Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

[Conde Lucanor]

it's not my job to refute you.

OK, you can pass. I'll wait for anyone else that does want and does think they can refute my claims.

it's your job to refute yourself. Science is about intellectual honesty about the limits of your assumptions. Philosophy is about burdening other people with refuting you.

No, your idea that science and philosophy are mere personal, subjective enterprises, is completely misguided. Science and philosophy are social practices, disciplines that build common knowledge on dialogue and interaction with others. The personal burden is to add one's own insights to a a systematic body of principles on which you can ground truths that are once universal and necessary. That's where refutations take place.

It only says that it could be the case that everything is an illusion, but you have no way to provide that it is the case.

Strawman. I am pointing out that there exist multiple conceptual possibilities and no experiment you can perform to eliminate any of them.

Which would confirm that you can only say that illusion is a possibility, as much as reality of the thing in itself is a possibility. So you cannot refute realism, you can only advocate for a sort of agnosticism: no one knows and anything goes.

Every experiment confirms all possibilities. No experiment disconfirms any possibilities.
So I am asking you to tell me how and why you've chosen the one you've chosen despite the alternatives.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "experiment", but I've chosen the only reliable philosophical path: that of realism and materialism.

Exactly. Logically speaking even the impossible is possible -

No, that's only you advocating for absurdity as foundational. But it self-defeats.

we are just generating untestable theories. That's why we need empiricism and falsification.

Why would someone need something in an absurd world? If anything goes, everything works.

Non-contradictions don't matter. That's just an axiom as arbitrary as any.

There is a Logical system and a corresponding universe in which P and ~P is false.
There is a Logical system and a corresponding universe in which P and ~P is true.

How do you empirically determine the truth about which universe you are in?

What you really mean is how one chooses to avoid epistemological nihilism and embrace the absurd and the arbitrary as the foundation of all? Well, there are several testing methods you can try on epistemological nihilists to see if they really embrace the absurd and the arbitrary as foundation of all. The only problem is, the only ones that seem to deal with the issue, choose to die.

So what? You are conflating the world of logic with the world that we find ourselves in. They are separate worlds.

In the world I exist in contradictions do exist - if they didn't, how could I possibly contradict myself when I choose to?

You're standing here on the old fallacy of amphiboly. The metaphorical "world" is not the same as the literal world. Logic belongs to humans and humans belong to the world. Logical contradictions exist only as errors in the structure of thought.

If all events in the history of the universe are nothing but an illusion, so are the causal relationships among them.

Whether your memories/experiences are an illusion or not has absolutely no bearing on the fact that you have memories/experiences.

As long as my experiences don't deviate (too much) from my expectations - all's OK.

Fact? I beg your pardon..? By definition, if memories/experiences are an illusion, then the memory and experiences of having memories/experiences are an illusion, too. That's a lot of bearing on that "fact".

And deviation? Against what baseline can you measure a deviation if there's no baseline at all?

Remember, this is the card you are using to cast doubt on the possibility that the moon existed in a time period prior to the existence of humans. If that were the case, if the unfolding of events in the universe is all an illusion, then the whole societal setting that we perceive to be living in, is all a farce, including our own existence. No one is supposed to have spent 9 months inside their mother's womb, it is a false memory implanted in a perceiving mind.

Let it be a farce! Nothing changes in practice. We are stuck in the condition that we are stuck in. How we narrate this condition .... who cares?

Yes, that sounds cool, but then why is it that no proponent of the farcical world actually embraces it and acts accordingly? If it is only something to write in an internet forum, a narrative to pose with a certain attitude, well...I do care, to see what's behind it. It can be fun, too, you know, to go to a masked ball and try to figure out who are behind the masks.

Ok, fine, let's try that. Let's try that only the perception of the length of time changes, but the events actually do happen, and they keep happening in the order that causality requires for them to come about.

You can't determine causal order if the light cones of two spacetime coordinates don't intercept. This is relativity 101.

