I think you’re putting to much faith in empiricism (pardon the irony). Mathematics, logic and many other disciplines are not strictly empirical. in nature. I think what you’re actually saying is that God is intangible, beyond sensory perception.

Secondly God is not ‘based on an idea’. If anything, God is reduced to an idea or a series of propositions, which then are said to have no possibility of empirical validation. But that is a kind of ‘straw God’ in that it refers mainly to the kind of God whose only presence is as a term in Internet debates. In practice belief in God is grounded in community, in tradition, and in a way of living, which opens up horizons of being in a way that mere propositional knowledge cannot.

I’m not here to argue for ‘theism’ (which again is a word only really encountered in Internet debates) but to try and provide another perspective on the question.

"Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer—with a PhD?" — Andrew M

I have often addressed that question. Again it's a question of philosophy not physics. For practical purposes you can assume the world has been there all along, just as is. But that is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical postuate. That is what I think Sean Carroll doesn't see.

Ever seen the Andrei Linde interview on Closer To Truth? He talks explicitly about the role of the observer.

Google AI's info repository is restricted to 2005 and older. — Agent Smith

Not so. ChatGPT is said to be updated to 2021, but someone pointed out it correctly answered that Elon Musk owns Twitter which happened last year.

The problem of actualization of potentia brings science and philosophy forcefully together IMO. — jgill

See Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities.

It has nothing to do with consciousness or intelligence (of course). An “observation” in quantum mechanics happens whenever any out-of-equilibrium macroscopic system becomes entangled with the quantum system being measured — Squelching Boltzmann Brains (And Maybe Eternal Inflation) - Sean Carroll

That is an a priori assertion, but which really could only ever be validated by observation.

Surprisingly this seems to be consonant with some aspects of logical positivism, although of course the positivist idea that empirical hypotheses and theories, which go beyond merely observational claims, can be verified, is itself nonsensical — Janus

Buddhists have a much broader definition of what constitutes 'experience', based on the experience arising from the jhanas. Even though Buddhists themselves wouldn't describe those states in terms of 'the supernatural', the Buddha himself is described as 'lokuttara' translated as 'world-transcending'. And the jhanas clearly exceed the boundaries of what would pass for 'empirical experience' in the modern sense.

Getting back to constructivism*. As Charles Pinter puts it,

If you lift your eyes from this [screen], what is revealed to you is a spread-out world of objects of many shapes, colors and kinds. Perhaps what you see are the familiar furnishings of your room, and if you look out a window you may see houses and trees, or a distant panorama of hills and fields. In fact, the word panorama is very apt: The root of the word is orama, the Greek word for what is seen with the eyes, and the prefix is pan, as in pantheism, meaning all. What you behold is a comprehensive display of the things before you, and this display is given to you as a single, undivided experience.

But at the same time, although this scene appears 'given' to our perception, in reality it is the faculty of apperception which combines all of the stimuli arising from the inputs into a unified scene - the panorama. And the process which enables the experience of unified cognition, called the subjective unity of perception, is (according to this source) an aspect of Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness'. That reference claims, citing research, that the faculty which synthesises the various disparate elements of experience is not well understood; it says that 'The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry.'

Yet you can say that it is within this domain of the subjective unity of experience, that we 'make sense' of experience. Isn't this where the observation of cause and effect actually takes place? Isn't this the domain in which order is sought and connections are made? And where is that domain? Is it 'out there', in the world, or 'in here' in the observing mind? Or both? Or neither? Not claiming to have an answer, but I think it's an interesting question.

-------

*

Constructivism is a philosophical theory about the nature of knowledge and reality. The central idea behind constructivism is that knowledge and reality are constructed by human beings, rather than discovered. According to constructivism, our experiences and interactions with the world shape our understanding of it, and our perceptions and beliefs are constructed as a result of these experiences.

In other words, constructivists argue that there is no such thing as an objective reality that exists independently of our perception and interpretation of it. Instead, they maintain that our understanding of reality is shaped by our experiences and the mental structures we use to process and interpret those experiences. — ChatGPT

One more thing. I know this is a very difficult point to articulate but appreciate the opportunity you have provided for me to try and explain it.

