Perhaps that is what I am trying to say. A relation is a concept in the mind rather than an object in the world. Relations exist in the mind, not the world. — RussellA

But then, how can the relationship "next to" be between between the ship and the quay? It is true that we can see that the ship is next to the quay, and you might choose to describe that as having the ship and the quay and the relationship between them in your mind in some sense. But that doesn't mean that your mind has created any of them. In any case, it can't be literally true. Your mind is not a spatial object - it occupies no space whatever. The physical substrate of your mind is in your brain (though I prefer to say that it is your entire body). Whichever it is, there is no room for the ship or the bollard and consequently not for the relationship between them.
I'm happy to say that a concept is in my mind, though neither mind nor concepts occupy any space at all - it's a metaphor. A relationship is indeed not an object in the world; it is something that holds between objects in the world. That mean it doesn't exist only in your mind. If it existed only in your mind, it would not be between the ship and the bollard. The thing is, a concept is always of something else, and the something else may well not be in your mind.

An intelligent and strategic response to the environment of these single cell organisms, which led to the T Rex and Sartre. — Punshhh

That's certainly true. The real genius of Darwin was that he managed to create or identify a purely causal, unthinking system which achieved the results of an intelligent system. There's no need to posit any minds - unless you want to include them for other reasons than explaining the phenomena.

The ship is not secured because of the relationship between the ship and the bollard, otherwise no rope would be needed. — RussellA

I see that you have decided that the relationship is between the ship and the bollard. Good choice. Now, can we agree that the relationship between Glasgow and Edinburgh is between Glasgow and Edinburgh and vice versa?
It depends on what you mean by "secured". But I would say that the rope secures the relationship and not the other way round. But the question that matters to us is whether we have secured that infinite regress.

Referential opacity is to do with individuals, not natural kinds. — Banno

I would have thought so, too. But what do we make of Kripke?

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke argues that proper names and certain natural kind terms—including biological taxa and types of natural substances (most famously, "water" and "H2O") designate rigidly. — Wikipedia - Rigid designator

I realize encyclopedias get things wrong, but this coincides with my memory.

Steam is H2O
Ice is H2O
Therefore, steam is ice
This is obviously incorrect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true. But you don't diagnose the problem.

It's the same as "All cats are mammals, all dogs are mammals, therefore all cats are dogs". — Banno

Banno is right. Undistributed middle.

Ice is water.
Ice makes for a good bridge.
Therefore water makes for a good bridge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have doubts about this. It is not wrong. But it doesn't mean that any old chunk of ice will make a good bridge. Ice only makes for a good bridge if it is handled properly. One could argue that the conclusion is true, provided we specify that it needs to be handled properly (i.e. turned into ice). There's a complication here because the same could be said of water.

The problem here is an equivocation on "water" as chemical identity versus as a particular phase of that substance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Mostly, this does not bother us, but in this kind of discussion, it matters.

it seems clear that my cup of water is the same water when it has frozen, ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that this is where the example is clearly in a different category from our referential examples. "Water" is a mass term - it doesn't do individuals. The only ways you can identify "the same water" is indirectly, via, for example, a cup. When you borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbour, you will, of course, return it. But you don't have to return the same grains of sugar, do you? The same goes for borrowing money. You repay the money you borrowed, but not the same individual money - the very idea is meaningless.

Referential opacity is not about ambiguity. — Banno

Well, we agreed, I think, that the problems occur between contexts, which may be one kind of ambiguity. But it is true that there are ambiguities that are not about reference. Nonetheless, I'm beginning to think that there are issues about the "description under which" we think about things that I have not seen discussed.

The schema says that if we have a true formula containing an individual variable a, and if we have a=b, then we can replace a in with b, and the formula will remain true. — Banno

There is something I don't understand here. Presumably, the implication goes the other way, so that if we can replace a with b in a formula, then we have a=b. So we need an independent way of establishing one or the other.

That's a nice and thought-provoking collection of examples.
— Ludwig V
I don't agree. — Banno

Fair enough.

That's good stuff. Thank you. :smile:

Well, if the personas have different properties then you have solved the "puzzle." — Leontiskos

I don't know I would go that far. That "if" tells me that you have reservations. I suspect there will still be issues to discuss, but it might be a change from going through that argument over and over again.

Some philosophers are wary of admitting relations because they are difficult to locate. Glasgow is west of Edinburgh. This tells us something about the locations of these two cities. But where is the relation that holds between them in virtue of which Glasgow is west of Edinburgh? The relation can’t be in one city at the expense of the other, nor in each of them taken separately, since then we lose sight of the fact that the relation holds between them (McTaggart 1920: §80). Rather the relation must somehow share the divided locations of Glasgow and Edinburgh without itself being divided.

This won't do. Bradley had what he considered a general argument about this - as I'm sure you know. If aRb, then there must be two other relations that relate a to R and R to b. I shall write this down as a(r1)R(r2)b. What is the relationship between a and r1 and R and r2 and b? You see how it goes - a nice infinite regress that proves the impossibility (not merely non-existence) of any relation whatever. Great fun!

Suppose I want my ship next to a quay. I can sail it up until the ship is at location x, where the quay is at location y and x and y are next to each other. If you are thinking like Bradley, you will be thinking that something more needs to be said. So I shall add something to physically represent the relationship - a rope. I shall fix the rope to a bollard on the quay, and fix the other end to the ship. I shall fix the rope by wrapping it round the bollard in a clove hitch, and similarly on the ship. So I can represent all of a, r1, R, r2, and b. So you can be reassured that the ship is securely next to the quay and physics will prevent it from moving. You can decide where the relationship is. I say it is between the ship and the quay. How could it be anywhere else? It certainly isn't in my head.

