Meaning, you can't have any idea of it. :wink:

What sort of thing is the world as it is? — Banno

I've often said before that there is a convergence between cognitive science and idealism (or constructivism) insofar as the former recognises the centrality of the mind in the construction of understanding. So it differs from empiricism in recognising that the mind is not tabula rasa, and reality not something that exists just so, independently of it. But ultimately, the question you're asking is a very deep question indeed. Isn't that the subject matter of the Parmenides, and much of the philosophy that followed it? It's easy to make glib statements about it, but it's really not so easy.

Seeing things in the same way and seeing the same things are not the same. We can see the same things in different ways. — Janus

But the point is, physics itself, which one would expect to have the most definitive answer to that in the general sense, cannot arrive at a conclusion as to whether there is any fundamental thing which is the same for all observers.

You defer to science as the arbiter of reality, saying that anything that can't be known by science is a matter for faith. Yet the observer problem or measurement problem has long since undermined the ideal of absolute objectivity. This has been known for a century, since the famous Fifth Solvay Conference. It is the nub of the debate between the realist Einstein, who upheld just the kind of realism you're appealing to, and the discoverers of quantum mechanics, Bohr, Heisenberg and others. Their view was considerably more nuanced. 'Physics does not show us nature as it is in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning'.

The most plausible explanation I can think of is that there is something there independent of the human that we are all seeing — Janus

A number of others have already addressed that - we're equipped with the same senses and inhabit a world of shared definitions, so we tend to see things the same way. But not always. People can reach radically different conclusions when presented with the same evidence.

I tried to explain before the distinction between empirical and metaphysical realism, which you dismissed as 'wordplay'. It really isn't.

It appears she (Nancy Cartwright) suggests there may be a greater disconnect between laws of physics and true laws of nature, than is commonly believed. Is that correct? — Relativist

She questions the very idea of there being natural laws in the sense of universally proscriptive or determinative principles. Why? Because what we call "laws" in physics are more like descriptions of observed regularities rather than prescriptions for what must happen. These laws are derived from idealized, abstracted, and isolated conditions—they describe how ideal objects behave in ideal circumstances. However, in the real world, there are countless extraneous factors and complexities that interfere with and influence outcomes, making reality far less tractable than the clean, quantitative descriptions provided by physics. Which is not to say that they don't work, but to question their universal status, as their universality is very specific in scope.

For that matter, I still stay that much of modern materialism can be seen as a descendant of the tendency in early modern science to reify natural laws as intrinsic features of the physical world. As Karen Armstrong notes in The Case for God, early modern thinkers took Newton's laws and similar discoveries as literal evidence of divine handiwork, turning what began as metaphysics into mechanistic descriptions in a clockwork universe. Much modern naturalism carries forward this approach, treating laws as real entities immanent in nature and universal regularities as the bedrock of reality, sans the God who purportedly put them there, who has become a ghost in his own machine.

However, this perspective inherits the same pitfalls that Nancy Cartwright critiques: it assumes that the abstractions of physics—idealized and purified of real-world complexity—correspond directly to the way the world is, rather than the way specific aspects of it are modeled under controlled conditions. The result is a metaphysical framework that continues to conflate the descriptive utility of scientific laws with their ontological status as supposedly fundamental truths about reality - however, with the distinct disadvantage of providing no conceptual space for the mind at all, save by way of some kind of ad-hoc epiphenomenon.

Take two people and ask them to point to tiny marks or blemishes on the surface of a table, for example, and they will point to the same things. — Janus

But put them in a physics lab.....

(Referring to video 'Is Reality Real) Are they saying that it is not the case that "reality is real"? — Banno

I took the time to generate a transcript (with some comments).

Beau Lotto (what an excellent name by the way): Is there an external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is. And the reason is because we have no direct access to that physical world other than through our senses. And because our senses conflate multiple aspects of that world, we can never know whether our perceptions are in any way accurate (an exaggeration in my view). It's not so much do we see the world in the way that it really is, but do we actually even see it accurately? (I think there are obviously degrees of accuracy but it's a rhetorical point.)