From our necessarily dualistic intelligence we want to account for the fact that humans (and animals) share a common world and the only two possibilities we can think of are a mind-independent actuality or an actuality produced by a collective or universal mind. — Janus

There's an idea in the early Buddhist texts (which I will probably add to the draft I linked to):

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. — Kaccayanagotta Sutta

You can see how this 'polarity' might map against the 'only two possibilities' you posit.

That is why I say that it is 'the idea of the non-existence of the world' that gives rise to the perceived necessity of there being a 'mind-at-large' which is thought to sustain it. It is thought that in the absence of this global mind, the world would not exist if not being perceived. But, says the Buddha, that is to fall into the 'polarity' of supposing that the world either 'truly exists' or 'doesn't exist'. 'When one sees the arising of the world' means, I think, attaining insight into the unconscious process of 'world-making' which the mind is continually engaging in. It is seeing through that process which is the aim of Buddhist philosophy.

(I expect you might find some discussion of this in the book you mentioned on non-dualism by David Loy. On that note, enough out of me for the time being, as I always I write too much. I've unexpectedly gotten a full-time tech-writing role for the next six months and next week I'm diving in the deep end so I have to switch focus for a while. Not that I'll dissappear completely. Thanks for reading.)

Thanks, good feedback, I'll take that on board. But I don't agree it's a matter of taste, although I will agree that it might be due to the limitations of my own understanding. But saying it's a matter of taste is again tantamount to making it a matter of opinion, which it isn't.

(Again, I found the book I read last year before taking a break from the forum, Mind and the Cosmic Order, brought a lot of these ideas into focus. It's worth just browsing the abstracts.)

I think the ratio you apply between knowledge and action is incorrect. — Paine

:up: Thanks, helpful explanation. I might have been making a connection where there wasn't one.

How do you square those two? If the only reality is "constructed by the activities of the intellect", then how can real numbers (which you claim are a part of reality), be "not a product of the mind"?

Either reality (part of which you claim includes numbers), is a product of the mind or it isn't. — Isaac

When materialist theories of mind say that something is a product of the mind, then it is positing an identity or equivalence between brain and mind. That is 'brain-mind identity theory', isn't it? That is a reductive explanation, i.e. it seeks to reduce ideas to a lower-level explanation i.e. the neurobiological.

So I'm attempting to argue for the generally Kantian view that knowledge comprises a synthesis of experience and intellect. Within that context what I'm arguing is that some fundamental ideas (what Kant calls the categories, and also logical and arithmetical primitives) are apprehended or discovered by the mind - that they're not a product of the brain, in terms of being understandable as a configuration of grey matter (i.e. 'discovered not invented'.) They are real on a different level of explanation or abstraction than that which materialism proposes (pretty much as per the last paragraph in the Schopenhauer quote I provided in this post.)

But whatever it is that appears as the empirical world cannot be said to be mind-dependent unless God or some universal or collective mind is posited. — Janus

I agree that it's a delicate philosophical position. I drafted a piece on that on Medium about it, from which:

Consider this. All of the vast amounts of data being nowadays collected about the universe by our incredibly powerful space telescopes and particle colliders is still synthesised and converted into conceptual information by scientists. And that conceptual activity remains conditioned by, and subject to, our sensory and intellectual capabilities — determined by the kinds of sensory beings we are, and shaped by the attitudes and theories we hold. And we’re never outside of that web of conceptual activities — at least, not as long as we’re conscious beings. That is the sense in which the Universe exists ‘in the mind’ — not as a figment of someone’s imagination, but as a combination or synthesis of perception, conception and theory in the human mind (which is more than simply your mind or mine). That synthesis constitutes our experience-of-the-world.

Another example from Western philosophy is provided in an account of Schopenhauer’s philosophy:

“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 [by idealism] than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room [or the reality of Johnson’s rock]. 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” ~ Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, p105.

What we need to grasp is that all we know of existence — whether of the rock, or the pen, or the Universe at large — is a function of our world-making intelligence, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. 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 our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question.

So there is no need to posit a ‘supermind’ to account for it, because there’s nothing to account for. — Mind at Large

I note in the essay that this is in line with the Buddhist view - refer to it for further details.

your opposition derives entirely from the fact that our mathematical models , assuming number is real, have been extremely successful in predicting previously unknown facts about the world. — Isaac

Not 'entirely'. The fact that mathematics can make predictions that can then be confirmed or refuted by experience is mainly an argument against fictionalism or conventionalism. My argument for mathematical platonism more generally is simply that number (etc) is real, but not materially existent. Numbers, and many other 'intelligible objects', are real, in that they are the same for anyone who can grasp them, but they're only able to be grasped by a rational intelligence. So they're independent of your mind or mine, but are only real as objects of the intelligence.

