
Note --- Nirvana : extinguishment, non-being, un-knowable (in the normal sense). I suppose that, in theory, a ghost could know the "peace that passes all understanding". (Philippians 4:7)

Scholastic Realism is a type of moderate realism. As such, it falls between platonism and nominalism on the issue of universals. Universals, strictly speaking, only exist in minds, but they are founded on real relations of similarity in the world.
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Scholastic-Perspectives-Philosophical-Scholarship/dp/0820442704
Note --- Sounds similar to my own notion of ideal Universals : unknowable by the senses, but imaginable by the rational mind.

One of the themes I'm studying in Aristotelian-Thomist (A-T) philosophy, is of the way that the intellect (nous) knows the forms or intelligible principles of things. I will probably start a thread on this topic, but here is a passage in a text on Thomist psychology that I find highly persuasive. — Wayfarer

For sure. :up: I think I have that book stashed away somewhere.

To hark back to your 'boulder' example - I suspect that, if we peruse the texts on classical epistemology, we won't find any passages that concern the reality or otherwise of boulders. I would further suspect that this is because 'a boulder' is simply the accidental form of the idea 'stone', the essential characteristics of which are impenetrability, heaviness, and so on. But the nature of stones has not been something of much discussion, I don't think. It reminds me of the question in The Parmenides as to whether 'hair, mud and dirt' have forms. — Wayfarer

Well, a boulder does not have a substantial form because it is a composite object, but the substances that compose it do have substantial form. But this is beside the question of whether extramental physical objects have shape, and there's really no disagreement on this in the Aristotelian tradition.

As I mentioned above, one of the hallmarks of modern philosophy is that objects come to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the pre-modern point of view, they have no real being of their own. — Wayfarer

I don't think this is right at all, but when you investigate the topic we can look at it. Earlier I mentioned this topic:

Notably, though, it is not an error to accept the existence of mind-independent objects. That was being done long before the 17th century. — Leontiskos

I think that in trying to avoid Scientism you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As Meister Eckhardt said, 'beings are mere nothings'. — Wayfarer

Eckhart is not going to be a good representative, here. He knows Aristotle and Thomas well, but he was also much more Platonic than they were, and in any case this probably comes from a sermon, and is conveying a spiritual point.

I put this to ChatGPT4. You might be interested in perusing the dialogue. — Wayfarer

Funny thing is, ChatGPT gets this right, particularly in its first two responses to you. That is what he meant. I have actually read a lot of Eckhart. But in examining your question you should look at philosophical treatises, not sermons. Eckhart isn't going to treat such a foundational question.

As I mentioned above, one of the hallmarks of modern philosophy is that objects come to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the pre-modern point of view, they have no real being of their own. — Wayfarer

I actually think your view is bread-and-butter nominalism. From the paper I cited earlier ():

. . .Reality, then, to put it simply, pertains to and signifies what is, and to things actually existing in the world. Realism, what many philosophers would now call an epistemological theory, in the broadest of terms, means that (i) there is reality—that things actually exist in the world—and (ii) that we can comprehend and express true (or conversely false) statements/propositions about this reality. — Reality: The Philosophy of Realism | Introduction, p. 3

nominalism may be commonly defined as the denial that relations as such possess an ontological status independent of the mind, or, being effectively the same thing, if they do exist they cannot be known. — Reality: The Philosophy of Realism | Introduction, p. 10

(Pinter seems to be a nominalist; he seems to be following in the footsteps of modern philosophy, which is thoroughly nominalist. Note that Scientism is closer to Realism than Nominalism.)

But 'exists' means 'to have an identity' - to be this, as distinct from that. And I can't see how you can have that, without an observer. — Wayfarer

I think this is a matter of logic; to be this or that no observer would seem to be required. To be distinguished as this or that an observer is required. Something has first to be this or that in order to be able to be distinguished as being this or that.

A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words.

I don't see it that way at all. Again, it is a matter of logic. "Fact" is an ambiguous word in that it can be taken to signify a statement of an actuality or simply an actuality; so the encyclopedia is a compendium of facts in the first sense, but not in the second.