Alva Noë on how our reality projects into our nervous system. However paradoxical it sounds, if we think of ‘what is visible’ as just what projects to the eyes, we see much more than is visible. Let me give you an example. I walk into a room and there's graffiti on the wall - and imagine it's graffiti that I find really offensive. I look at it, I flush, my heart starts to race, I'm outraged, I'm taken aback. Of course, if I didn't know the language in which it was written, I could have had exactly the same retinal events and the same events in my early visual system, without any corresponding reaction. Much more shows up for us than just what projects into our nervous system.

Donald Hoffman on if our senses are telling us the truth. Our senses are making up the tastes, odors and colors that we experience. They're not properties of an objective reality. They're actually properties of our senses, that they are fabricating. By ‘objective reality’ I mean what most physicists would mean, and that is that something is objectively real if it would continue to exist, even if there were no creatures to perceive it. Colors, odors, tastes and so on are not real in that sense of objective reality. They are real in a different sense. They're real experiences. Your headache is a real experience, even though it could not exist without you perceiving it. So it exists in a different way than the objective reality that physicists talk about. So it was quite a stunning shock to me when I realized that it's not just tastes, odors and colors, that are the fabrications of our senses and are not objectively real. Space-time itself, and everything within space-time. Objects, electrons, quarks, the sun, the moon, their shapes, their masses, their velocities, all of these physical properties are also constructions (compare Schopenhauer's 'vorstellung', representations.)

Frank Wilczek on how we perceive color and sound Scientific knowledge of what light is shows us that our natural perception leaves a lot on the table. The human perception of color is limited by the principles of quantum mechanics. It's interesting to compare the human perception of color, to the perception of sound. When you have two pure tones together, like a C and a G a simple chord, that's a fifth. If you hear that, you can hear the separate tones, even though they're played together and you hear a chord, you can also sense the separate tones.

Whereas with colors, you have two different colors, say spectral green and spectral red and mix them. What you see is not a chord where you can see the distinct identities preserved, but rather an intermediate color. In fact, you'll see something that looks like yellow. It's as if in music, when you play to the C and a G together, instead of hearing a chord, you just heard the note E the intermediate note.

So at this most basic level, we don't represent even the information we're getting in any accurate way. And the reason is because it was useful to see it this way. So what are you are seeing is the utility of the data not the data. Evolution by natural selection has shaped us with perceptions that are designed to keep us alive. So if I see a snake, don't pick it up. If I see a cliff, don't jump off. If I see a train don't step in front of it. We have to take our perceptions seriously, but that does not entitle us to take them literally.

Daniel Schmachtenberger on perception, choice making, and navigating reality. A perspective on something defined by perception is inherently a reduction of the information of the thing. My perspective of it is going be a lot less total information than the actual thing is. I can look at the object from the east side or the west side or the top or the north side or the inside, microscopically, telescopically, they'll all give me different information. None will give me the entirety of the information about the situation. So there is no all-encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about almost any situation.

What this means is that reality itself is trans-perspectival. It can't be captured in any single perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken. All of which will have some part of the reality, some signal. There may also be distortion. I may be looking at the thing through a fish eye lens or through a colored lens that creates some distortion. Why does this matter? The ability to take multiple perspectives, to see the partial truth in them, and then to be able to seam them together into something that isn't a perspective it's a trans-perspective capacity to hold the relationships between many perspectives in a way that can inform our choice-making is fundamental to navigating reality well.

Greetings, and welcome. You've chosen a difficult and perennial topic to start with, philosophy of mind and/or nature of consciousness.

Presumably you're familiar with the well-known expression in Descartes' Meditations, cogito ergo sum, translated as 'I think, therefore I am.' The thrust of Descartes' argument was that, even if I were to be deceived by an evil demon into a completely illusory picture of reality, I cannot doubt that I exist, as I must exist in order to be deceived.

Descartes uses this as a foundation for what he describes as 'clear and distinct ideas'. This puts Descartes in the tradition of rationalism, which can be traced back to Plato, in which the mind's ability to know rational truths directly, without the mediation of sense, is taken as guarantee of their veracity.

Descartes influence, not only through his philosophical writings, but also through his dualist model of mind and matter, and his invention of Cartesian co-ordinates which revolutionized mathematics by allowing the expression of problems of geometry in terms of algebra and calculus, makes him hugely influential in modern culture (more so than many people realise, in fact.)