Bradley wouldn't be happy with this, because he's a theoretician, playing with symbols, of which he has an infinite supply. That's the province of a logician, which I am not, so I'll leave you to read up on that. But for me Bradley's mistake is thinking of the relation as if it were an entity in its own right - an object corresponding to R. You are getting sucked in to his misleading metaphor because you are asking whether relations really exist, with (presumably) tables and chairs as your models. But symbols do not always represent entities that correspond to them. You can see from this example that there is no need for an infinite supply of entities linking the ship and the quay. To put the point another way, in 2+3=5, "2", "3", and "5" represent numbers, but "+" and "=" do not. It isn't a problem.

The relationship "west of" holds between Glasgow and Edinburgh, so I shall say that it is between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Similarly for the relationship "east of" between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Oh, I see. I would have expressed that by saying that the number is the same in all possible worlds, so the numeral "9" designates the same number in all possible worlds. I should have worked that out. Sorry.

I get the point about "the number of planets".

Sorry, but I don't really get the relevance of being an abstract object to rigid designation.

Let's just share the blame.

The planet case is a misapplication because the number of planets isn't a proper noun. Both t1 and t2 have to be rigid designators. — frank

Do you mean something like a blank space to be filled in with a number - hopefully the correct number?
Or perhaps more like a question "How many planets are there?" I get that. Thanks.

BTW. What is "9" the rigid designator of?

Are you familiar with de re vs de dicto? — frank

Yes, but don't see how it applies in the planets case.

I rejected that this is a good way to determine real, but that it is clearly showing us that there is no universal acceptance of how to categorise things as real or unreal. — AmadeusD

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about "real" at the moment. So I hope you won't mind if I suggest that statement needs to be modified. I agree that there is no established way of categorising Heaven as real or not. But there is pretty much universal acceptance about how to categorise some other things as real. Unicorns, for example, forged paintings, dramatic performances. There is no single way of categorizing things as real or not. It depends on what kind of thing you are talking about. The same applies to questions of existence (which is what the issue of Heaven comes to). Numbers don't exist in the same way that tables and chairs do.

Read the exchange with I just had with Banno. You do need to understand the issue of Supervenience though in relation to Mental States/Identity. — I like sushi

I'm afraid I'm not competent to express an opinion about what you are trying to say. I don't understand it.

That's a nice and thought-provoking collection of examples.

You aren't using the identity elimination schema there. — frank

I'm afraid I don't know or can't recall exactly what the identity elimination schema. Do you mind just outlining what it is?

That relations don't really exist in the physical world. — RussellA

I see. It's clearly not real issue. I would like to pursue it a bit, but I'm afraid I don't have the time and energy to think it through. But thank you for drawing my attention to it.

Relations certainly exist in the mind, in that I know the apple is to the left of the orange, but in what sense does the apple "know" it is to the left of the orange.

That's a silly question. It is presumably an attempt to explain what Bradley meant, but it is very unhelpful, amounting to mystification. It can't be what Bradley was saying.

physics is understood as amounting to finding useful indexical relations for the purpose of defining protocols for intersubjective communication — sime

I'm not sure I follow you exactly. But the intention to interpret Locke's distinction as semantic seems like a good way to go. I think of it as a methodological decision. I don't know how far that coincides with your view.
When you talk of "indexical relations" are you thinking of the equation, for example, between photons and colours? If so, I wouldn't equate finding them with the whole purpose of physics, nor think that it amounts to enabling inter-subjective communication. Or do I misunderstand you?

But that is exactly what was implied by the Galilean division. The distinction between what was measurably the case, and how objects appear, was central. I quote this passage about once a week: — Wayfarer

It's a good passage. Something to put on a wall in a frame.
But I think you misunderstand my point.
The "external reality" is always external, even when, for example, it is measured. Referring to "absence of an observer" allows people to conclude that when an observer is present, what is observed is not reality. But reality is still reality even when it is observed, or, for example, measured.
The new idea seems to define a new world of real objects, distinct from the world we perceive which contains appearances that don't really exist. But that is an illusion. The new idea defines a new way of looking at, thinking about, the same objects that we perceive and think about every day.

Yes, I'm aware that it is a side-issue, and I've no intention of pursuing it. I don't have the bandwidth to do that, so, although it could be part of another thread, I wouldn't be contributing to it.

Quine's contribution was to put the problem in terms of substitution, and hence in terms of extensionality, and so presenting it as a puzzle of logical form as opposed to a physiological issue. — Banno

"Physiological" is an odd term to use here. Did you mean something more like "Psychological"? But I take the point. But it seems to have turned out that the logic used to state the problem can't resolve it.

In this last we can see the whole in a single context. The problem - so far as there is one - only arises when the contexts are muddled together. That's what Quine pointed out. — Banno

I believe that "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent and Superman can fly, so Clark Kent can fly" represents things better. Whether, post Davidson, "Superman is Clark Kent and Superman can fly, so Clark Kent can fly. Lois believes that." is better, I wouldn't care to say. What I'm after is that it's not enough that she believe three separate sentences. She has to put them together, and that's what it is hard to represent in language. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that there something like a Gestalt at work here, which it is hard to represent with atomic sentences/propositions. I'm thinking of something like Quine's web of belief.

I suspect that you, Ludwig V, are familiar with all this. — Banno

There are many things that I ought to know and do not know. I did not know that Quine has an actual diagnosis and a solution.
Like all good philosophy, it is obvious when you see it. So thanks for that.
I was not asking in the spirit that some philosophers ask questions to which they believe they know the answer in order to lodge an objection - though I have to admit that I have been known to do that.