If 'fact' can signify either 'actuality' or 'statement of actuality' then it follows that on the first definition facts can exist without being observed, but on the second definition they obviously need to an observer who can, at least in principle, state them.

I don't think citing QM helps your case, because it trades on one interpretation of the so-called "observer problem", by interpreting "observer" to mean "conscious observer". In any case QM seems to show that all things consist in different and unique configurations of energy, and there seems to be no reason that configurations of energy should not exist absent observers, or that what pertains to the microphysical world regarding its counter-intuitive behavior should be translatable to the macrophysical world.

I claim that we can only talk sensibly about something at least possibly experienceable by us. I'm saying connected to our experience, not fully and finally or even mostly given, for even everyday objects are 'transcendent' in the Husserlian sense: they suggest an infinity of possible adumbrations. Note that I think a person can be alone with an experience --- be the only person who sees or knows an entity. — plaque flag

Of course, I agree that we can talk sensibly only about what we are familiar with. And I agree that everyday objects are transcendental, where that term is taken to signify that our experience of them cannot, even in principle, exhaust their natures or apprehend them in their wholeness.

As you say there are perhaps an infinite number of possible "adumbrations" of any object. But it does not follow that these transcendental objects which appear to us do not exist, or that they are not more than the totality of their possible adumbrations.

I actually think your view is bread-and-butter nominalism. — Leontiskos

The first thread I created on the forum that was predecessor to this one was an exploration and defense of platonic realism. I say that universals are 'the ligatures of reason' - that they are what enable abstract judgement. I'm intending to start another thread on that so I won't go into too much detail.

Funny thing is, ChatGPT gets this right, particularly in its first two responses to you. — Leontiskos

I felt the salient part of the response was this:

Modern empirical philosophy grants particulars a kind of primary status. These particulars are real, and our task is to observe, measure, and understand them. The inherent reality of these objects is, in many ways, taken for granted.

Eckhart’s view, on the other hand, suggests that the inherent reality of particulars is derived and secondary. They are "mere nothings" compared to the greater, all-encompassing reality of God. — ChatGPT

For Aquinas, all material particulars owe their existence to God. He posits that not only did God create the world, but God also continually conserves it in existence. Without God's sustaining power, material things would revert to nothingness. Accordingly, in Aquinas, the ontological status of material particulars is contingent, dependent on God's creative and conserving act. My argument is that materialism grants material objects inherent existence, sans any 'creating and conserving act' of God. Is that not so? Furthermore, that with empiricism, objects are accorded a kind of absolute status that they would not be granted in A-T philosophy. That is what materialism means. (By the way, I recall in our first conversation, I referred to Jacques Maritain's essay, the Cultural Impact of Empiricism. I look to that for understanding of and support for my view of universals.)

Note that Scientism is closer to Realism than Nominalism — Leontiskos

I believe the exact opposite. It was the rejection of universals first by nominalists such as William of Ockham that was the predecessor to later empiricism. I've put the argument for the reality of universals many times on this forum. There's an academic paper by a scholar called Joshua Hocshchild, who writes from within the Catholic Intellectual tradition, called 'What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West' (available on academia). He quotes Richard Weaver's book Ideas have Consequences, which is also about the rejection of universals and the decline of metaphysics, who says:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

I see the decline of the belief in universals as the immediate precursor to materialism in the modern period. This is because it results in the inability to conceive of different modes of existence, such as the reality of intelligible objects. A compelling case is made for this in the 2009 book Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie.

As for Charles Pinter and realism v nominalism, the subject doesn't come up at all. But I am inclined towards the view that what he views as 'gestalts' - fundamental cognitive wholes - might have a relationship with the Forms or Ideas. It is something I'm intending to explore.

Finally, after 20 odd pages of discussion, you still seem to think idealism is saying that 'without an observer reality does not exist'. I do not say that.

"Fact" is an ambiguous word in that it can be taken to signify a statement of an actuality or simply an actuality; — Janus

Disagree. A fact, as the argument states, is specific.

