Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:01 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:58 am You are merely babbling and making noises without reference to the details of the arguments. You are running out of argument to counter my views and address the challenge of the OP.
Nah, there's simply no point in trying to present extensive arguments that you will avoid dealing with, while resorting to your usual dogmatic mantras. It is not that I'm out of arguments, they are there, still unanswered and not dealt with properly, and apparently too much for what your idealist cult can handle.
There you go again.
Something is very wrong with you, i.e. keep mumbling about an 'idealist cult' and include me therein, when you run out of arguments.

You are like those immature ones who keep calling and simply branding people they cannot agree with as Nazis, racists, white supremacists, misogynists, fascists, communists, etc., when they don't have the capacity to counter argue.

Nope!
For those arguments you think I have not addressed, I have raised specific threads to deal with them, but you have not posted therein to deal with them specifically.

If there is still anything you think is not answered, that is due to your dogmatic blindness an bad communication of what you are expecting.

Btw, you still have not "proven" [not mathematical sense] the challenge in the OP conclusively.
The best counter you and other opponents can bring is 'things predated humans' so things had existed by-themselves or in-themselves. This argument is full of holes from the rigorous perspective.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:58 am This is nonsensical from you.
For example, where else can one begin to research on 'what is philosophy' if not from books and at present from an extensive search from 'google'?
I had made the attempt to exhaust all the books accessible by me [re Western, Eastern, and everywhere] and from google.
As stated I made an attempt to extract the essence of 'what is philosophy' from all the definitions of 'what is philosophy' I have collected.
This is a perfect example of what I've been saying. Your childish, silly naivety to produce such laughable arguments is baffling. I mean, you really expect me and everyone else to buy into the notion that "research" means googling and reading books from a couch in your home. One has to be really stupid to entertain such a vulgar, pedestrian notion, in a debate forum dedicated to a complex issue from a particular discipline. No different than anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, climate change deniers and alternative medicine and nutrition gurus feeling entitled to lecture the rest of the world based on their "own research" expertise.
You are really ignorant.

If you have enough books you will note many authors take a "Sabbath" from their regular work and spent months alone researching their thesis, reading books, articles, and in this modern time, using google and the internet to access various libraries.
Thereafter they present their drafts for discussions and peer review.


I have done the above, i.e. read and review at least 500 definitions of 'what is philosophy' and presented my definition of 'what is philosophy' as in
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28792
Since I have presented my findings and proposals [the above link and elsewhere], re "What is Philosophy", I have not received any significant counters to it.

In contrast to your very 'researched' definition, i.e.
"Philosophy is Speculation"
to represent Philosophy in essence and totality is laughable.

You think too highly of yourself when you are a merely a gnat within philosophy.
Note, no one is forcing you to accept any notion [proper, vulgar, pedestrian, etc.] here.
Since you are participating in this forum, the expectation is on you to discuss or counter whatever is presented. If you don't want to, just shut up.
commonsense
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by commonsense »

Independent of what?

Of course reality is independent of you. The experience of reality does not depend on an experience of you. Reality doesn’t depend on you.

Reality is independent of me, as well, in a significant minority of instances. (See thread on schizophrenia.)

Reality is independent of me.
Reality is independent of you.
Reality is independent.
Last edited by commonsense on Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:48 am
There you go again. [...]

[...] Since you are participating in this forum, the expectation is on you to discuss or counter whatever is presented. If you don't want to, just shut up.
Your hypocrisy is unmeasurable. While you gratify your delusions of grandeur by popping up degrading adjectives, you can't handle yourself being classified among the followers of the dogmatic cult of idealism. Oh, poor boy.

Again, just as most of your silly conceptions, your idea of what research is, is outright ridiculous. Now you come to pretend that your layman, pedestrian view, the result of your googling and walking down to the library shop, has been formally "presented" publicly to the philosophical domain and "peer-reviewed" in an internet debate forum. I mean, what a deluded ignorant fool one must be to entertain such a notion seriously.

There's nothing wrong with self-education, in fact, it's kind of a civic and personal duty, but proper credit should be given where it's due, and you have no academic credentials, nor any other intellectual accreditation that gives to anything you call "your research" more value than the chit-chat you engage in at the bar down the corner. The pretensions of your Karaoke philosophy are laughable.