However, there are many cases when a form of language is misleading, such as reification. But there are others where it is not, such as a categorial distinction. I'm not sure which kind the intensional/extensional distinction is.

When Macbeth sees Macduff's sword when Macduff comes to kill him, we are all clear the Macbeth sees Macduff's sword. There is a real sword, so it's an extensional context. When Macbeth sees a dagger before him, does Macbeth see an intensional dagger - i.e. a hallucination? What kind of object is that? I want to say that he does not see a dagger and that a hallucination is not an object. You can, I assume, see the implications.

You covered it pretty well. — Wayfarer

Thanks.

It was the novel iteration of the appearance-reality divide in the context of early modern science. That's what I'm saying that Berkeley (and, later, Kant) was reacting against. — Wayfarer

It was certainly important. I suppose the schoolmen must have some concept of appearance and of reality - though it is also possible that they just didn't think about them in the way that we do. One would have to read the texts carefully to know.

It was the belief that was coming into view in Berkeley's time, and is fully entrenched nowadays, that what is real, is real in the absence of any observer or mind whatever. — Wayfarer

I treat "in the absence of any observer or mind" as an extreme example of mind-independent existence. That's the key point for me. If only Berkeley had proposed "To be is to be perceivable" instead of "To be is to be perceived (or to be able to perceive)". That still leaves the possibility of inference to unobserved realities in question, though he has to admit that it is possible (as in the case of other minds and God.)

It's worth noting, though, that he cannot, on his own terms, go back to Aristotelianism, which also has realities that cannot be observed, but only inferred. That's what makes him an empiricist.

Yes, sure. LLMs don't encounter information in the same way we do, they cannot choose how they encounter information in the way we do, they don't have aversion or reward afaik. — Apustimelogist

Yes - aversion and reward are a key part of this. Which generates an interesting question - what would one have to provide a machine with to get a) an analogue of aversion and reward (which perhaps one could already see in existing machines) and b) actual aversion and reward.

They are capable of intelligibly talking about experiences even though they don't even have the faculties for those experiences. An LLM has a faculty for talking, it doesn't have a faculty for seeing. The structure of language itself is sufficient for its intelligible use. — Apustimelogist

Yes. But there's a limitation. If language has its roots in, and acquires its meaning from, human practices and forn of life, LLM cannot use (or abuse) language in the many of the ways that we do.

"Superman = Clark Kent" is logically presupposing both that there are two things being related, and that there are not two things but only one thing. It's that inherent contradiction that is the problem, and which is so bound up in your own thought. — Leontiskos

I'm sympathetic to most of what you have been saying. But this contradiction can easily be resolved. "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are both names for the same person - but each name is assigned to a different persona. This is not particularly strange - pen names, professional names, character names (Barry Humphries, for example), regal names, baptismal names, adoptive names, married names, aliases of all sorts.

Quine showed that Frege's solution didn't work, and told us not to try to substitute in such circumstances. Not really an answer so much as a statement of the problem. — Banno

It seems that people are quite unwilling just to accept the restriction. It needs a rationale - apart from Frege's solution not working.

The answer to this, From Kripke, is to drop Leibniz’s Law but keep extensional substitution - that is, to use rigid designation. — Banno

I'm afraid that I don't see this as any kind of answer.

a. Superman is Clark Kent. Major
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly. Minor
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly. a, b =E
— IEP
From two true statements, we get an untrue conclusion. — frank

This is too simple It is certainly true that Lois does not believe that Clark Kent can fly.
I don't suppose anyone thinks that we can be expected to automatically believe all the logical consequences of what we believe. We have to work them out for ourselves. But we need to believe some of them if our beliefs are to have any meaning. Yet there seems no way of drawing a line between logical consequences that we can be expected to believe and the rest.
At least, I would be reluctant to generalize this example, as the standard account of extension and intention does. There needs to be some room for paying attention to each case. They may not all fit the same mould.


I can't resist commenting on your quotation from Davidson.

But then it does not seem possible to distinguish between quite different things the dog might be said to believe. — Donald Davidson, Rational Animals

Of course not - not in a thumbnail sketch. But if we live with the dog, we can work out a fuller picture. There's nothing special here. All beliefs are surrounded by a penumbra of ancillary beliefs - many of them logical consequences, many others mere associations. Deciding which of them a believer has and which they do not have needs a wider view than two lines.

In a popular if misleading idiom, the dog must believe, under some description of the tree, that the cat went up that tree. But what kind of description would suit the dog? — Donald Davidson, Rational Animals

In one sense, there cannot be a description of the tree that suits the dog. The dog doesn't describe things. On the other hand, there seems no bar to our deciding what description suits the dog and applying it to the dog. We do that to other human beings as well and when we do that, we take their behaviour into account as well as what they say. What people say about their beliefs is important evidence, but it is not especially authoritative; sometimes behaviour over-rules it.

I don't think either of these philosophers claim that what you experience doesn't exist in some sense though. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps I should have explained properly. You are right, of course. Neither of them claims that what we experience doesn't exist. But the PLA is often treated as enormously paradoxical, as I'm sure you are aware. But Wittgenstein is only trying to demolish a philosophical myth, not deny that we can talk to ourselves. Again, Dennett is arguing that our perceptions are not what they seem to be, not that we don't have any.

LLMs are demonstrating his beetle-in-box argument. — Apustimelogist

Do you mean that they are capable of engaging in rational discourse without the benefit of human consciousness?

FH Bradley made a regress argument against the ontological existence of relations in the world — RussellA

Was he saying that relations don't really exist? Or just that they don't really exist in the physical world?