"Fact" is an ambiguous word in that it can be taken to signify a statement of an actuality or simply an actuality;
— Janus

Disagree. A fact, as the argument states, is specific. — Wayfarer

Your response does not contradict what I said. States of affairs or actualities are specific, and so are statements about them. If the actualities were not specific, then no specific statements about them could be made.

You speak about the word "fact" as though only one true definition pertains to it (the one that serves your argument, of course). I think it is a matter of usages, and the usages are patently equivocal. To put it another way 'fact' is an ambiguous term.

Finally, after 20 odd pages of discussion, you still seem to think idealism is saying that 'without an observer reality does not exist'. I do not say that. — Wayfarer

I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I think it raises a pertinent issue. If the in-itself nature of things cannot be known, we cannot with certainty say whether they exist in themselves or do not. From the fact that we cannot be sure whether they exist or not, it does not logically follow that they neither exist nor do not exist.

As I understand it Kant posits things in themselves because of the absurdity that would be involved in saying that something appears, but that there is nothing that appears. If there is something that appears, then it follows logically that the something that appears exists. So, I say that what we can say about the in-itself is governed only by logic, since we cannot know the in-itself nature of things, and it seems absurd to say that there could be something non-existent whose in-itself nature cannot be known.

For Aquinas, that all material particulars owe their existence to God. He posits that not only did God create the world, but God also continually conserves it in existence. Without God's sustaining power, material things would revert to nothingness. Accordingly, in Aquinas, the ontological status of material particulars is contingent, dependent on God's creative and conserving act. My argument is that materialism grants material objects inherent existence, sans any 'creating and conserving act' of God. Is that not so? — Wayfarer

This is all true... but in my opinion it's an undue mixing of theology with philosophy. It's also tricky because not all modern philosophers reject divine conservation, nor do they need to. The realism/nominalism debate concerns the status of our knowledge, and this is rather different than a debate about divine conservation and so-called "existential inertia." Also, when we get into the acts of secondary causes, the classical view of divine concurrentism is going to explicitly stop short of Occasionalism, and the point here is that for the classical theist position there is a real way in which things have being in themselves, even though this is ultimately referred to God.

I mean, you could try to make a genealogical argument that a shift from classical theism to naturalism resulted in Scientism, but the curious thing is that Aristotle manages to avoid Scientism without introducing explicitly theistic premises into his Physics or Metaphysics.

I believe the exact opposite. It was the rejection of universals first by nominalists such as William of Ockham that was the predecessor to later empiricism. — Wayfarer

Sure, but empiricism and Scientism are not the same thing. Would you not say that Scientism accepts that the objects of scientific study have being in themselves, and are knowable in themselves, and that this is the crux of the realist/nominalist debate?

I see the decline of the belief in universals as the immediate precursor to materialism in the modern period. This is because it results in the inability to conceive of different modes of existence, such as the reality of intelligible objects. — Wayfarer

I agree, and I agree that that aspect of Scientism (inability to conceive...) does flow out from nominalism.

Finally, after 20 odd pages of discussion, you still seem to think idealism is saying that 'without an observer reality does not exist'. I do not say that. — Wayfarer

Well, at this point I have disavowed that view so many times that I am just going to challenge you to produce quotes or evidence for your conclusion. Existence is a related issue, so it cannot be discounted out of hand, but it is not the issue I have been focusing on, for it is not the issue that divides us.

There's an academic paper by a scholar called Joshua Hocshchild, who writes from within the Catholic Intellectual tradition, called 'What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West' (available on academia). — Wayfarer

I agree that it flows from Ockham, but Hocschild's project here is very specialized. I tend to think he is either lost in the weeds or splitting hairs (or else attending to a more minute problem than that which concerns us). But note that he is rejecting the received view, which he sets out:

So, according to these and many other mainstream accounts, realists hold that universals have some mind-independent existence, while nominalists hold that universals do not have such mind-independent existence. — Joshua Hochschild, What’s Wrong with Ockham?