I think the conventional physicalist view is that ideas, as such, are a product of the mind, which in turn is a product of brain, which in turn is a product of evolution, and so on. That is the ontology of mainstream physicalism, as I understand it. Whereas this attitude is that these intelligibles are not a product of the mind, but can only be grasped by a mind. It is close to what is called objective idealism.

For Kant and Hegel, the only reality we know is constructed by the activities of the intellect. Hegel’s idealism differed in that Hegel believed that ideas are social, which is to say that the ideas that we possess individually are shaped by the ideas of the culture of which we're a part. Our minds have been shaped by the thoughts of other people through the language we speak, the traditions and mores of our society, and the cultural and religious institutions of which we are a part. We're embedded in that matrix of language, thought and convention.

Again I'm not saying, and I don't think any mature idealism is saying that the world is 'all in the mind' or that objects per se don't exist. It's just that they don't possess the mind-independent status that physicalism wants to imbue them with. It does not seek to orient itself with respect to experience of objects, in the way that empirical philosophy seeks to do (even if it fully respects empirical philosophy in respect of that vast domain within which it is authoritative).

Without the idea of a collective mind, how to explain the easily deduced fact that we all see the same things in their respective locations? — Janus

Individual minds, that all operate under the same conditions and parse experience in the same way. Mind is ‘collective’ in the sense that we’re all members of the same language group, culture, and so on. Hegel made a lot out of that, didn’t he?

Well, we can agree on that, at least. But if you look at some of the remarks made by the various talking heads in that Smithsonian Institute essay about what they think is wrong with mathematical platonism , the kinds of arguments they cite say something larger about the issue:

Other scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. 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?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

Why not ‘the divinity of Jesus Christ’ indeed? I think this signifies a deep confusion about the nature of transcendentals. And I think that is because empiricism, as a philosophical attitude, has conditioned us to believe that only what is phenomenally existent, only what science can validate, ought to be considered real. So despite the fact that science in general, and physics in particular, has been so utterly reliant on mathematical reasoning for its discoveries, the philosophical framework in which it operates can’t actually accomodate the kind of insight mathematics represents - hence those declamatory statements!. And that has many vast philosophical implications.

As I've often said, I came into this debate not through mathematics, as my school mathematics experience and performance was not very good. It was because I had what I consider a minor epiphany, concerning the reality of intelligible objects. There's a profound issue lurking there, buried beneath the ruins of an abandoned culture. One that used to be our own.

Actually I'll hark back to this discussion a couple of weeks ago which I feel ended on a reasonably harmonious note.

When we speak of Platonism isn't that something from ancient times? — jgill

That is what I would describe as a jaundiced view. Platonism one of the wellsprings of Western culture which I think still maintains both relevance and vitality.

Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value)

:100:

It may be ancient and unsolved, but that doesn't mean it holds the interests of those involved..... Philosophy is concerned with what was said or printed or argued in the past — jgill

Not in my view, obviously, but I won't try and persuade you.

Rather a good series of 10 essays by Marcelo Gleiser on The Big Think about quantum physics and philosophy. Well-informed and level-headed.

https://bigthink.com/people/marcelo-gleiser/

So far it’s quite angry and declamatory. — Jamal

Very much in the shadow of WWII and the Cold War. Walter Benjamin, who was an esteemed member of their circle, had been forced to suicide on pain of being captured by the Wehrmacht, apart from all the other massive destruction that had befallen everything around them. (I have a book called Grand Hotel Abyss which is a kind of collective bio of the Frankfurt School, must get around to reading more of it.)

I was reading what i thought was a great thriller, Kolmynsky Heights, Lionel Davidson. But I found to my intense annoyance about 75% of the way through the story introduces a major plot point which I found just beyond the pale of credibility and I had to abandon it.

Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. — Jamal

I've read quite a bit about that book, but never actually read it, but it struck me as pretty important. It interests me that they make many of the same criticisms of Enlightenment rationalism as do Christian apologists, albeit from a completely different theoretical basis.

