Personally, I wouldn’t compare K with S. As already noted, K argues that mind-at-large is similar to Schopenhauer’s Will. But his view is still evolving, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually ends up adopting some form of theism. But I could be wrong there. — Tom Storm

Kastrup says that he is a naturalist and that mind-at-large just is nature. Soinoza says God just is nature―that is the extent of the comparison I was making.

My understanding is as follows: In non-theistic idealism, objects like tables aren’t things that exist outside consciousness, but stable patterns through which consciousness organises itself. — Tom Storm

If we have totally separate consciousnesses then how do the stable patterns through which your consciousness organizes itself accord precisely enough with the stable patterns in my consciousness to explain a shared world wherein we will agree on what is in front of us down to the minutest details?

I'm not taking sides but, is this not solved by us being the same species? As in, when we use medical trials on a few patients, we assume they'll work on all of them- with caveats.

Do these questions arise about dogs? — Manuel

I'm not denying that human bodies have similar enough physical constitutions to enable generalizations form medical trials, and for that matter, general medical procedures which work on most everyone. But I don't see what that relevance that has to the point at issue, because I've been saying that only mind-independent physical existents or shared mind can explain the obvious fact that we share a world. Well, I mean I can't think of, and nor has anyone else to my knowledge presented, any other plausible explanation, but I'm open to hearing something different.

Not sure what your question about dogs is driving at.

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Interesting. I’m not sure I understand how you can have a materialist epistemology but a non-materialist ontology. Can you give me an example of how that might work? — T Clark

Science can only deal with what our senses reveal...with what is measurable and quantifiable. There are other less 'hard' areas of enquiry such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, ethology that require thinking in terms of purpose and reasons rather than or as well as mechanical causal models. So I think it depends on what you mean by "epistemology".

A scientist doesn't even need to think of what is being investigated as physical. They can simply "shut up and calculate" or they could think everything is ultimately mind and still do science perfectly as adequately as they do thinking everything is physical.

I'm very familiar with Buddhist philosophy―I took units in it at Uni and have been interested in Buddhist and Vedantic ideas since the age of 16. Ultimately I didn't find Buddhism philosophically satisfactory. I'm not saying there are not good insights and ethical teachings within Buddhism but it is not really a coherent philosophy or metaphysics at all but rather a soteriology. It is faith, not intellect, based.

Metaphysics, on the other hand, is about explaining as comprehensively as possible what is experienced. You have offered no account of how an explanation for a shared world can do without either mind-independent existents or the connection of what appear to be separate minds. "Similar constitution" has not explanatory power in that regard.

That said in Buddhist philosophy there is the idea of a "storehouse consciousness" (alaya-vijnana) that (given that that Karma is accepted as real) could be used to explain the fact that we share a world with sentient others, both human and animal (and perhaps plants and fungi).

To overstate the case, in order to do physics you have to be a materialist. So...Yes, that does make it an absolute presupposition. — T Clark

I can't see why one would need to be a metaphysical materialist in order to do science. Scince can only deal with what is given by the senses―that is its methodology.

The question that jumps out at me is: are the mathematical laws themselves physical, and, if so, how? I don’t expect an answer to that, as there isn’t one, so far as I know. But it makes a point about an inherent contradiction in physicalism. — Wayfarer

I'm not arguing for physicalism but against the idea that it is inherently contradictory. It can be argued that what we think of as laws are simply the ways physical things behave on the macro level based on what is ultimately stochastic at the micro-physical level. That may not constitute a comprehensive or even satisfactory explanation, but it contains no logical contradiction.

The laws may not be timeless principles but evolved habits as Peirce thought.
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I've also heard it argued that objects persist in idealism (not because a mind is always perceiving them) but because experience unfolds according to stable, law-like patterns — Tom Storm

It's not the idea like Berkeley's that God is always perceiving everything, and that God's perception or thought holds everything in stable existence. Kastrup's idea is that everything is constituted by consciousness that the "stable, law-like patterns" just are the underlying mental nature of things. Kastrup uses the word 'consciousness', but I don't think he believes that the universal consciousness is conscious of anything apart from what all the percipients (the dissociated alters) are conscious of. For him it has no plan, but evolves along with everything―it just is nature in the sense that Spinoza's God is nature.

To say the table is still there when no one is looking means that whenever someone does look again, experience will reliably present the same table in the same place, behaving the same way. — Tom Storm

That doesn't explain why everyone will see the table there for the first time.

I’m claiming that any account of what exists has to start from the fact that the world is first given as a shared
field of perception, not as a metaphysical posit. — Wayfarer

Of course―nothing could be more obvious―that is precisely what is to be explained. You haven't offered any explanation as to how idealism can coherently do without something like Berkeley's God or Kastrup's "mind-at-large".

Good question. Isn't the idea that the “world” we perceive is not independent matter imposing itself on us, but a manifestation of mind, or a universal rational structure, so the consistency of perception across subjects reflects the inherent order of this mind? — Tom Storm

Yes, if they are manifestations of a universal mind. But that seems to be the point that Wayfarer is denying. In fact he has written on here that it is the very point he disagrees with Kastrup about, and yet hat is the very posit, as also with the role of God in Berkeley's idealism that has explanatory power.

But it can, though. We live in a shared world, because we have highly convergent minds, sensory systems, and languages. So we will converge on similar understandings of what is real, due to those shared elements. I mean, genetically, we're all identical, up until the top-most layer of differentiation. — Wayfarer

The fact that our sense organs and brains are similarly constituted can explain how it is that we see things in similar ways, but it cannot explain just what we see. The content of perception, that is what is perceivable which animals also perceive in their different ways, is contributed by the world, whether that world is physical or mental.

If it's physical then the mind-independent physical existents explain how it is that we and the animals see the same things. If the world is mental then the human independent mind that constitutes the things we perceive explains it. If mind is fundamental then all our minds must be connected (below the level of consciousness, obviously) via that universal mind.

We've been over all this many times and you have never been able to explain how just the fact of our minds being similar, but not connected, could explain a shared world.

There is only consciousness; he generally says matter is the extrinsic appearance of mental processes. — Tom Storm

As such matter is real and human mind-independent, as it "mind-at-large". As I read Kastrup, he understands matter to be the "visible" or tangible aspect of mind. It's not as if mind could exist without matter, any more than matter could exist without mind, for Kastrup. It's just mind is the "thing-in-itself" whereas matter is its appearances. I read "appearances" to signify any relation or interaction at all, not just appearances for humans or even animals.

He argues that there is no matter, only mentation. — Tom Storm

I don't think that is what he argues. He argues that matter is what appearances look like to mind. It is the tangible aspect of mind, so to speak, not a separate substance. As I've said on these forums many times an idealism that does not posit universal mind in some form is incoherent and cannot explain what is clear to us from everyday experience―that we live in a shared world.

Kastrup posits universal mind, which then makes it coherent to say that matter exists independently of the human mind and is naturally intelligible and that human consciousness is not central or necessary to existence. It also follows from this that real objects and beings of all kinds can have existed prior to the advent of human consciousness and that we can coherently talk about that existence as being human mind-independent.

Kastrup's philosophy is pretty much Schopenhauer reheated.

@180 Proof

I’m going to say something controversial, another conclusion to the one in bold is that they didn’t co-arise, but that consciousness was introduced, to a pre-existing world. It makes more sense to me than the idea that consciousness was always present, even in the Big Bang. — Punshhh

Yes, we just don't know. It begs the question as to whether the laws of nature were present from the start or whether they are, as Peirce suggested, evolutionarily acquired habits. If the laws, even if only as potentia, came into being with being then they cannot be separated from it and that would suggests the presence of a kind of instinctive intelligence inseparable from being.

What I’m saying is that there is a way of stepping out of this dualistic thought process. To develop a sense of things which can become like an alternative approach, or perspective on an issue. Over time, it becomes like a reference system, but not dualistically based, but intuitive/feeling based. — Punshhh

I agree with that and I think we are always already not in that dualistic mode most of the time; we just may not have learnt how to attend to that intuitive mode, because the analytic dualistic mind demands a kind of spolighted precision which doesn't belong to that intuitive mode, and confusion and aporia follow.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

Our human models of our world express constructed ecosystems of interactions. Each modification in our scientific knowledge constitutes a change in that built ecosystem. The point is there is no one correct map, model or scheme of rationality that mirrors the way the world is. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world. It is an activity that continually modifies the nature of the world in ways that
are meaningful and recognizable to us. There is no intelligibility without a pragmatic refreshing of the sense of meaning of what is intelligible. — Joshs

If the order of the world is infinite and our models finite then there would be infinitely many ways to model its order truthfully, but also infinitely many ways to model it erroneously.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

This is like saying, how could there be consciousness when we live in a temporal world? — L'éléphant

I don't think that is a good analogy. Anyway why change the subject? We were discussing universal moral principles, principles which don't depend on the human, but are laws given from above, I thought.

The universal moral truth, if you agree that there is such a thing, is independent of what we value or do not value. — L'éléphant

Again I say that the only idea of a universal moral truth that I think is coherent would be what most everybody holds to be true, and that it would be true only on account of its being held by most people. This is not an appeal to populism, but to what mentally healthy people instinctively feel is right. So its a truth about the general moral feelings of humanity, not a truth that could be independent of humanity.

It seems most reasonable to me to think that animals of any kind might be considered to be conscious, however minimally. Plants and fungi I don't know. It does depend on what you take 'consciousness' to refer to.

I follow Whitehead in thinking that everything experiences processes and relations with other things, but I don't think it is necessarily conscious experience. I think about 99% of what we humans experience is not conscious experience.

So, I think there is a sense in which everything feels the affects of being acted upon―Whitehead, I seem to recall, refers to this as "pan-experientialism". The other point is that I think everything has a kind of immanent intelligence. I see consciousness, experience and intelligence as three different things that may or may not be connected or operating together depending on what phenomena we are considering.

My guess is that existence, and any related ideas we might explore, are inseparable from consciousness. — Tom Storm

Okay, I don't agree because although 'existence' is an idea, I don't think existence is an idea.

The next question you might ask is, 'Did the earth exist before humans? Did dinosaurs?' My tentative answer is both yes and no. — Tom Storm

If the terms 'Earth ' and 'dinosaur' were understood to most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences then in that sense I agree. However I don't agree that those terms do most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences. They don't refer to appearances but rather to what appears.

Maybe that's what you mean by "yes and no". I don't know.

Anyway, there wouldn't seem to be much point arguing about it, so I'll leave you to it.

But it’s also worth noting that if one tries to conceive of “the world” — a rock, a tree, anything at all — as existing in the total absence of mental processes, one quickly runs into an insoluble conundrum. — Wayfarer


There seems to be nothing without perception and experience; the possibility of meaning depends on it, I would have thought. — Tom Storm

So, do you think as Wayfarer does that it is not merely the possibility of meaning that depends on consciousness, but the possibility even of existence?

Would Kastrup not be operating within a distinction between perceiver and perceived, saying that consciousness is the medium and that the perceivers are conscious while the contents of consciousness, i.e., what is what is perceived, are not themselves conscious?

Since you seem to be incapable of cogent discussion in good faith, I'll leave you to wallow in your confusion.

The point is why bother saying that the mind is immaterial? If the mind is a process of the brain, then it is no more immaterial than digestion. Neither are objects of the senses, and if you are using 'immaterial' merely to indicate that, then sure.

All our thinking is dualistic anyway. As soon as you start talking about all experiences of things being the experiences of a subject, you have already entered Cartesian territory, at least in terms of modes, or distinctions if not substances.

Heidegger criticized Husserl, claiming he never freed himself from Cartesian thinking. If you start trying to pin this idea of different kinds of being (as opposed to different kinds of beings of course) down, you will inevitably end in paradox.

Even saying that we do not see reality as it is in itself is a product of dualistic thinking and cements the dualism even further.

It’s like the goldfish in the goldfish bowl. Wayfarer is saying the goldfish doesn’t realise there’s water there, it can’t see the water and takes it for granted. While you are saying, I know the water is there, but it’s no big deal. But then he says, but without the water you’d be lying on the bottom of the bowl and you say I know I’m suspended in water and it’s primary to me being suspended, but again it’s no big deal. — Punshhh

Perhaps it's like that. The irony is that I see Wayfarer's thinking as dualistic, whereas he claims that I am coming from a Cartesian standpoint, whereas, while I acknowledge that any discursive thinking is going to be inherently dualistic as that is just the nature of our language when it is doing analysis, I'm saying I see no point in claiming the mind is immaterial, even though we obviously have that conceptual distinction between material and immaterial. Every concept automatically invokes and evokes its opposite.

On the contrary, you’re already imagining yourself able to make the distinction between the world as it appears, and how it truly is. — Wayfarer

No, I don't need to imagine myself making a distinction, I simply make the obvious conceptual distinction between the world as it appears and as it is in itself, and that doesn't rely on knowing what or how it is in itself, but only on the fact that I can think it is something in itself. It doesn't even matter that it might not be anything in itself―I grant that possibility, even though I think it implausible. That distinction might not be possible for you because you don't understand it or it makes no sense to you personally―I don't know about that.

Not at all. I put that forward as to why you made the demand to ‘reveal my agenda’ and the insistence that ‘I must believe in an afterlife’ - when none of that is the least relevant to anything that I’ve said in this thread. — Wayfarer

No, the reason I asked is because I believe you do believe in an afterlife because I doubt you have changed your mind since you took Buddhist vows and because you were in discussions always against Bachelor's "Buddhism without beliefs", and I surmise that the reason you are so obsessed with debunking materialism is that you think that if it were true it would discount the possibility of an afterlife. That said, I admit an afterlife is not directly relevant or necessary to what you've been arguing (or more accurately, stipulating) and I'm also not suggesting there is anything wrong with believing in an afterlife by the way. I tend not to believe, but I'm on the fence myself since I believe we all know so little really.

The basic contention of phenomenology and also of transcendental idealism, is that the concept of ‘the world before humans existed’ is still a concept. — Wayfarer

But again this is a mere truism and/ or a conflation―of course a concept of "the world before humans existed" is a concept. However the world before humans existed is (or was, if you like) not a concept. This is so self-evident I cannot understand why you apparently fail to grasp this.

Accordingly, we are not really seeing the world as it is (or would be) without any consciousness of it. Put another way, we are not seeing it as it is (or was) in itself, but as it appears to us. That does not make it an illusion, but it qualifies the sense in which it can be considered real. — Wayfarer

As you should know, I don't deny that we see and understand the world only as it appears to us, and that this is not, by any stretch, the whole of the world. We can never know the world in its entirety. There are also countless other creatures that presumably see and understand the world more or less differently than we do. And it seems obvious that the totality of that animal experience does not even come close to exhausting the nature of the world.

As you also should know, I favour a process metaphysics, so I see the world as fundamentally relational, but I don't see relationailty as confined to us or even to animals, or plants or even cells or molecules. On the other hand the world as it appears to us is as much a part of the world as any other of its relations or processes. As such it is not an illusion―the world (of which we are an integral part) reveals itself to us truly. That said, dualistic thinking can move us away from that primary participatory knowing.

You say that the fact that we don't see the world as it is unperceived qualifies the sense in which the perceived world can be considered real. I think that unless you mean that the perceived world cannot be considered to be the whole of reality, then what you say is a kind of nonsense. Our experience of the perceived world tells us that our perceptions are not the world, but on the other hand all we can directly know is the perceived world. Regarding how the unperceiveable aspects of the world might be, we can only surmise based on our perceptual experience, so it can never be perceptually real for us, even though we know it must be real in itself.

This is why I said that this question originates from the sense we all have (not unique to Janus), of the ‘real physical world described by science’, on the one hand, and the ‘mental picture of the world’, private and subjective, on the other. That is like a ‘master construct’, if you like, and very much a consequence of the Cartesian division between matter and mind. It is part of our ‘cultural grammar’, the subject-object division that lies at a deep level of our own self-understanding.

So I’m saying that the question comes out of ‘cultural conditioning’, and this is what happens when this is challenged. — Wayfarer

It is not only the real physical world as described by science but the real physical world as revealed by perceptual experience and our feelings of embodiment (our bodies obviously being part of that world). I don't think in terms of "mental pictures of the world" at all, although I acknowledge that we work with models of the world whenever we think discursively (i.e. dualistically) but that is not what our primary experience of the world is at all―that is it is not an experience of "mental pictures".