Meanwhile, you remain incompetent to address the arguments presented against the OP and the basic objections to the counterarguments. You're forced to deny the truth value of empirical scientific proofs, you're forced to deny the objective reality of things, you're forced to deny possibility of having any direct contact with any reality, you're forced to assume no difference between reality and hallucination, and when all of this comes back to haunt you and undermine your own arguments, you resort to the trick of capricious, messy relativism to disguise your blatant contradictions, when not simply lying.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:38 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:48 am
There you go again. [...]

[...] Since you are participating in this forum, the expectation is on you to discuss or counter whatever is presented. If you don't want to, just shut up.
Your hypocrisy is unmeasurable. While you gratify your delusions of grandeur by popping up degrading adjectives, you can't handle yourself being classified among the followers of the dogmatic cult of idealism. Oh, poor boy.
You are so ignorant that you are condemning yourself and kicking your own ass, i.e. not knowing that your views are that of an Empirical Idealist.
I don't condemn 'realism' blanketly because my views in one aspect is of Empirical Realism.

This is what is going on with Critical Race Theory at present.
The CRTists [blacks and apologists] condemned 'whiteness' as very evil.
The irony is those [mixed] whose parents are one black and one white, many will insist they are "black" and condemn "whiteness" while blatantly ignoring the fact that they are also 'white' in a way and condemning themselves.
As such they are very ignorant and evil in condemning the 'white' parent without compassion nor empathy for their 'white' father or mother.

You are so ignorant that you are condemning yourself and kicking your own ass.
Again, just as most of your silly conceptions, your idea of what research is, is outright ridiculous. Now you come to pretend that your layman, pedestrian view, the result of your googling and walking down to the library shop, has been formally "presented" publicly to the philosophical domain and "peer-reviewed" in an internet debate forum. I mean, what a deluded ignorant fool one must be to entertain such a notion seriously.
You are just making noises.
Point is we must debate the respective points rather than making blanket hasty judgments.
There's nothing wrong with self-education, in fact, it's kind of a civic and personal duty, but proper credit should be given where it's due, and you have no academic credentials, nor any other intellectual accreditation that gives to anything you call "your research" more value than the chit-chat you engage in at the bar down the corner. The pretensions of your Karaoke philosophy are laughable.
You are playing God as if you are omnipresent and know everything about me or presumably everyone else without any evidence.

I don't know your credentials, but from you have posted, philosophically, your ideas and views are really constipated, bastardized, dogmatic, infected with confirmation bias and other mental viruses.
Meanwhile, you remain incompetent to address the arguments presented against the OP and the basic objections to the counterarguments. You're forced to deny the truth value of empirical scientific proofs, you're forced to deny the objective reality of things, you're forced to deny possibility of having any direct contact with any reality, you're forced to assume no difference between reality and hallucination, and when all of this comes back to haunt you and undermine your own arguments, you resort to the trick of capricious, messy relativism to disguise your blatant contradictions, when not simply lying.
Don't make stupid blanket statements.
Provide the relevant specific evidences and arguments to justify you have any intellectual integrity.

Btw, that your insistence 'Philosophy IS Speculation' lead and ensure all your views are merely speculations only!
That was my claims of your view all along.
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

Critical Race Theory? Are you so desperate to make a point that you bring completely irrelevant stuff?

And now you come back to label me an "empirical idealist" after pages and pages of calling me a "critical realist". Consistency is surely not your best attribute. I have already refuted your claim that I could ever be an idealist, and no known classification could assimilate materialism and realism with idealism, but since you're always clueless about these things, which are not even controversial, one can expect the wildest claims. Meanwhile, your idealism, no matter how you paint it, twist it and do all kinds of maneuvers to conceal it, is still plain old idealism, which is, BTW, the only one resorting to a pure speculative framework that swallows any empirical project. Realism, on the other hand, doesn't take scientific research as mere opinions compiled in dogmatic conventions.

I don't need to gather more evidence and know your personal details to figure out that you're no scholar, done no real research, nor published anything to be peer-reviewed. But you can easily prove me wrong, so I will patiently wait for the details of the books you have published.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 4:35 am Critical Race Theory? Are you so desperate to make a point that you bring completely irrelevant stuff?

And now you come back to label me an "empirical idealist" after pages and pages of calling me a "critical realist". Consistency is surely not your best attribute. I have already refuted your claim that I could ever be an idealist, and no known classification could assimilate materialism and realism with idealism, but since you're always clueless about these things, which are not even controversial, one can expect the wildest claims. Meanwhile, your idealism, no matter how you paint it, twist it and do all kinds of maneuvers to conceal it, is still plain old idealism, which is, BTW, the only one resorting to a pure speculative framework that swallows any empirical project. Realism, on the other hand, doesn't take scientific research as mere opinions compiled in dogmatic conventions.