Only insofar as all were empiricists - 'all knowledge from experience'. IN other respects, chalk and cheese. Ayer and Carnap would have found Berkeley's talk of spirit otiose, to use one of their preferred words. — Wayfarer

Quite so. I just wanted to suggest that even though Hegelian idealism was widely rejected, Berkeley was still remembered with approval in some positivist quarters.

Note again that 'substance' here is from the Latin 'substantia', originating with the Greek 'ousia'. So it could equally be said 'there is not any other kind of being than spirit', which sounds to me less odd than 'substance' in the context. — Wayfarer

I understand Berkeley as adopting a rather literal interpretation of substance and assigns it the role of "supporting (standing under) the existence of things". That was precisely what God was supposed to do - not only creating things, but maintaining them in existence. I'm sure you know about Malebranche and Occasionalism. Philosophers mostly seem to skate over Berkeley's project and its roots in the theology of the time. But, in a sense, it makes a nonsense of Berkeley's project to leave God out of it - not that he wasn't interested in science, as you point out.

What Berkeley denies is the existence of corporeal substance, where 'substance' is used in the philosophical, rather than day-to-day, sense: the bearer of predicates, that which underlies appearances. He claims that is an abstraction - which is a point I hope I made sufficiently clear in the OP. — Wayfarer

Oh, you certainly did make it clear. I'll take you word for it that he sees it as an abstracting. I rather think, though, that "bearer of predicates" is a translation into modern terminology. My point is only that, whatever exactly he is denying, he is clear that its conceptual role will be fill by the spiritual substance which is God.

So he's saying objects of perception exist in perception - if not yours or mine, then the Divine Intellect, which holds them in existence. — Wayfarer

That's trivially true. His problem is that once he has got people to grasp that he does believe that things do not exist unless they are perceived, they find wheeling in God to save himself from absurdity to be too little, too late.
BTW I read somewhere - so it may not be true - that the second limerick was written by Berkeley himself. It was certainly published anonymously.

Indeed, I did also mention that, to dispel the idea that Berkeley dismissed sensible objects as mere phantasms. — Wayfarer

You were quite right to do so. I'm not sure what you are referring to. I wanted to stay near the heart of the matter, so had to be very selective, so it is not impossible that I failed to acknowledge what you actually said properly.

A good account. Thanks.

I hope this is of some interest.

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’. — Berkeley - Treatise 35

Berkeley has the problem that afflicts many philosophers who want to deny the existence of something. The kinds of thing that philosophers are interested in are such that to deny their existence seems to be to deny the existence of things whose existence is blindingly obvious. Wittgenstein’s private language argument is a case in point, and recent philosophy has been much concerned about Dennett and others who seem to claim that our perceptions are all illusions.

Berkeley here is claiming that this is an entirely technical debate and has no effect on common sense. No wonder his theory got tagged as “immaterialism”, which also means something that doesn’t matter. But he doesn’t mean that it does not affect anything of real importance. He thinks that to eliminate the concept of matter is to remove an important cause of atheism, scepticism and even socianism – and who could not think that those are important issues?

One of the reasons that it is so hard to discern what Berkeley is claiming is that he goes back on things that he has said. For example, he proposes that to exist is to be perceived (I don’t know what arguments he has to back up that claim, but let that pass). But he realizes later that in every one of his perceptions, there is an element that is not perceived – himself. He allows, therefore, that I am in fact able to infer my own existence from my perceptions. He denies that I can have an idea of my own, or any other, mind. I know them, he says, by their effects – not by an idea of them, but a “notion” of them.

(I think he means by “notion” something that we know, not directly by perception, but indirectly, by reflection and inference. I’m not clear how this related to “esse est percipi”.)

He indignantly rejects the inference that matter exists, on the ground that it is an unknowable substance underlying and causing our experience. Actually, the deeper reason is that he thinks that matter is inert and that inert things are incapable of causing anything. It’s a neat twist, I have to admit, but it is also a re-thinking and redefining of the concept of matter. He is in fact talking past all his opponents.

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’. — Berkeley Treatise 26

This is is final move. So what it all comes to is that incorporeal active substance or spirit replaces the inert substance matter.

However, by the early 20th century, philosophical idealism fell out of favor — particularly in the English-speaking world

It is true that the idealism of Bradley, Green and Bosanquet fell out of favour. That was in the Hegelian tradition. But the sense-data theory of Ayer and the phenomenalism of Carnap was very much in the tradition of Berkeley.

Historically, nominalism shifted the sense of what is real from universals to particulars, from ideas to objects, and thence the presumption that the sensible world is real independently of the mind. — Wayfarer

I'm very sceptical about that. But I don't know enough to argue the point properly. Nominalism was clearly part of what was going on, but something as complex as the Renaissance/Reformation must have involved many interacting factors. The idea that a single part of the movement caused everything seems highly implausible to me. I also suspect that our problem was not really a problem for pre-Enlightenment philosophy. The explanation I'm looking for is how the problem originated. I don't recall Aristotle worrying about our problem. Plato's philosophy is more complex, but still doesn't align with our debates, IMO. Yet, there were important ideas in the older philosophy. It should not be dismissed wholesale.

'Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descartes and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which, according to Gillespie, dismantled the rational God / universe of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, out of a concern that anything less than that would undermine divine omnipotence'. — Wayfarer

It sounds like a very good read and might fill in some of the many blanks in my historical understanding. Yet - No spark setting off an explosion. Many factors combining in a storm.
I'm really interested in the information that there was a real (!) theological concern behind to the development of fideism. I had the impression that it was simply a resort of the faithful under the assault from the Enlightenment. Thanks for that.