Your saying it is a "master construct" is just another just-so story for me. Humans are diverse, and the ideas of each should be addressed on their own terms, not shoe-horned into some psychologistic narrative about "cultural conditioning" or dismissed by categorization. The "subject-object" division is just another distinction made possible by dialectical, discursive thought or logic, if you like.

Your last sentence, for me, seeks to dismiss any disagreement with your ideas as being merely a product of cultural conditioning. If you want to challenge or refute what others say, you should, in my view, have enough good faith to believe they are just as capable of thinking for themselves as you think you are, and then if you disagree address their arguments in their own terms by cogent counterarguments, or if you cannot find such counterarguments, then admit as much.

I disagree―I think discussion benefits from bringing unacknowledged assumptions and premises to light.

I think you're projecting bert. No doubt everyone has a purpose here, even if it is only entertainment, or an interest in exploring ideas in order to decide which ones seem the more plausible or a desire to find out what is true or whatever. I don't believe everyone here is motivated primarily by confirmation bias. I also don't believe everyone here or even many of us, could be reasonably classed as mentally ill. You say we don't need to talk about these things, but ironically it is you doing the talking about them.

Both Husserl and Heidegger make a radical claim that is hard for most to swallow: Husserl argues that transcendental consciousness does not emerge at some point in the empirical history of the world along with living things. It doesnt precede the world either. Rather, it is co-determinative of history. Heidegger makes a similar argument about Being. One doesn’t have to accept their claims about consciousness or Being in order to embrace their rethinking of the basis of empirical science, causality and objectivity away from physicalism. — Joshs

What do they mean by "history" though? History as constructed and understood by humans or history meaning the actual unfolding of events going right back to the Big Bang (assuming provisionally that the current cosmological accounts are accurate)?

This lays the issue out well. I would add one thing--there is no incoherence or inconsistency in thinking that the physical world did not exist prior to the advent of consciousness. That is the essence of the Taoist way of thinking as I understand it. There is no reason both those ways of thinking may not be useful depending on the context. — T Clark

I think that's true if you mean by 'incoherence' and 'inconsistency', "logical incoherence and inconsistency". In other words it is a logical possibility that the physical world did not exist prior to the advent of consciousness. On the other hand the idea that the world did not exist piroir to consciousness does not cohere with, and is inconsistent in relation to, all of our science. And I think that alone should give us pause. I think it should be taken into account that Taoist thought is of a time prior to any understanding of the world that we could class as scientific. That said, does Taoism explicitly declare that the world did not exist prior to consciousness?

Anyway even if it does explicitly say that I don't think that should detract from its poetical and spiritual import.

You believe there is an afterlife, right? Why not be honest about what you believe and what your actual agenda is? — Janus


And you say I'm putting words in your mouth :rofl: — Wayfarer

If you read it with enough care you would have seen it was a question, not a statement. A question you refuse to answer for what would seem to be obvious reasons.

I think you did a great job of articulating the divide between your approach to consciousness and the distinctions Janus is relying on. Before one can decide which position is preferable, yours or his, it is necessary to be able to effectively summarize each position from within its own logic. You have done a reasonable job of representing the Cartesian position as pitting external, objectively causal stuff against inner subjective feeling. Janus, by contrast, is imposing that same logic onto his representation of your position rather than capturing how the logic differs. — Joshs

What distinctions do you think I'm relying on? You seem to be suggesting that you agree with Wayfarer that my position is some kind of Cartesian dualism. If so, you are mistaken. I do see language itself, as opposed to the world, as inherently dualistic. My main point was that there is no incoherence or inconsistency in thinking that the physical world existed prior to the advent of consciousness. Science informs us that it did. The fact that such judgement is only possible where there is consciousness (and language for that matter) I see as a mere truism. What do you think?

Right, instead of answering the question you instead talk about me and where you (erroneously) think I'm coming from.
More politics than philosophy.

We live in a material world, and all our propositional knowledge is material knowledge. All our feelings are bodily feelings. All our coherent thoughts are thoughts about things we have, as embied material beings, experienced. What is the point of saying that consciousness is not material, if not to say it is immaterial..to say that it is something beyond the material world?

Do you think consciousness is mortal, confined to mortal beings, or is it something beyond this temporal world? You believe there is an afterlife, right? Why not be honest about what you believe and what your actual agenda is?

Material conditions are anything that we can detect via the senses. Science tells us there were material conditions prior to humans.

And, as predicted you didn't answer the question I posed re whether you believe that immaterial or disembodied consciousness is possible.

Yes, but I also said that they can be said to arise together, but that all the evidence points to the existence of material conditions prior to there being consciousness in any form that we could understand or know about.

That's likely true, but that's different from the existential claim: — bert1

Okay, but if we know of no consciousness which is not accompanied by material conditions, it follows that we cannot really have a grasp of the possibility, even though we can of course say it is logically not impossible. So, the question becomes 'What significance could such a vague possibility have".

What evidence are you thinking of? — bert1

Cosmological, paleontological.

Do you mean the presence and not-presence of consciousness is determined by material conditions (a very strong claim), or that the type or content of consciousness is determined by material conditions (a different weaker claim). I think you probably mean the former. — bert1

We know of no consciousness which is not accompanied by material conditions. It is arguable, in fact it seems unarguably true, that the type or content of consciousness is determined by the material conditions it is conscious of. So, both are indicated.

Nothing in the OP, or anything I've said about it, suggests an 'immaterial consciousness', although the fact that it will always be so construed by yourself and Janus is philosophically signficant. — Wayfarer

The OP says that consciousness is primary against, presumably, the idea that the material is primary. If consciousness is not, according to you, material, or at least a function of, or dependent on, the material, then the implication would be that it is immaterial, and that disembodied consciousness is possible.

Be honest now and say whether you believe disembodied consciousness is possible. I'm betting you won't answer that question.

The working definition of 'universal', as I am using it, is that it is objective and timeless and its weight is measured as true or false. — L'éléphant

How could there be any such thing in a temporal world? In relation to moral thought the only universality I can imagine would be that most people cross-culturally hold certain things to be good and others evil.

Most people naturally think it is good to be good to "one's own" (as do other social animals). The difficulty, given the natural incapacity to instinctively or viscerally care for more than some rather small number of people, is to induce people to expand their instinctive circle of care into a greater circle of intellectual care. And that is arguably what humanity needs if it is to survive.

That said, I have explained that moral relativists -- which is what you're describing -- cannot then make a claim (someone else mentioned this Esse Quam Videri) or a judgment (which, in philosophy is actually a proposition or assertion) that "there is no universal moral truth, only disapproval of despicable acts by most people across cultures" because this claim is an assertion, thereby contradicting their own principle. — L'éléphant

I am not describing moral relativism, because I think there is good empirical evidence that people generally, and cross-culturally, vale and dis-value the same things in regard to the significant moral issues like murder, rape and so on.

And I'm not saying there is no universal moral truth, I am deflating the notion of universal moral truth to a more human and less rigid scale. I am making an empirical claim for more or less universal facts concerning what humans everywhere value and dis-value.

The "foundation" is not some god-given principle, but the generality of human moral feeling. I'm assuming that moral feeling generally is dependent on the ability to empathize. It will not be completely universal because it should be taken into account that some people are congenitally deficient in the ability to empathize, and others are unable to empathize or regulate their behaviors due to psychological trauma.

These conditions are not the norm, though, and would make it harder for one to possess a moral compass. It's hard know just what the percentage of the population such empathy-lacking people comprise, but it seems clear that it is not a healthy condition, and I see no reason why we should not think in terms of health since we do that with the body.

Predatory people in society are analogous to cancers in the body.

Indeed it does, but outside that imaginative act what remains?

The point of Bitbol's line of criticism, is that both the subject and the objects of scientific analysis are reduced to abstractions in day-to-day thought. But these abstractions are then imbued with an ostensibly fundamental reality - the subject 'bracketed out' of the proceedings, the objective domain taken to be truly existent. But it should be acknowledged, the 'co-arising' of the subjective and objective is very much part of the phenomenological perspective. — Wayfarer

What remains outside of our imaginative acts is whatever there is or was prior to our acting imaginatively.