I don't need to gather more evidence and know your personal details to figure out that you're no scholar, done no real research, nor published anything to be peer-reviewed. But you can easily prove me wrong, so I will patiently wait for the details of the books you have published.
Something is very wrong with you.
What is wrong with using Critical Race Theory as an analogy [similarity] to what you are behaving at present.

You are too dogmatic with words and confining their meanings ONLY to what you deem and want them to mean.
Re Critical Realist also as Empirical Realist,
here is the argument;
A Realist is also an Idealist
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32913

You did not provide any related counter arguments therein.

I suggest, whatever points you think I have not addressed, you should raise a separate thread so we can debate on it in detail.
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

I don't think there could be something wrong with me just because I don't fall for your fallacies and cheap attacks. Your supposed analogy, for example, does not refer to a logical mindset that could hinder progress in a rational debate. A good example of that would be your dogmatism and your approach to discussions with the mindset of a creationist or a flat-earther. Instead your supposed analogy is a typical red-herring and association fallacy that appeals to emotions, not focusing on the logical framework, but on the supposed "evil behavior" of the opponent. Talk about cheapo attacks.

All my arguments against your conceptions of realism and anti-realism have been thoroughly explained within this thread. Your desire to create sub-forums to debate them apart does not leave you exempt from dealing with them within the current debate, and I'm certainly in no obligation of migrating my points there.

Your main problem is that your Empirical Realism is an epistemological, anti-ontological stance, which still gets entangled with ontological problems that cannot resolve from its chosen framework.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 11:17 pm I don't think there could be something wrong with me just because I don't fall for your fallacies and cheap attacks. Your supposed analogy, for example, does not refer to a logical mindset that could hinder progress in a rational debate. A good example of that would be your dogmatism and your approach to discussions with the mindset of a creationist or a flat-earther. Instead your supposed analogy is a typical red-herring and association fallacy that appeals to emotions, not focusing on the logical framework, but on the supposed "evil behavior" of the opponent. Talk about cheapo attacks.

All my arguments against your conceptions of realism and anti-realism have been thoroughly explained within this thread. Your desire to create sub-forums to debate them apart does not leave you exempt from dealing with them within the current debate, and I'm certainly in no obligation of migrating my points there.

Your main problem is that your Empirical Realism is an epistemological, anti-ontological stance, which still gets entangled with ontological problems that cannot resolve from its chosen framework.
I believe it is more of an intellectual competence and for clarity to discuss the separate contested elements in a separate thread.
We can still discuss within this thread the issue of Philosophical Realism [independent reality re OP] vs Empirical Realism.

Why do you keep clinging to the 'ontological' which is due to an inherent primal impulse suitable for the proto-days and is a psychological weakness in modern times?
see this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33409

I have insisted on a Reality-Gap where there is no way you can ever confirm the reality of your supposed ontological object that is beyond your human conditions, i.e. you are speculating and chasing an illusion.

Empirical Realism is merely to accept whatever is immediately real is grounded on the empirical and polished [topped up] with critical philosophy.
This is basically scientific without supposing there is an ultimate objective reality independent of the human conditions.
I don't speculate any independent objective reality beyond what is empirically verifiable and justified, and rationalized with critical philosophy.

How is this entangled with an ontological problem when I deny ontology [substance and independent objects]?
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

Dismissing the ontological, because of whatever awkward justification, leaves the proponents of such doctrine lacking the grounds to make claims about any realm of being, which is exactly what they refuse to do. Such a stance would prove to be merely rhetorical and sophistic. Actually, anti-realist philosophers from the Kantian and post-Kantian tradition adopt what Meillassoux calls "correlationism: the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other." Anti-realists then need to cling to ontology to advance their epistemic fallacy.

No sound argument has been advanced to attest the truth of a supposed "reality gap", which is a clumsy misunderstading of a irrelevant delay in sense-impressions. As I explained, the issue in question is the casual relation, but the acknowledgement of such delay implies precisely that causal relation between the object and its perception that the anti-realist wants to deny. And so I asked how could you explain the delay if the interaction between objects and its perception was not real? And the answer was in the vicinity of: "I conditioned my belief in the delay to the assumptions of my relativistic framework", in other words, there's no real delay in itself, caused by anything in itself.

