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: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:56 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote:At present which philosopher or any group of philosophers agree that Metaphysics is possible as a Science in general?
Since Quine revived metaphysics in analytic philosophy it has stayed firmly on the agenda.
Metaphysics in Analytic Philosophy
As the new millennium dawned, however, it was clear not only that metaphysics was no longer dead, but that its resurrection as analytic metaphysics was one of the more remarkable developments in philosophy in general and in its analytic strain in particular.
Also note:
Analytic Philosophy
Science has also had an increasingly significant role in metaphysics. The theory of special relativity has had a profound effect on the philosophy of time, and quantum physics is routinely discussed in the free will debate. The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to widespread commitments among philosophers to scientific realism and naturalism.
Kant claimed Metaphysics is possible as a science as he defined both terms specifically in his own way. There is no consensus on Kant's definition then nor it is accepted in our modern time.

That Science is claimed to play a role in metaphysics does not make metaphysics of science. Theology also relied on science to support its creationism theories.

In our modern time, the term 'science' has its specific meaning, i.e.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

To claim metaphysics is a science at present would make it only a pseudoscience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I challenge you to prove the absolutely absolute exists?
Prove to me your realism [philosophical - critical] is absolutely absolute? This is the same as the OP's challenge.
That's a completely ridiculous challenge. ANYTHING that you regard as real (the universe, consciousness, the subject, you, etc.) becomes your absolute, and that works for every type of idealist, too. Even if one embraced the only ontological committment compatible with your anti-realism, the void, that is still an absolute.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I don't believe in any absolutely absolute.
My empirical realism is relative and conditional, and so is my transcendental idealism which by definition is relative to the human conditions.
Your "human conditions" are the absolute you are positing. The boldest and most daring relativism always requires a system of reference as a foundational reality. That's why anti-realism is constantly shooting itself in the foot, having to posit something as real, which idealists are perfectly happy to acknowledge, as long as it is not a material reality. At the end of the day, that's all what idealists want: to promote the reality and primacy of the "spirit", aka consciousness.
Note your usual rhetoric, this time sliding from "human conditions" to 'spirit'.

What you are missing is the need to differentiate between
1. absolutely absolute
2. relative absolute

If it is MY 'absolute' then it is a relative-absolute, i.e. it is relative to me.
Any "absolute" that is related to the human condition is a relative-absolute, e.g. absolute temperature is related to Science which is conditioned by human scientists and their consensus. Other similar are absolute monarchy, absolute power, and the likes.

However if you claim your absolute of whatever is absolutely independent of the human conditions - as in your critical [philosophical] realism, that would be an absolutely-absolute.
I argued your claim of an absolutely-absolute is an impossibility because no thing can be absolutely independent of the human conditions ultimately.

Note even any attempt to prove the absolutely-absolute already implied the precedence of the inclusion of the human conditions into it. Thus your claim of an absolutely-absolute existence of any thing-in-itself is an impossibility to start with. This is why your critical [philosophical] realism is not realistic nor tenable.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Note I claimed your realism [you claimed it is absolute] is idealistic because you are only in contact with the ideas [sense data] of your reality and is never in contact with the supposed reality. Your supposed reality is a transcendental reality.
Then you use ideas [ideal] to infer your supposed reality.
As such, whatever the reality you claim, what is most real to you is merely idealistic, thus empirical idealism or transcendental realism.
This claim of yours reveals that you're the victim of your own arguments. The same phenomenological critique you apply to realism, ends up undermining your own stance, since you're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). If phenomenalists like you were coherent, they would apply the same skepticism to the reality of experience, landing on epistemological nihilism or Berkeley's solipsism.
Btw, rhetoric again, I don't agree with the phenomemalist label.

You are deflecting.
The onus is on you to prove your "supposed transcendental reality" exists independent of your own and general human conditions.
So prove it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Note the difference between sense i.e. the faculties of the 5 senses and reason.
The claim of invisible, mysterious, teleological forces and the likes is not common sense but rather an inference of reason, i.e. by the human crude and pure reason that produce fallacious inferences.

Common sense thus is related to the 5 common senses and what you sensed is what you get.
You're obviously completely ignorant of what is referred to as the common sense view.
Philosophy of Common Sense
Philosophy of common sense, 18th- and early 19th-century Scottish school of Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, and others, who held that in the actual perception of the average, unsophisticated man, sensations are not mere ideas or subjective impressions but carry with them the belief in corresponding qualities as belonging to external objects. Such beliefs, Reid insisted, “belong to the common sense and reason of mankind”; and in matters of common sense “the learned and the unlearned, the philosopher and the day-labourer, are upon a level.”
Note that the spiritual, immaterial bodies that populated the heavens purported by theologians, were for them real external objects, and the magical forces involved were also real, external and objective. Only with the advent of modern science such poor and precarious rationalizations were revealed as untenable for a realistic view of the world.
Btw, the point is not related to the 'Philosophy of Common Sense' in this case.

Note my point again;
The claim of invisible, mysterious, teleological forces and the likes is not common sense but rather an inference of reason, i.e. by the human crude and pure reason that produce fallacious inferences.

"Common sense" in the above is related to literally 'common sense'. This is not the main point.

Do you agree or disagree with my point in blue?
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:56 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: The age of the moon is a scientific fact, thus not illusory in that sense.
So the question of 'illusion' does not arise in this sense.
But note, all scientific facts are at best 'polished conjectures'.
There is no 100% certainty with scientific facts, it is possible a scientific fact could be wrong.

However if you were to claim 100% absolute certainty for whatever scientific facts are of the moon, then that would be illusory.
This is a common misconception peddled by anti-science propagandists distorting some claims of philosophers of science.
Not all scientific assertions imply absolute certainty, and there are many fields of science, especially those which are relevant to contemporary issues, where research has produced pretty solid evidence in favor of a given model or theory, but nevertheless they allow for refinement and even replacement.
And there is outright speculation in some relatively new fields, such as theoretical physics. So it has always been fair to say that, in general, science research produces provisional knowledge, rejecting dogmatic approaches and promoting what works best for science: its method, requiring that everything be tested and retested in order to improve the current state of knowledge.

The anti-science gang has wanted to exploit this to mean that claims coming from all scientific fields, from all subjects, from all aspects of reality are always, uniformly, only partially reliable. But that's simply not true. No serious scientist is challenging and retesting the scientific fact of the sun in our planetary system, as if it were just a 'polished conjecture', nor the existence of planet Mercury as the closest in orbit to that sun, nor the existence of the Earth's moon and its age.
In such particular cases, talking about "absolute" certainty is in no way undermining science's general ability to challenge its own claims.
To claim these well-established facts are speculative or even worst, illusory, is completely preposterous, it shows ignorance and very little recognition of the value of science.
Rhetoric again, I have never claimed to be anti-science as you are alluding above.
The general maxim that is a default within the Scientific Framework is, there is no 100% certainty to any scientific knowledge.
To label scientific knowledge as 'polished conjectures' [in context] do not make any difference to the above.

Science does use the term 'absolute' e.g. absolute temperature, etc. which is a relative-absolute.
No modern scientist would attribute the term 'absolute' to any scientific theory. If you think so, show me the evidence. But even if there are such claim, they are fundamentally relative-absolute and not an absolutely-absolute claim. [note modern not past like Newton and his likes]
In any case, your response that the age of the Moon is not illusory, implies that the entity affected by age is not illusory either.
And if the Moon and its age are not illusory, neither is illusory the existence of the Moon in a time when humans were not around.
If the existence of the Moon in a time when humans were not around is not illusory, then the existence of the Moon independent of human perception cannot be illusory.
If the existence of the Moon independent of human perception is not illusory, the Moon in itself is not illusory.
But I have justified, that 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans' is based on a realization that is conditioned upon the human framework and conditions.
Without that "human framework and conditions" there is no way it can be determined the realization 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans.'

In normal convention within the human framework and conditions, yes, the Moon existed before humans, therefore existed as real conditionally, thus then and now.

But under the most rigorous philosophical reflection the above claim cannot be absolutely-absolute.
Thus in this case, one has to suspend judgment and just literally shut up on this point. To even start deliberating about would invoke the human conditions, than cannot be independent of it.

Note Wittgenstein's
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”

If you insist as you do under critical [philosophical] realism not to shut up with your claim of philosophical realism, then the moon you are referring to in this case is an illusion.
This has serious implications and consequences [potentially evil] because the next extension is claiming an independent soul and God exists as in-itself.

That is why some philosophers are claiming philosophical [critical realism] is theo-centric in the ultimate sense.

Veritas Aequitas wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote: So, is that your answer? That the discovery of the electron has nothing to do with what's real, but with what fits into Thomson's theoretical framework? Did electrons exist before Thomson?
There were no "electrons" before Thomson.
Whatever is an "electron" [or whatever the name] after Thomson is conditioned upon the scientific framework and that is at best a polished conjecture.
There is no electron-in-itself [note OP] either before or after Thomson.
Well, that would imply that Thomson, a body composed of fundamental particles, nor any human, have ever existed in themselves, even though they, paradoxically, just like the Moon, do age.
One has to wonder where scientific frameworks come from, since the beings that are supposedly their creators, are ultimately illusory, too.
There is no brain in itself, there is no neuron in itself, no synapse in itself, there is no conscious activity in itself, no mental state in itself, no cognition in itself, no experience in itself. You can't get more absurd.
I never claimed humans and things are illusory within ordinary empirical experiences and I NEVER claimed they are ultimately illusory as a personal belief.