My understanding is that the use of the word 'will' can throw us off. Is it not the case that what S means by will is more like energy - a non-metacognitive, blind, instinctive force? — Tom Storm

It is a perennial philosophical reflection that if one looks deeply enough into oneself, one will discover not only one’s own essence, but also the essence of the universe. ...For that reason it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe if one comes into substantial contact with one’s ultimate inner being. — Schopenhauer, SEP

It is rather like what East Asian Buddhism calls 'realising the true nature'. (Many critics have noted the convergences of Schopenhauer and Buddhism in this respect.)

I don't agree with that paraphrase of Schopenhauer's analysis. I think the crucial point about Schopenhauer and Kant (and to some extent the other German idealists) is their grasp of the way in which the mind (or brain) constructs what we naively and instinctively take to be an independently-existing domain. That is why Schopenhauer says in his first sentence that realising this requires 'attaining to wisdom'.

My very high-level paraphrase of Schopenhauer and Kant is that the mind (nous, I think, in the traditional sense) brings together (synthesises) the elements of the understanding with the objects of perception to create a unified whole, which we designate as 'the world', but that we generally overlook or ignore this fact, because 'the mind does not see itself'. So we take for granted the independent reality of the world, while ignoring the role the mind plays in its construction. I think contintental philosophy, generally, is much more aware of this, than current English-speaking philosophy which is tied to scientific naturalism as a normative framework (although the times are a' changin.)

If there is no object without a subject, then the existence of a tree, a table, a chair, etc. etc., requires a perceiving subject, but how does then entail that representations/appearances like a tree, table, chair, etc. also has an inner, subjective side? — KantDane21

I don't know if I agree that this is entailed by Schopenhauer's argument. I haven't read Christopher Janaway's book on Schopenhauer, but I recently completed Bernardo Kastrup's Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics and I do know he was pretty scornful of Janaway's book. But then, I'm also sceptical of what Kastrup and his followers call the 'mind-at-large', which plays a role suspiciously like that of God in Berkeley's philosophy. (I actually joined the Kastrup forum and had this out with them.) But the long and short is, it's not necessary to posit whether objects have an 'inner life'. That amounts to speculative metaphysics. I think this is where the Buddhist analysis has influenced me. I think considerable circumspection is required at this point, a clear awareness of what it is we don't know. That's the sense in which scepticism can counter-balance idealism.

Well, I thought it appropriate to bring Schopenhauer back into the discussion, as that is what it started with. I will also add I thought it an excellent original post and a good question for which I myself didn't have an answer.

And with that…….we’re off to 450-odd pages of persuasions. — Mww

Yes, I was going to add something along those lines.

That what we generally presume to be external to us is not, in fact, external to us, but only exists as an idea in relation to the consciousness which is in us.

How is that not an argument?

t was just about showing that you can't explain philosophy with physics — Wolfgang

I am in complete agreement with your conclusion, but you don't make any kind of argument for it. But I'll leave you to it, others here seem to see something in it.

Regarding 'emergence', I once attended lectures on Hindu philosophy by a lecturer who used to intone as a kind of principle of Vedanta, 'what is latent, becomes patent', referring to the evolution of the multitude of sentient beings who all actually originate in Brahman. I recall a similar passage in the writings of Swami Vivekenanda, saying that the acorn evolves into the oak because the oak is 'involved' into the acorn. However, I also note that in Hindu philosophy, the principle is that 'life comes from life', it doesn't recognise the possibility of a-biogenesis.

To me the key philosophical distinction is that there is an ontological distinction between the living and inorganic domains. There are also ontological distinctions between sentient and non-sentient life-forms. I believe these distinctions were recognised in Aristotelian philosophy, but that they're generally not recognised by physicalism, for obvious reasons.

Integers are outside the naturals... — fdrake

Thanks. My question was about the sense in which a domain, such as the domain of natural numbers, is real, but not phenomenally existent. I notice that nowadays it is commonplace to say of anything considered real that it must be 'out there somewhere' - but even though such a domain is not anywhere, it is nevertheless real. See this passage.

t. It is neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B = consciousness (philosophy). — Wolfgang

Unfortunately for your OP, this is a nonsense expression. It not actually an equation or even a meaningful sentence. The equations which govern the motion of bodies are quite well known, but there is nothing corresponding to that which explains the nature of thought. End of story.

the "clockwork" conception of the universe that first starts with Aquinas — frank

I've never read that the mechanistic model of the Universe started with Aquinas. I had thought it started around the time of Descartes, who firmly believed in it.