No, relativity does not cancel the cause-effect relation in time. Both in classical physics (Newton's laws are still doing fine), as well as in Einstein's theories, causality remains, not allowing an effect to be before its cause. And that's the only reason why in the theory of relativity signals cannot travel to observers faster than the speed of light.

Or if you want a more time-centric approach to this, do some homework on Lamport clocks. Time is relative to the observer - not absolute.

No, Lamport clocks is not, even in our wildest dreams, an example of a change in our understanding of causality.

Then I go back to my initial statement that there's substantial evidence that the moon existed prior (by 4.5 billion years or 4.5 seconds, it doesn't matter now) to humans. It is now even more obvious that your 5-minute universe thought experiment is completely useless to refute my point.

Precisely! The human time-scale is unfalsifiable - obviously! Because we, humans, define what 1 second IS, and then we interpret our experiences of time through the lens of our very own definitions.

But I already said that: to any scientists perception is reality!

Nonsense!! I mean, not just that I think what you said is unintended nonsense (which would imply you actually trying to find any coherence in these matters), but that you advocate for nonsense as foundational: anything goes. As a result, you feel free to contradict yourself and play arbitrarily with concepts. Of course, you're very much entitled to enunciate as much nonsense and incoherent thoughts as you like, but one always wonders why you and the rest of the posmo tribe are so concerned with the sense and coherence of others, as if there was in this farce some overarching rule of sense and logic to follow.

You have this exactly backwards. Philosophy does PRECISELY that. Any foundation that you arbitrarily choose will be summarily rejected and attacked.

If I choose anti-foundationalism (which I have done) - Philosophy will reject and attack that too.

The point is that if an attack involves destroying your own weapons of attack, it actually ends up being suicide, while leaving the enemy unharmed. The "anything goes" tribe, while pretending to undermine some certainties, undermines ALL certainties, including theirs.

Philosophy is Kobayashi Maru: a game you cannot win. It's by design - it tests your character where the odds are stacked against you.

I will not even answer this. I don't want to end up quoting Yoda.

I have no practical use for the real/non-real distinction.

That's pretty obvious.

Remember, it is you who is arguing that the appearance of truth is not a reliable criteria for determining the real truth of the universe, which means you're left only with the advocacy of epistemological nihilism, because, well...anything goes, right?

It's not epistemological nihilism. It's anarchism.

It seems you're not familiar with the meaning of anarchism, but if it were to be applied to epistemology, it would be exactly epistemological nihilism.

Anything goes. If it's useful - it goes (bar ethical considerations)

What you are saying you is that you will not go that far to advocate and actually embrace your own philosophical stance if it makes your neighbor a bit uncomfortable. That's one heck of a stance!!!

[Veritas Aequitas]

It is never my contention that knowledge concerning disentanglement from reality, such as knowledge of things that don't exist or ceased to exist, arises from something different than entanglement with reality.

The contention here is 'does the universe exists if there are no humans'. Your claim is 'yes' while I claim 'no' in the sense of no disentanglement from human conditions.

It seems you missed that the contention 'does the universe exists if there are no humans' can be inverted to 'do humans exist if there is no universe'.

When it comes to your own answer, you add a conditional: "no, if by existence we mean disentanglement from human conditions". But you never say if you mean necessary entanglement (for which there can't be disentanglement) or contingent entanglement/disentanglement. Things can be entangled at a given moment and disentangled at another, maintaining their independence and what they are. Things can also be entangled so that they cannot be separate without ceasing to exist completely. So you mean this: that in order for the universe to exist, it cannot be disentangled, separate from humans.

But your claim that the universe exists only if there are humans, comes with a self-defeating feature: you claim "there are" humans, that they do exist. Let's revisit the two criteria mentioned above:

1) do you mean that humans exist in the sense of being themselves necessarily entangled with humans, so that if they were separate they cease to exist? That evidently cancels humans, the proposition being self-referential, and you're in trouble.