Philosophers can and will continue to argue at length about what exactly Aquinas or Ockham believed, but the terms 'Realism' and 'Nominalism' have a definite meaning in the philosophical lexicon, and challenging that meaning on the basis of a close reading of Ockham doesn't strike me as a productive avenue. Everyone recognizes that the dichotomy is a simplification of the views of particular thinkers.*

But note that, if we take Hocschild at his word about the received view, then Pinter is a nominalist with respect to the universal of shape.

* The complicated question, which we are not honing in on, has to do with the manner in which a universal is said to be mind-independent. The accurate predication of a universal constitutes a truth, and people (like Hocschild, but I would have to read him further to know for sure) often conclude that because truth is mind-dependent for Aquinas, therefore he was a nominalist. This fails to hone in on the precise distinction. A universal like shape is only known by minds, but it truly exists in things. Even if there were no minds, it would still exist, but it would not be known to exist. (Note that I am speaking of the existence of the universal (shape), not the substance of which it is predicated.)

(Out for a few days)

So, according to these and many other mainstream accounts, realists hold that universals have some mind-independent existence, while nominalists hold that universals do not have such mind-independent existence. — Joshua Hochschild, What’s Wrong with Ockham?

It seems to me odd that @Wayfarer will say that universals have mind-independent existence, but he will not admit that ordinary objects do. As I see it universals, or generalities, are only possible on account of the observed differences between, and commonalties shared by, objects.

Of course, it is the observer that formulates these observed differences and commonalities as generalities and specificities, but it would seem implausible to think that these are created ex nihilo or arbitrarily by the observer; it seems more plausible, to me at least, to think that the observed differences and commonalities are real attributes of the objects and do not depend for their existence on being observed, even though they obviously do depend on the observer for being apprehended and distinguished.

Quite blustery, but demonstration of more accurate understanding of Special Relativity is what I was hoping to see. So like I said, if you can provide that, get back to me.

The complicated question, which we are not honing in on, has to do with the manner in which a universal is said to be mind-independent. The accurate predication of a universal constitutes a truth, and people (like Hocschild, but I would have to read him further to know for sure) often conclude that because truth is mind-dependent for Aquinas, therefore he was a nominalist. This fails to hone in on the precise distinction. A universal like shape is only known by minds, but it truly exists in things. Even if there were no minds, it would still exist, but it would not be known to exist. (Note that I am speaking of the existence of the universal (shape), not the substance of which it is predicated.) — Leontiskos

Apologies if I am misunderstanding your criticism. (I've had another try at it below).

Hochschild does not hold that Aquinas was nominalist, not at all, but I'm afraid trying to condense his depiction in a forum post would not be possible. There is a passage in his essay that I often refer to, because it helped me to understand what is at issue:

Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. — Joshua Hochschild

That makes a great deal of sense to me. Formal and final causes provide the raison d'etre of things, in their absence, there is a broad streak of irrationality in modern culture.

----RECAP----

I've backtracked through the dialogue to better respond to your criticism, as you're a serious thinker and I would like to believe I've responded adequately.

If what we experience as an external shape is actually no more than an idea or sensation, then we would have no reason to believe that boulders would treat canyons differently than cracks. Yet you assented to the proposition that boulders do treat canyons differently than cracks (even when no minds are involved), precisely because you believe that shape is in fact more than an idea or sensation. — Leontiskos

You're saying it's pre-existent, and its discovered by us, which is an empirical fact. I'm not denying the empirical fact. When you say this, you have, on the one hand, the object, and on the other, ideas and sensations which are different to the object, as they occur within the mind. You're differentiating them - there is a pre-existent shape, and here, the ideas and sensations are in your mind.

it may also be as Wayfarer says, and we may have to give up the facts. — Leontiskos

We do not have to give up facts, but to recognise the role of the observer.

The crux is the fact that you have attached yourself to a theory which entails that boulders do not have shape, combined with the fact that we both agree that boulders do have shape. — Leontiskos

I agreed a matter of empirical fact, boulders do have shapes, but the substance of the OP is the role of the observing mind in providing the framework within which empirical facts exist and are meaningful.

The disagreement is over whether we can know external reality as it is in itself. — Leontiskos

It is indeed. I'm arguing that there is a subjective element in all knowledge, without which knowledge is impossible, but which is not in itself apparent in experience. This is why disagreement is possible. I also have the understanding that as imperfect finite beings knowledge is always limited. But I do not discount revelation or spiritual enlightenment and the possibility of true knowledge.

I am talking about knowing mind-independent reality, I am talking about knowing things whose existence is distinct and unrelated to mind. Your claim that <If a reality can be known, then it is not mind-independent> is therefore neither here nor there. I don't think anyone in the thread has been conceiving of "mind-independent reality" in this way. — Leontiskos

That is what I'm arguing. I know that it is an empirical fact that there are untold, countless things that I will never know or have any contact with - heck, I don't know most of the people in my street - but that is not the point at issue.

As you say there are perhaps an infinite number of possible "adumbrations" of any object. But it does not follow that these transcendental objects which appear to us do not exist, or that they are not more than the totality of their possible adumbrations. — Janus

My point is perhaps best understood as semantic. Let P be claim that objects exist as more than their possible adumbrations (in a wide metaphorical sense of adumbration, which might include the inexhaustibility of the concept of a prime number.) Now what is P supposed to mean ?

In my view, the point is to see that the object is not hidden behind or within itself. It's just we are temporal beings, grasping the objects over time, seeing this aspect and then perhaps that one.

As I understand it Kant posits things in themselves because of the absurdity that would be involved in saying that something appears, but that there is nothing that appears. — Janus

I think he makes that point too somewhere (I tried to find it), but perhaps its best to understand him as the radicalization of a tradition.

Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. — Kant

Kant's final claim is recklessly wrong. If space and time are only on the side of appearance, we no longer have a reason trust the naive vision of a world mediated by sense organs in the first place. Crack open your Descartes, and you'll find a detailed analysis of vision and other surprisingly sophisticated discussions of the nervous system. Locke and Hobbes also acknowledged spatial and temporal reality of the brain that they needed, after all, to tell the rest of their story, the one about it 'painting' a 'gray' world of primary qualities with lovely secondary qualities, like color, sound, value, significance.

Kant makes all of that appearance, leaving nothing behind but a pointless shadow, because he thinks the grammar requires it, and because he's afraid of being seen as Berkeley --- probably because he's more absurd than Berkeley, though apparently more theologically sophisticated.

Kant's final claim is recklessly wrong. — plaque flag

Whereas I think he's right. As I've said throughout, how can there be time without duration, space without distance, and either of those without perspective? The mind provides the perspective and scale within which time and space are meaningful. That's also shown up in cosmology.

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 looses 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

Also an extract from Schopenhauer’s Philosophy by Bryan Magee.

The previous chapters in this book concern the way in which the brain unconsciously constructs its perception of the world from the elements of physical stimuli and the interaction of autonomic and conscious faculties. The following extract is from end of Chap 4 – beginning of Chap 5.

It was …Locke who first identified the characteristics which could not be 'thought away' from the objects of our experience ‚ characteristics without which objects as such were literally inconceivable. This was an achievement of genius. But it was not until philosophy's Copernican revolution (i.e. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason) that the true philosophical explanation of it became possible. And this was not, as Locke had thought, that the primary qualities are the irreducibly minimal attributes necessary to material objects existing independently of experience, in a space and time which are also independent of experience, but that they are constructive principles in terms of which the mind creates the percepts of conscious experience out of raw material supplied to it (of necessity prior to perception, and therefore not perceived) by the senses.

Schopenhauer was the first person to put forward 'a thorough proof of the intellectual nature of perception [made possible] in consequence of the Kantian doctrine', and was also the first person to marry this philosophical account to its corresponding physical account. (Here there’s a brief account of how Kant’s work has shown up in biology, cognitive science and even linguistics.)

Schopenhauer's reformulation of Kant's theory of perception brings out implications of it which Kant touched on without giving them anything like the consideration their importance demanded…. The first of these is that if all the characteristics we are able to ascribe to phenomena are subject-dependent then there can be no object in any sense that we are capable of attaching to the word without the existence of a subject. Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are.

Kant did see this, but only intermittently‚ in the gaps, as it were, between assuming the existence of the noumenon 'out there' as the invisible sustainer of the object. He expressed it once in a passage which, because so blindingly clear and yet so isolated, sticks out disconcertingly from his work: 'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations.' …

Another objection would run: '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 what Kant has just been quoted as saying, that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. 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: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

Schopenhauer's second refutation of the objection under consideration is as follows. Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the latter no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the former‚ in short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. — Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, Bryan Magee

I hope you all find this quote from Sartre, basically the opening of Being and Nothingness, relevant (tho maybe all will have a different use or reaction).

MODERN thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it. Its aim was to overcome a certain number of dualisms which have embarrassed philosophy and to replace them by the monism of the phenomenon. Has the attempt been successful? In the first place we certainly thus get rid of that dualism which in the existent opposes interior to exterior. There is no longer an exterior for the existent if one means by that a superficial covering which hides from sight the true nature of the object. And this true nature in turn, if it is to be the secret reality of the thing, which one can have a presentiment of or which one can suppose but can never reach because it is the "interior" of the object under consideration---this nature no longer exists. The appearances which manifest the existent are neither interior nor exterior; they are all equal, they all refer to other appearances, and none of them is privileged. ...The obvious conclusion is that the dualism of being and appearance is no longer entitled to any legal status within philosophy. The appearance refers to the total series of appearances and not to a hidden reality which could drain to itself all the being of the existent. And the appearance for its part is not an inconsistent manifestation of this being. To the extent that men had believed in noumenal realities, they have presented appearance as a pure negative. It was "that which is not being"; it had no other being than that of illusion and error. ... But if we once get away from what Nietzsche called "the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene," and if we no longer believe in the being-behind-the-appearance, then the appearance becomes full positivity; its essence is an "appearing" which is no longer opposed to being but on the contrary is the measure of it. For the being of an existent is exactly what it appears.
...
Thus we arrive at the idea of the phenomenon such as we can find, for example in the "phenomenology" of Husserl or of Heidegger --- the phenomenon or the relative-absolute. Relative the phenomenon remains, for "to appear" supposes in essence somebody to whom to appear. But it does not have the double relativity of Kant's Erscheinung. It does not point over its shoulder to a true being which would be, for it, absolute. What it is, it is absolutely, for it reveals itself as it is. .. The appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence. The essence of an existent is no longer a property sunk in the cavity of this existent; it is the manifest law which presides over the suc­cession of its appearances, it is the principle of the series.

I'll add a quote from Husserl too, because I think it's the 'temporal horizon' of objects that tempts us to project something that hides behind them. I can only see the puppy from this or that side at any given instant, but I'm still seeing the puppy, not some representative of or surrogate for of the puppy.

I claim that all we can mean when we talk of the existence of this puppy is caught up in actual and possible experience, but I further claim that this experience is really just the being of the world, which 'just happens' to reliably organize itself around sentient and sapient flesh, 'into' which it flows.

The thing is given in experiences, and yet, it is not given; that is to say, the experience of it is givenness through presentations, through “appearings.” Each particular experience and similarly each connected, eventually closed sequence of experiences gives the experienced object in an essentially incomplete appearing, which is one-sided, many-sided, yet not all-sided, in accordance with everything that the thing “is.” Complete experience is something infinite. To require a complete experience of an object through an eventually closed act or, what amounts to the same thing, an eventually closed sequence of perceptions, which would intend the thing in a complete, definitive, and conclusive way is an absurdity; it is to require something which the essence of experience excludes.

Relative the phenomenon remains, for "to appear" supposes in essence somebody to whom to appear. But it does not have the double relativity of Kant's Erscheinung. It does not point over its shoulder to a true being which would be, for it, absolute. What it is, it is absolutely, for it reveals itself as it is

Note the acknowledgment that 'to appear' supposes in essence somebody to whom to appear'. That is the 'transcendental subject' (which incidentally is not phenomenally existent).

My view on that is that it's a mistake (partially of Kant's making) to suppose that the world 'as it is in itself', the 'ding an sich' or 'the noumenal' is something that exists outside of or apart from phenomena and then to proceed to wonder what this 'real world' might be. As for the last four sentences, I don't agree with them at all. Other than that, I don't see much here in conflict with the OP, nor in the following Husserl quote.

Whereas I think he's right. As I've said throughout, how can there be time without duration, space without distance, and either of those without perspective? The mind provides the perspective and scale within which time and space are meaningful. That's also shown up in cosmology. — Wayfarer

If you follow me and understand 'mind' as just the being of the world, then maybe I'll agree with you, for I think space and time are as real as anything can be. But if you insist on tying mind down to the brain, then you seem to be attributing the creation of time and space to a spatial and temporal object (this same brain.) You are basically (at least implicitly) making time and space a dream, as if dreams can have meaning apart from ordinary temporal spatial worldly experience. Do you see the issue ? Kant casts into doubt all of our basic, ordinary understanding.

if you insist on tying mind down to the brain, — plaque flag

In our case, as physical beings, the brain is the vehicle of the mind, is it not? I'm talking about 'the brain' as an object - as already noted somewhere upthread. And time is not 'the being of the world' - read the Andrei Linde passage again. He says, that absent an observer, there is no time. (Linde is a mainstream scientist by the way.)

Kant casts into doubt all of our basic, ordinary understanding. — plaque flag

Kant calls into question the 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect'. That is why it produces such hostile reactions - it challenges our view of reality.

In our case, as physical beings, the brain is the vehicle of the mind, is it not? — Wayfarer

I don't think you are seeing the issue. Kant's radicality makes the brain itself a mere piece of appearance, not to be trusted. He saws off the branch he's sitting on. Hoffman does the same thing. But it's such an exciting story.

In my view, the point is to see that the object is not hidden behind or within itself. It's just we are temporal beings, grasping the objects over time, seeing this aspect and then perhaps that one. — plaque flag

To me you seem to be misunderstanding the idea that objects are not necessarily merely the sum of their attributes. We only know of objects, the attributes that are accessible to our human cognition. The same goes for other species. But there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects.

Kant's final claim is recklessly wrong. If space and time are only on the side of appearance, we no longer have a reason trust the naive vision of a world mediated by sense organs in the first place. — plaque flag

I have always thought that Kant is wrong about space and time: if there can be things in themselves, then why not space and time in themselves? Kant has no warrant to claim that space and time exist only in perceptual appearances, any more than he would to claim (which I think he doesn't) that objects only exist in perceptual appearances.

For me the distinction between primary and secondary qualities still stands.

I wish people would carry on discussions in their own words instead of posting walls of text which are quotations from supposed authorities. The argument from authority is a weak form of doing philosophy in my view; we need to learn to think for ourselves. (That said, I'm obviously not condemning reading other philosophers, but surely if we have mastered their arguments, we can present them in our own words).

Kant's radicality makes the brain itself a mere piece of appearance, not to be trusted. He saws off the branch he's sitting on. — plaque flag

He doesn't have to anything to say about the brain, in his day the physiology of the brain was pretty well completely unknown, but he does no such thing. Please take some time to read through the passages that I posted just before the one from Sartre.

Kant calls into question the 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect'. That is why it produces such hostile reactions - it challenges our view of reality. — Wayfarer

That may apply to some objections to Kant, but it's very much beside the point here. I've explicitly challenged scientific realism, embraced correlationism, gone the whole Hegelian hog.

To me you seem to be misunderstanding the idea that objects are not necessarily merely the sum of their attributes. We only know of objects, the attributes that are accessible to our human cognition. The same goes for other species. But there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects. — Janus

I understand the temptation to say there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects, but I'm asking what kind of meaning can be given to such a claim. It's not only unfalsifiable, it's impossible to parse at all. In my view, any attempt to give such a claim meaning will involve connecting it to possible experience.

I'm obviously not condemning reading other philosophers, but surely if we have mastered their arguments, we can present them in our own words — Janus

I did that in the OP. I provide the passage about Schopenhauer's philosophy by way of showing points of agreement with at least one historic philosopher.

I do understand what you are getting at. I think it's a reasonable concern. We already know, using our reasoning, that some animals have better or different than senses than we do. I grant that point. And I'd say that the sentience of those creatures 'is' also the being of the world. But those creatures exist for us, and we speak of them and not their representations or surrogates. But we experience them, from or through our human perspective. And they experience us.

Perhaps we'll even agree if you see that my perspective metaphor is just that ---inspired by the visual situation but suggesting more. To see the object in a different way (from a difference place or nervous system) is still to see the object and not some mediating image.

It surprises me that you say you challenge scientific realism; that seems inconsistent with your own avowed direct realism. What do you understand scientific realism to consist in, and on what grounds do you challenge it.

I did that in the OP. I provide the passage about Schopenhauer's philosophy by way of showing points of agreement with at least one historic philosopher. — Wayfarer

What matters (to me at least) is open discussion and cogent arguments, though, and points of agreement with historic philosophers (authorities) are worthless without cogent arguments presented in our own words and accompanied by a willingness to hear them critiqued and being prepared to sustain engagement as long as is required to either arrive at agreement or agreement to disagree.

But we experience them, from or through our human perspective. — plaque flag

Yes, of course we experience everything through our human perspective. We are trying to work out what is best and most plausible to say about things from within that context. Regarding that I don't say that we know anything beyond what we can experience, but we can conjecture beyond that and argue for what seems most plausible to say.

I acknowledge that there will inevitably be disagreement and no way of definitively establishing the truth, since we all have our own groundless and perhaps affectively motivated starting presuppositions, so I don't expect us to all end up on the same page.

I would hope that this process might show all of us where our attachments to particular ideas (confirmation biases) lie, and that we are capable of letting go of what we might want to be the case, if we can come to see just what those biases are.

And I'd say that the sentience of those creatures 'is' also the being of the world. — plaque flag

This is an important point of disagreement, I think. I would agree that the sentience of creatures is the being of the world, but I don't count it as the whole being of the world.

It surprises me that you say you challenge scientific realism; that seems inconsistent with your own avowed direct realism. What do you understand scientific realism to consist in, and on what grounds do you challenge it. — Janus

What I mean by such realism (the kind I reject) is the postulation of 'aperspectival stuff' being primary in some sense, existing in contrast to ( and prior to ) mind or consciousness.

Metaphysically, realism is committed to the mind-independent existence of the world investigated by the sciences. This idea is best clarified in contrast with positions that deny it. For instance, it is denied by any position that falls under the traditional heading of “idealism”, including some forms of phenomenology, according to which there is no world external to and thus independent of the mind.

I think you can find a good version of this in Hobbes.

The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavour because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained. — Hobbes

For Hobbes, matter is 'out there' in motion whether or not anyone is 'rubbed' by it so that sensation and fancy result. Dualism, right ?

You might think that I'm a dualist, but the whole point for me is a monist clarification, which is already right there in the TLP. I am my world. The deepest subjectivity is being itself. Ontological cubism. So-called consciousness is just the being of the world given 'perspectively ' ( the being of the world is arranged around sentient flesh as a kind of origin of a perspectival coordinate system .) [It's like a cubist painting, hinted at in Leibniz and that passage about the bridge. The bridge only exists from various perspectives. ]

What I mean by such realism (the kind I reject) is the postulation of 'aperspectival stuff' being primary in some sense, existing in contrast to ( and prior to ) mind or consciousness.

Metaphysically, realism is committed to the mind-independent existence of the world investigated by the sciences. This idea is best clarified in contrast with positions that deny it. For instance, it is denied by any position that falls under the traditional heading of “idealism”, including some forms of phenomenology, according to which there is no world external to and thus independent of the mind. — plaque flag

I'm well familiar with those positions. Where we disagree is that I don't see perspective as being relevant to existence, except within the context of perception. So, saying that stuff cannot exist without a perspective, to my way of thinking, conflates existence with cognition. I see no reason to do that, and it just seems logically and conceptually wrong.

I don't think science needs to say that we know anything more of things than how they appear to us, while acknowledging that appearances do not exhaust the being of things, and that conjecturing about that being is not science but metaphysics, a realm where strict decidability is not to be expected.