Too much vituperative speech. Shame but there it is.

I agree with the some elements of your post, but you could detach it from Heidegger and it would work just as well.

There's also a distinction that can be made between 'subjectivity' and 'subject-hood'. The latter is a rather awkward neologism, but it's supposed to get at the state of being a subject, rather than the more narrowly-defined 'defined by one's own interests'. The subject in that sense is simply the pre-condition of all experience.

In other words, something similar to the Buddhist idea that we, or our destiny, are just an element of the whole universe, so that separated subjectivities are just our mental creation. This way, there is not me, you, they, but just the whole, with some kind of apparent distinctions not very important. — Angelo Cannata

I don't know if that is 'the Buddhist idea'. The teaching of non-self, anatta, is always given adjectively, as a description of the attributes of phenomenal experience which are anatta, anicca (impermanent) and dukkha. The Buddha however does not deny personal agency, contrary to millenia of misconceptions about this point - see for instance this sutta.

The key point is that 'the subject' is unknowable - not that 'it' exists or doesn't exist - both the idea that self exists, or doesn't exist, are faulty, according to Buddhism, being the so-called 'extreme views' of eternalism and nihilism, respectively.

In Hinduism, which the Buddha differentiated his teaching from, the subject is conceived as ātman which is usually translated as something like 'transcendental ego' or 'self of all beings'. Buddhists don't recognise that idea, except in the sense that all beings have the potential capacity for enlightenment.

Have a look at It Is Not Known but it is the Knower, (pdf) Michel Bitbol. He's a philosopher of science, historian of Schrodinger's writings, and is well versed in Indian philosophy. Might be closer to what you're looking for than Heidegger.

What you seem to be missing is the advancements which Aristotle and Aquinas have made — Metaphysician Undercover

We've discussed that a lot, and no, I haven't missed it. As I just said, which you seem to have missed, I am quite persuaded by platonic realism - by which I also mean Aristotelian's take on it. We discussed this blog post on it a long time ago. I also frequently refer to Maritain's criticism of empiricism.

When I read that reductionism can be "the sum can be explained by its parts" I was a bit confused. That can't be what it really means. Is that just a bad definition? — musicpianoaccordion

No, it’s a fair definition. Reductionism definitely has its uses. It is used to break down complex systems into their simplest components and understand how they work together. It has many uses in all kinds of engineering and scientific disciplines. But when it’s applied to philosophy it is often inappropriate as it is a very engineering or science-based attitude. The way I would put it is that reductionism is the consequence of trying to apply scientific method to philosophical problems. That’s definitely a problem.

Karma is not determinism. It generates tendencies and likely outcomes. There’s lots of mythology about it.

Karma in this sense doesn’t permit the ability to change for the better or for the worse. — Benj96

It should also be pointed out that Buddhism has always accepted the reality of karma - that all volitional consequences have actions - but not that any person, or anything, has a fixed essence or unchanging self. Here’s a primer https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/karma.html

Putnam is yet another gap in my philosophical education, but found a paper with this abstract:

The Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam criticizes philosophers who advocate scientism: the view that science offers the only true and correctdescription of the world. Scientism, for Putnam, undermines the finite and contextual nature of human perception. Putnam is also critical with the plurality of worlds espoused by Nelson Goodman in which different and incompatible ways of seeing things are actually valid. The problem with this idea for Putnam is that it undermines the fact that we interact with the same piece of reality and so there can be an interface despite diversity and incompatibility of description. ...Putnam points out that conceptual relativity or the different ways of seeing the same state of affairs internal to a conceptual scheme steers a middle course between the excess of scientism and relativism. The paper argues that conceptual relativity rejects scientism and relativism while still affirming science and plurality of views.

which seems a good approach and one I would agree with (although I note on page 3 a ref to 'the philosopher Richard Dawkins' :rage: )

As far as Platonism is concerned as I've often said, I find platonic realism persuasive. I've now come around to the point of view that the 'objects' of platonic realism, such as universals and natural numbers, are real and invariant structures of reason. And as 'the world' is actually 'our experience of the world', then these are not simply 'in the mind' as conceptualism argues. They're as real as tools or utensils or anything else we use, but they're not physical.

//have to say, reading that essay, I'm an instant Putnam fan.//

Am I correct in my thinking? — musicpianoaccordion

Have a glance at this article about one of the originators of the idea of holism in philosophy.

1. What do you think about how people use "holistic approach"? Used in the wrong way? — musicpianoaccordion

Not really. Holistic is mostly encountered in the field of medicine, i.e. holistic health practices.

2. Are "reductionism vs holism" really that helpful? — musicpianoaccordion

Reductionism is one of the pernicious tendencies of modern philosophy. It's criticized by its antagonists as 'nothing but-ism' - examples being, humans are nothing but collections of atoms (or cells or molecules or whatever), the mind is nothing but the brain, the universe is nothing but matter.

3. Aristotle issupposed to have said that "The whole is more than the sum of its parts.". Does it make him a supporter of holism and an antireductionist? — musicpianoaccordion

His philosophy was later called hylomorphism, where hyle is matter (literally, 'timber') and morphe is form. The forms of Aristotle are descended from Plato's ideas (eidos), different in some important respects but with an underlying similarity. Generally, Plato and Aristotle were opposed to reductionism

4. For me as a musician — musicpianoaccordion

Music can obviously be very complex but at the same time it expresses simple principles albeit in a highly dynamic and textured way.

Is that what I'm doing if I look at a fMRI of someone looking at a cup? Modelling the model? — Isaac

To have a model of a cup necessarily implies there's a cup. — Isaac

The discussion of 'the real cup' - that, if the perception of the cup is neural activity, then what is the 'real cup'? - is premissed on a misunderstanding. When you turn your attention to the 'nature of consciousness' then it's a qualitatively different type of act to 'turning your attention to the cup'. Why? Because the cup is by definition an object ('cup' being a token for any external object).

But understanding the sense in which the mind constructs reality, as idealism posits, requires a different kind of attention to examination of 'the cup', because that is not an objective process, it's not concerned with objects, but with the actual process of knowing. It requires a kind of stopping (epoché) or 'cessation' which is more characteristic of contemplative than discursive reasoning.

All the machinery of modern science is basically geared towards the object as an external phenomenon - you see this very clearly in the attempts to model consciousness scientifically. (There, you're trying to 'objectify' the process of knowing by understanding the mind or brain as another objective process.) The endeavour of objective understanding has no limits - I was just reading yesterday that it is now thought that there are literally trillions of galaxies, and at the other end of the scale that the Large Hadron Collider is getting started up again (New! Improved!) But understanding the nature of knowing is not necessarily amenable to that extraordinary scientific power that we now have access to.

The cardinal difficulty is that this requires a shift in perspective, or a different mode of understanding.

Common to Schopenhauer on the one hand and Buddhism on the other is the notion that the world of experience is something in the construction of which the observer is actively involved; that it is of its nature permanently shifting and, this being so, evanescent and insubstantial, a world of appearances only. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhaur's Philosophy

You can see that also in Platonist philosophies with their focus on universals or ideas as the sub-structure of judgement; whilst the individual cup is an ephemeral instance, the idea of the cup is a universal, and so not something that can be broken or lost. Furthermore 'the idea of the cup' is neither objective nor subjective, but straddles the object-subject divide.

From Spirituality and Philosophy in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason:

I think we could call “spirituality” the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth. We will call ‘spirituality’ then the set of these researches, practices, and experiences, which may be purifications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking, modifications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for the subject, for the subject’s very being, the price to be paid for access to the truth ~ Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject

The decisive distinguishing feature of Western philosophical spirituality is that it does not regard the truth as something to which the subject has access by right, universally, simply by virtue of the kind of cognitive being that the human subject is. Rather, it views the truth as something to which the subject may accede only through some act of inner self-transformation, some act of attending to the self with a view to determining its present incapacity, thence to transform it into the kind of self that is spiritually qualified to accede to a truth that is by definition not open to the unqualified subject.

That, I claim, is precisely what has been lost in analytic philosophy, although still alive in contintental and perhaps phenomenological philosophy.

He’s really f***ed this time. I know, I know, it’s been said before, but there’s no coming back from this.

Cheer up Tate. At least we have the Internet. :party:

These ways of 'modeling the real world' are inherently misguided because they start with the assumption that what is in the mind represent what is outside the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I blame John Locke. :grimace:

Then you come across Tom Storm's problem of explaining the consistency between us. If there's no intrinsic property which causes us to treat an object a certain way, then why do we so consistently do so? — Isaac

Because we’re all part of the same species/culture/language group etc. - as Janus put it. But you can find many counter-examples. One of those I remember from undergrad years was the anecdote of a African forest tribesman taken to a mountain lookout by anthropologists. There were clear views across a sweeping plain in the distance with herds of animals on them. He knelt down and started reaching in front of him and after some conversation with the translator, it was established he was trying to pick up these animals, as he had no sense of this kind of scale, having always dwelt in thickly forested areas.

If you think about it, there are countless examples of this - different people interpreting the same scenario differently due to their background beliefs. Which is the ‘one right way’?

There is no one “correct” way of carving up a scene. What is important for us may be of no interest in the life of a tiger or a fly, so every species has its own scheme for carving up the world according to its interests. In technical language, we say that every animal has its species-specific segmentation of reality, linked to its world-model. We are hard-wired to believe that our scheme for dividing the world into objects is the real one, because such a belief is necessary for existence. Though our segmentation of reality is partly bound to physical facts, much of it is arbitrary. However, there is one aspect of any segmentation which is non-negotiable: It must be self-consistent. What this means is that regardless of how information is received from the environment—whether visually, by sound or by touch—there can be no conflict: All the items of information must support one another. Also, when the organism undertakes actions, its plan of action must be fully aligned with its scheme of segmentation, so no discrepancy is ever encountered. So long as its segmentation is self-consistent, the animal cannot ever become aware of a difference between its world-model and reality.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 14). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Although here is where I detect a shortcoming in Pinter's argument - which is that h. sapiens, being a rationally-aware sentient being, is able to become reflexively aware of the sense in which existence is a mental construct - as we're doing. In fact, arguably, this is what philosophy comprises. Although in his defense, he doesn't claim his book is philosophy as such.

So there are attributes... — Isaac

Of course. I'm not saying that ‘the world is all in the mind’ - that the physical world is literally in your or my head.

Pinter again:

One of the most important insights of contemporary brain science is that the visual world is a constructed reality. When we look, what we hold in awareness is not an optical array but a mental construct, built from information in the array, which presents us with all that is of value to us in a scene.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 17). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We're not dreaming it up, but the sense in which it exists 'outside of' or 'apart from' that constructed reality is unknown to us. We can't 'compare' the proverbial 'cup' with 'the real cup' because the real cup is just an temporary collection of atoms.

for the second option we're having to invoke a whole load of speculated realms and mechanisms, just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why. — Isaac

Because we're talking philosophy. Despite Banno's best efforts, not crockery.

There is an intuition in philosophy that there is a lack, absence or deficiency in normal perception - the sense that things are not what they seem, or that the reality which most of us take for granted is not the whole story.

You do not put the VR-generated forebrain fantasy back in the cupboard. — Banno

No fantasy involved. And the cupboard is just the same.

The point is, the 'physical cup' exists - but it is not what we see. Our seeing of it is the overlay generated by our fantastically powerful VR-generating forebrain. What is physically real, then, does not exist in a meaningful sense - it only exists when it is seen to exist by an observer.

This actually makes sense out of dualism. The constructive activities of the brain are invisible to science itself, as science only deals in what can be measured and quantified. But the things that we see are generated by the brain on the basis of those bare-bones objects. So the reality we actually inhabit is not what physically exists.

That's why I keep going back to the distinction based on truth, and maintaining that there are unknown truths. — Banno

The assertion that there are 'unknown truths' is obviously only a surmise, because by definition you can never verify that until they're known. It's rather like the barber fallacy or any of those other set fallacies from Russell etc.

It must be understood that nature does not aim to deceive us, but the very opposite: We imagine objects to be in surrounding space because that’s where they’re supposed to be—that’s where we reach out for them. Likewise, we experience visual objects as “holographic” images because that is the most informative and practical way of getting the information about them into our mind. Surely, however, the physical world consists of solid three-dimensional objects, so it seems that we must be seeing them correctly. Again, we are mistaken: The appearance of a three-dimensional object such as a teacup is a product of the visual brain. The “cup in itself”, the real teacup in the unobserved physical world, consists of atoms and charged particles, and “appearance” is not a force of physics.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 81). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

They are indeed “figments” because they exist nowhere except in awareness. As a matter of fact, they exist only as claims made by sentient beings, with no material evidence to back up those claims. Indeed, brain scans reveal electrical activity, but do not display sensations or inner experience.

You see! This is why eliminativism claims that consciousness can't be real. Capiche? Those 'sensations and inner experiences' actually comprise the world of perception - but they can't be detected by scientific instruments.

So the possibilities are that either real existents, including the objects perceived, the environmental conditions and the constitutions of the perceives all work together to determine the forms of perceptions. or else there is a universal or collective mind which determines the perceptions and their commonality. — Janus

Neither. There is an external reality, according to Pinter, but the way (or the sense) in which it exists is incomprehensible to us. It can be modelled scientifically, because scientific measurement only takes into account the measurable attributes. But the modelling of all those measurable attributes still does not comprise an object - it's not an object until it is designated as such by the observer. And you can see how that has an exact parallel in physics - that prior to the act of measurement the object has no real existence other than as a distribution of possibilities. This is why Pinter mentions QBism, which I've already mentioned several times.

The point of Pinter's analysis is that objects do not exist as such outside the gestalts of perceivers. When we look at the world, what we are seeing is the product of the evolved brain which is like a fantastically sophisticated VR display superimposed over a domain that otherwise lacks inherent features or structure.

Sensations, beliefs, imaginings and feelings are often referred to as figments, that is, creations of the mind. A mental image is taken to be something less than real: For one thing, it has no material substance and is impossible to detect except in the mind of the perceiver. It is true that sensations are caused by electrochemical events in a brain, but when experienced by a living mind, sensations are decisively different in kind from electrons in motion. They are indeed “figments” because they exist nowhere except in awareness. As a matter of fact, they exist only as claims made by sentient beings, with no material evidence to back up those claims. Indeed, brain scans reveal electrical activity, but do not display sensations or inner experience.

An animal’s Sensorium is the repository of all its sensations and sensory experience. The Sensorium does not correspond to a specific area of the brain, but is a widely distributed collection of innate sensibilities and capacities. One of the central tasks of the brain is to code all sensory input so it gives rise in the organism to specific impressions and sensations. Everything that comes into the field of our awareness, every shading and nuance of feeling, is coded so as to have its unique, highly specific effect on consciousness.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 52). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

You're only approving that because the subject of the discussion has returned to cups. If we now introduce cupboards, you will feel that all is complete. :-)

To have a model of a cup necessarily implies there's a cup. Otherwise it's a model of what? — Isaac

It should be recalled that here 'the cup' is a token for 'the object of perception'. It is supposed to represent a generic 'thing', anything that can be an object of perception. But we're not really talking about any such things as the proverbial cup. The subject of the discussion is the processes of cognition and comprehension, taking 'the cup' as an example. When you're modelling a specific process of cognition, then it helps to narrow it down to a token item such as the proverbial cup. But that is not strictly the case here; the 'modelling' we're discussing is not of a specific thing but the general process of cognition and comprehension.

So I don't think you have made the case that:

in our shared world, we do have reason to believe those atoms are constituted that way intrinsically. — Isaac

or

. But... they still do genuinely form the shape of a hunter with his bow. — Isaac

These are basically assumptions - but that is the very point at issue! Do constructed artifacts have an intrinstic or inherent nature - or is that imposed on them by their makers, in line with a specific purpose?

(What I find interesting about Pinter's book is his proposal that the 'bare bones' of material or physically-measurable objects don't have any intrinsic identity, but that identity is imposed upon them in the form of gestalts, meaningful wholes, which are the basic primitives of animal and human cognition.)

Ken Gergen mentions some of the affinities he sees between buddhism and his model of relational being. — Joshs

Buddhist Abhidharma and 'mindfulness' was a major influence on The Embodied Mind, and has generally become part of the enactivist/embodied cognition milieu.

This blog post on the Zen Koan 'First there is a Mountain' has some interesting things to say about imputed identity.

Admirable effort and I can see what you're getting at. My response would be to notice that your approach is indeed instrumentalist - that it takes an instrumental view of reason. This is that there is the possibility of faulty cognition, which is able to be corrected through various rational means, so as to arrive a correct perception. But the underlying assumption is realist, specifically that there is a real [X] which exists even if we might have mistaken views about. And that is in keeping with the overall orientation of cognitive science and scientific realism.

But again, this is a different kind of analysis to the philosophical issue of 'the nature of the external world' and the way it might be constituted. That operates on a different level. (And I don't want to come off as some self-described expert in saying that. I don't consider myself expert, but as a self-directed student who is following a thread of insight, which in my view has generally been neglected in much modern philosophy.)

There's a comment on teacups on the book I keep referring to, Pinter's Mind and the Cosmic Order. As I've said, this too is not a philosophy book as such, although it has many philosophical implications. But the point that he makes is that:

Common sense leads us to assume that we see in Gestalts because the world itself is constituted of whole objects and scenes, but this is incorrect. The reason events of the world appear holistic to animals is that animals perceive them in Gestalts. The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 3).

This is in line with his overall thesis that the identity of things is generated by perceptual gestalts in the mind of the observing subject - that the object in itself is not inherently 'a teacup'.

But I'm not saying that Pinter has it right, and you have it wrong. Your analysis is sound on the level at which it is made, but his analysis is from a different perspective.

As a general remark, the awareness that the Universe as it is in itself really is an ineffable mystery, but one that our evolved cognitive systems interpret in a particular way for our own purposes, strikes me as being a salutory and modest philosophical attitude. The alternative seems to be an unwarranted confidence in our taken-for-granted realism. It is closer to what philosophical scepticism really is - more so than scientific realism, in most cases.

All philosophy is about sentences to you. It's just language-games.
— Wayfarer

Pretty much. Unlike life. — Banno

I should've stopped there. :wink:

Would he just admit that he hadn't thought of the ways science has uncovered his noumena? — Banno

You forget that Kant lectured in science, and that his nebular theory (modified by LaPlace) is still part of current science. Bishop Berkeley wrote a treatise on optics. Schopenhauer was intensely interested in science. But I know this a pointless discussion, so I'll desist.

They're not an object of consciousness, but if you're asking, what is the world 'constructed from' then it's an answer. Sure, it's not the kind of explanation that scientific realism will demand.

It can be considered a form of pan-psychism, but it does not assume a notion of psyche as an inner, spiritual substance. — Joshs

Buddhist philosophy denies the existence of substance in the philosophical sense, and also of the transcendental subject (ātman). But it still has an idealist school.

Vijnanavada [says that] that the reality a human being perceives does not exist, any more than do the images called up by a monk in meditation. Only the consciousness that one has of the momentary interconnected events (dharmas) that make up the cosmic flux can be said to exist. Consciousness, however, also clearly discerns in these so-called unreal events consistent patterns of continuity and regularity; in order to explain this order in which only chaos really could prevail, the school developed the tenet of the Ālaya-vijñāna or “storehouse consciousness ¹.” Sense perceptions are ordered as coherent and regular by the store consciousness, of which one is consciously unaware. Sense impressions produce certain configurations (samskaras) in this unconscious that “perfume” later impressions so that they appear consistent and regular. Each being possesses (instantiates) this store consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world, though this world does not exist (in its own right). — Encylopedia Brittanica

-----
1. @Tom Storm - the Ālaya-vijñāna has been compared with Jung's 'collective unconscious'.

When one's mind constructs reality, what is it it constructs it from? — Banno

I've answered numerous times already.

'The external universe, outside the scope of observation by any living being, is the residue after all sensable qualities have been taken away. What remain are only formal entities which have no concrete interpretation. Thus, the universe uncoupled from observation is an abstract system in search of an interpretation. ...The material universe, of course, has an independent existence quite apart from observers. But the important lesson for us is that this external universe is very different from the way we imagine it to be. The mind of living beings projects all manner of sensable features onto material objects, hence we perceive the world with all the properties we have projected onto it—but objectively the unobserved universe is formless and featureless.'

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 85). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition. — Wayfarer

This resembles Kant's distinction between phenomena, what appears to us, and what the universe is in itself.

Moreover, if there is a something, independent of mind, then in what sense does the theory remain a version of idealism? — Banno

Transcendental idealism does not propose that the physical world exists in the individual mind. The analysis takes place on a different level to that - what are the conditions by which the subject knows any object whatever. But you are clinging to a straw-man version of idealism.

Reading an essay on mathematical realism. Discussing 'rigid properties', the author says 'objects exist prior to humans thinking about them, and they have rigid properties. All scientific discoveries fall into this category: planets, say, exist “out there” independently of anyone being able to verify this fact (pace extreme postmodernists and radical skeptics), so when we become capable of verifying their existence and of studying their properties we discover them.'

This takes the perspective of scientific realism for granted, and rather casually at that. He acknowledges those who question it, whom he presumably dismisses as 'radical skeptics and extreme postmodernists'.

But note the assumed inherent - that is, unconditional - reality of such objects of experience - and for these purposes, it makes no difference whether the subject is a remote planet or a pen on the desk in front of you. By imbuing objects with that supposed inherent reality, you're overlooking the grounding of that judgement in your own implicit cognitive system. In one sense - the empirical sense - it is of course true that there is a vast world external to and prior to any act of observation of it, with pens and planets and much else besides. But this overlooks the sense in which the world exists as a panoramic construct in the mind of the observer making that judgement (and again consider the etymology of 'world'.)

Consider the proposition 'X exists'. It might sound like an uncontroversial proposition, until you ask the question 'what is X'? Take Pluto, which was previously classified as a planet but no longer. So the answer to the proposition 'Does the planet named Pluto exist?' used to be positive, but is now negative. I'm only saying that to draw attention to the conditional nature of such statements. They're dependent on definitions, naming conventions, and so on. For the purposes of astronomy and natural sciences generally, it is of no particular importance, but when it comes to the question of the nature of being, then it's a different matter. And the human has a role to play in all such judgements even though from an objective point of view, we're but ephemeral instances on a speck of dust in an infinite cosmos.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. [Physicist] Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two sub-systems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

is how I, as thinking subject, can at the same time be the object I think about. — Mww

The body is an object as far as our personal cognition is concerned. I suppose you could say this dual aspect is represented symbolically by the 'descent' into the realm of matter in Platonist philosophy and religious lore. Coming to think of it, it is where, in dualist philosophies, the rubber really meets the road. :-) See what Schopenhauer has to say about it. Kastrup says something similar. From the 'outside', there's a body and brain; from the 'inside' there's a unified being. Two aspects of the one reality.

I'm just wondering about the evolution of the word, "being". — Harry Hindu

Good! Do that.

What makes something both a subject and object and not just an object? Which came first? — Harry Hindu

Recall Descartes. You may doubt the existence of anything, but not that you are doubting.

I don’t actually regard that last post as speculative. I’m interested in Jung but I think it’s a digression.

The thesis seems to be that reality is fundamentally mental - not only in your mind alone, or my mind alone, but also (and here's the thing) in a transpersonal, spatially extended form of mind. — Tom Storm

I think that is a fair depiction but I never tire of pointing out that whatever this form of mind might be, it's not an object of experience. That is always a major stumbling-block. I think because we are so instinctively oriented towards the objective domain (object oriented?) then the insuperable difficulty is, well what kind of thing are we talking about? As I have said, that is the subject of an essay by the French philosopher of science, Michel Bitbol, with the title 'It is never known but is the knower'. It's also the subject of that essay I often mention, 'the blind spot of science'. I think the challenge is that to grasp it requires a kind of cognitive shift - like a gestalt shift, a different perspective. Instead of being focussed exclusively on objective matters (empiricism) or symbolic logic it requires a kind of self-awareness, an awareness of the structure of thought in oneself. (This is why it is sometimes remarked that Kantian types of philosophies converge with meditative disciplines, indeed I first learned of Kant through a book called Central Philosophy of Buddhism.)

The second point that's becoming gradually clear to me, is the basically Kantian point that causality itself is a relationship in ideas. I think the 'natural attitude' is that there is the real world 'out there', the vast universe, plainly external to us, and objective, and our mind, 'in here', the subjective domain. Whereas, I am starting to see that formal logical structures, like mathematical operations and logical laws, are structures in the experience-of-the-world. They're neither private or subjective, nor external and objective - they transcend or at least straddle the subject-object distinction. So causality is neither in the world, nor in the mind, but in the experience-of-the-world. (This is the meaning of Quantum Baynsienism.)

The book I'm reading at the moment, Pinter's Mind and the Cosmic Order, points out that the world described by quantitative science has no intrinsic features or structure. The mind brings all of those to experience by way of gestalts, structured wholes. Animal cognition operates the same way, but in h. sapiens, due to abstract logic, representation and language, we are able to apply logic to the structure of experiences. So those structures are internal to the mind, but not your mind or my mind - they are how THE mind operates. So numbers, principles, laws, and the like, are uniform structures in experience. They don't exist in the sense that the objects of scientific analysis exist, but on the other hand, you wouldn't have science without them. That's also the sense in which the mind is 'one' - it's not numerically one, there's not a single instance, but it's the same in all sentient beings (individuated as Kastrup's 'dissociated alters'.)

Living beings, and humans in particular, are the window through which meaning enters the Universe. That is why we're called 'beings'.

Yes indeed it is. Actually reading it again - probably should have done that before now - I think the OP advances a weak argument for idealism. I think we’ve covered it well.

Mr Kastrup — Tom Storm

'Doctor', to us. (Actually, he has two doctorates.)

At the risk of taking this thread back on topic, there is an article on SEP directly addressing the titular issue. — Banno

Idealism vs materialism is not actually the same debate as realism vs non-realism. Idealism is not non-realist, but claims that the external material world has no intrinsic or inherent reality outside the experience of it. So it may be opposed to what you think is 'realist' but to declare that it is non-realist actually begs the question, that is, assumes what needs to be proven (that the external material world is inherently real and that the denial of this constitutes non-realism.)

I think the assumed version of realism behind that article is scientific realism.

But I guess it is saying there is no 'material', so there is only ideas or mind. — Tom Storm

Even given a consistent idealist ontology, that the fundamental constituents of knowledge are not objects but ideas and sensations, this doesn't mean that pain is not real, because it is experienced as real, and that experience is apodictic (cannot plausibly denied).

Also note that Berkeley, who is the textbook idealist, does not deny that matter exists, but that it exists apart from or independently of sensations and ideas.

More on 'fear of idealism':

Physicalism—whether it ultimately turns out to be philosophically correct or not — is hypothesized to be partly motivated by the neurotic endeavor to project onto the world attributes that help one avoid confronting unacknowledged aspects of one’s own inner life. — Bernardo Kastrup, The Physicalist Worldview as a Neurotic Ego-Defense Mechanism

Compare Michel Henri 'Barbarism'

Metaphysical realism is the thesis that the objects, properties and relations the world contains, collectively: the structure of the world [Sider 2011], exists independently of our thoughts about it or our perceptions of it. Anti-realists either doubt or deny the existence of the structure the metaphysical realist believes in or else doubt or deny its independence from our conceptions of it. Realists about numbers, for example, hold that numbers exist mind-independently.

Curiously, I favour realism about numbers, in other words, mathematical platonism, even though my other views are closer to what is described as anti-realism in this article.

Actually, I think it should be noted that 'realism' in pre-modern (or medieval) philosophy referred to realism concerning universals, whilst realism today is generally synonymous with scientific realism, that being the commitment to the mind-independent reality of objects of scientific analysis. They're practically opposite in some ways. I don't know if the article talks about that.

It is an interesting source. I will try and take some time to take it in.

The universe has become me (and everything else). — Art48

So, how did that happen? There's nothing in evolutionary biology which accounts for the existence of DNA, as the theory pre-supposes the existence there being something able to sustain heritable changes in order for evolution to occur. There's nothing in the physical sciences which accounts for the nature of mind, other than the assumption that it is something that must have evolved, given that the mythological accounts of religion can't be scientifically valid.

If we understood ourselves correctly—as temporary manifestations of something vast and ancient beyond comprehension—that would be enough. — Art48

I think this impulse or sentiment you're expressing is actually the residuum of the religious accounts. However notice that science generally, and evolutionary science in particular, rejects any ideas of teleology or the notion that evolution evolves 'towards' anything, other than successful reproduction and adaption. As far as science is concerned, while you may feel subjective admiration towards life, it is something very like a chain reaction, chemical scum, in Stephen Hawking's estimation.

It’s absurd. — Art48

Your interpretation is what is absurd. Why do you think, were beings to dwell in some extra-terrestrial psychic dimension such as 'heaven', that time in the human sense would have the same meaning? What if, in those domains, one second is the equivalent of aeons of time on earth? What if, in their understanding, what we regard as existence is merely a phantasmogorical illusion? We have no way of judging that.

The fundamental idea of immortality is to find 'the deathless', something beyond all change and decay. It's not like necessarily being reborn in a fancy condo with your tennis racket and dog, there to live forever, as the popular myth has it. The way it is depicted in religious lore, as it's plainly something outside ordinary comprehension it is presented in images of angels and harps sorrounded by clouds, a concession to the popular imagination. I recall reading somewhere (can't remember where) that in traditional lore, angels were actually sometimes awe inspiring and terrible forces. Nowadays they're cute little cartoon images on birthday cards.

Your post shows little comprehension of the subject at hand. I'm not going to try and persuade you one way or the other but if you're going to post about such a subject, at least try and understand it a little better.

fear of having to face the reality of the spiritual world... — Metaphysician Undercover

That's why I keep a copy of Thomas Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, on my profile page. It really is worth reading. (Nagel is a professed atheist.)

The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life. — Thomas Nagel

Maybe but at least it explains the reference.

I don't understand what this is saying at all. — Michael

See this

I just don't understand your issue of reification of the subject when you are the one that has defined a subject as an object, or a thing. — Harry Hindu

I never said that. Plainly from the perspective of a subject, myself, other beings appear in some sense as objects, but we do not regard other beings as objects, which is why we refer to them with personal pronouns rather than as ‘it’ or ‘thing’. (For that matter, reflect on why humans and some of the higher animals are called ‘beings’.) Philosophy has long been aware of the paradox that we ourselves are subjects of experience, but are also objects in the eyes of other subjects.

The basic principle is found in Indian philosophy, in the Upaniṣads, where it is stated that ‘the hand cannot grasp itself, the eye cannot see itself ’ ( Source). It’s also been articulated in phenomenology. Here’s a reading on it.

Most forms of idealism do not deny the reality of matter, they simply affirm that matter is logically dependent on mind. This is the real issue of modern metaphysics. The laity tend to place matter as first, assuming that mind evolved through some form of emergence. But this illogical position renders the entire universe as unintelligible (cosmological argument being the ultimate demonstration), so the higher educated tend to adopt some form of idealism. You'll see idealism as the most common perspective of physicists, placing the wave function (ideal) as prior to the material object (particle). — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree. I don’t know if it’s the most common, but it’s certainly strongly represented amongst them.

The question never seems to occur to the poor. I guess they’re too busy to worry about it.

But I suppose a less flippant answer might reference Karl Durkheim’s ‘anomie’ - the sense of drift, meaninglessness and absence of purpose that he posits is characteristic of modern cultures on a large scale. It’s almost like we evolved through thousands of generations of incredibly difficult lives to the point where we’ve forgotten why. Perhaps if we had recall of how hard life was for all of those tens of thousands of years we’d be less inclined to take the life we now have for granted.

‘Oh, the same one that gives you a Command-Z in real life.’