What I claim is,
your extended claim [that 'ism' as in philosophical or critical realism] that things and humans are things-in-themselves, i.e. existing as absolutely independent entities, is illusory in the ultimate sense.
In a sense, it is your 'ism' that is generating the illusion.

My "ism" i.e. empirical realism and its corresponding transcendental idealism is very realistic and is in close alignment with real ordinary empirical experiences.

Btw, as you often had done, don't forcefully squeeze my 'round peg' transcendental idealism into the "round holes" of other types of idealism.
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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 04, 2021 4:56 amKant claimed Metaphysics...
This matter about the relationship between Kant and metaphysics has already been settled. I have provided more than enough evidence to support my claim and you don't have anything to refute it.

Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am That Science is claimed to play a role in metaphysics does not make metaphysics of science. Theology also relied on science to support its creationism theories.
Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy, and particularly the relation between analytic philosophy and science. You asked which philosophers at present agree that metaphysics is possible as a science in general, and I delivered: analytic philosophers. Note this from John Searle, an analytic philosopher:
The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
"Most philosophers today accept some version or other of Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction [...] but now there is general scepticism about our ability to make a strict distinction between those propositions that are true by definition and those that are true as a matter of fact. The rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction has profound consequences for analytich philosophy [...] The results of philosophical analysis cannot be sharply distinguished from the results of scientific investigation. [...]If we accept Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, then philosophy is not something that can be clearly demarcated from the special sciences. It is, rather, adjacent to, and overlaps with, other disciplines. Although philosophy is more general than other disciplines, its propositions do not have any special logical status or special logical priortiy with regard to the other disciplines.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am What you are missing is the need to differentiate between
1. absolutely absolute
2. relative absolute

If it is MY 'absolute' then it is a relative-absolute, i.e. it is relative to me.
A "relative absolute" is an oxymoron, completely absurd. Making up terms to escape logical contradictions is pure sophistry. Let's be reminded of what is the issue at stake here: you claimed your stance (empirical realism) is a relative realism, subsumed within transcendental idealism. This means that for anything to be called real, it is conditioned to be an ideal object of the human mind. Not YOUR human mind, but everyone's human mind, which you call "the human conditions". My reply was that this apparent relativization does not fulfill the requirements of relativity as such, since you still provide a fixed frame of reference with pretensions of objectivity outside your own experience: the human conditions. But if "your absolute reality" is only yours, relative to you, then it stays with you. You cannot wrap it up and send it to another person to engage in a discussion and still pretend that it is "relative to you", at best it would be relative to a group of people, but that raises the problem of those people ("the human conditions") being included inside your relative reality, leaving you and your frame of reference alone by themselves. This would not justify your belief in anything else but yourself (solipsism), and would make your participation in an internet forum to discuss matters with other people a vain exercise of self-delusion. So, it is either that or you actually distrust "your own absolute reality", aka relative reality, to posit the fixed frame of reference, which by not being conditioned to anything else, becomes your non-relative (absolute) reality, labeled as non-realism. Your non-relative non-realism is then your absolute non-realism. You're forced to claim that "the human conditions" do not exist in themselves. But then in what sense, relative or conditioned to what they exist? And the answer cannot be "conditioned to the human conditions"!!!
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Any "absolute" that is related to the human condition is a relative-absolute, e.g. absolute temperature is related to Science which is conditioned by human scientists and their consensus. Other similar are absolute monarchy, absolute power, and the likes.
And so, I repeat my question: do human conditions exist in themselves?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Note even any attempt to prove the absolutely-absolute already implied the precedence of the inclusion of the human conditions into it. Thus your claim of an absolutely-absolute existence of any thing-in-itself is an impossibility to start with. This is why your critical [philosophical] realism is not realistic nor tenable.
So, the existence of human conditions in themselves is also an impossibility to start with? Since we already know your answer has to be: "yes, it is also an impossibility", the next obvious question is: what conditions the human conditions?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:56 am This claim of yours reveals that you're the victim of your own arguments. The same phenomenological critique you apply to realism, ends up undermining your own stance, since you're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). If phenomenalists like you were coherent, they would apply the same skepticism to the reality of experience, landing on epistemological nihilism or Berkeley's solipsism.
Btw, rhetoric again, I don't agree with the phenomemalist label.

You are deflecting.
The onus is on you to prove your "supposed transcendental reality" exists independent of your own and general human conditions.
So prove it.
Note how how you insist with "prove it", while avoiding a proper logical response to my argument. Deal with the arguments first, and here it is again: You're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). So prove that sense data and ideas exist and you have direct contact with it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Btw, the point is not related to the 'Philosophy of Common Sense' in this case.

Note my point again;
The claim of invisible, mysterious, teleological forces and the likes is not common sense but rather an inference of reason, i.e. by the human crude and pure reason that produce fallacious inferences.

"Common sense" in the above is related to literally 'common sense'. This is not the main point.

Do you agree or disagree with my point in blue?
I restate my point that you're completely ignorant of what the common sense view is. The "human crude and pure reason" is exactly what the Scottish school described as the sensations that "[...] in the actual perception of the average, unsophisticated man, [...] carry with them the belief in corresponding qualities as belonging to external objects." These beliefs that "belong to the common sense and reason of mankind" are the pre-theoretical view before philosophy and science were developed as formal, systematic disciplines.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Rhetoric again, I have never claimed to be anti-science as you are alluding above.
You don't need to claim it, you just need to show it. Whoever denies the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon is against science.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: But I have justified, that 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans' is based on a realization that is conditioned upon the human framework and conditions.
That's a non-sensical justification. If X is non-illusory and it predates humans, it existed for real before any human conditioning. If it existed before any human conditioning, it can certainly continue existing after human conditions, and therefore, its existence is independent of human conditions. The fact that at one moment in time both X and humans coincided, and X became knowledgeable by humans, does not imply that X can only exist when it is knowledgeable by humans.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: In normal convention within the human framework and conditions, yes, the Moon existed before humans, therefore existed as real conditionally, thus then and now.
But under the most rigorous philosophical reflection the above claim cannot be absolutely-absolute.
In this case philosophical reflection is far from being the "most rigorous", as it stays in an ivory tower of ethereal ideas, dismissing the hard evidence of human practice. There's simple no sensical philosophical justification for making a distinction between "normal convention within the human framework and conditions" and "the most rigorous philosophical reflection", as if the latter somehow magically avoided being human framework and conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thus in this case, one has to suspend judgment and just literally shut up on this point. To even start deliberating about would invoke the human conditions, than cannot be independent of it.

Note Wittgenstein's
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Note the difference between suspending judgement: "we cannot know whether it exists or not", and applying judgement: "it doesn't exist". You're not following your own advice.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: This has serious implications and consequences [potentially evil] because the next extension is claiming an independent soul and God exists as in-itself.

That is why some philosophers are claiming philosophical [critical realism] is theo-centric in the ultimate sense.
An entirely ridiculous claim, as the belief in the existence of things that appear in our real experience does not imply the belief in the existence of things out of pure imagination, such as souls and gods.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I never claimed humans and things are illusory within ordinary empirical experiences
Yes, you did, because you claim ordinary empirical experience is no different than hallucination: things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote:
I NEVER claimed they are ultimately illusory as a personal belief.
If the acknowledgement of their existence is completely dependent of an epistemological framework, and you claim there's nothing real outside any epistemological framework, then it is exactly the same as calling them ultimately illusory.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:50 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 amKant claimed Metaphysics...
This matter about the relationship between Kant and metaphysics has already been settled. I have provided more than enough evidence to support my claim and you don't have anything to refute it.

Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am That Science is claimed to play a role in metaphysics does not make metaphysics of science. Theology also relied on science to support its creationism theories.
Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy, and particularly the relation between analytic philosophy and science. You asked which philosophers at present agree that metaphysics is possible as a science in general, and I delivered: analytic philosophers. Note this from John Searle, an analytic philosopher:
The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
"Most philosophers today accept some version or other of Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction [...] but now there is general scepticism about our ability to make a strict distinction between those propositions that are true by definition and those that are true as a matter of fact. The rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction has profound consequences for analytich philosophy [...] The results of philosophical analysis cannot be sharply distinguished from the results of scientific investigation. [...]If we accept Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, then philosophy is not something that can be clearly demarcated from the special sciences.

It is, rather, adjacent to, and overlaps with, other disciplines. Although philosophy is more general than other disciplines, its propositions do not have any special logical status or special logical priortiy with regard to the other disciplines.
Note the point bolded above definitely do not mean 'metaphysics is possible as a science'.