And then there's the magic trick, out of the idealist philosophical hat, which candidly conflates "whatever is immediately sensed" with "whatever is immediately real", as if the latter was the cause of the former as verified by experience, and yet claims realists are clinging to illusions when they appeal to that same causal relation. Worst of all, the anti-realist pretends not to see that "humans conditions" fall within the same epistemological trap. Since human conditions would not exist in themselves, they would be no cause, but what is caused, and yet they would have to reappear as the cause of the uncaused. Utter nonsense. No sound argument has been advanced to deal with this major problem.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 3:22 am Dismissing the ontological, because of whatever awkward justification, leaves the proponents of such doctrine lacking the grounds to make claims about any realm of being, which is exactly what they refuse to do. Such a stance would prove to be merely rhetorical and sophistic. Actually, anti-realist philosophers from the Kantian and post-Kantian tradition adopt what Meillassoux calls "correlationism: the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other." Anti-realists then need to cling to ontology to advance their epistemic fallacy.
From where did you jump to the conclusion that anti-realists [in specifically my case] that I need to cling to ontology [traditional and substance] to advance my points.
No sound argument has been advanced to attest the truth of a supposed "reality gap", which is a clumsy misunderstading of a irrelevant delay in sense-impressions.
As I explained, the issue in question is the casual relation, but the acknowledgement of such delay implies precisely that causal relation between the object and its perception that the anti-realist wants to deny. And so I asked how could you explain the delay if the interaction between objects and its perception was not real? And the answer was in the vicinity of: "I conditioned my belief in the delay to the assumptions of my relativistic framework", in other words, there's no real delay in itself, caused by anything in itself.
Russell did provide the argument in his Problems of Philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Probl ... Philosophy

Note the Reality Gap is implied in Philosophical Realism;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism
Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved.
The Reality Gap is so obvious in Science where there is a time Gap for light or energy to travel to the human senses and to realization and cognition.

In general anti-realists do not deny causality in the general and conventional sense but rather claim that in the ultimate sense, causality is entangled with the human conditions, e.g. Hume's customs, habits and constant conjunctions.

I have raised a thread to get to the bottom of this point'
Is there a Reality Gap?
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33455
And then there's the magic trick, out of the idealist philosophical hat, which candidly conflates "whatever is immediately sensed" with "whatever is immediately real", as if the latter was the cause of the former as verified by experience, and yet claims realists are clinging to illusions when they appeal to that same causal relation.

Worst of all, the anti-realist pretends not to see that "humans conditions" fall within the same epistemological trap. Since human conditions would not exist in themselves, they would be no cause, but what is caused, and yet they would have to reappear as the cause of the uncaused. Utter nonsense. No sound argument has been advanced to deal with this major problem.
You got is wrong,
it is the transcendental [critical] realist who conflates whatever is immediately sensed" with "whatever is immediately real" which exists independent of the human conditions.
The realists' illusion is claiming that the thing sensed and experienced are independent of the human conditions, i.e. are things-in-themselves.

You seem to be babbling your own strawman.
My anti-realist position in the ultimate sense is not leveraged on causation.
What I leveraged on is empirical experiences [verified and justified] as supported by critical philosophy.
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

Ontology deals with what exists and epistemology with whether it can be known, objectively, the answer to that question or not. Whatever realists or anti-realists do to deal with that, nevertheless implies an ontological stance, even if it's just a basic assumption in their framework. In other words, epistemology cannot survive one day without ontology, it always has to deal with the entity that knows and must place it somewhere in a world of objects. So, unless one has embraced epistemological nihilism or any of its variants, one is entangled with ontology, and that is true even if one wants to jump to the wagon of anti-realism. Note that anti-realists, departing from epistemology, make ontological claims and then proceed to argue with vague ontological assumptions implicit in their framework. The only way anti-realists could stop clinging to ontology would be embracing epistemological nihilism and stop making claims about the world, its objects, and the subjects that dwell in it.

The use of the label "reality gap" to refer to any delay in sense-impressions is a misnomer, an obvious straw man argument from an anti-realist. A simple device or machine (such as a camera, scanner, a plate in the double-slit experiment, etc.) can record properties and events with some delay at a given distance without anyone ever worrying about a "reality gap", which turns out to be completely irrelevant in most empirical settings, unless we are talking about vast distances, in which case the delay is always acknowledged and taken into account in scientific descriptions. In any case, the causal relation between the object and its impression is also acknowledged, and that is the key issue to approach in the realism/anti-realism debate. Your implication that delay in sense-impressions = Hume's problem of induction is outright false and misleading.

