This from page 7 of the 'Being No-one' precis. It confirms the same point the Feldman paper makes about the lack of a scientific account of the subjective unity of experience.



It's an interesting paper, with lots to consider, but settled science, it ain't.

Say there is a cosmic purpose; how could we ever discover it; — Janus

By doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, I would hope.

You're spot on. Unfortunately. :sad:

One of the cuts that the GOP are trying to extort is funding for the Inland Revenue Service to hire more tax agents.

Republicans’ proposal to rescind $71 billion in IRS funding pushed through by Democrats last year would cut projected tax receipts by $191 billion over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The result: The government would find itself an additional $120 billion in the hole.

Republicans, who’ve campaigned hard against the IRS money since last summer, have mostly ignored the budget warnings, arguing they are trying to protect average Americans from zealous tax collectors.

This is bullshit. 'Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted that the new funding [will] not be used to increase audit rates on those earning less than $400,000 a year.' The reason they want to defund the IRS is so that all their rich donor mates can get the tax department of their backs. See this analysis.

As always, GOP cuts will worsen the deficit and benefit the wealthy while the GOP are bleating about 'cutting wasteful spending'.

The paper I quoted about the impossibility of providing a neurological basis for the subjective unity of experience references the science. I'm going to listen to the Metzinger talk a bit later, I'm sure I'll find it congenial.

The philosophical issue is not scientific per se. Analytical idealism is not anti-scientific. It's anti-materialist.

Still no resolution. The Freedom Caucus really might push the US into default rather than back down. They are refusing to even consider tax increases as a means to address the deficit: only cuts to welfare will be considered.

As I understand it default might mean not being able to make some specific payments - but that if Congress then decided to pass the limit increase, payments would be able to resume. By this means, the Freedom Caucus might be willing to indicate it's complete callousness and disregard for the welfare of the nation by engineering a 'limited default' - which would still cause major stock-market ructions and many other unknown consequences. Kind of like cutting off the finger of your kidnap victim and mailing it to the parents, then blaming the parents for not coughing up. I wouldn't put it past those MAGA thugs.

Here is a 'gift' link to the current WaPo coverage for those interested.

The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact, and so on. So the argument is that the features of objects are not intrinsic to them, but imputed to them by the observer, and whether or not they continue to have those features in the absence of any observer, is just the whole point at issue. What is 'trivial' is simply that it is impossible to definitively prove 'object permanence' i.e. that features are instrinsic to the object without any perception, as the object has to be perceived to ascertain what features it has.

Another passage from that book might help to amplify the point. He refers to Gestalts, having previously discussed how the mind instinctively grasps objects as meaningful wholes, or gestalts.

Imagine putting three pennies on the table in a triangular pattern, as suggested below:

In perception, the threesome of pennies has its own identity, separate from that of the individual coins: For instance, the threesome has a triangular appearance in our eyes. Does the threesome exist as a separate unit in the mind-independent world? Are there three things in the world (namely the three coins) or are there four things (the individual coins and the threesome-of-coins)? This is not an easy or trivial question, for it depends on what you understand by "existing". If existence is limited to the material, then you have only three things, because no new material is added when the threesome is formed. However, if reality were limited to what is material, there would be no such things as structure or form, because they neither add to, nor take away from matter. The threesome of coins is a separate reality for us because it has a separate quality in perception. What is there in the mind-independent world to make it something separate? What is there in the material world to make any Gestalt group of objects exist on its own merits, over and above the individual objects in it? There are groups of objects that come together naturally. Think of a table: It has five parts, namely a horizontal top and four legs. However, the table has a proper function which is only achieved by the whole. The same idea applies to living animals, which have numerous organs that work together and jointly make the animal. What distinguishes these examples is that the composite object depends functionally on its parts. It exists only as a dynamic combination of its components. There are many other systems of objects in the world that interact naturally, and by their interaction form cohesive groups. For instance, the planets revolve around the sun and interact gravitationally, thus forming a planetary system. However, material systems which belong together because they function as a unit are few and far between. In contrast with  functionally  related groups  of  things, there  are innumerable random groups of objects which are nothing more than chance combinations, without purpose. Hypothetically, every collection of objects could be separated out of its background and assigned an identity as a group, in which case everything would be a Gestalt. If that were the case, the very notion of Gestalt would be meaningless. This shows that a Gestalt is more than an arbitrary joining together of objects. There must be a reason, a purpose, for bringing particular things together and taking them to form a coherent whole. But in the mind-independent universe, there are no such things as reasons and purposes. We are led to conclude that it requires a living subject to mentally extract a dynamic group of objects from a background in which it is deeply embedded, and make it stand out as something existing. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (pp. 43-44). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