It can be said that all "day-to-day thought" consists in abstractions―at least that part of it which is linguistically mediated thought. However, our thoughts are not whatever it is we are thinking about, so the things we think about exist prior to our thinking about them, otherwise we would have nothing to think about. It seems to be true that their existence for us is relational―the forms they take in our perceptions are of course in part a functions of our perceptual systems. It doesn't follow that they have no existence apart from that.

“What does it mean to assert existence independently of the conditions under which existence is ascribed at all?” — Wayfarer

That question makes no sense as far as I can tell unless you mean what does it mean to us? If so, I'd say that it means we are being able to think outside of the narrow perspective of our own experience and allow that there is more to the world than just that. It is a kind of humility and a rejection of anthropocentrism.

It means 'the map(maker) =/= territory' (i.e. epistemically ascribing has (a) referent(s) ontologically in excess of – anterior-posterior to – the subject ascribing, or episteme). — 180 Proof

Exactly, we are not the world―the world is more than merely human.

Right, consciousness is determined by material conditions, and without material conditions there would be nothing to be conscious of. On the other hand without consciousness there would be no one to be aware of material conditions. So, a conclusion might be that neither is primary, and that they co-arise. On the other hand we can certainly imagine that material conditions were present prior to the advent of consciousness or least prior to consciousness as we understand it. All our scientific evidence points to that conclusion.

The one thing that is always missed in discussions like this is that while the foundationalist view claims that there are universal moral truth, anyone who argued against foundationalism is also making -- though maybe not intentionally and without awareness -- a 'universal' claim, mainly that there is no universal truth and morality is based on cultural differences.. — L'éléphant

It doesn't have to be a universal claim, but merely an observation that no one has been able to present a universal truth, such that the unbiased would be rationally compelled to accept it. The closest we can get, in my view is the empirical observation that things like murder, rape, theft, devious deception and exploitation are despised by most people across cultures. The only caveat being that those things may be not universally disapproved of if they are done to the "enemy" or even anyone who is seen as "other".

So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim? — L'éléphant

So, I think that any foundation which is not simply based on the idea that to harm others is bad and to help others is good, per se, is doomed to relativism, since those dispositions are in rational pragmatic alignment with social needs and they also align with common feeling, and also simply because people don't universally, or even generally, accept any other foundation such as God as lawgiver, or Karmic penalties for moral transgressions or whatever else you can think of.

Right, hence my meaning in saying to know of having it is superfluous. In response to your to have it and know you have it are two different things. — Mww

I can have an itch and scratch it without having being consciously aware of having done so. Or I can have an itch and consciously notice it, and then decide whether to scratch it or not.

Both of those experiences are possible without any self-reflective conceptualization such as "I have an itch".

This seems to stating that awareness is knowledge. Depending on what "awareness" means here would, I think, determine whether the critique applies. — Esse Quam Videri

Awareness can be counted as a kind of knowledge―knowledge by acquaintance or participation, but it is not, on it's own "knowledge that", or propositional knowledge.

Per the example of having an itch above―if I am not consciously aware of having an itch, yet I scratch it then it could be said that my body knew of the itch, even though my mind was not conscious of it.

If I am consciously aware of the itch, it would not seem that the conscious awareness must be of the self-reflective kind.

I think (J will correct me if I'm wrong) one of the motivations for this post was a discussion whether 'reality' and 'existence' and be differentiated, citing C S Peirce, who makes that distinction. Whereas in common discourse, they are naturally regarded as synonyms - that what is real is what exists and vice versa. — Wayfarer

Right, we can certainly specify a sense or senses in which reality and existence may be distinguished, and other senses in which they are synonymous.

They certainly feel different. "Reality" feels more objective, concrete, philosophical, external. "Existence" feels more abstract, subjective, personal, internal. The Tao Te Ching uses "existence" and "being" as more or less interchangeable depending on the verse and translator. This is the kind of thing I meant when I talked about connotation. — T Clark

:up: That all makes sense to me.

What about connotation? Two different words might be accurately, called synonyms, but still have a different mood, tone, or implication associated with them. — T Clark

I hadn't thought about connotation. Would that be a matter of meaning, or association of meaning? I'll have to think on that.

I'm trying to think of two synonymous words that have different moods, tones or implications associated with them. What about 'reality' and 'existence'? They would seem to be synonymous in some contexts but not in others.

What came to mind immediately for me were 'real' and 'to exist', as opposed to 'real' and 'fake'. Language appears to be a complex web of meanings and associations, which would seem to put paid to attempts to establish meaning in terms of 'essence'.

One of the things that comes to my mind is a discussion I read years ago about 'thick terms' in philosophy. Most of those are those terms with great depth of meaning, such as the examples you provide - goodness, existence, reality, consciousness, mind, and so on. — Wayfarer

What do you think "thickness" or "depth" of meaning are, if not either polysemy or ambiguity? That said, are polysemy and ambiguity not related? I think we we have polysemy when the word is and/or has been used in multiple different contexts, and we have ambiguity when the relevant context of usage is not specified. And then we have inherent vagueness, which I think obtains when it is imagined that there is an absolute, context free sense of a term.

One of the problems for me is that each side in this discourse seems to think the other is sociopathic. Today’s discourse is polarized and antagonistic. I’d like to see more civil conversations between people with different worldviews. I’m reluctant to call individuals sociopathic. — Tom Storm

It's not that I'd say the individuals are necessarily sociopaths, but that their attitude of "let them sink or swim" is sociopathic. I don't believe this attitude is good for the individuals in need or for society as a whole (or even for the individuals holding such attitudes). In my view such attitudes and the policies that reflect them contribute to social ill-being in more ways than just their impact on the individuals in need, and in that sense I would class such attitudes and policies as sociopathic.

They are often steeped in Greek philosophy and hold the familiar Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia as the goal or telos of a good life. Yet they are also right-wing, Liberal voters who are happy to cut people off welfare and dismantle safety nets. — Tom Storm

Then they have a narrow view of flourishing as being relevant only to themselves.

In my view, their positions would cause considerable harm to the powerless. And yet they and I both ostensibly hold that flourishing is the goal of a moral system. They think that society is enhanced if people's independence is promoted and vital to this is not subsidising sloth and inertia through welfare. — Tom Storm

I don't believe it is as simple a matter as "not subsidizing sloth and inertia through social welfare". That seems to me like a self-serving rationalization of an essentially selfish attitude.

I do not think they are sociopathic, they just hold a different worldview. And relative to my worldview they are mostly "wrong" on this. — Tom Storm

OK, then we disagree on that. I think their attitude is simplistically self-serving and sociopathic. For me sociopathy is not an "all or nothing" proposition, but is on a spectrum.

We live in a pluralist culture where most people think their views are good and right. The best we can do amongst this mess of contradictions is select the views we endorse and try to promote or nurture them. Or opt out entirely, which is also tempting. — Tom Storm

I see so much wrong with the ways things are that I kind of have "opted out". I mean I don't get personally involved in helping the needy. If I had significant wealth I might, but I'm a lowly pensioner myself, and I have my own suite of interests and pursuits for which there is already not enough time. I do try my best to do no harm, and that's about as far as my concern with others who are not family or friends goes.

I support the idea of social welfare, free education and medical services and, most importantly, taxing the rich to a much greater degree than is presently happening. But no government seems to have the balls to do it. I see there is little I can do about that, other than express my opinion about it. You no doubt are much more directly involved in helping people than I am.

Our society is a messy clusterfuck of pluralism, competing values, and beliefs. It seems that all we can really do is argue for the positions we find meaningful. — Tom Storm

I don't believe morality is a matter of "positions" at all, but of a compass based on the ability to empathize with others. To harm others is undesirable and hence bad because it feels undesirable and hence bad to many or even most people. The other point is that a community is inherently based on mutual respect and care. The fact that some people lack such empathy-based respect and care means that they are, if they don't conceal their disposition, considered to be sociopaths, and sociopathy is generally considered to be a condition of mental illness or incapacity to function in a way compatible with pragmatically necessary social values.

It really seems analogous to a cancer cell in the body of an organism. Is anyone seriously going to think that cancer is a good thing?