It is also completely nonsensical to claim your position is leveraged on empirical experience and at the same not leveraged on causation. What you really meant is not leveraged on REAL causation or leveraged on a different theory of causation, which of course is Hume's problem of induction and the seed for Kant's anti-realist project. But then again, as I have shown repeatedly, anti-realists are still stuck with the problem of justifying experience itself. Here is Kant assuming the validity of judgements of perception, grounding them on real subjects, themselves grounded on judgements of perception, making such validation circular:
Kant wrote:Empirical judgments, in so far as they have objective validity, are judgments of experience; they, however, in so far as they are only subjectively valid, I call mere judgments of perception. … All of our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception: they are valid merely for us, i.e., for our subject, and only afterwards do we give them a new relation, namely to an object, and we intend that [the judgment] is supposed to be also valid for us at all times and precisely so for everyone else;


For heaven's sake, where did "subjects", "us" and "everyone else" come from? From the experience of subjects, us and everyone else? Isn't that what he needed to explain in the first place? This is why: since they are treated as objects of perception ("there are subjects in my perception"), it turns out that if they are subjectively valid at first instance, their objects of perception instantly become validated objectively ("there are subjects in my perception that have experiences of objects in their perception which are not mine subjectively, therefore independent of my immediate perception") and not afterwards. Since the principle of judgement of perception cannot stand this way without putting anti-realism against the wall, then it can only resort to subjectivism and solipsism: "empirical judgements are valid merely for me. If I judge empirically that other subjects are in my perception, they must not have experiences of objects in their perception, in order for my subjective validity to stand. All perceptions, all experiences of objects, are exclusively mine." The notions of "subjects", "us" and "everyone else", are left unexplained, and they must stay this way for saving the subjectivity of empirical judgement. They must remain as vague assumptions under the label "human conditions". And that's why when I asked how you could prove intersubjectivity to be real, I couldn't get a straight answer. How could I get a straight answer if idealists cannot justify any distinction between hallucination and reality without presenting arguments that undermine any possible distinction.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by jayjacobus »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:03 am Ontology deals with what exists and epistemology with whether it can be known, objectively, the answer to that question or not. Whatever realists or anti-realists do to deal with that, nevertheless implies an ontological stance, even if it's just a basic assumption in their framework. In other words, epistemology cannot survive one day without ontology, it always has to deal with the entity that knows and must place it somewhere in a world of objects. So, unless one has embraced epistemological nihilism or any of its variants, one is entangled with ontology, and that is true even if one wants to jump to the wagon of anti-realism. Note that anti-realists, departing from epistemology, make ontological claims and then proceed to argue with vague ontological assumptions implicit in their framework. The only way anti-realists could stop clinging to ontology would be embracing epistemological nihilism and stop making claims about the world, its objects, and the subjects that dwell in it.

The use of the label "reality gap" to refer to any delay in sense-impressions is a misnomer, an obvious straw man argument from an anti-realist. A simple device or machine (such as a camera, scanner, a plate in the double-slit experiment, etc.) can record properties and events with some delay at a given distance without anyone ever worrying about a "reality gap", which turns out to be completely irrelevant in most empirical settings, unless we are talking about vast distances, in which case the delay is always acknowledged and taken into account in scientific descriptions. In any case, the causal relation between the object and its impression is also acknowledged, and that is the key issue to approach in the realism/anti-realism debate. Your implication that delay in sense-impressions = Hume's problem of induction is outright false and misleading.