Metaphysics is a very loose term and there is no way Metaphysics is possible as a science conventionally.
Generally, in our modern time, it is a taboo to associate Metaphysics with Science.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am What you are missing is the need to differentiate between
1. absolutely absolute
2. relative absolute

If it is MY 'absolute' then it is a relative-absolute, i.e. it is relative to me.
A "relative absolute" is an oxymoron, completely absurd. Making up terms to escape logical contradictions is pure sophistry.
Note the definition of what is relative, i.e.
Relative: a thing having a relation to or connection with or necessary dependence on another thing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relative

'What is absolute temperature is relative to the scientific framework, thus it has to be a relative 'absolute'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_temperature

Whatever is claimed to be an 'absolute' and it is related to something, then it is a relative absolute.
If you claim otherwise, you will have to invent a new meaning for 'relativity'.

On the other hand the very obvious absolutely-absolute is God which is not dependent on anything. In this case, your claim is illusory.

What you claimed as absolutely-absolute and independent of the human conditions i.e. critical [philosophical] realism is based on ignorance.
Let's be reminded of what is the issue at stake here: you claimed your stance (empirical realism) is a relative realism, subsumed within transcendental idealism.
This means that for anything to be called real, it is conditioned to be an ideal object of the human mind.
Not YOUR human mind, but everyone's human mind, which you call "the human conditions".

You are being rhetorical above. Don't force your thinking into mine.
What I claimed is, what is real cannot be independent of the human conditions, i.e. that is transcendental idealism.
My reply was that this apparent relativization does not fulfill the requirements of relativity as such, since you still provide a fixed frame of reference with pretensions of objectivity outside your own experience: the human conditions.
Who are you to decide on how to use the term relativity?

Note scientific objectivity is relative to the frame of reference of the scientific framework which is relative [as defined] to the human conditions, i.e. many scientists and not just one scientist.

Note I am breaking up the long post to avoid losing the whole post should anything happen to my computer.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:50 am But if "your absolute reality" is only yours, relative to you, then it stays with you.
You cannot wrap it up and send it to another person to engage in a discussion and still pretend that it is "relative to you", at best it would be relative to a group of people, but that raises the problem of those people ("the human conditions") being included inside your relative reality, leaving you and your frame of reference alone by themselves.
This would not justify your belief in anything else but yourself (solipsism), and would make your participation in an internet forum to discuss matters with other people a vain exercise of self-delusion.
So, it is either that or you actually distrust "your own absolute reality", aka relative reality, to posit the fixed frame of reference, which by not being conditioned to anything else, becomes your non-relative (absolute) reality, labeled as non-realism. Your non-relative non-realism is then your absolute non-realism. You're forced to claim that "the human conditions" do not exist in themselves. But then in what sense, relative or conditioned to what they exist? And the answer cannot be "conditioned to the human conditions"!!!
The above is a mess.

I don't believe your term 'your absolute reality'.
Whatever reality to me is never absolutely absolute but rather is conditioned upon my empirical self.
As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality. If it is associate that with 'absolute' then it is a relative absolute, never an absolutely-absolute reality.

There is no question of solipsism with my beliefs, i.e. empirical realism where everything [things and other humans] are real to me.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Any "absolute" that is related to the human condition is a relative-absolute, e.g. absolute temperature is related to Science which is conditioned by human scientists and their consensus. Other similar are absolute monarchy, absolute power, and the likes.
And so, I repeat my question: do human conditions exist in themselves?
No! human conditions do not exist in themselves?
The general principle is there are no things-in-themselves as claimed by critical realists.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Note even any attempt to prove the absolutely-absolute already implied the precedence of the inclusion of the human conditions into it. Thus your claim of an absolutely-absolute existence of any thing-in-itself is an impossibility to start with. This is why your critical [philosophical] realism is not realistic nor tenable.
So, the existence of human conditions in themselves is also an impossibility to start with? Since we already know your answer has to be: "yes, it is also an impossibility", the next obvious question is: what conditions the human conditions?
Human conditions emerges.
There is no need to speculate on its ultimate conditions - the first cause.
What are human conditions can easily be verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:56 am This claim of yours reveals that you're the victim of your own arguments. The same phenomenological critique you apply to realism, ends up undermining your own stance, since you're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). If phenomenalists like you were coherent, they would apply the same skepticism to the reality of experience, landing on epistemological nihilism or Berkeley's solipsism.
Btw, rhetoric again, I don't agree with the phenomemalist label.

You are deflecting.
The onus is on you to prove your "supposed transcendental reality" exists independent of your own and general human conditions.
So prove it.
Note how how you insist with "prove it", while avoiding a proper logical response to my argument. Deal with the arguments first, and here it is again: You're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). So prove that sense data and ideas exist and you have direct contact with it.
You got it wrong re my view of reality.
When I see the moon [verified and justified], that to me is reality where I am part and parcel of that reality.
I don't claim there is a moon-in-itself that is independent of my conditions and human conditions.

You on the other, when you see the moon [verified and justified], you claim the moon exists in itself and is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
So you prove how the moon is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Rhetoric again, I have never claimed to be anti-science as you are alluding above.
You don't need to claim it, you just need to show it. Whoever denies the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon is against science.
I did not deny the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon as verifiable and justifiable via the scientific framework and system.
My point is whatever is objective existence of electrons or the Moon cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Point is how can the objective existence of electrons or the Moon be consummated without the involvements of human scientists at all.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: But I have justified, that 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans' is based on a realization that is conditioned upon the human framework and conditions.
That's a non-sensical justification. If X is non-illusory and it predates humans, it existed for real before any human conditioning. If it existed before any human conditioning, it can certainly continue existing after human conditions, and therefore, its existence is independent of human conditions. The fact that at one moment in time both X and humans coincided, and X became knowledgeable by humans, does not imply that X can only exist when it is knowledgeable by humans.
You are being rhetoric again, where did I say that?
I claimed what is real [not what is known] cannot be independent of the human conditions.

On the other hand, you without any direct contact with the supposed-reality insist that supposed reality exists as real. This is merely a speculation and what you are speculating as really real, i.e. independent of the human conditions is illusory.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: In normal convention within the human framework and conditions, yes, the Moon existed before humans, therefore existed as real conditionally, thus then and now.
But under the most rigorous philosophical reflection the above claim cannot be absolutely-absolute.
In this case philosophical reflection is far from being the "most rigorous", as it stays in an ivory tower of ethereal ideas, dismissing the hard evidence of human practice. There's simple no sensical philosophical justification for making a distinction between "normal convention within the human framework and conditions" and "the most rigorous philosophical reflection", as if the latter somehow magically avoided being human framework and conditions.
Note I have argued against what you are insisting is merely basing on speculation because you do not have direct contact with that supposed reality you claimed exist independent of yourself and the human conditions.

I don't get involved with speculations like you do.
What I claimed as real is based primarily on empirical evidences and supported by rational thinking. What is wrong with that?
The above is subsumed within transcendental idealism because humans are part and parcel of reality, thus cannot extricate one self from reality to view reality [which one is part and parcel of] from an independent standpoint [which is an impossibility].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thus in this case, one has to suspend judgment and just literally shut up on this point. To even start deliberating about would invoke the human conditions, than cannot be independent of it.

Note Wittgenstein's
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Note the difference between suspending judgement: "we cannot know whether it exists or not", and applying judgement: "it doesn't exist". You're not following your own advice.
Note sure of your point above.
I meant you have to suspend judgment in insisting reality is absolutely-independent of the human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: This has serious implications and consequences [potentially evil] because the next extension is claiming an independent soul and God exists as in-itself.

That is why some philosophers are claiming philosophical [critical realism] is theo-centric in the ultimate sense.
An entirely ridiculous claim, as the belief in the existence of things that appear in our real experience does not imply the belief in the existence of things out of pure imagination, such as souls and gods.
You don't seem to realize what you are claiming as what is real experience to you, exist absolutely independent of yourself and the human conditions.
This is the same as the theists claim that God exist in itself independent of human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I never claimed humans and things are illusory within ordinary empirical experiences
Yes, you did, because you claim ordinary empirical experience is no different than hallucination: things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it.
Note I stated 'within ordinary empirical experiences' and such experiences are real not illusory.

Yes, there are similarities between real things 'within ordinary empirical experiences' and hallucination proper. They are in a continuum.
The point with hallucination proper is what is claimed cannot be verified and justified empirically.

My empirical realism do not make the claim "things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it".
Veritas Aequitas wrote:
I NEVER claimed they are ultimately illusory as a personal belief.
If the acknowledgement of their existence is completely dependent of an epistemological framework, and you claim there's nothing real outside any epistemological framework, then it is exactly the same as calling them ultimately illusory.
Note my empirical realism does not warrant the above.
Regardless of whether it is epistemological or ontological, what is critical is when I see an apple, it has potential utility or otherwise and it is the same with other empirical things.