The form this takes is not something intrinsic to the objects, but is inferred by the mind. The larger argument is that consciousness continuously structures experience this way - as the quote about Thomas Metzinger says:

People are thus what Metzinger calls naïve realists, who believe they are perceiving reality directly when in actuality they are only perceiving representations of reality. The data structures and transport mechanisms of the data are "transparent" so that people can introspect on their representations of perceptions, but cannot introspect on the data or mechanisms themselves.

Your argument is similar to the 'argumentum ad lapidem' of Samuel Johnson based on the instinctive assumption of the independent reality of objects of perception.

Furthermore, that underlined passage which I referred to, links to a paper on the neural binding problem: subjective unity of experience. When I say that there's 'no scientific account' of the subjective unity of experience, this remains the case. Certainly, Metzinger is correct in saying that this is 'generated by the brain' which is exactly what I said here:

all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. — Wayfarer

But the paper I linked to shows that science can't identify which neural mechanism provides for what we experience as a subjective unity. It acknowledges that while there are plausible accounts for the 'stable world illusion', it goes on to say:

But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the neural binding problem really is a scientific mystery at this time.

Capiche?

You are incorrect Wayfarer. Idealism, in the sense that there is no proof of something outside of our perception, has been refuted. — Philosophim

Citations, please. (A lot rides on the meaning of 'outside' in this statement!)

This is not the thread for it, but if you wish to create a Bernardo Kastrup thread: — Philosophim

On the contrary:

By analytic idealism, I take it to be that reality is fundamentally (ontologically) one mind which has dissociated parts (like bernardo kastrup's view). — Bob Ross

You might explain the distinction between this paragraph in the article you link to about Metzinger's 'self model':

People are thus what Metzinger calls naïve realists, who believe they are perceiving reality directly when in actuality they are only perceiving representations of reality. The data structures and transport mechanisms of the data are "transparent" so that people can introspect on their representations of perceptions, but cannot introspect on the data or mechanisms themselves. These systemic representational experiences are then connected by subjective experience to generate the phenomenal property of selfhood. — Wikipedia

And that in my post, which you describe as 'incorrigibly idealistic':

Consciousness plays the central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ and also the coherence and reality of the world of appearance. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves and the objects of our perception to exist is dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, most of which are unknown to us. We have no more knowledge of them than we do of cell division or of our hair growing or our food digesting. — Wayfarer

(There's a video lecture from Metzinger here, which I will find time for later. Interesting that this was filmed at a Krishnamurti Foundation conference.)

I'm meaning to read Metzinger, but at first glance, he seems a rather cold personality. But I don't see any contradiction between the type of constructivism or phenomenology that I'm advocating with science as such. The conflict is with the idea that the world exists independently of the mind, or that the objective sciences can provide a complete account of the nature of being.

Incidentally, there is a Mahāyāna Buddhist school called Vijñāvada or Yogācāra, which is often compared to Western idealist philosophy, although with some caveats.

Which is more about how our subjective experience, perception, and cognition might be emergent factors that we can never find because they're emergent out of the whole body/mind configuration. — Christoffer

Which is pretty what the Phaedo and other ancient sources imply in the analogy of 'the soul as the harmony of parts'.

We are able to describe this shape based on observation, but the shape is independent of observation and judgment. — Fooloso4

You haven't addressed the argument, but I have a sense that nothing further can be added.

:100:

I am well aware of this general idea, the problem is it is plainly false. I don't want to argue here and derails Bob Ross's fine thread, but in general such challenges to accepted theory are fun to consider when first entering philosophy, but are eventually solved. — Philosophim

This is not true that idealism has been 'solved' or refuted generally. There are quite a few people of scientific bent, of whom Bernardo Kastrup is one, who have made detailed arguments for philosophical idealism, which have not been refuted.