The problem for you is that you think there is a "slam dunk" way of debunking physicalism. There is no slam dunk way of debunking physicalism or any other metaphysical view because everything depends on what assumptions you begin with. — Janus

I would go further and suggest that there are no "slam-dunk" arguments anywhere in philosophy. If there were, they would demolish ideas without understand them properly, and in metaphysics all ideas deserve a proper understanding .There is something in all of them that deserves our respect and attention.
However, your argument proves too much. It is always the case that conclusions depend on what assumptions are made at the start. But that applies to good arguments as much as to bad ones.
I do agree that there is no fact of the matter that will determine the truth or falsity of any metaphysical view. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all views are equal. I think of them as alternative ways of looking at, thinking about the world and our lives in it. What I don't yet know is how to evaluate them. Yet, I can't help having views about some of them.

I thought it might be something like that. "the reality of universals" is the litmus test for platonism.

Caution needed here, though. Again there's a sense in the back of that of the 'there anyway' reality, which will supposedly carry on regardless. But that too is a mental construct, vorstellung, in Schopenhauer's terms. — Wayfarer

Yes, yes, our concept of reality is our concept - who else's would it be? In the same way, our concepts of a unicorn or a swan are our concepts. Whether such creatures exist is another matter. More accurately, our concepts are not arbitrary, but the result of a negotiation with Reality, with how the world is. Actually, it's not really a negotiation because the world doesn't do give-and-take. It's more a question of trying a suite of concepts on to see if they fit with what we want.

As Kant put it, “time is the form of our intuition” — we cannot picture a pre-human past except as a temporal sequence ordered in the way our minds structure it. The scientific account is entirely valid within that framework, but it doesn’t erase the fact that the framework itself is ours. — Wayfarer

This is one of the moments that I think we may agree about at least some of this. The catch comes in when I want to say that framework is what reveals the world to us. You seem to have difficulty with that.

Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honour, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. … — Meister Eckhart, On Detachment

We talked about this. I do think that the door/hinge analogy is more helpful.

The scientific realist and the scholastic realist disagree -- but about what, exactly? Is there a way to frame their disagreement without each insisting on one view about how to use the word "real"? — J

I'm not at all clear what you mean by scholastic realism. Can you explain, please?
I'm more familiar with idealism vs realism, but I'm pushing at the same door. At the very least, even if actual agreement can't be reached, mutual understanding would be deepened.

"categories of being" or "modes of existence" or as "categories of objects" or categories of language. — Ludwig V

I can live more easily with any of these than with Being or Existence or Objects or Language.

What we want to be talking about is misleading and true appearances, not "reality." — J

Absolutely.

Notice in the paragraphs above, the experiment is directed by the hypothesis, and the hypothesis is directed by the underlying assumptions or attitude. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's perfectly true. But what makes the system work is that the experimental results are not directed by the hypothesis - it wouldn't be an experiment if they were. So what are they directed by? Reality or Nature or the World - take your pick. That's what I was trying to say. I'm sorry if I was not clear.

.... We examine "conceptual space" and discover that, let's say, "Universals, numbers, and the like, are . . . relationships that can only be grasped by the rational mind." (Notice that for the time being I omitted your word "real".) If this is true, then we've learned something important about a category of being which we encounter. — J

Actually, there's a surprising amount of consensus about the "categories" of being, amongst those philosophers who have ventured into this territory. Meinong, Peirce, Popper all come up with three categories - the physical, the abstract, the mental. There are variations, but there's a lot of overlap and the surrounding framework differs. But the overlap is significant.
One reservation I have is that this arrangement can be characterized in different ways. It can be characterized as "categories of being" or "modes of existence" or as "categories of objects" or categories of language. It may be that this is less important than the approach.

My challenge is, What is added to our knowledge by describing this category as "real"? Is there any non-circular, non-question-begging way of teasing out more information from "real"? … And we can go on to give names to other elements of ontology -- perhaps including names for ways of existing. (Quantification!) We'd end up, ideally, with a clear and organized metaphysic that can still speak about grounding, structure, and epistemology, thus covering what most of us want from terms like "real" and "exist," but without the contentious, ambiguous baggage. — J

I've been thinking about this a lot. The same word is used, so there is a great temptation to give a general characterization of all the uses. There may not be one, in which case we simply designate the word as ambiguous. "Bank" as in river and "bank" as in financial institution and "bank" as in "you can bank on that" is a stock example. However, in the case of real, I wondered whether we could say that "real" is the concept that enables us to distinguish between misleading and true appearances.

I have busy days (again) tomorrow and Tuesday. So I doubt if I will reappear here before Wednesday.

But can’t you see that this seemingly straightforward statement already assumes the very point in dispute? — Wayfarer

OK.
This is an important moment - when the arguments run out or when there is no fact of the matter that will settle the dispute. Let's suppose that we have here two different ways of thinking about - interpretations of - the world, which are self-consistent and incompatible. Yet we seem able to communicate, so there must be some common ground. This is why Wittgenstein writes in that maddeningly elusive way. I'm not Wittgenstein and it would be absurd to try to imitate him. All I can do is try to present an account of my ideas that you can recognize as, in some sense, possible. The same applies to you. Mutual understanding would be success, I think. Agreement would be a pleasant surprise.