I do not speculate there is an apple existing as an apple-in-itself independent of any human and human conditions.
In a way, you cannot claim an apple is absolutely independent of humans and human conditions especially when they are grown by humans. So is anything else that came upon after humans exist.
So you have to turn to a things that predated humans but then you are ignorant that even in such cases, they are not ultimately independent of the human conditions.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:50 am But if "your absolute reality" is only yours, relative to you, then it stays with you.
You cannot wrap it up and send it to another person to engage in a discussion and still pretend that it is "relative to you", at best it would be relative to a group of people, but that raises the problem of those people ("the human conditions") being included inside your relative reality, leaving you and your frame of reference alone by themselves.
This would not justify your belief in anything else but yourself (solipsism), and would make your participation in an internet forum to discuss matters with other people a vain exercise of self-delusion.
So, it is either that or you actually distrust "your own absolute reality", aka relative reality, to posit the fixed frame of reference, which by not being conditioned to anything else, becomes your non-relative (absolute) reality, labeled as non-realism. Your non-relative non-realism is then your absolute non-realism. You're forced to claim that "the human conditions" do not exist in themselves. But then in what sense, relative or conditioned to what they exist? And the answer cannot be "conditioned to the human conditions"!!!
The above is a mess.

I don't believe your term 'your absolute reality'.
Whatever reality to me is never absolutely absolute but rather is conditioned upon my empirical self.
As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality. If it is associate that with 'absolute' then it is a relative absolute, never an absolutely-absolute reality.

There is no question of solipsism with my beliefs, i.e. empirical realism where everything [things and other humans] are real to me.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Any "absolute" that is related to the human condition is a relative-absolute, e.g. absolute temperature is related to Science which is conditioned by human scientists and their consensus. Other similar are absolute monarchy, absolute power, and the likes.
And so, I repeat my question: do human conditions exist in themselves?
No! human conditions do not exist in themselves?
The general principle is there are no things-in-themselves as claimed by critical realists.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Note even any attempt to prove the absolutely-absolute already implied the precedence of the inclusion of the human conditions into it. Thus your claim of an absolutely-absolute existence of any thing-in-itself is an impossibility to start with. This is why your critical [philosophical] realism is not realistic nor tenable.
So, the existence of human conditions in themselves is also an impossibility to start with? Since we already know your answer has to be: "yes, it is also an impossibility", the next obvious question is: what conditions the human conditions?
Human conditions emerges.
There is no need to speculate on its ultimate conditions - the first cause.
What are human conditions can easily be verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Btw, rhetoric again, I don't agree with the phenomemalist label.

You are deflecting.
The onus is on you to prove your "supposed transcendental reality" exists independent of your own and general human conditions.
So prove it.
Note how how you insist with "prove it", while avoiding a proper logical response to my argument. Deal with the arguments first, and here it is again: You're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). So prove that sense data and ideas exist and you have direct contact with it.
You got it wrong re my view of reality.
When I see the moon [verified and justified], that to me is reality where I am part and parcel of that reality.
I don't claim there is a moon-in-itself that is independent of my conditions and human conditions.

You on the other, when you see the moon [verified and justified], you claim the moon exists in itself and is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
So you prove how the moon is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Rhetoric again, I have never claimed to be anti-science as you are alluding above.
You don't need to claim it, you just need to show it. Whoever denies the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon is against science.
I did not deny the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon as verifiable and justifiable via the scientific framework and system.
My point is whatever is objective existence of electrons or the Moon cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Point is how can the objective existence of electrons or the Moon be consummated without the involvements of human scientists at all.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: But I have justified, that 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans' is based on a realization that is conditioned upon the human framework and conditions.
That's a non-sensical justification. If X is non-illusory and it predates humans, it existed for real before any human conditioning. If it existed before any human conditioning, it can certainly continue existing after human conditions, and therefore, its existence is independent of human conditions. The fact that at one moment in time both X and humans coincided, and X became knowledgeable by humans, does not imply that X can only exist when it is knowledgeable by humans.
You are being rhetoric again, where did I say that?
I claimed what is real [not what is known] cannot be independent of the human conditions.

On the other hand, you without any direct contact with the supposed-reality insist that supposed reality exists as real. This is merely a speculation and what you are speculating as really real, i.e. independent of the human conditions is illusory.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: In normal convention within the human framework and conditions, yes, the Moon existed before humans, therefore existed as real conditionally, thus then and now.
But under the most rigorous philosophical reflection the above claim cannot be absolutely-absolute.
In this case philosophical reflection is far from being the "most rigorous", as it stays in an ivory tower of ethereal ideas, dismissing the hard evidence of human practice. There's simple no sensical philosophical justification for making a distinction between "normal convention within the human framework and conditions" and "the most rigorous philosophical reflection", as if the latter somehow magically avoided being human framework and conditions.
Note I have argued against what you are insisting is merely basing on speculation because you do not have direct contact with that supposed reality you claimed exist independent of yourself and the human conditions.

I don't get involved with speculations like you do.
What I claimed as real is based primarily on empirical evidences and supported by rational thinking. What is wrong with that?
The above is subsumed within transcendental idealism because humans are part and parcel of reality, thus cannot extricate one self from reality to view reality [which one is part and parcel of] from an independent standpoint [which is an impossibility].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thus in this case, one has to suspend judgment and just literally shut up on this point. To even start deliberating about would invoke the human conditions, than cannot be independent of it.

Note Wittgenstein's
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Note the difference between suspending judgement: "we cannot know whether it exists or not", and applying judgement: "it doesn't exist". You're not following your own advice.
Note sure of your point above.
I meant you have to suspend judgment in insisting reality is absolutely-independent of the human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: This has serious implications and consequences [potentially evil] because the next extension is claiming an independent soul and God exists as in-itself.

That is why some philosophers are claiming philosophical [critical realism] is theo-centric in the ultimate sense.
An entirely ridiculous claim, as the belief in the existence of things that appear in our real experience does not imply the belief in the existence of things out of pure imagination, such as souls and gods.
You don't seem to realize what you are claiming as what is real experience to you, exist absolutely independent of yourself and the human conditions.
This is the same as the theists claim that God exist in itself independent of human conditions.

Note why you are speculating with things-in-themselves is due to some psychological "weaknesses" [relative to future needs] that was and is necessary at present [not future], and is still very active in the majority of people.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I never claimed humans and things are illusory within ordinary empirical experiences
Yes, you did, because you claim ordinary empirical experience is no different than hallucination: things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it.
Note I stated 'within ordinary empirical experiences' and such experiences are real not illusory.

Yes, there are similarities between real things 'within ordinary empirical experiences' and hallucination proper. They are in a continuum.
The point with hallucination proper is what is claimed cannot be verified and justified empirically.

My empirical realism do not make the claim "things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it".
Veritas Aequitas wrote:
I NEVER claimed they are ultimately illusory as a personal belief.
If the acknowledgement of their existence is completely dependent of an epistemological framework, and you claim there's nothing real outside any epistemological framework, then it is exactly the same as calling them ultimately illusory.
Note my empirical realism does not warrant the above.
Regardless of whether it is epistemological or ontological, what is critical is when I see an apple, it has potential utility or otherwise and it is the same with other empirical things.

I do not speculate there is an apple existing as an apple-in-itself independent of any human and human conditions.
In a way, you cannot claim an apple is absolutely independent of humans and human conditions especially when they are grown by humans. So is anything else that came upon after humans exist.
So you have to turn to a things that predated humans but then you are ignorant that even in such cases, they are not ultimately independent of the human conditions.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Sun Jul 11, 2021 5:53 am, 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 »

Aequitas Veritas wrote: Note the point bolded above definitely do not mean 'metaphysics is possible as a science'.

Metaphysics is a very loose term and there is no way Metaphysics is possible as a science conventionally.
Generally, in our modern time, it is a taboo to associate Metaphysics with Science.
I have proven beyond reasonable doubt the relationship between metaphysics in general and science. Just as there is a philosophy of science, there is some sort of science of philosophy, which is mostly found systematically developed in analytic philosophy.

You will have to do better than just making blind assertions to refute it.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Note the definition of what is relative, i.e.
Relative: a thing having a relation to or connection with or necessary dependence on another thing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relative

'What is absolute temperature is relative to the scientific framework, thus it has to be a relative 'absolute'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_temperature

Whatever is claimed to be an 'absolute' and it is related to something, then it is a relative absolute.
If you claim otherwise, you will have to invent a new meaning for 'relativity'.
That pair you made up: "relative absolute", as well as "absolute absolute", are complete (absolute) nonsense, an exercise of pure (absolute) sophistry. You're also confusing the relativism of perspectives, an epistemological stance, and ontological relativism. And so you have made quite a confusion out of the term "absolute" to posit your fallacious arguments.

You got everything wrong about absolute and relative temperature, because it does not refer to the concept of temperature as a whole. Temperature is a measurement of heat, and it is the same heat whether it is measured one way or the other. There's no absolute heat vs relative heat. There's no "framework-independent temperature" as opposed to a "framework-dependent temperature". The relativity or absoluteness to which the concept refers is about the scale used as reference for measurement, one being an arbitrary scale based on observed physical behavior and the other a scale based on internal relationships defined mathematically. Yet they are all scales of reference for measurement.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: You are being rhetorical above. Don't force your thinking into mine.
What I claimed is, what is real cannot be independent of the human conditions, i.e. that is transcendental idealism.