When discussing these matters, just be aware that your physicalist views are not supported by philosophical argument, but are simply expressions of your 'gut feel' as to what can and can't be true. Incredulity is not itself an argument.

The smooth stone will be carried along by the current, the jagged one will catch and snag — Fooloso4

The example you're giving takes 'the objective' as independently real - independently, that is, of any judgement or perception on our part, and imputes self-evidence to it. The basic argument remains: look, these stones are far older than our minds, how can you say they don't exist independently of our perception of them? They were around millions of years before anyone perceived them.

But idealism does not necessarily call the empirical reality of objects into question. It's not saying that the world is only 'in the mind' (although certainly Berkeley can be interpreted as saying that, which is why, in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant added a section distinguishing his philosophy from what he called the 'problematic idealism' of Berkeley.)

What idealism, analytic or transcendental, is drawing attention to, is that the mind creates the framework within which our judgements about the stone (or any object) are meaningful. Schopenhauer, for example, published an early book, On Vision and Colors, which is his analysis, based on the neuroscience of his day, of how the brain synthesises visual data to generate color cognition. The basic outlines of what he said have been abundantly confirmed by later science. Cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that specifically human ability of rational thought (and beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science and a matter of controversy.)

Consciousness plays the central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ and also the coherence and reality of the world of appearance. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves and the objects of our perception to exist is dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, most of which are unknown to us. We have no more knowledge of them than we do of cell division or of our hair growing or our food digesting.

When we perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ the object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind synthesises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – acknowledging it or ignoring it depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc - this is the process of 'apperception').

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them. Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs experiential reality - partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of a huge number of unconscious processes, including memories, intentions and cultural frameworks. This is how we arrive at what Schopenhauer designates as 'vorstellung', variously translated as 'representation' or 'idea'. And that is what reality consists of. It includes the object, but it is not in itself an object. As Schopenhauer says in the first paragraph of WWI, discerning this fact is the beginning of philosophical wisdom.

our perception relies on an internal categorization of reality and that to fully understand it we instead require imagination based on understanding scientific data. — Christoffer

Their remains no scientific account of which neural systems are able to generate the subjective unity of experience. See The Subjective Unity of Perception in a paper on the Neural Binding Problem. He notes that the problem posed by David Chalmers in his paper Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Concsiousness, remains 'intractable'.

It’s well known that people who would say they’re part of one political party, right or left, are generally very skeptical of information and motives of the “other guys.” — Mikie

In Australia, this is generally much less visible than the USA. I say 'generally' because there are some cases - a Murdoch-owned (natch!) media outlet that propogates climate-change denial and what nowadays is called 'conservativism'. There are outbreaks of neo-nazism and white supremacy here and there (particularly in Melbourne, for some reason) and there was some serious civil strife over COVID lockdowns. But overall, Australian society is far less polarized than American in this regard. Politics is comparatively genteel with a few outliers at each end of the spectrum, but overall with at least a modicum of civility. Seems a lot more polarised in the disunited states.

I don’t know if the above two posts reflect awareness of the specific problem regarding raising the debt limit. Due to a quirk of the American political system, Congress has to approve raising the amount that Treasury can borrow to pay for costs already incurred. It has nothing directly to do with spending proposals for the future or even with the budget. It is only concerned with paying for costs already incurred. If the debt limit is not raised, the American Government may not be able to meet its obligations - make payroll for the military, pay pensions, make interest payments on its already-massive debts - it’s a huge list. And if that happens, it’s going to be everyone’s problem, because it will cause an extremely severe stock market crash and huge economic downturn, possibly on the scale of the Great Depression or even greater. ‘Financial apocalypse’ is a term often used. It is the threat of this happening, that one party - one side of politics, not ‘all politicians’ - is using as a threat to force the Government to accept enormous spending cuts. And that is an illegitimate political tactic - before the ‘tea party republicans’ came along in 2011-12, no side in American politics had ever contemplated such a tactic. But the extreme right of the GOP have normalised it (God help us all). Hopefully sanity will prevail, but it’s getting very close to drop-dead time.