You’re picturing “reality” as something fully formed, existing apart from and unaffected by any observer, and then treating our perceptions as merely imperfect copies of it. That is precisely the realist model under debate. — Wayfarer

Isn't “reality” something that is what it is, ... existing apart from and unaffected by any observer" an important, if not fundamental assumption of science? How is science possible without observation and experiment that do not affect the data?
Your picture of my picture is not quite accurate. Some, but not all, of "reality" exists apart from and unaffected by any observer. (I shall go on to talk of reality without qualification. It simplifies some explanations) It's not necessarily fully formed, whatever that means. Our perceptions are not copies of it. There's a great risk of reification here. Perceiving is an activity, not an entity. Thermostats are a contol system. They respond to events and control machinery. There is no need for any images. (What would an image of temperature or pressure be like?) Our senses are part of a complex system and provide information to enable us to function. Images would just get in the way.

The whole issue is whether such a reality—one entirely independent of observation—is anything more than a theoretical construct. — Wayfarer

Well, there is the awkward fact that reality was there long before we were. I've accepted (perhaps not very clearly) that reality is, let us say, observation-apt and was observation-apt before there were any observers. On the other hand, some would insist that the only reason that reality is observation-apt is that our senses have evolved to take advantage of certain facts about reality in order to provide us with information about it; that idea is the result of our observations and theoretical constructs. I don't think you really reject them.
Theoretical constructs can be true, can't they? I'm not sure you really accept that. I get very puzzled whether you are saying that we don't know (epistemology) whether the earth goes round the sun or vice versa or not. There is the additional interesting question whether you accept that the earth goes round the sun or not. But perhaps that would be ontology.

We have no direct access to it, only to direct knowledge of it, only to the appearances mediated through our perceptual and cognitive faculties. To claim that reality “is there anyway” is to slip in, unnoticed, the conclusion you are trying to prove. — Wayfarer

I think there's a slip somewhere there. I had the impression that you did not think that "direct knowledge" was any more possible than "direct access". Indeed, I rather think that they stand or fall together. I thought we had agreed on this. I also thought that your distinction between epistemology and ontology meant that you accepted that reality existed - the problem is about our knowledge of it.

:roll: The entire point of the Critique of Pure Reason is about the processes that generate knowledge. — Wayfarer

I'm sorry. My remark was badly written. I knew it at the time, but couldn't think of a clearer way to explain. If I think of a better way to explain it, I'll come back to it. But it may be just a muddle.

Damn it. I meant to write ‘ there is NO pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception’. — Joshs

That's good news. I've done similar things myself. :smile:

The minute you place logic at the forefront of philosophical inquiry, you're going to get what amounts to technical, non-English terminology for a homely concept like "existence." — J

Too true. But, perhaps, for our purposes, we could use the natural language translation.

I frankly don't think my proposal to abandon terms like "existence" or "reality" will work, because thus far we don't have a ship to jump to. Unless you're in the Heideggerean tradition and are willing to adopt that very difficult vocabulary, or you want to do more with the Anglophone logical apparatus. (I've often said that Theodore Sider is really good on this.) For our purposes on TPF, I'd just like to see less contention about "the right definition" for a Large philosophical term, and more attention to the conceptual structure the term is meant to describe or fit into. — J

It's not a realistic project, I agree. But it gives me something to hold on to when the water gets choppy and I fear drowning in all the different views.

The thrust of the essay isn't that there's not an objective reality, but that reality is not only objective, it has an ineliminable subjective aspect. — Wayfarer

If you just mean that we can know what things are like, I can see the point. I can even accept that there are distortions in the way that we discover and think about reality. But the question is whether those distortions affect reality. I think that they do not - saving exceptional cases.

Agree. To think of the appearance and the in itself as a set of two non-equal things is a mistake. I take the gist of Kant's argument is that we don't see what things really are, what they are in their inmost nature, but as they appear to us. — Wayfarer

OK. I'm not unsympathetic, but I think that Kant misrepresents knowledge, because he doesn't recognize the process that generates it. My version would emphasize the dynamism of our knowledge. Our knowledge is always partial, always finding new questions. But we work on those questions and work out answers, which generate more questions. Complete and final knowledge seems like the terminus of that process, but it will never be actually reached. I would suggest that it is a "regulative ideal", but I really am not sure what complete final knowledge would be.

'Epistemological' is the nature of knowing, 'ontological' is on the nature of what exists. I make it clear at the top of the OP that the primary concern is epistemological. — Wayfarer

I take the point. It may be my problem, rather than yours. But there is a catch. If knowledge is true, then surely, there is a connection with ontology, isn't there?

Regards Berkeley, I have an essay on him which I might publish here at some point. — Wayfarer

I find him fascinating. It's a beautifully constructed argument, with all the right definitions in place. But he keeps taking back what he seems to have said - in the most elegant way and without ever admitting it. His patronizing remark that it is fine for people to go on thinking and speaking in the old way, but he prefers to think and speak with the learned. But the learned, in his day, were mostly the schoolmen, whose ideas he has been consistently rubbishing for page after page. And so on.

... Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. — Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics

This is odd way of putting the problem. There's no doubt that we are capable of rational thought, at least some of the time. So it can't be incompatible with "an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies." I think that this dilemma is at least partly resolved by the fact that we now have reasoning machines.

We understand ‘same picture’ by seeing it as ‘same picture’. Or as you put it, by seeing something as ‘marks on paper’. The notion of marks on paper is no less in need of interpretation than seeing something as a duck or a rabbit. There is pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception. — Joshs

I agree entirely, apart from the last sentence. We agree that perception is not a passive process but involves activity (whether conscious or unconscious). Then we say that there is a perception before, without, independently of, all those processes. I don't think that fits together.
It is true that sometimes we are surprised by a loud noise or an unexpected flash or touch. We are startled, we jump, as they say. But that is not a perception - it's a reaction. In fact, we usually do manage to explain "I heard a loud noise" or whatever. One might, reluctantly, call that a perception; the difficulty is that a perception is always a perception of something. So it would be better just to say, "I heard a loud noise, which startled me." But that's a retrospective account and doesn't necessarily reflect my experience.