Now to solipsism. Solipsism is the idea that only one's own consciousness can be known with certainty. I think that this is implied by the cogito, as the expression is written in the first person (*I* think therefore *I* am.) But I don't believe Descartes himself considered solipsism a possibility. He believed that God would not deceive him about the reality of the world. As he believed that humans comprised body and mind (or soul), presumably he saw no reason to doubt the existence of minds other than his own. Nevertheless Descartes' philosophy was later criticized for the suggestion that the knowledge of other minds can only be inferential, which can indeed give rise to solipsism.

The belief that others have consciousness, as we lack the evidence, is pure faith. — Reilyn

Accordingly, I think this sets too high a bar for what constitutes knowledge. A world in which oneself is the only conscious being strikes me as being dangerously close to psychopathology. There is abundant evidence, overwhelming evidence, that other beings feel as we do, suffer as we do, behave for similar motivations as we do. Awareness of that fact is the basis of empathy, which is a sure-fire antidote to solipsism. The role of empathy and inter-subjective understanding has been explored in many schools of modern philosophy specifically existentialism and phenomonology.

Another point is that idea that consciousness is one's own unique possession, is itself a kind of mental construction. It relies on there being a sense of 'I' and 'mine' which is something that is acquired in infancy and forms the basis of ego. There's nothing the matter with that, it is an essential component of normal psychological functioning. But I think the solipsistic view, again, distorts this functionality by projecting it as the only real knowable. If you ever study Buddhist philosophy, you will discover that this projective functionality of the psyche is described as 'I-making' and 'mine-making', and is one of the roots of all human suffering according to Buddhism.

So I hope that provides food for thought, and again, welcome.

Nothing further to add at this point.

Are you familiar with the arguments in How the Laws of Physics Lie?, Nancy Cartwright?

What is it that you think this video shows? — Banno

Hint: has to do with the original post.

I think the evidence indicates that atoms, protons and so on existed prior to us. — Manuel

I'm not denying it, if you read carefully. I hadn't heard of Collier, but perusing the Wiki entry, he seems a kindred spirit!

Neuroscientists that deny the reality of neurones? — Banno

Cognitive scientists who understand the fundamental role of an observing mind. Notice the cameo by Richard Dawkins muttering incredulously about 'a conspiracy to deny objective reality.'

If we never arose, there would still be something there. It must be assumed otherwise how could we exist at all? Something had to happen that led to us, which did not depend on us. — Manuel

I really do understand the perplexity here. The issue is, as soon as you say 'something', then you're bringing your mind to bear on the question. In the OP, I'm careful to say that I'm not claiming that, in the absence of an observer, things literally become nothing. It's rather that the mind provides the framework within which the whole concept of 'existence' is meaningful - including the units of time by which it is measured (13.7 billion years).

It is in this context where I reference a quotation from the Buddhist texts (not in support of a religious argument!):

By and large, Kaccāyana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. — Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

But the Buddha is not referring to the geological origin of the world. It's a reference to the 'world-making process' which the mind is involuntarily engaged in at each successive moment. The 'origin of the world', in Buddhist terms, is the process which gives rise to that world-making process ('the chain of dependent origination'.) The 'cessation of the world' is the ending of that process, namely, nibbana (in the Pali texts.)

What I'm relating that to, is the insights of cognitive science (ultimately traceable back to Kant) about how 'mind creates world'. It does not create the objective world, but then, what is 'objective' without there being the subject or observer for whom it is an object? It's interesting that in many of the early Buddhist texts, you will encounter the expression 'self and world', as in, 'the self and world arises' or 'the self and world exists'. That is why Buddhism has been phenomenological from the outset. That is also why there is a convergence between Buddhist philosophy, phenomenology, and cognitive science, which we see in books such as The Embodied Mind.

This is why I say at the outset that grasping this point requires a perspectival shift, a gestalt shift.

Sure. I still maintain, time and space rely on an element of perspective, and that the perspective is provided by the observer.

Henri Bergson insisted that duration proper cannot be measured. To measure something – such as volume, length, pressure, weight, speed or temperature – we need to stipulate the unit of measurement in terms of a standard. For example, the standard metre was once stipulated to be the length of a particular 100-centimetre-long platinum bar kept in Paris. It is now defined by an atomic clock measuring the length of a path of light travelling in a vacuum over an extremely short time interval. In both cases, the standard metre is a measurement of length that itself has a length. The standard unit exemplifies the property it measures.

In Time and Free Will, Bergson argued that this procedure would not work for duration. For duration to be measured by a clock, the clock itself must have duration. It must exemplify the property it is supposed to measure. To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time. — Who Really Won the Bergson-Einstein Debate

The following makes the same point:

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. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

Moved below

Now we know that there is such a thing as time and space absent us, which are quite different from our intuitive understanding of them. — Manuel

How do we know that, by the way?

Wayfarer won't agree with you about the human-independent existence of space and time by the way. — Janus

I keep emphasizing that there are two distinct meanings of 'mind-independent': a practical meaning and a metaphysical meaning, the latter corresponding to metaphysical realism.

The practical meaning refers to the fact that many things—trees, mountains, other people—exist independently of your mind or mine in the sense that they do not rely on our individual perceptions to exist. This is uncontroversial and consistent with everyday experience.

Metaphysical realism, however, illegitimately extends this practical sense to claim that the world-at-large exists entirely independently of all mind, as if it is fundamentally separate from the act of perception or any cognitive structuring. — Wayfarer

:up:

I think the fact that we all see the same things and can agree down to the smallest detail as to what we see and that our observations show us that other animals see the same things we do, suggests very strongly that these things are not just mental constructions. — Janus

Speaking of 'smallest details', there's a long (and not very entertaining) video interview on Essentia Foundation's website at the moment (Essential Foundation being Kastrup's idealist philosophy publishing organisation.) It comprises an interview with three European physicists who have won a prestigious award in physics for experimental demonstrations of the so-called 'Wigner's Friend' argument. The abstract goes:

Prof. Dr. Caslav Brukner, Prof. Dr. Renato Renner and Prof. Dr. Eric Cavalcanti won the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations. Their different no-go theorems make us reconsider the fundamental nature of reality. Bell's theorem in quantum mechanics already confronted us with the fact that locality and 'physical realism,' in the sense that particles have predetermined physical properties prior to measurement, cannot both be true. But in certain variations of the Wigner's Friend thought experiment an additional metaphysical assumption is now also put in question: the absoluteness of facts. In different words: can we safely assume that a measurement outcome for one observer is a measurement for all observers?

This is in line with QBism - that observations in quantum physics have an ineluctably subjective element, so that each observation is indeed unique to a particular observer. Of course it is also true that observations tend to converge within a certain range - it's not as if the observation will yield a frog or a tree, so it's not entirely random. But it's also not entirely objectively determined.

The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains. — Christian Fuchs, founder of QBism

Note the resonance with the Kant quotation.

One has to be willing to face criticism on a public forum, as it's integral to participating. But I don't accept that my responses are at all evasive.

From this it follows that prior to the advent of mind nothing could have existed. Everything known to science seems to contradict this. — Janus

I have addressed this objection many times, both in this thread and elsewhere. Of course it is true that h.sapiens is a recent arrival in evolutionary and geological terms. That is an established fact and not in dispute. But it is also not the point at issue in this argument. The starkest illustration of the point at issue is the exclamation by Immaneul Kant, in the Transcendental Aesthetic, 'If the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish; and as appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.'

So I'm not disputing the empirical facts of science. In the OP, I say

What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.

So appealing to objective fact does not constitute an objection to the OP.

then the idealist will say that lived experience is prior to science, which of course for us it is — Janus

That is a point made from outside experience. It is viewing humans among other phenomena, as paleontology would do, or as anthropology would do.

I don't think the question even really matters for human life, unless you are religious and believe in the possibility of some kind of salvation/ redemption which must involve belief in a life beyond this one in order to make any sense at all. I believe that is often the unacknowledged premise. — Janus

Yet I am accused of arguing tendentiously on the basis of religious motivation, when it seems clear to me that, as you can't understand the argument, and believe that it contradicts common-sense realism, then the author must have religious pre-conceptions. Which speaks to preconceptions of your own.

Knew I'd read that spelling somewhere.

But if mental life is part of reality, and I’m sure you would agree it is, and physics doesn’t explain that, then there is an explanatory gap. But I agree that modern physics is plainly superior to Aristotelian, although it is interesting that Werner Heisenberg himself saw an application for Aristotle’s ‘potentia’ in quantum physics - see https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/quantum-mysteries-dissolve-if-possibilities-are-realities

I grant that it doesn't explain mental life. — Relativist

Oh, so dualism then? Different laws for the mental?

But physics does not 'explain reality' - contrary to Armstrong's physicalism, in which 'the physical' is all that there is. As philosophers of science point out, physics is based on fundamental premisses which methodically exclude fundamental aspects of reality as lived (also known as 'being'.) It depends on idealisation, abstraction and objectification of mathematical models which take only into account the quantifiable characteristics of external bodies. As a model, it obviously provides extraodinary control over those subjects, but as a paradigm, it excludes much of what is basic to philosophy.

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

Anyway, don't want to derail gnomon's thread, but I did want to call that point out.

The nature of reality is better explained by modern physics. — Relativist

'Physics does not show us nature as she is in herself, but only nature exposed to our methods of questioning.'

But it doesn't matter, right? Not important. And I've also spent more time addressing your objections than, I think, anyone else on this forum, over a period of years, including in the post two or three above this one. Could it be that, rather than my not addressing your questions, that you don't understand the responses? For instance, the excerpt posted about Husserl which I think supports all the major points in the OP, but which elicited no response.

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

I also don't think the question is of much importance — Janus

Ironic, considering how much time you've devoted to arguing about it.

Still, at least that has the consequence of making me clarify my argument, which is a plus.

You would have to posit some sort of soul or immaterial mind, I would imagine, to go the route that you are—i.e., reason is not grounded in the brain. For me, the brain is clearly the organ responsible for facilitating reason. — Bob Ross

Bob, I appreciate the clarity of your position, but it seems to presuppose that correlation implies causation or identity. While a functioning brain is undeniably necessary for reasoning, it doesn't follow that reasoning is reducible to or explainable as neurophysiological processes. This assumption overlooks the qualitative distinction between physical states (which are describable in third-person terms) and rational states (which involve first-person intentionality). If we take seriously the goal-directed nature of reason, as aiming at truth, it seems to transcend the purely mechanical processes of the brain, which are indifferent to truth. It is undoubedtly the case that a functioning brain is required for the exercise of reason, but that doesn't mean that reason is grounded in neurophysiological processes (which is the general assumption of materialist philosophy of mind.) The vicious regress is that to establish the identity of any purported neurological processes with the exercise of reason, itself requires the exercise of reason. We can't see reason 'from the outside' as it were, but only from within the process of rational inference itself, 'if this, then that', etc. Reason is goal- directed with respect to arriving at a true outcome, hence an intentional activity.

Edward Feser puts it thus:

Now the puzzle intentionality poses for materialism can be summarized this way: Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.

and Thomas Nagel:

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts [i.e. by describing them in terms of neurological activities], one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions.

The long and short is, though we know that a functioning brain is a necessary condition for reason, this doesn't establish that reason is meaningfully a product of the brain. It might be something that having a good brain enables us to recognise - but we recognise it, because it was already the case. Hence, transcendendental!

@Mww

I feel obliged to say something about the conscilience between being good and being true in pre-modern philosophy. Sound judgement relies on clear vision, the ability to assess what is the case and respond accordingly. And this, across a wide range of situations and scenarios. It isn't a matter of technical know how or specific subject-matter expertise, but - what's that old-fashioned word? - wisdom, a.k.a. sapience (part of our species name, as it happens.) Of course, for us moderns, that is challenging, because the universe is supposed to be indifferent to us, and besides not animated by anything other than physical laws. But I felt it was worth calling out.

Being true is about sentences — Banno

:chin:

I once had a conversation online and this guy said that Nietzsche said the (physical) universe does not contain any ethical principle. But he also argued that the ethical person is 'rationally' defined in modern thinking. — EnPassant

Modern science and culture has division at its basis - division between self and world, mind and matter, I and other. In the sphere of philosophy it was built around the division of the primary qualities of matter - those attributes such as mass, shape, velocity, and so on, which are precisely measurable and predictable, and those such as scent, colour, etc which were said to be 'in the mind' of the observer. At the same time, any kind of teleological thinking was banished from physics - objects behave as they do because of physical laws and antecedent physical conditions. Furthermore science sees no reason not to treat the human subject as objects, as @Relativist says above. So the natural outcome of that is that of course the physical universe is devoid of morality, subjectivity and intentionality, which are increasingly understood as matters of individual conscience and tantamount to mere opinion. Nietszche was highly aware of that, although it was not something of his invention. Arguably, his 'Death of God' was a reflection on it.

I did not mean to comment of "ethical normativity" - whatever that is - but rather to comment on what we have to work with. — Questioner

That's OK, I'm not accusing you of anything! But 'ethical normativity' is precisely the nub of the question posed by the OP - why ought we do good.

My comment and the quote I provided was about the general assumption that evolution provides the basis or ground for judgements about such matters. That is what I'm questioning. I hasten to add I'm not promoting any kind of 'Intelligent Design' agenda. I'm overall pretty familiar with the evolution of h.sapiens, and evolution generally, which I've studied since I was a child (I grew up on the excellent Time-Life series of books.) But I think our culture leans too heavily on evolutionary theory for a sense of identity. It is a biological theory about the origin of species. Due to the historical circumstances of its discovery it has assumed a role for which I don't think it's suitable. See Is Evolution a Secular Religion? Michael Ruse.

Just look at how little the surrender deal to the Taleban sparked outcry. — ssu

Thanks SSU your perspective on geopolitics always seems very sound and well informed to me.

Let’s not forget, however, that while Trump inked the deal with the Taliban that lead to the US withdrawal, it was Biden who had to execute it, which lead to those disastrous scenes and deaths at Kabul Airport and the debacle of the collapse of the Afghan military. This was then used against Biden for the remainder of this term, regardless of the fact that Trump had set the wheels in motion. Which would only be typical of MAGA politics. But that’s the other thread.

I generally refrain from commenting on the Ukraine disaster, but I have an ominous feeling about it. I think it’s too optimistic to hope for Ukraine to turn the tide of war, but it’s desperately important to avoid and outcome that Putin can claim as a victory.

It is, really. I think I’ve interacted with ChatGPT every day since launch, which is now two years. It’s also really helpful in professional matters, I have won a contract to do product documentation for a smart comms device. ChatGPT provided instant background to the protocols used by this device (which I’d never heard of) and a lot of other industry-specific information.

I’ve begun to think of the ‘A’ in ‘AI’ as standing for ‘Augmented’, rather than ‘Artificial’. Because that’s what it is.

Well, to address your objections more completely.

Constructivism (and my position in the OP) does not deny that objects exist independent of perception. The key point is that our knowledge of such objects is mediated by subjective processes—experience and prior knowledge shape how those objects appear to us. This does not negate their independent existence but highlights the active role of the subject in any knowledge of them.

I keep emphasizing that there are two distinct meanings of 'mind-independent': a practical meaning and a metaphysical meaning, the latter corresponding to metaphysical realism.

The practical meaning refers to the fact that many things—trees, mountains, other people—exist independently of your mind or mine in the sense that they do not rely on our individual perceptions to exist. This is uncontroversial and consistent with everyday experience.

Metaphysical realism, however, illegitimately extends this practical sense to claim that the world-at-large exists entirely independently of all mind, as if it is fundamentally separate from the act of perception or any cognitive structuring. This leap goes beyond what can be demonstrated and assumes what it needs to prove, ignoring the role that mind plays in shaping the world we experience. Recognizing this distinction is key to understanding why metaphysical realism is not as secure as it seems.

This distinction between the practical and metaphysical meanings of 'mind-independent' is consistent with Kant's insight that empirical realism is compatible with transcendental idealism. We can acknowledge that objects exist independently of our individual perceptions in the practical, phenomenal sense while also recognizing that this does not mean they exist as they are 'in themselves,' apart from the structuring role of mind.

You seem to be conflating knowledge with what we have knowledge of. I guess it depends on what you mean by "knowledge". Knowledge by aquainatance can be equated with bare perception, but discursive knowledge also incorporates judgement regarding what is perceived. — Janus

I agree that knowledge and what we know are distinct. However, my argument is about the relationship between the two: what we know is dependent on our cognitive and rational faculties.. Even bare perception, which you equate with knowledge by acquaintance, involves a structuring process, if any object it to be identified - even to know what it is requires that it be identified..Cognition is thus always mediated by sensory and cognitive abilities.

The fact that different subjects see the same objects doesn't vitiate constructivism. Shared experiences arise because we inhabit a shared world and possess similar sensory and cognitive apparatuses, leading to intersubjective agreement. However, this does not prove that the world is 'mind-independent'—only that our minds process shared inputs in similar ways.Furthermore different subjects can see the same objects in competely different ways, depending on what preconceptions or prior knowledge they bring to what they see.

The questions are matters of faith because there is no possibility of logical proof or empirical confirmation regarding the question of whether the world is fundamentally physical or mental. — Janus

If deciding whether reality is 'physical' or 'mental' requires a leap of faith, then realism is in no better position than idealism. Metaphysical realism claims that the world exists independently of the mind, but it cannot justify this beyond an appeal to reason—an appeal that idealism and constructivism also make. The difference is that idealism and constructivism openly recognize the unavoidable role of the mind in structuring experience, making them more consistent with how knowledge actually operates. In doing so, they are forthright about their reliance on reason rather than claiming a privileged metaphysical certainty.

it's not that I don't see the point, but that I disagree, and that is the point which you seem to be incapable of seeing. — Janus

Right back at ya! :-) (I mean, from what you say, I can't see what it is you're taking issue with.)

Incidentally I am seeing how this 'mind creates world' meme is proliferating on the Internet right now. In various substack and medium feeds, plus Aeon and Big Think there are articles on it practically every day, some thought-provoking and sober, some entirely ridiculous.

Right - it makes sense. In some ways it's similar to the enactivist 'building the path by walking it' approach. There are similar ideas coming out of cognitivism, and, of course, the Vervaeke lectures and the 'salience landscape' and 'relevance realisation'. But that is a fair distance from the hard core neo-darwinian view.

Natural selection has no goals. — Questioner

Right. That's the salient point when it comes to invoking evolutionary biology as a rationale for ethical normativity.

The fact that we and the animals all share the same world and see the same things at the same times and places shows that what we perceive is not only determined by the mind but is also constrained by the physical nature of the senses and what is "out there". — Janus

I don't think constructivism denies that, nor do I in the OP - as I said I acknowledge there are objects unseen by any eye. I think you're still seeing both constructivism and idealism as stating that reality is 'all in the mind'.

Contructivism's core idea is that knowledge is a construction created by the mind, based on experience and prior knowledge, which provides the conceptual framework into which experience is incorporated. Radical constructivism stays neutral about the mind-independent world. It says, "We can't know reality as it is; we only know how we construct it."

It's more concerned with how we learn, think, and know than about making metaphysical claims. It is applied to fields such as education, cognitive science, and systems theory. "Reality is like a map you create as you navigate a territory—you can't claim the map is the territory itself." But the important thing to note is that it is largely epistemological, concerned with knowledge.

Analytical idealism accepts these premisses, but then goes a step further in proposing a metaphysic in which reality is mental in nature.

But as said in the OP, my main focus is not proposing a substantial metaphysics. In some way, my own approach is more aligned with constructivism. But they're both opposed to metaphysical realism. But it doesn’t mean dismissing reality or saying 'reality doesn't exist' —it's that both constructivism and phenomenological idealism recognize the importance of subjective experience as a fundamental structure of experienced reality. And it's just this subjective element which is 'bracketed out' by objectivism. The critique of metaphysical realism (drawing from Kant) is that it fails to notice how the mind actively structures reality through establishing conditions of subjective experience. Realism assumes that the world is 'just so' independent of the observer, yet overlooks how much of what we take as real is mediated by this subjective structuring process.

Which is exactly what the passage about Husserl states:

Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

.

So this is not a 'matter of faith', and I think the reason you keep saying that over and over again is because you're not seeing the point.

(Incidentally the above info about constructivism was gleaned from Constructivist Foundations. Information about analytical idealism can be found on Essentia Foundation.)

Trump has stated he intends to pursue a deal. — Tzeentch

Trump is basically implying that he will cave to Putin, whom he constantly expresses admiration for. As said many times, I believe Putin is wholly and solely responsible for the criminal invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of billions of dollars worth of property and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Wholly and solely. It is desperately important that Putin is defeated and seen to be defeated, and that will be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, outcome. But anything less is capitulation to a murderous autocrat.