You're the only one being rhetorical, not being able to move beyond that slogan. What you claim has been shown to be a weak affirmation that cannot stand once some analysis is thrown at it. You condition the real to humans, but when asked if humans are real, you deny it. So for you the conditions for something to be real is based on something unreal, and so nothing ends up being real. And you call this a form a realism. Nonsense.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I don't believe your term 'your absolute reality'.

That's why your stance is absolute anti-realism.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Whatever reality to me is never absolutely absolute but rather is conditioned upon my empirical self.

But the only way for you the deny any absolute is to deny the reality of your self, or just the same, claim that your self is conditioned by something else, but then you have to say what's that something else that is not you, leaving the domain of "human conditions". So, say it, what is it?
Aequitas Veritas wrote: As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality.
So many problems with this. If reality is relative to you, this implies you're placing yourself outside of reality, while still implying a meta-reality that encompasses you and your relatively-defined reality. Then you're still implying an absolute (unconditioned) reality in which you're immersed with your own reality. By being immersed in it, you're conditioned by it. No matter how hard and for how long you try to play the game of relativizing things, you can't go on with it forever, there will always be the final Russian doll that you have to deal with.

Now, if reality is relative to the human conditions, the problem is the same: you're placing human conditions outside of reality, while still implying a meta-reality that encompasses human conditions and their relatively-defined reality. But even worst, because now you also have to take into account the problematic "you" from the previous paragraph, and the more problematic relation between "you" and the "human conditions", given that you assume they are separate things, as if one thing could actually be absoluletly independent of you. You're guilty of the same sin you attribute to others.
Aequitas Veritas wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote: the next obvious question is: what conditions the human conditions?
Human conditions emerges.
There is no need to speculate on its ultimate conditions - the first cause.
Ha! Running away from a compromising answer will not save you. Even if you avoid answering what conditions the human conditions, you still acknowledge there's something that conditions the human conditions, ultimate conditions, a first cause, which of course has to be a "thing in itself" unconditioned by humans. An absolute. But your own doctrine and overall stance in this thread does not allow you to do that. That certainly says something about how tenable your doctrines are.
Aequitas Veritas wrote:What are human conditions can easily be verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences.
So what? You claim that everything verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences, is ultimately dependent of human conditions. So you are actually claiming the absurd: that human conditions are dependent of human conditions. That a framework is dependent upon a framework, and there's nothing outside framework, the infamous "constant passing of meaning" of phenomenologists.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: You got it wrong re my view of reality.
When I see the moon [verified and justified], that to me is reality where I am part and parcel of that reality.
No, it's not that I got it wrong with your view of reality, but that your view of reality is a mess and you cannot help but contradict yourself over and over. Here, for example, you claim that you are "part and parcel of reality", but then in other instances you are forced to say that objective reality is conditioned by you, but not simply implying that reality and you are bundled, but that reality vanishes as soon as you are not there to condition it. In other instances, reality becomes mere subjective reality, your own reality. And the list of problems, which I have pointed out several times, goes on, and on...
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I don't claim there is a moon-in-itself that is independent of my conditions and human conditions.

You on the other, when you see the moon [verified and justified], you claim the moon exists in itself and is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
So you prove how the moon is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
I have already refuted this. You have to deal with the arguments and not simply ignore them and go back to repeating your mantra.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I did not deny the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon as verifiable and justifiable via the scientific framework and system.
My point is whatever is objective existence of electrons or the Moon cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
By definition, objective existence implies existence independent of human agency. You cannot acknowledge objective existence and at the same time deny existence independent of human agency, without falling in an horrible contradiction. Your solution to this, very flawed, is that the realization of objective existence necessarily passes through human knowledge of objective existence, but then that opens up a can of worms for you, as it undermines all the assumed foundations of your own doctrines, and so, if you had any coherency and consistency, would end up advocating for epistemological nihilism, yet you still posit your idealism as something true and certain.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I claimed what is real [not what is known] cannot be independent of the human conditions.
Just a claim, never proved.
Aequitas Veritas wrote:Note I have argued against what you are insisting is merely basing on speculation because you do not have direct contact with that supposed reality you claimed exist independent of yourself and the human conditions.
So what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? Obviously, something not based on speculation. Note the importance of the pronoun "we" in whatever your answer is.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: What I claimed as real is based primarily on empirical evidences and supported by rational thinking. What is wrong with that?
Empirical evidence and rational thinking has proved that the Moon has existed independent of human conditions, yet you did not accept it. What was wrong with it?
Aequitas Veritas wrote: My empirical realism do not make the claim "things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it".
In that case, you lost the challenge of the OP: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. You can only deny it by claiming what you say you did not claim.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Yes, there are similarities between real things 'within ordinary empirical experiences' and hallucination proper. They are in a continuum.
The point with hallucination proper is what is claimed cannot be verified and justified empirically.
According to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately encompassed by an overarching self-referential framework, with no underlying external reality that connects with objects inside this framework. Things come into being only inside the framework. That makes the absence of empirical verification and justification irrelevant to make a distinction between hallucination and reality.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I do not speculate there is an apple existing as an apple-in-itself independent of any human and human conditions.
Yet you speculate about the real existence of humans and human conditions, but only as an assumed framework for placing your arguments, yet you ultimately deny their reality, actually undermining your whole doctrine by refuting your own arguments. Paradoxically, your self-referential framework kills itself.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Note the point bolded above definitely do not mean 'metaphysics is possible as a science'.

Metaphysics is a very loose term and there is no way Metaphysics is possible as a science conventionally.
Generally, in our modern time, it is a taboo to associate Metaphysics with Science.
I have proven beyond reasonable doubt the relationship between metaphysics in general and science. Just as there is a philosophy of science, there is some sort of science of philosophy, which is mostly found systematically developed in analytic philosophy.

You will have to do better than just making blind assertions to refute it.
I am not going to waste time with your dogmatic stance.
I have raise a thread on this;
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33246
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Note the definition of what is relative, i.e.
Relative: a thing having a relation to or connection with or necessary dependence on another thing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relative

'What is absolute temperature is relative to the scientific framework, thus it has to be a relative 'absolute'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_temperature

Whatever is claimed to be an 'absolute' and it is related to something, then it is a relative absolute.
If you claim otherwise, you will have to invent a new meaning for 'relativity'.
That pair you made up: "relative absolute", as well as "absolute absolute", are complete (absolute) nonsense, an exercise of pure (absolute) sophistry. You're also confusing the relativism of perspectives, an epistemological stance, and ontological relativism. And so you have made quite a confusion out of the term "absolute" to posit your fallacious arguments.

You got everything wrong about absolute and relative temperature, because it does not refer to the concept of temperature as a whole. Temperature is a measurement of heat, and it is the same heat whether it is measured one way or the other. There's no absolute heat vs relative heat. There's no "framework-independent temperature" as opposed to a "framework-dependent temperature". The relativity or absoluteness to which the concept refers is about the scale used as reference for measurement, one being an arbitrary scale based on observed physical behavior and the other a scale based on internal relationships defined mathematically. Yet they are all scales of reference for measurement.
Absolute temperature was an example, note I referred to 'absolute monarch, absolute power, absolute X.
I claim such absolutes are actually relative absolutes, i.e. they are conditioned upon the framework and systems they are dependent upon.

There is another more proper sense of 'absolute' i.e.

  • Absolute: [Google-Oxford]

    2. viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.
    "absolute moral standards"

    PHILOSOPHY
    a value or principle which is regarded as universally valid or which may be viewed without relation to other things.
    "good and evil are presented as absolutes"
To differentiate the earlier absolute [relative] thus it is appropriate to identify the latter [as defined above] as absolutely-absolute .

What is wrong with that?

Aequitas Veritas wrote: You are being rhetorical above. Don't force your thinking into mine.
What I claimed is, what is real cannot be independent of the human conditions, i.e. that is transcendental idealism.

You're the only one being rhetorical, not being able to move beyond that slogan. What you claim has been shown to be a weak affirmation that cannot stand once some analysis is thrown at it.
You condition the real to humans, but when asked if humans are real, you deny it. So for you the conditions for something to be real is based on something unreal, and so nothing ends up being real. And you call this a form a realism. Nonsense.
I have stated many times. I do not deny 'humans are real'. Show me the evidence?
To me, humans are real within the empirical.
Where those who claim there are humans as persons-in-themselves, or as a soul that survives physical death, such claims of humans-in-themselves are not real.
So where did I ever claim, humans are real because the soul is unreal?

Point is you don't have the capacity to comprehend the more finer aspects of reality except by merely clinging to a dogmatic common or vulgar view.

At present I am refreshing on Kant's CPR.
You are in the same boat as those analytic Kantian who cannot understand Kant's claiming and arguing that p and not-p are acceptable at the same time but not in the same perspectives.

Aequitas Veritas wrote: I don't believe your term 'your absolute reality'.

That's why your stance is absolute anti-realism.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Whatever reality to me is never absolutely absolute but rather is conditioned upon my empirical self.

