something in an occult sphere — green flag

(probably to no avail) — Wayfarer

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. — Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

Are you, Wayfarer, serious in a defence of the arch-scientism offered by Hoffman, because it gives some small solace to idealism? You hussy, you! — Banno

Would it not be that humans see the world just fine for what we need to do in it. — Tom Storm

Now evolution and quantum mechanics and cosmology posit that events occur over time, and that they happen to discreet individuals. — Banno

Most, I'd guess, would be baffled to think that anything other than naive realism could be true. — Manuel

Scienticism isn't taken seriously by most scientists. — Manuel

As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure. — Vladimir Solovyov (19th c philosopher, not current Russian TV propagandist of same name)

the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all — green flag

one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere — Wittgenstein

Would you say that he has more data than the astrologers... — universeness

Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all? — What is Math? Smithsonian Institute

It goes against what he is saying, if he is giving evidence that our senses mislead us, why trust the evidence? It too is misleading. — Manuel

Unless it is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers.

If reason is in this way self-justifying, then it is open to us also to speculate that natural selection played a role in the evolution and survival of a species that is capable of understanding and engaging in it. But the recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support. At most it may show why the existence of reason need not be biologically mysterious.
— Thomas Nagel

Are you unfamiliar with the late David M. Armstrong? — Relativist

Why evil, and not mental sickness? — Tzeentch

2. What makes these symbolisms the same is how they are used by humans. It is not that they refer to the same eternal objects. — Richard B

I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. — Art48

Do you think it might be a possible that just as Kant argued that space and time were essentially part of the human cognitive apparatus which help us make sense of our world, that perhaps reason - e.g., identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle, might not have similar source? In which case, reason is not true as such - or located outside of the human domain - it is rather a condition of human experience and an unavoidable product of our perspective. — Tom Storm

What exactly makes snakes and trains not real? — Banno

The constructions we invent may not be literally true, but still, he says of his own, “I’ve evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.” Of what he identifies as a snake or a train, he says, “Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions.”

It’s worth pointing out that if there can be no “public” objects that aren’t personal constructions, science has a problem: “The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects.” After all, “My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.”

It’s not that Hoffman considers our constructed personal realities therefore worthless. In fact, they’re all we’ve got, and being real to us is a way of being true, after all. “I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.” — Donald Hoffman

QBism would say, it’s not that the world is built up from stuff on “the outside” as the Greeks would have had it. Nor is it built up from stuff on “the inside” as the idealists...would have it. Rather, the stuff of the world is in the character of what each of us encounters every living moment — stuff that is neither inside nor outside, but prior to the very notion of a cut between the two at all. — Chris Fuchs

A self-help book or marginal scripture is marketed as lost or repressed wisdom. I claim that this frame itself is already picture enough, as those who market the book must know. — green flag

The novice sits at the knee of the sage. If the novice could truly evaluate the sage, he would already be the sage — green flag

A person can believe in Enlightenment (or Quality or some ineffable and unverifiable X) and defend its existence without claiming to possess it or to have experienced it directly. — green flag

. Evolution has conditioned our perceptions of the physical world to see icons rather than truth, but that doesn't necessarily imply our logical faculties have been conditioned the same way. — Art48

Q: If snakes aren’t snakes and trains aren’t trains, what are they?

A: Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.

A few posts seem to be quibbling over the word "exists". What word would you prefer instead? Subsist? Something else? — Art48

Now I am curious, what is an example of something that is conceptually unreal? — Richard B

The scientific method seems to be our best tool to protect us against building a high credence level, from a faith based origin. — universeness

Why would you choose to assign any significant credence 'at this stage' to the work done by Stevenson? — universeness

BTW do you assign high credence to Rupert Sheldrakes morphic resonance? — universeness

It's a short step to say all thoughts exist there, although, of course, the step has to be justified. — Art48

The paradox exists. For how much longer? Can an idea stop existing? That doesn’t seem right. It seems if all humanity vanished tomorrow, Russell’s paradox would still exist — Art48

Russell, apparently, regards thoughts differently, as acts. He writes: “One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's.” — Art48

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’sRussell’s Paradox entry has the following.

Russell’s paradox is the most famous of the logical or set-theoretical paradoxes. Also known as the Russell-Zermelo paradox, the paradox arises within naïve set theory by considering the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set appears to be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. Hence the paradox.

Some sets, such as the set of all teacups, are not members of themselves. Other sets, such as the set of all non-teacups, are members of themselves. Call the set of all sets that are not members of themselves “R.” If R is a member of itself, then by definition it must not be a member of itself. Similarly, if R is not a member of itself, then by definition it must be a member of itself.

Did Russell’s paradox exist before he . . . discovered it? Or . . . invented it? Which is it, discovered or invented? If discovered, then yes, the paradox was there since before the Big Bang, just waiting to be found. If invented, then no, the paradox came into existence the moment Russell first thought of it.

The paradox exists. For how much longer? Can an idea stop existing? That doesn’t seem right. It seems if all humanity vanished tomorrow, Russell’s paradox would still exist. But if an idea cannot cease to exist, then it obviously must exist for all eternity into the future. If Russell created the paradox, that would mean the idea is half-eternal, having a start time in the finite past but no end time in the future. It seems rather odd to say a mortal human being can create something which will exist for all eternity. It seems to make more sense to say that Russell’s paradox was discovered, not invented; that it has always existed.

Existed where? One answer is: in the mind of God. But this answer assumes an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing being, which are more assumptions than we need. The minimum is merely to stipulate a place where all thoughts exist, without saying anything more about the place. I call the place the “mindscape.” [reference to this thread omitted]

I don’t claim the above is a proof; any of the steps in thinking can probably be disputed. But it’s a train of thought—an interesting train, at least, for me—that leads to the idea of the mindscape. — Art48

When you look at things from an evolutionary perspective and understand biology and biochemistry there doesn't seem to be any hard problem.

Yeah living systems are really complicated... and yeah the chemistry and evolution that can happen over 4 billion years is really complicated.. but I don't think by making up fuzzy words like qualia and weird thought experiments like zombies you actually highlight any real problem or illuminate any gap in our knowledge!

Yes humans have complex subjective experience and presumably all living systems even a mosquito have some sort of internal subjective experience...

But it seems like neurology and biochemistry and evolutionary biology do a pretty good job of explaining what's going on and I don't see how any of that mumbo jumbo is creating any better science?

In other words it seems like the science we have and the understanding we have does a pretty good job explaining things, and unless you're creating something better, it seems like you're just praying on the gullible and naive religious impulses by creating these weird philosophical niches!!! — Metamorphosis

These stories do interest me. — Tom Storm

f. As for your "documented ... thousands of cases" of "past life memories", those anecdotes are not, in any rigorous sense, compelling public evidence. — 180 Proof