The reason I mention this is that in mysticism there is the idea that there are experiences in which the mind, or normal mental processing involved in the experience, is superseded by the body, or something approximating the soul. Indeed there are whole areas of practice seeking to do this. — Punshhh

There certainly are. What's more there are many reports of such events taking place. But are they veridical? By which I mean, not merely are they in fact accurate reports? Are they, perhaps retrospective, even filtered through the expectations of those practicing the practice? Many times, even if you take the reports at face value, they don't look as if they are necessarily veridical, but have quite different aims.

I’m not sure we would say that seeing the picture as marks on a page is an aspect of it (as it is so generally an aspect of any drawing), or maybe it is, as our becoming aware of the truth of it, the trick of it, both together as you say. Also, I would think that sometimes a rose is just a rose. In other words, I’m not sure seeing a chair, even recognizing or identifying a chair, would count as perceiving an aspect of it; as if each time we regard it as a chair. — Antony Nickles

I can understand that. On the other hand, I can't argue with @Joshs that it seems to have exactly the same conceptual structure as the duck and the rabbit. It may well be that it in fact has a different status, as a description that mediates between two incompatible interpretations. It may even count as a more objective description than either of the interpretations. In fact it may even be the appropriate answer to the question what the duck-rabbit picture is - what "it" is. Your chair, of course, is not a picture. One might point out that it is difficult to interpret it as anything else, so that case is different. As against that, who knows what puzzle pictures of a chair might be created? There is a not dissimilar issue, however, and that is the description under which we recognize it. It is a chair, but it is also furniture, carpentry, wood, a luxury and so forth.

I’m not sure whether Astorre’s pointing out that some countries are just recognizing a thing’s presence is just as mundane as this, but, in contrast to equating a thing with something specific (with “is”), the difference in perspective at least highlights the occurrence of something surprising us (perhaps our letting a thing surprise us). — Antony Nickles

I agree that @Astorre's paper gave me a new perspective on "exists". I'm not sure that, in the end, the grammar is determinative - natural language is too flexible - some would say sloppy - for us to take it that seriously. But it is certainly suggestive.

Going one stage further, the person viewing the picture is also a standing wave, so something in the movement of the observer and the movement of what they are seeing provides enough stability, is still enough for the experience to seem to be substantial and static in some ways. — Punshhh

I really like your examples. I shall add them to my collection of stereotype or generalization busters. But extending that model to people, IMO, doesn't help much. I can take on board that people are not just fixed objects, like rocks, but are also a collection of processes, in constant change. So are many of the things that we see. But the phenomenon of a standing wave is very different from the brain waves that you may be thinking of. For one thing, they don't create the same kind of illusions.

Yeah, I think it's one of the most useful frameworks available. As long as we promise not to claim it's the right way to define "existence"! What quantification gives us is an ordinary, unglamorous way to capture a great deal of the structure of thought. This effort, I believe, is roughly the same project as trying to understand what exists. — J

OK. This deserves to be taken seriously.

It occurred to me, while I was thinking about all this, that we have under our hands an example of an attempt to coin technical terms for the purposes of philosophy. Heidegger, Dasein present-to-hand, ready-to-hand &c. Sartre has similar concepts, but was channeling Heidegger; the differences may be important. Both have a certain currency amongst philosophers, but I don't think they have penetrated ordinary language (yet). I don't find them particularly exciting, though.

I'll need to think about this overnight.

"The meaning of both "real" and "exists" depends on the context - on what is being said to be real or exist," as you say. So they are notoriously difficult to use precisely and consistently. — J

Well, I'm not opposed in principle to specialized or technical terms. I guess that since you think that there is a distinction out there, in reality, so to speak, you would want the new terms to capture it. But we would need to describe it accurately to do that.
I think it is only difficult for philosophers because they don't seem able to accept that the meaning of the terms depends on their context of use. They expect them to have a univocal meaning. ("Good" is another example, by the way.) If they could accept that, the problems would be, I think, much easier.
However, there is something fundamental about the idea of a concept being instantiated or a reference succeeding. Perhaps that's what we should look at.

Would you agree that there is an important ontological difference of some sort between a number and a rock (or the class "rock" too, perhaps, but let's not overcomplicate it)? — J

Actually, I oscillate between thinking that they have different modes of existence and thinking that they are different kinds (categories) of object. Either way would do, I think.

In his own somewhat unsatisfactory way, I think this is what Quine was trying for by equating existence with what can be quantified over. — J

Well, I thought that idea, together with the idea of domains of discourse, that would define what a formula quantified over, (numbers, rocks, sensations &c.), would work pretty well. I know that some people have gone off it now, but I'm not clear why.

I agree that, for instance, there are good reasons for sometimes distinguishing "exist" and "real," such the numbers example. But I'm sure you wouldn't maintain that it is true that numbers are real but not existent. We can go so far as to say that drawing such a distinction illuminates something interesting and important about numbers. But that something -- the distinction itself -- does not depend on our use of "real" and "existent" to describe it. Arguably, two invented technical terms would do even better. — J

For what its worth, the dictionaries seem to cite that "real" as a definition of "existent". But it seems pretty clear that "real" in most of its uses does not mean exists and "non-existent" is not an antonym for "unreal", not is "unreal" a synonym for existent. What the dictionaries seem to miss is that the meaning of both "real" and "exists" depends on the context - on what is being said to be real or exist.