But the only way for you the deny any absolute is to deny the reality of your self, or just the same, claim that your self is conditioned by something else, but then you have to say what's that something else that is not you, leaving the domain of "human conditions". So, say it, what is it?
Where did I deny the reality of my self?
You got it wrong!
My self is conditioned to my own inherent human conditions, not to some independent something else.

Again, point is you don't have the capacity to comprehend the more finer aspects of reality except by merely clinging to a dogmatic common or vulgar view.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality.
So many problems with this. If reality is relative to you, this implies you're placing yourself outside of reality, while still implying a meta-reality that encompasses you and your relatively-defined reality. Then you're still implying an absolute (unconditioned) reality in which you're immersed with your own reality. By being immersed in it, you're conditioned by it. No matter how hard and for how long you try to play the game of relativizing things, you can't go on with it forever, there will always be the final Russian doll that you have to deal with.

Now, if reality is relative to the human conditions, the problem is the same: you're placing human conditions outside of reality, while still implying a meta-reality that encompasses human conditions and their relatively-defined reality. But even worst, because now you also have to take into account the problematic "you" from the previous paragraph, and the more problematic relation between "you" and the "human conditions", given that you assume they are separate things, as if one thing could actually be absoluletly independent of you. You're guilty of the same sin you attribute to others.
So wrong again.
You are imposing your Transcendental Realistic views upon my views, so that is a strawman to begin with.

Where did I place human conditions outside reality.
I'd define reality as 'all there is' so the person, humans conditions are all part and parcel of reality, thus cannot be outside it.

Instead you as a transcendental realist deemed the supposed reality is independent from yourself and is merely indirected connected via brain activities.

Aequitas Veritas wrote: Human conditions emerges.
There is no need to speculate on its ultimate conditions - the first cause.
Ha! Running away from a compromising answer will not save you. Even if you avoid answering what conditions the human conditions, you still acknowledge there's something that conditions the human conditions, ultimate conditions, a first cause, which of course has to be a "thing in itself" unconditioned by humans. An absolute. But your own doctrine and overall stance in this thread does not allow you to do that. That certainly says something about how tenable your doctrines are.
Yes, I argued as with Kant, the thing-in-itself claimed as unconditioned is an illusion.
I am grounding my existence and reality based on real empirical elements polished by critical philosophy.

Meanwhile you are a transcendental realist [critical or philosophical realist] are grounding your reality based on an illusion.

Aequitas Veritas wrote:What are human conditions can easily be verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences.
So what? You claim that everything verified and justified empirically and philosophically via psychology, anthropology and the various science of human nature and human sciences, is ultimately dependent of human conditions. So you are actually claiming the absurd: that human conditions are dependent of human conditions. That a framework is dependent upon a framework, and there's nothing outside framework, the infamous "constant passing of meaning" of phenomenologists.
I only use the term dependent superficially.
The proper term I often used re conditioned is mutual entanglement and emergent and the focus on the empirical and not assuming and digging for any first cause which is illusory.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: You got it wrong re my view of reality.
When I see the moon [verified and justified], that to me is reality where I am part and parcel of that reality.
No, it's not that I got it wrong with your view of reality, but that your view of reality is a mess and you cannot help but contradict yourself over and over.
Here, for example, you claim that you are "part and parcel of reality", but then in other instances you are forced to say that objective reality is conditioned by you, but not simply implying that reality and you are bundled, but that reality vanishes as soon as you are not there to condition it. In other instances, reality becomes mere subjective reality, your own reality. And the list of problems, which I have pointed out several times, goes on, and on...
Whatever you don't understand and the above strawman[s] you spew, the central point is I am part and parcel of reality which is ALL-There-IS.

Again, point is you don't have the capacity to comprehend the more finer aspects of reality except by merely clinging to a dogmatic common or vulgar view.
You need to let go off your dogmatic grip and do more reflection on what is really real.
Aequitas Veritas wrote: I don't claim there is a moon-in-itself that is independent of my conditions and human conditions.

You on the other, when you see the moon [verified and justified], you claim the moon exists in itself and is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
So you prove how the moon is absolutely independent of your conditions and human conditions.
I have already refuted this. You have to deal with the arguments and not simply ignore them and go back to repeating your mantra.
Refuted? in your dreams?
Your case is still pending.

Aequitas Veritas wrote: I did not deny the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon as verifiable and justifiable via the scientific framework and system.
My point is whatever is objective existence of electrons or the Moon cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
By definition, objective existence implies existence independent of human agency. You cannot acknowledge objective existence and at the same time deny existence independent of human agency, without falling in an horrible contradiction. Your solution to this, very flawed, is that the realization of objective existence necessarily passes through human knowledge of objective existence, but then that opens up a can of worms for you, as it undermines all the assumed foundations of your own doctrines, and so, if you had any coherency and consistency, would end up advocating for epistemological nihilism, yet you still posit your idealism as something true and certain.
There are many views as to what is objectivity.
My take on objectivity is related to scientific objectivity, i.e. independent of individual's opinion and beliefs.
Scientific objectivity whilst is independent of individuals' opinion and belief is ULTIMATELY not independent of the human conditions, i.e. the scientific framework which is grounded on human conditions.
What is scientific objectivity is intersubjectivity based on intersubjective consensus.

There is no way where any objectivity can be absolutely independent of human agency collectively. [note collectively].

Suggest you research into Eastern Philosophy re the mechanics of the Yin-Yang Philosophy.
Just a claim, never proved.
As I had justified with the arguments above.

So what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? Obviously, something not based on speculation. Note the importance of the pronoun "we" in whatever your answer is.
"We"?? not me and other anti-realists of the likes.
Yes, you are seeking to contact with whatever is supposed, i.e. a speculation and presupposition thus ending with confirmation bias.
You admitted you are never in contact with it but merely inferred based on common sense, science, etc.
But unfortunately the most credible basis for your claim, i.e. Science is merely based on 'polished conjectures'.

Empirical evidence and rational thinking has proved that the Moon has existed independent of human conditions, yet you did not accept it. What was wrong with it?
Note the addition rational thinking, i.e. finer critical philosophy that indicate there is no Moon-in-itself. I believe you are still very far from the deeper philosophical issues because due to a psychological weakness within those of your likes.
You need to reflect and do in depth research into that.
In that case, you lost the challenge of the OP: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. You can only deny it by claiming what you say you did not claim.
Note the above, reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
Whatever is sensed as external is ultimately still conditioned to the human conditions.
According to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately encompassed by an overarching self-referential framework, with no underlying external reality that connects with objects inside this framework. Things come into being only inside the framework. That makes the absence of empirical verification and justification irrelevant to make a distinction between hallucination and reality.
You are entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor. That is why you are stuck with the linguistic duality of either inside or outside and nothing else.
So when you start with such an inherent metaphor you are staring a strawman.
Note my point with emergence, not with nor from anything independent of myself since I am part and parcel of reality -which is ALL there is.
Yet you speculate about the real existence of humans and human conditions, but only as an assumed framework for placing your arguments, yet you ultimately deny their reality, actually undermining your whole doctrine by refuting your own arguments. Paradoxically, your self-referential framework kills itself.
Where did I speculate about the real existence of humans and human conditions. I am part and parcel with reality -ALL there is, there is no need for speculation on this matter.

Where did I "assumed framework for placing your arguments."
Note the case of scientific knowledge, they emerge out of a scientific framework and system comprising a community of scientists who are humans.

Self-referential? that is your strawman.
I only use that term with the necessary qualifications.

.........................
I find this discussion is getting too tedious and repetitive.

Note:
The only central point of the OP is
Philosophical Realism [critical [yours] and transcendental] is not realistic and tenable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism
So the onus is on you to prove it is realistic as leverage on the thing-in-itself as real, not illusory.

Instead of proving [supporting, demonstrating] your stance you are deflecting to argue my stance supposedly Transcendental idealism* is not real. This should be argued in another separate thread.
I am using transcendental idealism as a focus point but it does not represent my views 100%.
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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 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am
Aequitas Veritas wrote: Note the point bolded above definitely do not mean 'metaphysics is possible as a science'.

Metaphysics is a very loose term and there is no way Metaphysics is possible as a science conventionally.
Generally, in our modern time, it is a taboo to associate Metaphysics with Science.
I have proven beyond reasonable doubt the relationship between metaphysics in general and science. Just as there is a philosophy of science, there is some sort of science of philosophy, which is mostly found systematically developed in analytic philosophy.

You will have to do better than just making blind assertions to refute it.
I am not going to waste time with your dogmatic stance.
I have raise a thread on this;
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33246
You don't have time to waste on this issue and yet you will devote a whole new thread to discuss it? Talk about coherency there.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
  • Absolute: [Google-Oxford]

    2. viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.
    "absolute moral standards"

    PHILOSOPHY
    a value or principle which is regarded as universally valid or which may be viewed without relation to other things.
    "good and evil are presented as absolutes"
To differentiate the earlier absolute [relative] thus it is appropriate to identify the latter [as defined above] as absolutely-absolute .

What is wrong with that?
There's no big issue with the possible meanings of absolute and relative, the problem is your made up bundle of the two terms in an oxymoron. If we gave any legitimacy to this nonsense, we should also allow a space to the obvious missing concept: the "relatively relative". Actually this seems to capture more accurately your position.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am You condition the real to humans, but when asked if humans are real, you deny it. So for you the conditions for something to be real is based on something unreal, and so nothing ends up being real. And you call this a form a realism. Nonsense.
I have stated many times. I do not deny 'humans are real'. Show me the evidence?
The evidence is your own statements saying that humans are only real within a perspective, not different than something is real for someone hallucinating, but not actually real at the end of the day.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am To me, humans are real within the empirical.
"Empirical" points at experience. A hallucination is also empirical, is something the subject experience as real, so you cannot make any distinction between reality and hallucination. Humans are real for you in the same sense that things are real for someone taking LSD.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Point is you don't have the capacity to comprehend the more finer aspects of reality except by merely clinging to a dogmatic common or vulgar view.
More or less the same point of everyone spreading nonsensical views and clinging to a somewhat mystical, esoteric, dogmatism. As if their absurd doctrines had more value because they sound absurd.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I deny the reality of my self?
You got it wrong!
My self is conditioned to my own inherent human conditions, not to some independent something else.
So you say you're conditioned to yourself. Aren't human conditions dependent of your own framework? I rest my case.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I place human conditions outside reality.
Right here: "As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality. "
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I'd define reality as 'all there is' so the person, humans conditions are all part and parcel of reality, thus cannot be outside it.
See how now you have to change your own definitions to escape the problematic logic you had used. First reality was inside and dependent of a human framework, now the human framework is inside an absolute reality that stands all by itself. And you'll keep moving from one stance to the other in good old sophistic fashion.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I only use the term dependent superficially.
The proper term I often used re conditioned is mutual entanglement and emergent and the focus on the empirical and not assuming and digging for any first cause which is illusory.
Keep correcting yourself, you might reach the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel you're in.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am the central point is I am part and parcel of reality which is ALL-There-IS.
You condition reality to your experience, so other than your own experience, what evidence you have of something else?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am There are many views as to what is objectivity.
My take on objectivity is related to scientific objectivity, i.e. independent of individual's opinion and beliefs.
Ah, really? You deny the scientific objectivity of the Moon existing prior to humans, since you claim is ultimately conditioned by human frameworks, that is, a set of opinions and beliefs. The mention of "individual's opinion" is laughable, as you have not been able to give any coherency to the idea of a human individual, which would require being an entity independent of yourself. While you demand that the existence of the Moon independent of humans be proved, you cannot prove yourself the existence of humans outside your own experience, nor that any universal principle or truth applies to them. All you have, using your own words, is your own ideas.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Scientific objectivity whilst is independent of individuals' opinion and belief is ULTIMATELY not independent of the human conditions, i.e. the scientific framework which is grounded on human conditions.
Read again all that contradicting nonsense. Aren't human opinions part of the human conditions? How is it that scientific objectivity is independent of them, while at the same time dependent of them?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am What is scientific objectivity is intersubjectivity based on intersubjective consensus.
How can you prove intersubjectivity?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Suggest you research into Eastern Philosophy re the mechanics of the Yin-Yang Philosophy.
Awgh!! No, thanks, I pass. Enough idealist nonsense already.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am So what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? Obviously, something not based on speculation. Note the importance of the pronoun "we" in whatever your answer is.
"We"?? not me and other anti-realists of the likes.
Yes, you are seeking to contact with whatever is supposed, i.e. a speculation and presupposition thus ending with confirmation bias.
You admitted you are never in contact with it but merely inferred based on common sense, science, etc.
But unfortunately the most credible basis for your claim, i.e. Science is merely based on 'polished conjectures'.
Again, will you dare to answer the question: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am In that case, you lost the challenge of the OP: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. You can only deny it by claiming what you say you did not claim.
Note the above, reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
Whatever is sensed as external is ultimately still conditioned to the human conditions.
You're avoiding the issue. You said you had not claimed that "things only exist in your own experience, not outside of it". If you did not claim that, you're only left with the opposite claim: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. That refutes the challenge of your OP.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am According to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately encompassed by an overarching self-referential framework, with no underlying external reality that connects with objects inside this framework. Things come into being only inside the framework. That makes the absence of empirical verification and justification irrelevant to make a distinction between hallucination and reality.
You are entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor. That is why you are stuck with the linguistic duality of either inside or outside and nothing else.
So when you start with such an inherent metaphor you are staring a strawman.
Note my point with emergence, not with nor from anything independent of myself since I am part and parcel of reality -which is ALL there is.
Isn't the word "inherent" a "habitualized container metaphor"? If I say "according to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately inherent to a self-referential framework", does that change anything for you?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I am part and parcel with reality -ALL there is, there is no need for speculation on this matter.
Prove it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I "assumed framework for placing your arguments."
Note the case of scientific knowledge, they emerge out of a scientific framework and system comprising a community of scientists who are humans.
How can you be certain that there's an actual community of scientists and you're not hallucinating about their existence?
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:17 pm You don't have time to waste on this issue and yet you will devote a whole new thread to discuss it? Talk about coherency there.
I meant wasting time going in circles with your very limited dogmatic stance.
The new thread is to get other views.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
  • Absolute: [Google-Oxford]

    2. viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.
    "absolute moral standards"

    PHILOSOPHY
    a value or principle which is regarded as universally valid or which may be viewed without relation to other things.
    "good and evil are presented as absolutes"
To differentiate the earlier absolute [relative] thus it is appropriate to identify the latter [as defined above] as absolutely-absolute .

What is wrong with that?
There's no big issue with the possible meanings of absolute and relative, the problem is your made up bundle of the two terms in an oxymoron. If we gave any legitimacy to this nonsense, we should also allow a space to the obvious missing concept: the "relatively relative". Actually this seems to capture more accurately your position.
I highlighted the addition meanings and senses of 'absolute'.
Thus to be more specific, the term absolutely absolute is not an issue.
Note "relative" = considered in relation or in proportion to something else.
So what is wrong relative-absolute where such an absolute is relative to something, while absolutely absolute means not related to anything at all.

"Relatively relative" can represent meta-relativity of relations.

Show me where the above are wrong?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am You condition the real to humans, but when asked if humans are real, you deny it. So for you the conditions for something to be real is based on something unreal, and so nothing ends up being real. And you call this a form a realism. Nonsense.
I have stated many times. I do not deny 'humans are real'. Show me the evidence?
The evidence is your own statements saying that humans are only real within a perspective, not different than something is real for someone hallucinating, but not actually real at the end of the day.
Strawman again.
I never state humans are not actually real at the end of the day.

Yes, humans are only really-real within the 'empirical + philosophical' perspective. This is undeniable.
It is the theists and traditional metaphysicists who would claim humans are really-real to the extent of a spirit or soul-in-itself that survives physical death. Are you insisting on such a claim that humans are really real to that extent?

The question of what is really-real is a another sort of dream and we could be dreaming all the time. Note the example of the "Dreaming of a Butterfly."
It is the same with hallucination, where both are with reference to the mechanics and process of cognition of humans.

However within the same continuum of mechanics and processes, what is really-real must be verified and justified empirically and philosophy which must be applied to humans claimed to be real.
Dreams and hallucinations of 'real' humans in the psychiatric kind do not quality in this case as really-real.

Your thinking in this case is too entangled and messed up.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am To me, humans are real within the empirical.
"Empirical" points at experience. A hallucination is also empirical, is something the subject experience as real, so you cannot make any distinction between reality and hallucination. Humans are real for you in the same sense that things are real for someone taking LSD.
Note as above what is really-real must be verified and justified empirically and philosophy which must be applied to humans claimed to be real.
As such 'hallucinated real humans' from someone taking LSD cannot qualify as really-real in the conventional and scientific sense.
Note, your thinking in this case is too entangled and messed up.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Point is you don't have the capacity to comprehend the more finer aspects of reality except by merely clinging to a dogmatic common or vulgar view.
More or less the same point of everyone spreading nonsensical views and clinging to a somewhat mystical, esoteric, dogmatism. As if their absurd doctrines had more value because they sound absurd.
There is a lot of difference in this case with esoteric claims.

What I am claiming is based on solid and more sophisticated "empirical + philosophical" verification and justifications. I am saying your thinking is not sufficiently wide and deep, thus your inability to understand and expressed [not necessary agree with] my intended views.

Actually, what you are claiming, i.e. critical [philosophical] realism is esoteric.
While we agree on the empirical claims of reality, you are making an additional speculation [philosophically] that there is a person-in-itself which is independent in a way and there are things-in-themselves that are independent of the human conditions.
It is a majority view, but in essence it literally nonsense, i.e. absolute independent and has no direct connection to the senses [& experience] at all.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I deny the reality of my self?
You got it wrong!
My self is conditioned to my own inherent human conditions, not to some independent something else.
So you say you're conditioned to yourself. Aren't human conditions dependent of your own framework? I rest my case.
What happened to your logical thinking?
I am human.
If human conditions are dependent on my own framework, then my [as human] framework cannot be independent from human conditions.
Btw, I don't want to use the term 'dependent' which can mislead.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I place human conditions outside reality.
Right here: "As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality. "
That is your definition not mine. Such a definition is only from the vulgar and common sense.