There being no lawgiver, the universe must follow its own will. It dances wildly to its own song, and the will of physicists is to learn the tune. — unenlightened

Alfred North Whitehead said that the laws of physics nowadays play the role assigned to the inexorable decrees of fate in Greek drama.

All meaning must lie – we’ve come to assume – somewhere without and never within. — Bernardo Kastrup

And yet

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. — Steven Weinberg

from what I've heard the soul of Buddhism, like that of a cornered government official, is to neither affirm nor deny neither the existence nor the nonexistence of souls. — Agent Smith

'Soul' is very much a term from the lexicon of Greek and Hebrew religions. There's no direct equivalent in Buddhism. Buddhism denies that anything exists 'sui generis' in and of itself, but always as a consequence of causes and conditions. Nevertheless, there is, says the Buddha, an unconditioned, an unmade, an unfabricated - were there not, there would be no escape from the conditioned, the made, the fabricated. But crucially the unconditioned is never subordinated to conceptual classification in Buddhism.

As for 'what will become of me?' the Buddha describes such concerns as self-seeking or self-centred. In a way, you can say the very concern with oneself is what propogates itself through saṃsāra.

These are all extremes which Buddhism attempts to avoid. — Agent Smith

The 'two extreme views' - the first being 'eternalism', i.e. affirms that the world-and-self have a real non-perishing existence. Bear in mind, this was taught in the context of a culture which believed in re-birth, so that the aim of spiritual practice was conceived in terms of 'seeking a propitious re-birth' - that through correct conduct and ritual, one could be re-born in perpetuity, as it were. The opposite view was nihilism i.e. there are no moral consequences for actions in this life beyond death. This is what most modern people believe. Death is seen as a kind of 'global reset'.

Generally speaking, acceptance of the idea of the reality of re-birth or continued existence is the dividing line between traditional and secular western Buddhism. See Facing the Great Divide Bhikkhu Bodhi.

I say: There are toothbrushes! — Banno

Not to mention coffee cups, although if we went on, this would become rather a large list.

Anyway, to hark back to Schopenhauer, as the thread was about him, I will quote verbatim two paragraphs that I regard as key to his magnum opus, namely the first:

§ 1. “The world is my idea:”—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it; and each of these, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea. — WWR

and from page 35

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things,veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemism, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality.

Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it.

Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly; for suddenly the last link is seen to be the starting-point, the chain a circle, and the materialist is like Baron Münchausen who, when swimming in water on horseback, drew the horse into the air with his legs, and himself also by his cue. The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.

Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained. — WWR

(added paragraph breaks)

That filthy slot!

And yet we do understand how things are. — Banno

said Ptolemy

If you understand it, it undercuts idealism. — 180 Proof

It undercuts Berkeley's form of idealism, but Kant still maintains transcendental idealism.

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. (CPR, A369)

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. (A370)

presuming a split between object and subject leads to an irreparable fissure. — Banno

The separateness of subject and object is undeniable. I experience myself as a subject in a domain of objects. You can't wish it out of existence.

the argument invents a thing-in-itself about which nothing can be said, then proceeds to tell us all about it. — Banno

I don't agree. I understand the assertion of the 'thing in itself' as only an observation about the limits of the understanding, i.e. we don't understand how or what things truly are, but are limited to knowing how they appear to be.

If everybody agrees the nature of human intelligence is representational, what would be used to examine the “inner nature” of representations? — Mww

Wouldn't that correspond to the real nature of the knowing subject? If the domain of representations corresponds to 'the phenomenal realm', then the nature of the knowing subject corresponds to 'being in itself' (to coin a phrase. This is the subject of an interesting blog post.)

Nice of you to say so, but I consider myself more 'casual reader' than 'expert' :yikes:

The aspect of this argument that most perplexes me is the suggestion that all objects possess subjectivity - for that is panpsychicm, which to my knowledge is not associated with Schopenhauer (where it can plausibly be with Spinoza and Liebniz). I think the passage quoted by @Jamal really nails it - that the sole real existent is will: 'Besides the will and the representation, there is absolutely nothing known or conceivable for us.' But, as he then mentions, and several others agree, it's hard to see how the argument from the principle of sufficient reason supports this contention.

Exactly right, I completely mangled it. :yikes: