Londoner wrote:I think it is better if we stick to addressing the points we actually make, rather than bracketing the other person into some vague philosophical category. If we do that then we will end up chasing straw men, where you insist I am a solipsist etc. even though I deny it and we end up having discussions about historical philosophical categories.
My statements are part of a larger paragraph which aims to identify the broader philosophical context of our discussion. Since many issues in a debate can get to a point of no resolution, or getting messed up, I do think it's relevant to show the categories to which our point of views belong, so we can recognize if we need to focus on that larger set of doctrines or keep on discussing at a smaller scale. That's why I openly stated I'm a materialist, which should give you clues about what would make some sense to me and is worth discussing. In that same order of ideas, I actually was expecting that you would put no contest to my claim that your positions are those of idealism.
Londoner wrote:However, if it is the case we cannot 'assimilate the world directly as it is (noumena)', then I do not see how we can 'make statements of truth about its objective reality'. How would we know that they corresponded to its objective reality?
Because our perception can find necessary connections between things and events, which remain constant and predictable, without our perception participating in those constant relations. We know it because other perceptive beings, as independent, external observers, can validate those connections, as well as the use of instruments and ways of keeping records. If the structure of reality were purely the design of our mind, there wouldn't be any reason to believe that the conjunction of events at a given instance, would repeat at another. Anything goes. No enabling conditions of experience of our individual minds, no a priori framework of understanding, could make the structure of reality works as it works. It works with complete disregard to our perception of it. So we know that the dark side of the moon has been there for long, even when we didn't see it or go there.
Londoner wrote:This suggests that there are two 'realities', the reality revealed to us and a different 'objective reality'. When could we be in a position to compare the two? It is like asking a blind person what it is like to see; they could only know that if they were not the blind person that they are.
What it suggests is that there's one reality, of which we are also part of and in which we interact with other beings. To think of a "reality revealed to us" is to imply there's a reality outside the perceiver to be revealed. The concept itself of a capturing mind implies too the objective reality of space. And the concept of perception itself invokes the need for something to exist as a reality, as a necessary truth of being: the self that thinks.
Cogito ergo sum, remember?
Londoner wrote:You suggest that we can achieve this 'using tools developed by culture, like philosophy and science'. I would suggest that those tools support my own approach. Progress in all these fields has been achieved by realising that the universe does not have a set 'concrete' nature, that there are no such things as simple 'statements of truth'.
At least if we look at Kant's project, we would have to disagree. He set himself to do for philosophy what Newtonian science had done for scientific knowledge: to elevate it to a discipline in which we could ground truths that are necessary and universal. In any case, if there were no statements of truth, we could begin with the statement "all we have access to is our perceptions" as one of those not true statements. And just the same: "I perceive and think".
Londoner wrote:For example in one sense we can say that 'X is red', but we have come to understand that 'red' is really a property that arises from the electro-magnetic spectrum, pigmentation, the nature of our eyes, the nature of our brains, language and so on. So, to say 'X is red' is not even a simple statements of truth about its reality as we experience it, let alone its 'objective reality'...The same is true regarding quantum mechanics, relativity and so on.
If you were consistent with your line of thought, you would have to say that not only red is not an objective property of X, but that X itself lacks any objective reality, nor the electromagnetic spectrum, nor our eyes and brains. No real properties would arise from them, and no causal structured connections would form as universal and necessary. It would be all just an abstract, arbitrary, disorderly entropic idea floating in the realm of nowhere. But then of course, you would need an ordering entity to put that all together, a capricious contingent device, which idealist call god.
Londoner wrote:So while we can never reach this 'objective reality', one thing we do know is that the reality in which we believe we live is not a representation of this 'objective reality'. We can know that because our own ideas of reality are not consistent with each other, we have no single representation we call 'objective'.
How inconsistent they may be? To have no limits would imply no lawfulness of thought, completely arbitrary chaos in our minds. Not even the surrealistic order of dreams. To doubt external reality on the basis of the subjectivity of our perception inevitably leads us to doubt internal reality as well. There would be no reality at all.
Londoner wrote:If a body must have extension, then to say a body has extension would be a priori but analytic. But if we are going to use these terms we need to be clear if we are discussing the ideas of Kant or your own.
You are right, Kant does say it's analytic and I can agree. For the purpose of our discussion, however, it's then also relevant to notice that for him, "bodies have weight" is a synthetic proposition, and that synthetic judgements can convey truths. Kant does think there are real bodies out there and that Newton laws did apply to an objective reality, and he defends that concept against Berkeley and Descartes.
Londoner wrote:I think we have exhausted this one. As I started with saying, if I have learnt that the word that describes grass is 'green' and so have you, then we can both carry on agreeing that 'the grass is green' forever. If in my mind the mental representation is different to yours, how could we ever know it? We might ask each other; 'Is it green like that door?' We both agree it is. 'Is it green like that bit of the spectrum?'. We both agree it is. The sensation we both get when looking at these things is what we have both learnt to call 'green'. And that's fine; as long as we are both using the word 'green' to describe the same range of objects, that is all that is necessary to communicate and function. Our subjective mental representations of 'green' have no consequences.
You see, you are taking the experience itself and placing it in the field of language, but as I said regarding the room experiment, you don't need to utter a word or label something with a name for it to work as a proof of the objective reality of what is perceived by our senses. We can forget the word "red" and focus on the wavelength of the light spectrum, the objective property, which remains constant in two separate instances of perception.
Londoner wrote:You cannot have the subjective experience of others. What you get is language.
Not exactly. We get communication, which is not reduced to spoken or written language. We can infer the subjective experience of others by relating what we see in their behavior to our own subjective experiences and behavior, as if looking in a mirror.
Londoner wrote:That there is 'an objective external reality' is surely what you are saying we can know. If you are using the word 'objective' then presumably this is to distinguish it from 'subjective'? But I cannot escape my subjectivity; I cannot subjectively know the objective..
Not escaping my subjectivity would mean not having a relation with the external world. It would be the mind in a bubble, untouched by anything outside of it. But the reality is that there are ways of relating to the external world, called the senses.
Londoner wrote:Alternatively, if we say that we are not separated from 'external reality' in any respect; then the labels 'objective' and 'subjective' both become meaningless. Then the position would be solipsistic; 'what is in my mind' and 'reality' would be one and the same thing.
That has been precisely your position: that the reality of our minds is all that we have. And you're right: that is solipsism.