It is also completely nonsensical to claim your position is leveraged on empirical experience and at the same not leveraged on causation. What you really meant is not leveraged on REAL causation or leveraged on a different theory of causation, which of course is Hume's problem of induction and the seed for Kant's anti-realist project. But then again, as I have shown repeatedly, anti-realists are still stuck with the problem of justifying experience itself. Here is Kant assuming the validity of judgements of perception, grounding them on real subjects, themselves grounded on judgements of perception, making such validation circular:
Kant wrote:Empirical judgments, in so far as they have objective validity, are judgments of experience; they, however, in so far as they are only subjectively valid, I call mere judgments of perception. … All of our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception: they are valid merely for us, i.e., for our subject, and only afterwards do we give them a new relation, namely to an object, and we intend that [the judgment] is supposed to be also valid for us at all times and precisely so for everyone else;


For heaven's sake, where did "subjects", "us" and "everyone else" come from? From the experience of subjects, us and everyone else? Isn't that what he needed to explain in the first place? This is why: since they are treated as objects of perception ("there are subjects in my perception"), it turns out that if they are subjectively valid at first instance, their objects of perception instantly become validated objectively ("there are subjects in my perception that have experiences of objects in their perception which are not mine subjectively, therefore independent of my immediate perception") and not afterwards. Since the principle of judgement of perception cannot stand this way without putting anti-realism against the wall, then it can only resort to subjectivism and solipsism: "empirical judgements are valid merely for me. If I judge empirically that other subjects are in my perception, they must not have experiences of objects in their perception, in order for my subjective validity to stand. All perceptions, all experiences of objects, are exclusively mine." The notions of "subjects", "us" and "everyone else", are left unexplained, and they must stay this way for saving the subjectivity of empirical judgement. They must remain as vague assumptions under the label "human conditions". And that's why when I asked how you could prove intersubjectivity to be real, I couldn't get a straight answer. How could I get a straight answer if idealists cannot justify any distinction between hallucination and reality without presenting arguments that undermine any possible distinction.
To be insightful, a person must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don't think you have done that.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

jayjacobus wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:01 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:03 am [...]
To be insightful, a person must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don't think you have done that.
I agree with the above.
Lucanor's views are too crude and kindergartenish [philosophically]!
Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:03 am Ontology deals with what exists and epistemology with whether it can be known, objectively, the answer to that question or not. Whatever realists or anti-realists do to deal with that, nevertheless implies an ontological stance, even if it's just a basic assumption in their framework. In other words, epistemology cannot survive one day without ontology, it always has to deal with the entity that knows and must place it somewhere in a world of objects. So, unless one has embraced epistemological nihilism or any of its variants, one is entangled with ontology, and that is true even if one wants to jump to the wagon of anti-realism. Note that anti-realists, departing from epistemology, make ontological claims and then proceed to argue with vague ontological assumptions implicit in their framework. The only way anti-realists could stop clinging to ontology would be embracing epistemological nihilism and stop making claims about the world, its objects, and the subjects that dwell in it.
As I had implied what I can agree with the term 'ontology' is in its widest sense as referring to "what-is" of reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology#
Since whatever both of us are referring is regarding same 'reality' i.e. fundamental ontology, we can do away with the term 'ontology' as a common denominator.

However what is more pronounced in the term of 'ontology' [used traditionally and even in the present] is with reference to the existence of things independent of the human conditions, i.e. ontology in the philosophical realist sense, especially related to substance theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory

Point is when you refer to the term 'ontology' you are not referring to its widest sense, but rather to the above confined meaning related to philosophical [critical] realism.
This is why I denounced the term 'ontology' as used from your perspective.

The use of the label "reality gap" to refer to any delay in sense-impressions is a misnomer, an obvious straw man argument from an anti-realist. A simple device or machine (such as a camera, scanner, a plate in the double-slit experiment, etc.) can record properties and events with some delay at a given distance without anyone ever worrying about a "reality gap", which turns out to be completely irrelevant in most empirical settings, unless we are talking about vast distances, in which case the delay is always acknowledged and taken into account in scientific descriptions. In any case, the causal relation between the object and its impression is also acknowledged, and that is the key issue to approach in the realism/anti-realism debate. Your implication that delay in sense-impressions = Hume's problem of induction is outright false and misleading.

You are too casual, crude and naive [philosophically] with your 'without anyone ever worrying about a "reality-gap" ' and that "it is irrelevant".

The principle is as long as there is a distance between the supposed reality and the perception of it, there is a reality-Gap regardless of the distance involved.
WHO ARE YOU to insist the reality-Gap in principle and reality is completely irrelevant in most empirical settings.
In QM and particle-Physics, micro-distances and nano-seconds are very critical.

For the purpose of philosophy, the principle of the Reality-Gap is very critical for the realism and anti-realism debate.