Hope you don't mind me chipping in here. My aim is not to persuade, but (hopefully) clarify.

What is real is what exists, and does not need to be perceived to exist. — Philosophim

This is the crux of the issue. Realism presumes 'the world' (or object of perception) to be real, irrespective of whether it is perceived or not. Idealism, on the other hand, takes issue with this apparently-obvious fact. George Berkeley, for example, said explicitly 'esse est percipe' - to be is to be perceived. His argument is nevertheless categorised as empiricist, because it is based on the observation that the existence of physical objects cannot be proven independently of, or outside of, the perception of them (where 'perception' includes seeing, touching, instrumental analysis, etc). He maintained that we only have direct access to our own perceptions and cannot perceive anything beyond those - that when we see the object, our seeing of it consists in 'the experience of the object'. It is therefore unwarranted to assume the existence of material objects outside perception.

It is well known that many people think Berkeley's philosophy absurd. There is an historical anecdote featuring the famous writer, Samuel Johnson:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus!"

This is now immortalised as the 'argumentum ad lapidem', meaning 'argument from the stone', and is said to be fallacious, on the grounds that kicking a stone does not actually address the theory. It rather asserts a conclusion incompatible with the theory and then demonstrates the conclusion without discussing the real claims of the argument. After all, the stone and the sensation of striking your foot against it are, likewise, perceptions and impressions of color, hardness, time and place, and the like. In this sense, Berkeley's argument is not too distant in spirit from Descartes' argument that in all of our perceptions, we might be mislead by an evil daemon. (Updated and annotated translations of Berkeley can be found here - and one thing you will learn if you look at them, is that Berkeley was no slouch when it came to dealing with objections to his philosophy. He was a very clever polemicist.)

So - the point I'm getting at is that the instinctive sense that the object is real whether or not anyone perceives it, is precisely the point at issue in idealist arguments - hard as that may be to accept.

'Trans rights' are a political correctness minefield in today's culture. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald being a case in point - the Oxford Union, a 200 year old debating society which has hosted many illustrious and controversial speakers, is being pilloried for inviting a professor who has been identified as hostile to trans rights.

[Kathleen] Stock – described recently as a “mild-mannered and eminently sensible middle-aged lesbian” – resigned as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex in 2021 following what she described as “bullying and harassment” in response to her views on gender identification and transgender rights. The controversy revolved around her belief that a person’s self-declared gender identity does not outweigh their biological sex, “particularly when it comes to law and policy”.

In April, the Oxford University LGBTQ+ society called for Stock’s invitation to speak [at the Union] to be rescinded, claiming she was “transphobic and trans-exclusionary”. It also accused Oxford Union of disregarding the welfare of the society’s members under the guise of free speech.

Earlier this month, Oxford’s student union passed a motion to cut financial ties with the Oxford Union. Seventy-eight per cent of those present voted in favour, preventing the Oxford Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, causing a reduction in membership that will likely put a strain on the debating organisation’s finances. It is the first time such action has been taken.

Several Oxford colleges including St Edmund Hall, Mansfield, St Anne’s and St Hilda’s have also passed motions condemning the talk, calling for Stock’s invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community.”

Christ Church, one of the wealthiest colleges, described Stock as a “notorious transphobe” and said that if she spoke the union would be “complicit and responsible in spreading transphobic rhetoric”

So - say what you like about gender constructs.......

(on second thoughts, better not :yikes: )

I wonder if Kevin McCarthy caves, whether he will loose his job over it. After all, part of the devil's bargain he had to sign to win the Speaker's gavel was to agree that he could be tossed out by a single vote. It hasn't attracted any comment that I've noticed, but you'd have to think it was a possibility.

No! This is where 'the unknown knower' comes into the picture. 'The eye can't see itself, the hand can't grasp itself', which is an aphorism from Vedanta. What it means is that we can't see the subjective faculties which synthesise the 'subjective unity of experience' because we're never outside of it, so it's not objectively known to us. (Hence also the tortuous and painstaking analysis required by the Critique of Pure Reason.)