Nevertheless, it is hard to believe there are many cases in which one would want to say that something real didn't exist, even though it is quite normal to accept that something unreal does exist - under a different description. A toy car is not a real car, but it is a real toy. A painting may not be a real Titian, but it is a real forgery. &c. One needs to bear in mind several close relations like actual, authentic, genuine, and so on.

It is pretty clear that are used in different ways in many contexts. So I'm afraid that I don't understand what you mean by "But that something -- the distinction itself -- does not depend on our use of "real" and "existent" to describe it."

I’m very careful about the wording: — Wayfarer

I thought so. Now I'm very worried. We'll see.

Epistemological, not ontological. — Wayfarer

OK. I'm not sure what difference it makes, but maybe...

The idea is that a photograph presents the appearance of an object as mediated by the camera’s optical and technical structure. It’s not the object itself, but an image of the object—structured by the mechanics and limitations of the device. In this conversation, the photograph was being used as a metaphor for perception itself. Just as a photograph is a camera-dependent image, so our perception of the world is mind-dependent, shaped by the structure of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. — Wayfarer

I have no complaint about all this. But you have a worrying tendency to slip from "our perception of the world is mind-dependent" to "the world is mind-dependent".
I take the point about the metaphor. In fact, I think that the the fact that we have technologies of representing the world as we see it is a huge influence on how we think about it. But not necessarily a helpful influence...
If it is a metaphor, it follows that the photograph is not the same as our perception of the world. So we should chart the differences, so that we do not get misled by it.
The most important difference, I think, is that the camera does not perceive what it photographs. You might well say that it records the appearance of what it photographs, but that depends on how we interpret the picture. That's something the camera cannot do. The bone of contention escapes the metaphor.
But it does seem to me that the metaphor gives us grounds for saying that appearances are an objective reality. If they were not, the camera could not record them.

Kant ... distinguishes between the appearance of things—how they present themselves to us—and the thing in itself (das Ding an sich), which is how things are independently of how they appear. — Wayfarer

OK. Let's think about this.
The sun rises in the morning, moves across the sky through the day, and then sinks below the horizon. The sun appears in the morning and disappears in the evening. What happens between the evening and the following morning is hidden from us. This is appearance as disclosure or revelation - as presence (or absence). But this is different, because it is the same object that appears and disappears. (You know how we know that!)
We might complain that the sun, despite appearances, doesn't move. The illusion that it moves is created by the movement (spinning) of the earth. Now we have the distinction between appearance and reality, and it is created by our misinterpretation of what we see. But there is nothing hidden here.
When we collect mushrooms, we have to be very careful. A mushroom can appear to be tasty and nutritious, but be exactly the opposite. A quicksand can appear to be solid ground, but give way as soon as we step on it. People pretend to be (and appear to be) what they are not. These are the appearances the best fit Kant's model. Here, appearance (and not misinterpretation) does hide reality.
Yet perhaps Kant is justified in developing a philosophical, technical, use of "appearance" and classify all appearances together and all realities together. I think not, because appearance and reality are intertwined. There is no binary opposition here. "Appearances" and "realities" are not two different (groups of) objects.

But one sympathetic reading is to see the “thing in itself” as a philosophical placeholder: it marks the limit of our possible knowledge. It also preserves a sense of mystery that no amount of empirical or conceptual inquiry can dissolve—the mystery of what reality is in itself, outside of its appearance to us. In this way, Kant's philosophy continues the classical distinction between appearance (what seems) and reality (what is). — Wayfarer

Marking the limit of our knowledge would be something I could understand. There are indeed unknown unknowns - and, notice, they are presumably what they are independently of anything that we say or do. But I resist the idea that the boundary is fixed. We find that calculating what happens at a molecular level in the macro world is too complex to be a realistic project. So we resort to statistical or probabilistic laws. They work pretty well for us. When we encounter the astonishing phenomena at sub-atomic level, we do not walk away - we wring from the phenomena what conclusions we can.

You rightly emphasize perspective, point of view, as inescapable in all that we know, and, if I've understood you, say that a view of things without any perspective is impossible. I agree. We can characterize a view from a perspective as an appearance, so this becomes an interpretation of what Kant is doing.
So here's Kant trying to make sense of the idea of a view of things outside any perspective. So now I ask, is a view without perspective possible, or not?

If it is possible to say anything that was true of all possible perspectives, that might do as saying something about how things are in themselves, I suppose. (I gather that is one of the strategies that Einstein adopts in the theory of relativity.)

As for the sense of mystery, that could well be one of the motivations. Idealism as denial of the reality of the common sense world, has a very long history, going all the way back to Plato. I am sure that there is something going on here that ordinary philosophical discussion does not touch.

Whatever you imagine is still ordered by a perspective. What you’re visualizing is a Universe as if there were no observers—but the very act of visualizing already imposes a kind of structure, a standpoint. That unknowable, perspective-less universe is what I refer to as the “in itself.” — Wayfarer

This is a version of Berkeley's argument, which he is very enthusiastic about. It is a good one. But if you rule out the possibility of an unknowable, perspective-less universe, what does it mean to refer to it? Is saying of something that it is unknowable true independently of all perspective? I think not. What was unknown can become known - perhaps is already known as soon as we say it is not known.

Reality is broader: it is “the mode of being of that which is as it is, independent of what any actual person or persons may think it to be” (Logic of Mathematics). This includes mathematical truths, laws of nature, and possibilities — things that are real but not existent in the same way as physical objects (hence the distinction!) — Wayfarer

Perhaps I should be taking Peirce (and Meinong) more seriously. "Modes of being" such as "things that are real but not existent in the same way as physical objects" is right up my street. There's much about this approach that I like very much.