2) Do you mean that humans exist in the sense that while they are contingently entangled with other humans, they can disentangle at any given moment, and maintain their independence and what they are? This will get you in more trouble: since any human would be a mind-independent reality for the perceiving subject, and each perceived human is a contingent being that begins and ceases to exist, the perceiving mind is faced with the possibility that all perceived humans ceased to exist, and yet the domain where all these humans used to exist would remain. Voilá, the universe, thrown out through the window, comes back through the door to haunt you!!

But of course, you can still find an escape route, the only one left, by claiming that only one human exists, necessarily entangled with himself, and that this one and only human, being all there is, is at the same time the universe. Hello, solipsism!!

My point is none of the above.

I don't agree with absolute determinism but rather open-ended determinism.

1. I assume you believe in the big bang.

2. Right from the emergence of the big bang to the present everything is connected and thus entangled with everything as a whole.
At first there was only a soup of particles then these particles slowly coalesce into bigger and bigger things and objects and they are interconnected [entangled] to the whole deterministically.
Then at a certain point in time, homo-sapiens gradually emerged out to the original soup of star dusts but they are still deterministically connected [entangled] with the all of reality.

3. As you can infer from the above, human beings are fundamentally connected and entangled with the all of reality and vice-versa.

4. The only reason why humans think they are disentangled is when they are endowed with a higher consciousness of self-awareness and it was only around 500+ years ago that Descartes' heavy influence that separate the mind from the body and made everything else of reality independent of the mind.

5. Fundamentally humans are connected [entangled] with all the things of reality as parts of the whole.

What is critical here is from point 1 [believe the big bang is true] to point 5, all the above are conditioned upon the human conditions.

Thus whatever you claim, i.e. humans are independent of the universe which could be true in the common and conventional sense, this claim is subsumed within the ultimate entanglement.

There is no way you can take any independent objective stance [i.e. God's eye view] to make any objective independent claim.

[Atla]

There is no way you can take any independent objective stance [i.e. God's eye view] to make any objective independent claim.

The idea of the "God's eye view" objective stance was always untenable, and then even got refuted by science over a century ago, aren't you a bit late to the party?

[Veritas Aequitas]

This is reducible to the the contention between Philosophical Realism versus Philosophical Anti-Realism, mine is Empirical Realism aka Transcendental Idealism.
I am arguing Philosophical Realism is not realistic nor tenable.
I believe I have raised a thread for my claim and in various threads.

Yours, as it is easily shown, is good old phenomenalism, but there are different forms of phenomenalism.
In a general sense, everyone, even the hardcore realists and materialists, acknowledges the basic epistemological principle of phenomenalism that reality is not directly given to the subject, but indirectly through the senses.

We all know Kantian phenomenalism identified itself as Transcendental Idealism, which you say you endorse, however it is interesting to note that not even Kant denied the existence of things in themselves (as mind-independent objects), he was kind of agnostic about it. So, your Transcendental Idealism and Kant's don't seem to be compatible, and you take a contradictory stance when you say you believe there's an empirical reality, and then proceed to argue for solipsism.

Nope I had never argued for solipsism which is a incoherent theory.
The Incoherence of Solipsism

Re Phenomenalism,

• Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, some forms of phenomenalism reduce talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data.
  wiki

While most realists acknowledge indirect realism, they insist there is a real physical object that is transmitting the waves that generate the sense-data in the brain. This thing-in-itself to realists is real and is independent of the human conditions, or human mind.

Note Transcendental idealism is also empirical realism, i.e. the empirical external reality exists independently within the common and conventional sense.

There are few passages in the Critique that led many people to believe Kant was agnostic with things-in-themselves.
But in the whole context of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is very firm things-in-themselves are illusory when reified as real.

Note Kant wrote,

The Concept of a Noumenon is thus a merely limiting Concept, the Function of which is to curb the pretensions of Sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment.

At the same time it [Noumenon] is no arbitrary invention; it is Bound up with the Limitation of Sensibility, though it [Noumenon] cannot affirm anything Positive beyond the Field of Sensibility.

None the less, if the Concept of a Noumenon be taken in a merely Problematic sense, it is not only admissible, but as setting Limits to Sensibility is likewise indispensable.
B311

The above is quite obvious, the noumenon aka thing-in-itself [plural things-in-themselves] in the discussion of empirical things is merely a limiting concept, thus cannot be a positive real thing at all.
In addition, the noumenon cannot be anything positive beyond what is empirically, i.e. to ensure there are no positive metaphysical-mystical things like souls, God and the likes.

At times, Kant wrote such passages with something like 'will always remain unknown to us" i.e.

Such Objects of Pure Understanding will always remain Unknown to us; we can never even know whether such a Transcendental or exceptional l Knowledge is Possible under any Conditions -- at least not if it is to be the same kind of Knowledge as that which stands under our ordinary Categories.
B314

Therefore without taking the full context of the CPR into consideration, they jumped hastily to conclude Kant is agnostic with the thing-in-itself.
This is a very psychological issue.

While Kant asserted the thing-in-itself is not real and illusory, he nevertheless use the idea of the thing-in-itself for his other philosophical ideas.

[Veritas Aequitas]

At the same time, to assert the ontological status of everything is mind-independent must also be dependent of a particular framework.
The epistemological framework is the most credible, e.g. the scientific framework.
Thus if you are not relying an an epistemological framework then you are likely to be dependent of a lesser credible framework which in a way is still of human construct.

When you "assert the ontological status of everything is mind-independent" you are relying on the groundless "Speculative Philosophy" framework which is from a human construct.

As such whatever which way, you are stuck with the human conditions.

All systematic modes of inquiry and research have an epistemological framework in which they are grounded. When you are in epistemology, you're already in philosophy. But not all epistemological frameworks are credible and reliable. The one that departs from the first-person view of phenomenical approach and denies any ontology beyond that, is the least reliable, least credible framework, the least fruitful for our practical entanglements, and it only leads to solipsism.

As stated, solipsism is an incoherent theory.

How can Transcendental realism aka empirical realism be the least credible when it realizes what it entangled with the external independent external world empirically [objects, living things and other humans] is the most real.
The concept behind transcendental realism is that it take externalness as another inherent human senses like the five senses and other senses that had emerged in alignment with the forces of the big bang.

Generally the point is reality is all there is and humans are a part and parcel of reality. Fundamentally there is no way humans can extricate themselves from what they are part and parcel of to make themselves independent of what they are part and parcel of.

On the other hand, the realists merely assume there is a real physical thing beyond what is realized.

Here is Kant critique of philosophical realism;

However harmless Idealism may be considered in respect of the essential aims of Metaphysics (though, in fact, it is not thus harmless),
it still remains a scandal to Philosophy and to Human Reason-in-General that the Existence of Things outside us (from which we derive the whole material of Knowledge, even for our Inner Sense) must be accepted merely on Faith,
and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their Existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.
B55

[Veritas Aequitas]

But your acknowledgement of "the existence of one and only mind-independent, physical reality" is based on assumption and speculation and there is a reality-gap between you and that physical reality.

No, only idealism is grounded in pure speculation. Realism and materialism is grounded on the evidence that our systematic inquiries reveal about the universe using reliable methods of research, aka science. Every discipline of knowledge has an epistemological base with basic assumptions, but science in particular is the only one that actually includes in its core principles the challenge and test of its presumptions.

As you stated there are many types of idealism.
I have stated mine is transcendental idealism aka empirical realism.

Most the realists and empirical realism agree with science but note the best of science knowledge is that they are merely polished conjectures [Popper].

But the realists take reality further and ASSUME without proofs there is a physical reality beyond what is realizable by themselves via sense-data;

Not sure if you agree with Russell who is an indirect realist who insist there is a real external independent world, despite stating the following;

• Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.
  We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 12.djvu/41

See this thread,
Russell: "Perhaps There is No Table At ALL?"
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32814

As you can see while the realist rely in instinctive beliefs, the empirical realist rely on direct experience of reality as the human self in entanglement as part and parcel with reality.

[Skepdick]

That's not a belief of any sort...

Hang on a mo; what's the word? Ah, here it is:

Dumb Linguistic prescriptivist

If you think beliefs are about language you are even dumberer than I thought.

[Skepdick]

OK, you can pass. I'll wait for anyone else that does want and does think they can refute my claims.

Why can't you point out the limits and gaps of your own assumptions while you wait?

No, your idea that science and philosophy are mere personal, subjective enterprises, is completely misguided. Science and philosophy are social practices, disciplines that build common knowledge on dialogue and interaction with others. The personal burden is to add one's own insights to a a systematic body of principles on which you can ground truths that are once universal and necessary. That's where refutations take place.

You have no idea what my idea of science and philosophy are about - you are guessing.

I am simply pointing out that any scientist who values their own intellectual integrity burdens themselves with volunteering the limits of their own assumptions, gaps in understanding and likely scenarios in which their model/understanding does not apply.

You don't want to volunteer your short-commings. You want others to find them for you.

From this we can infer that either you are not entirely committed to intellectual honesty, or you simply lack self-reflection.

Which would confirm that you can only say that illusion is a possibility, as much as reality of the thing in itself is a possibility. So you cannot refute realism, you can only advocate for a sort of agnosticism: no one knows and anything goes.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "experiment", but I've chosen the only reliable philosophical path: that of realism and materialism.

You are contradicting yourself. On the one hand you say you can't refute any philosophy.

On the other hand you are claiming that only your philosophy is "reliable". How did you refute the reliability of the philosophies you reject?

No, that's only you advocating for absurdity as foundational. But it self-defeats.

It doesn't self-defeat - it self-affirms. You are interpreting it incorrectly.

This sentence does not exist. That's not self defeat. The sentence is still there.

Q.E.D your interpretation is wrong.

What you really mean is how one chooses to avoid epistemological nihilism and embrace the absurd and the arbitrary as the foundation of all? Well, there are several testing methods you can try on epistemological nihilists to see if they really embrace the absurd and the arbitrary as foundation of all. The only problem is, the only ones that seem to deal with the issue, choose to die.

I don't believe any such test exists. Nobody has yet been able to test whether I "embrace" anything without having some dubious assumptions in their testing methodology.

You're standing here on the old fallacy of amphiboly. The metaphorical "world" is not the same as the literal world. Logic belongs to humans and humans belong to the world. Logical contradictions exist only as errors in the structure of thought.

Logical contradictions exist. This is an ontological fact.

It's simply your value-judgment that any particular ontological artefact is an "error".

What makes it an "error" other than your bias against contradictions?

Fact? I beg your pardon..? By definition, if memories/experiences are an illusion, then the memory and experiences of having memories/experiences are an illusion, too. That's a lot of bearing on that "fact".

Does it matter how we define or label them? Not to me. To you maybe. Facts or illusions. We have memories.

And deviation? Against what baseline can you measure a deviation if there's no baseline at all?

Against my own priors.

Yes, that sounds cool, but then why is it that no proponent of the farcical world actually embraces it and acts accordingly?

Because you can't figure out whether they do or don't embrace it.

I am yet to find somebody who can empirically determine whether I "embrace" the Christian God or not. Go ahead and measure my belief.

If it is only something to write in an internet forum, a narrative to pose with a certain attitude, well...I do care, to see what's behind it. It can be fun, too, you know, to go to a masked ball and try to figure out who are behind the masks.

This is a peculiar game to play indeed. What if there are no masks where you expect some?

People are people. They use the language that they use because that's the language that their social circle uses without being committed to any particular philosophical position. Most people don't even care about Philosophy.

No, relativity does not cancel the cause-effect relation in time. Both in classical physics (Newton's laws are still doing fine), as well as in Einstein's theories, causality remains, not allowing an effect to be before its cause. And that's the only reason why in the theory of relativity signals cannot travel to observers faster than the speed of light.