//with that I'll bow out for now, don't want to hog @Bob Ross's thread.//

A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape. — Fooloso4

And which stone would that be? 'Oh, it doesn't matter - any stone.' But 'any stone' is an abstraction - and abstraction is still dependent on the matrix of conceptual thought.

I certainly see the 'constructionist' logic in your last paragraph. — Tom Storm

Constructivism (I've learned) is an approach in science and philosophy that emphasizes the role of the mind in the construction of knowledge and the interpretation of data - hence the name! I don't think it is synonymous with idealism and so I'm not sure if 'idealism' is really what I'm arguing for - although I do notice that Kastrup has published articles in Constructivist Foundations.

So a starlight, for example, from distant galaxies (or the CMB) that predates by millions (or billions) of years the human species – it's capability of "mind" – is not a "meaningful idea" or a "real" (mind-invariant) referent? — 180 Proof

No, it's not. It's not anything, until it is cognised. It's not non-existent, but it's also not existent - it has a kind of latent or unmanifest reality. There's a subjective element in all cognition which synthesises and contextualises the stimuli we're receiving - starlight included - and combines it into the world. That activity is what gives rise to the subjective unity of experience - which is 'the world'. That is the sense in which nothing is ultimately mind-independent, although for practical purposes, it can be treated as if it is. Hence as I said - mind-independence is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical axiom. In actual fact, reality is not something we're outside of, or apart from - it has an inextricable subjective foundation, which we're not consciously aware of - transcendental in the Kantian sense.

This is why I asked about the "something" that has always been capable of observing. — Fooloso4

We can form no meaningful idea of what exists in the absence of the order that the mind brings to reality.

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

In order for Kastrup's assertion to qualify for a theory of reality it must explain how animals like us, capable of experiencing, came to be in a universe like ours full of things to be experienced. — Fooloso4

There is an implicit endorsement of scientific realism in this. Analytic idealism is not a realist philosophy in that sense.

There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. — creativesoul

I wonder if that ‘aha’ point is the appearance of the very first living organism.

6371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained. — TLP

I notice in modern discourse that even the notion of laws is called into question. This goes back to the discussion about the erosion of the idea of an animating cosmic purpose.

Interesting how nature, once 'the created', is now imbued with the power of creating itself.

When Trump returns to the Oval office the buck will stop at his desk. He will actually do something. How refreshing that will be. — Varnaj42

Now we see your true colors.

Yes well the problem is that people seldom agree on which facts are correct. — Varnaj42

You may not disagree, but the fact of human-induced climate change is proven beyond reasonable doubt, regardless of how you feel about it.

We are living in a threat of global communism and we can't find anything better to do than to argue about climate change. — Varnaj42

Yes so perhaps you can find something more constructive to say rather than waste further time denying the science.

The science is very clear - increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, plainly correlated to emissions caused by human activities, are unmistakeably linked to increasing global temperatures. It is very clear and simple. There might be scientists who want to dispute that, but scientists were employed by the tobacco industry to cast doubt over the link to lung cancer (see Merchants of Doubt). It's the same kind of scenario with climate-change denial, there are many vested interests who want to deny it.

We just don't happen to think it is the fault of human beings. — Varnaj42

'Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own facts' ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I’ll stick with the free version for now. I find myself using it all the time. I can see the day, and it’s not far off, where it becomes embedded in your audio-visual life-space, helping with all kinds of information - recipes, tips, exercise plans, life plans, motivational talks. I think an alternative title to ‘artificial intelligence’ might be ‘augmented intelligence’ - using it to augment your own capacities in various ways.

(Seems to me that one of the big players who’s completely failed to catch this train, is Amazon. I’ve been using Alexa devices for about eighteen months, and they’re pretty lame - glorified alarm clocks, as someone said. Whereas ChatGPT, with speech recognition, is more or less what I think Bezos set out to do when he created Alexa. So far, he’s failed miserably, as far as I can see.)

You'll find them here.

In terms of science, I think that science proper is the acquiring of how entities relate to each other and not what they fundamentally are — Bob Ross

:up: Agree. I am also a Kastrup reader. Overall, as I'm opposed like him to reductive materialism, I'm generally in agreement with him. My criticism of his philosophy is perhaps an over-reliance on metaphors - the 'dissociated alter' and 'the dashboard' to name a couple. At the same time, I think he's an important voice. He is building up an impressive bibliography and does an excellent job in many debates and forums.

My overall philosophical orientation is to emphasise the primacy of experience and that knowledge is a constructive and synthesising activity, which absorbs experiences and perceptions and synthesises them into the gestalt of subjective experience. Empiricists likewise stress the primacy of experience - Berkeley was an empirical idealist - but I adopt the Kantian principle of there being innate categories and functionalities of the mind which are not simply given but which the mind brings to experience.

Forms || Outside Time/Space — schopenhauer1

'Prior to' - ontologically prior. Not 'outside' as in 'located somewhere else'.

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing?....I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken? — Fooloso4

Hope you don't mind my chipping in. What's at issue here, is the sense in which the physical world has an inherent reality outside our experience, knowledge and perception of it. From a realist point of view, that it exists independently of us is so obvious as to seem hardly worth stating. But consider the role of the observing mind in arriving at this understanding.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. Then you imagine on the one side, your representation, and on the other, the object being represented. What that neglects is the role of the observing intelligence in synthesising experience to form a whole - a gestalt, in fact - which is then the subject of your judgement. Absent that synthesising capability, there is nothing to pass judgement about. So you can't literally get outside your representation. You can't in any sense imagine a world from no viewpoint. Perspective is essential, and perspective is what the observer brings.

You might object (as did Einstein) 'surely the moon continues to exist when there is nobody to perceive it'. Bishop Berkeley, and Bernardo Kastrup, get around this difficulty by positing God and a Mind-At-Large, respectively, which ensures the continuous existence of the moon, even the absence of observers. However I have a rather more radical view than that (and here part company with Kastrup.) It is that all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. After all, the definition of ‘empirical’ is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience.’ So, asking of the Universe ‘How does it exist outside of, or apart from, our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question. It's not as if it really ceases to exist when not observed, or really comes into existence when it is observed. To exist is to be 'inside' this relational subject-object dynamic¹.

Because of scientific realism, we assume that the world exists independently of your or any mind. But that's only true as a methodological assumption, not as a metaphysical axiom. This is something that has become increasingly evident in 20th century science and philosophy, mainly as a consequence of the observer problem in physics. Science has had to acknowledge the role of the observer, whether via the 'Copenhagen interpretation' or in Wheeler's 'participatory universe' model or in QBism. (Kastrup addresses all this, by the way, he is thoroughly conversant with modern physics and was employed at CERN at some point.)

I suspect that is probably a controversial analysis, but that's my take on it.

-------
1. 'By and large, Kaccayana, 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'. ~ the Buddha, Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

When something is said to be material a common meaning is, as 180 Proof outlined above, that it is observable (or detectable in some way), and when something is said to be immaterial there are two common meanings: either that it doesn't exist or is unimportant, or that it exists in some way other than the material. — Janus

The point is that our rational grasp of things is constructed around abstractions, which are fundamental to language and therefore the basic operations of predication (is, is not, less than, same as, and so on.) None of those abstractions are materially existent but they're intrinsic to our ability to reason. That is one of the reasons that reason is unique to h. sapiens. We kind of straddle two worlds, the world of sensable objects, and the world of thought, from which we are able to envision and then realise possibilities - which is the ability that has provided the technology that we're using to mediate this discussion. Hence Wigner's 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'.

I don't know what it could mean to say that logic and maths transcend physical reality. Would it mean that they would still exist, even if nothing else existed? — Janus

It would mean that at least some of the primitive terms of both of those would be the same in all possible worlds, that if intelligent life evolved elsewhere, it would still be obliged to recognise the law the excluded middle and the notion of 'equals', for instance. I think they precede existence, in the sense that they are associate with or constitutive of the natural order, from which life evolves in the first place.

Then why bother asking? It's a serious example. 'Money', would be another. Especially now that all money is electronic. It exists only by fiat, as a set of agreements, has no material existence.

Is there an example of an immaterial 'something' we can point to uncontroversially? — Tom Storm

Interest rates.

I enjoyed how 'Wayfarer' engaged 'ChatGPT' (presumably GPT-4) to elaborate on this intricate connection. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks! Actually as far as I know, it’s still ChatGPT - I’m signing in via OpenAI although whether the engine is the same as GPT-4, I know not. Also appreciate the ref to Haugeland.

If you ask ChatGPT, it will not go and check against Sartre's corpus. — Banno

Whereas if you use Google’s forthcoming Bard, it will. Check out this presentation on it.

I’m looking forward to being able to converse with Siri - let’s imagine you’re interacting via Siri - with these kinds of questions.

‘Siri, can you provide some examples of the texts where Jean Paul Sartre said that?’

I agree, but it is still an active detachement even for the sage. — Christoffer

Indeed. 'Being' is a verb. ;-)

Some philosophical questions I put to ChatGPT 20.05.23

Q: Where would one encounter the expression about things that are 'always already the case'?

ChatGPT: The expression "always already the case" is often encountered in philosophical and theoretical discussions, particularly in the realms of phenomenology, existentialism, and post-structuralism. While it doesn't have a specific origin or a single author, it has been explored by various thinkers.

One notable instance of this expression can be found in the works of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre used the phrase "always already" to describe the idea that certain aspects of our existence, such as our facticity (our given circumstances and conditions) and our fundamental freedom, are inherent and preexisting. He argued that these aspects of our being are not products of our conscious choices but are thrust upon us, shaping our existence.

Additionally, the concept of "always already the case" can be related to the philosophical notion of "being-in-the-world" (Dasein) put forth by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger emphasized the idea that our existence is always already embedded in a specific context, a world that precedes our individual consciousness. According to Heidegger, we are thrown into a world with preexisting meanings, values, and structures that shape our understanding of ourselves and our experiences.

Furthermore, the expression is frequently encountered in post-structuralist and postmodern thought, particularly in the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. These thinkers emphasized the ways in which power structures, historical contexts, and language itself shape our understanding of reality. The notion of "always already the case" points to the idea that our perspectives and interpretations are influenced by preexisting discourses and systems of meaning.

Overall, the expression "always already the case" reflects the philosophical inquiry into the preexisting conditions, contexts, and structures that shape our existence and understanding of reality. It is encountered in discussions surrounding existentialism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.

Q: Would it be feasible to link the notion of what is 'always already the case' to the realm of the a priori?

ChatGPT: Yes, it is feasible to link the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori. The concept of the a priori refers to knowledge or propositions that are independent of experience or empirical evidence, based on reasoning alone. These are considered necessary truths that can be known prior to any particular experience.

When we consider what is "always already the case," we are essentially referring to certain aspects of existence or reality that are assumed to be fundamental and unchanging. These aspects are often seen as transcending individual experiences and are considered to be universally applicable. In this sense, they can be thought of as a priori conditions or truths.

For example, Kant argued that certain synthetic a priori elements are necessary to make sense of our experience of the world. These are not derived from experience but are inherent in our cognitive faculties. They are considered "always already the case" because they are universal and apply to all individuals.

In a similar vein, the notion of what is "always already the case" can be related to the a prioristructures of understanding discussed by phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl. Husserl argued that our experience of the world is shaped by certain preexisting structures of intentionality and consciousness, which he referred to as "transcendental subjectivity." These structures are considered a priori because they are not derived from individual experiences but are assumed to be inherent in consciousness.

Therefore, by linking the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori, we can explore the underlying and universal conditions that shape our understanding and experiences of reality. Both concepts involve aspects that are considered fundamental, necessary, and independent of empirical evidence or particular experiences.

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I think this actually addresses a gap I'm aware of in Kantian philosophy. The concept of the a priori sounds so dry and so much an artefact of logic, but linking to that sense of the 'always already' provides a phenomenological and existential dimension that it is lacking.

I'm not sure there is a "classical tradition", a religious life seem to be mostly very subjective even if practices as an institution looks collective. — Christoffer

There’s a term that is distinct from both the subjective and objective, and that it transcendent(al). The detachment of the sage in philosophy has a different quality to the detachment of the scientist because it is concerned with more than what is simply quantifiable. But of course in secular culture, everything is viewed through what Charles Taylor calls ‘the immanent frame’ which brackets out consideration of the transcendent(al).