Causality is not the key issue of the realism /anti-realism debate. You seem to be very ignorant of this issue.
The key issue with realism /anti-realism debate is expressed in philosophical realism;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism
Realism can also be a view about the properties of reality in general, holding that reality exists independent of the mind, as opposed to non-realist views (...) which question the certainty of anything beyond one's own mind.
[..]
Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved.
[..]
In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism. Today it is more usually contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism
It is also completely nonsensical to claim your position is leveraged on empirical experience and at the same not leveraged on causation. What you really meant is not leveraged on REAL causation or leveraged on a different theory of causation, which of course is Hume's problem of induction and the seed for Kant's anti-realist project. But then again, as I have shown repeatedly, anti-realists are still stuck with the problem of justifying experience itself. Here is Kant assuming the validity of judgements of perception, grounding them on real subjects, themselves grounded on judgements of perception, making such validation circular:
Kant wrote:Empirical judgments, in so far as they have objective validity, are judgments of experience; they, however, in so far as they are only subjectively valid, I call mere judgments of perception. … All of our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception: they are valid merely for us, i.e., for our subject, and only afterwards do we give them a new relation, namely to an object, and we intend that [the judgment] is supposed to be also valid for us at all times and precisely so for everyone else;


For heaven's sake, where did "subjects", "us" and "everyone else" come from? From the experience of subjects, us and everyone else? Isn't that what he needed to explain in the first place? This is why: since they are treated as objects of perception ("there are subjects in my perception"), it turns out that if they are subjectively valid at first instance, their objects of perception instantly become validated objectively ("there are subjects in my perception that have experiences of objects in their perception which are not mine subjectively, therefore independent of my immediate perception") and not afterwards. Since the principle of judgement of perception cannot stand this way without putting anti-realism against the wall, then it can only resort to subjectivism and solipsism: "empirical judgements are valid merely for me. If I judge empirically that other subjects are in my perception, they must not have experiences of objects in their perception, in order for my subjective validity to stand. All perceptions, all experiences of objects, are exclusively mine." The notions of "subjects", "us" and "everyone else", are left unexplained, and they must stay this way for saving the subjectivity of empirical judgement. They must remain as vague assumptions under the label "human conditions". And that's why when I asked how you could prove intersubjectivity to be real, I couldn't get a straight answer. How could I get a straight answer if idealists cannot justify any distinction between hallucination and reality without presenting arguments that undermine any possible distinction.
Quoting merely a paragraph from the Prolegomena [a side text] from Kant will not help your cause.
Kant discussed and deliberated on the concept of the 'subject' very extensively and deeply in his Critique of Pure Reason re the empirical subject [self] the logical subject, the transcendental subject, etc.
In this case, you need to understand [not necessary agree] with the whole context of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason before you critique Kant's single paragraph.

In the above, you are shooting your own self-constructed strawman.
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:32 am
As I had implied what I can agree with the term 'ontology' is in its widest sense as referring to "what-is" of reality...
Whenever a wannabe philosopher is set to pick up all his spattered nonsense to attempt to recompose with it a decent, coherent argument, you will get him talking about things "in this sense or another". The Eiffel Tower is in Idaho, in the sense that there's the city of Paris in Idaho. Sure, anything can make sense this way.

So, you have been forced to concede that even from your anti-realist stance, you're still stuck with ontology. The problem is that by giving no serious attention to it, you and the anti-realist gang end up making the most absurd claims about beings from the framework of epistemology, which is like using thermodynamics to measure angles. Worst of all, you're unable to see how this unchecked ontological assumptions corrode the whole logical structure that aims to deny materialist ontology, because the doctrine must posit entities that then cannot be justified.

Sense-impressions delay in particle physics? Come on!! We know science is definitely not your favorite subject, but don't make it so obvious. No one has actually ever observed an electron moving through space, we see its effects afterwards and any delay in sense-impression is irrelevant. Your all made-up "reality gap" is utter nonsense, it only shows up in your dreams.

Oh, yes, the Kantian subject: "One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" is only ever encountered as appearance, never as it is in itself." The problem remains the same: "subjects appear in my perception". What justifies the belief that they are things that also experience transcendental apperception and encounter their selves as appearances? The answer is: nothing. In other words, how does the "I think" (instead of "I am") get transformed into the "you think" (instead of "you are")? Anti-realists then can only resort to subjectivism and solipsism: "empirical subjects are valid merely for me".
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Conde Lucanor
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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jayjacobus wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:01 am To be insightful, a person must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don't think you have done that.
It seems you're not even competent to make an argument, but I guess everyone is entitled to spit words into a forum.
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