You entirely missed the point. Lamport clocks are used to determine precisely:

A. Causality violations (events which violate the lightspeed barrier)
B. Regions of space-time outside of which causal order is impossible to determine.

Second order time. You don't understand it.

Nonsense!! I mean, not just that I think what you said is unintended nonsense (which would imply you actually trying to find any coherence in these matters), but that you advocate for nonsense as foundational: anything goes. As a result, you feel free to contradict yourself and play arbitrarily with concepts. Of course, you're very much entitled to enunciate as much nonsense and incoherent thoughts as you like, but one always wonders why you and the rest of the posmo tribe are so concerned with the sense and coherence of others, as if there was in this farce some overarching rule of sense and logic to follow.

Because we know something you don't. We know how information works. We know how interpretation works. We know how knowledge-construction works. We know how meaning-making works. From first principles.

Computer Science is the science of Metaphysics.

The point is that if an attack involves destroying your own weapons of attack, it actually ends up being suicide, while leaving the enemy unharmed. The "anything goes" tribe, while pretending to undermine some certainties, undermines ALL certainties, including theirs.

I can't undermine myself with my words. It's impossible. As I have already demonstrated.

I don't exist.

Look! Nothing happened. I didn't self-combust. The world didn't disappear into a singularity. Absolutely nothing of consequence was observed. Because words don't denote anything.

It seems you're not familiar with the meaning of anarchism, but if it were to be applied to epistemology, it would be exactly epistemological nihilism.

No, it isn't. It's anarchism. It's explicitly refusing to let you dictate to me what is and isn't knowledge.

Especially since much of the knowledge I use is knowledge I've created.

What you are saying you is that you will not go that far to advocate and actually embrace your own philosophical stance if it makes your neighbor a bit uncomfortable. That's one heck of a stance!!!

You don't get it. As an anti-foundationalism there is no Philosophical stance to embrace. This is just an interpretation error on your part.

I reject Philosophy.

Philosophers are still trying to figure out whether the rejection of Philosophy is a Philosophy or a non-Philosophy.

[tillingborn]

If you think beliefs are about language you are even dumberer than I thought.

Oh yeah? Well, if you think that follows from anything I have said, you are even dumbumderdumerumptytummerer than you are able to think.

[Skepdick]

If you think beliefs are about language you are even dumberer than I thought.

Oh yeah? Well, if you think that follows from anything I have said, you are even dumbumderdumerumptytummerer than you are able to think.

Guess you don't understand the difference between linguistics and beliefs, eh?

[tillingborn]

Guess you don't understand the difference between linguistics and beliefs, eh?

Oh yeah? Well, if you think that follows from anything I have said, you are even dumbumderdumerumptytummerer than you are able to think.

[Skepdick]

Guess you don't understand the difference between linguistics and beliefs, eh?

Oh yeah? Well, if you think that follows from anything I have said, you are even dumbumderdumerumptytummerer than you are able to think.

I keep saying it and I'll say it again.

I am the dumbumderdumerumptytummererest I can be.

It's not anywhere near your level or dumbumderdumerumptytummererestestestestness.

(I suck less than you do! Tralalalalalala!). Philosophy at its best.

[tillingborn]

I keep saying it and I'll say it again.

I am the dumbumderdumerumptytummererest I can be.

It's not anywhere near your level or dumbumderdumerumptytummererestestestestness.

Ah well, now if there is a level of dumbumderdumerumptytummererestestestestness that I have achieved, clearly you are not the dumbumderdumerumptytummererest that you could be. The reason you hate philosophers is the same that they have always been hated. You think you're right - philosophers know you're not.

[Skepdick]

You think you're right - philosophers know you're not.

I know I am not right.

You think I think I am right.

See! You are dumberer than me again.

I am not in the game of being right. I am in the game of being less wrong. Science, not Philosophy.

[tillingborn]

I am in the game of being less wrong.

You pretend you are a scientist. How much more wrong could you be?