Note my argument which I have repeated many times, but you deliberately ignored.
  • 1. Reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
    2. ALL-THERE-IS covers all human conditions.
    3. Human conditions [part and parcel of reality -2] cannot be independent of reality.
Don't blackout and ignore the above again.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I'd define reality as 'all there is' so the person, humans conditions are all part and parcel of reality, thus cannot be outside it.
See how now you have to change your own definitions to escape the problematic logic you had used. First reality was inside and dependent of a human framework, now the human framework is inside an absolute reality that stands all by itself. And you'll keep moving from one stance to the other in good old sophistic fashion.
What change?
I have been using that definition since and before I joined this forum.

I mentioned the term "dependent" can be very misleading especially to your kind.
My main and commonly stated point is, Reality, i.e. all-there-is cannot be absolute independent of the human framework [conditions].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I only use the term dependent superficially.
The proper term I often used re conditioned is mutual entanglement and emergent and the focus on the empirical and not assuming and digging for any first cause which is illusory.
Keep correcting yourself, you might reach the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel you're in.
The point is your thinking is very shallow and narrow.
That is why I have been using some 'superficial' terms for you to keep up.
It is just like teaching the physical world to a Grade school kid, the school syllabus cannot simply jump into the topic of Quantum Physic, but merely start by talking about solid macro objects initially to suit the kid's level, then progress from there.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am the central point is I am part and parcel of reality which is ALL-There-IS.
You condition reality to your experience, so other than your own experience, what evidence you have of something else?
I have stated many times, what is reality is leveraged on the empirical and philosophical verification and justifications. [note 'philosophical' is the critical element here]
While we agree with the empirical [vulnerable to errors] & scientific knowledge merely "polished conjectures", that is not enough so we need to reinforce it with critical philosophy.
But your critical realism is not sufficiently 'critical' to the essence of critical philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am There are many views as to what is objectivity.
My take on objectivity is related to scientific objectivity, i.e. independent of individual's opinion and beliefs.
Ah, really? You deny the scientific objectivity of the Moon existing prior to humans, since you claim is ultimately conditioned by human frameworks, that is, a set of opinions and beliefs.
The mention of "individual's opinion" is laughable, as you have not been able to give any coherency to the idea of a human individual, which would require being an entity independent of yourself. While you demand that the existence of the Moon independent of humans be proved, you cannot prove yourself the existence of humans outside your own experience, nor that any universal principle or truth applies to them. All you have, using your own words, is your own ideas.
Strawman again. This is so common from you.
I don't deny scientific objectivity but qualify that it is not absolutely absolute.

Re the idea of human individual, it is your thinking that is in a mess.
I had opened a separate thread to discuss and get to the bottom the issue and to expose the mess you are in with this topic.

A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33164

Whenever I think there is a mess, I open a new thread to clear it, but you have ignored it but prefer to dig into the dumpster here.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Scientific objectivity whilst is independent of individuals' opinion and belief is ULTIMATELY not independent of the human conditions, i.e. the scientific framework which is grounded on human conditions.
Read again all that contradicting nonsense. Aren't human opinions part of the human conditions? How is it that scientific objectivity is independent of them, while at the same time dependent of them?
Again you are ignorant on this due to shallow and narrow thinking.
Is my writing not clear in the above?

I have explained this point a 1000 times including here and elsewhere.
Note for example.
Einstein would have an opinion then a belief upon the self verification of his theory on relativity.
When he presented his papers to the scientific community [peers and relevant experts, journals], is tested and verified by empirical evidences, and his proposed theory is accepted, the theory is regarded as a Scientific [Physics] theory for all.
It is thus independent of Einstein and opinions of other individuals.
But the theory is still conditioned by the Scientific Community [collective of humans] which in essence is leveraged on human conditions.
So while it is independent of the individuals opinions and belief it is not independent of the collective of humans.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am What is scientific objectivity is intersubjectivity based on intersubjective consensus.
How can you prove intersubjectivity?
Intersubjective [re scientific objectivity] is equivalent to the intersubjective consensus of scientific peers [human subjects].

You need to research more on this?
Is the present USD Dollar objective? Yes, it definitely is, but it is not grounded on the objectivity of ant physical Gold equivalent [as in the past]. Rather it is objective but grounded on the subject trust, faith and consensus of human subjects in the USA and around the world, i.e. intersubjective consensus.
Get it?
There are other such examples.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Suggest you research into Eastern Philosophy re the mechanics of the Yin-Yang Philosophy.
Awgh!! No, thanks, I pass. Enough idealist nonsense already.
That is where you are ignorant.
You are relying on hearsays without doing in depth research.
But I am doubtful you will grasp the essence of it due to your dogmatic narrow and shallow thinking.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am So what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? Obviously, something not based on speculation. Note the importance of the pronoun "we" in whatever your answer is.
"We"?? not me and other anti-realists of the likes.
Yes, you are seeking to contact with whatever is supposed, i.e. a speculation and presupposition thus ending with confirmation bias.
You admitted you are never in contact with it but merely inferred based on common sense, science, etc.
But unfortunately the most credible basis for your claim, i.e. Science is merely based on 'polished conjectures'.
Again, will you dare to answer the question: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with?
Not too sure what you mean here? I try ..

You as a critical realist claimed when you saw and experienced a tree external to your body and mind, that 'tree-in-itself' exists absolutely independent of your mind and body.
As such, according to me, you do not have "direct" contact with that tree-in-itself.
What you are doing is merely inferring from the best knowledge [common or scientific] you have that there is a tree-in-itself that is existing absolutely independent of your mind and body.
But scientific knowledge is merely polished conjectures thus not absolute knowledge.

So your supposedly tree-in-itself is merely a speculation.
To INSIST - philosophically - there is an independent tree-in-itself is a delusion.
This is a sort of relative "necessary" unavoidable psychological aberration the majority is infected with which must be corrected by critical philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am In that case, you lost the challenge of the OP: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. You can only deny it by claiming what you say you did not claim.
Note the above, reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
Whatever is sensed as external is ultimately still conditioned to the human conditions.
You're avoiding the issue. You said you had not claimed that "things only exist in your own experience, not outside of it". If you did not claim that, you're only left with the opposite claim: things can exist in your own experience, and outside of it. That refutes the challenge of your OP.
You are confused and don't understand.
Note my syllogistic argument re reality as ALL-there-is.
As such there is no reality-in-itself that is independent of the human conditions.
The OP require proof if the claim is otherwise.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:46 am According to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately encompassed by an overarching self-referential framework, with no underlying external reality that connects with objects inside this framework. Things come into being only inside the framework. That makes the absence of empirical verification and justification irrelevant to make a distinction between hallucination and reality.
You are entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor. That is why you are stuck with the linguistic duality of either inside or outside and nothing else.
So when you start with such an inherent metaphor you are staring a strawman.
Note my point with emergence, not with nor from anything independent of myself since I am part and parcel of reality -which is ALL there is.
Isn't the word "inherent" a "habitualized container metaphor"?
If I say "according to you, the act of verifying and justifying empirically, is ultimately inherent to a self-referential framework", does that change anything for you?
"Inherent" in this case is with reference to human nature.

I was referring to your,
"Things come into being only inside the framework."
which imply "inside" if not "outside".
When I used the term 'emergent' that is with no reference to inside or outside, it just 'is" and what-is is subject to verification and justification empirically and philosophically. [note critical philosophy].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am I am part and parcel with reality -ALL there is, there is no need for speculation on this matter.
Prove it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:34 am Where did I "assumed framework for placing your arguments."
Note the case of scientific knowledge, they emerge out of a scientific framework and system comprising a community of scientists who are humans.
How can you be certain that there's an actual community of scientists and you're not hallucinating about their existence?
Note my explanation re the continuum of hallucination, dreams, reality and the need for
verification and justification empirically and philosophically. [note critical philosophy] to realize what is really-real from the unreal.

Note if you don't strive to get out of your silo, you will forever present strawman[s] and miss the point.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:50 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 amKant claimed Metaphysics...
This matter about the relationship between Kant and metaphysics has already been settled. I have provided more than enough evidence to support my claim and you don't have anything to refute it.

Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am That Science is claimed to play a role in metaphysics does not make metaphysics of science. Theology also relied on science to support its creationism theories.
Now we are discussing metaphysics in contemporary philosophy, and particularly the relation between analytic philosophy and science. You asked which philosophers at present agree that metaphysics is possible as a science in general, and I delivered: analytic philosophers. Note this from John Searle, an analytic philosopher:
The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
"Most philosophers today accept some version or other of Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction [...] but now there is general scepticism about our ability to make a strict distinction between those propositions that are true by definition and those that are true as a matter of fact. The rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction has profound consequences for analytich philosophy [...] The results of philosophical analysis cannot be sharply distinguished from the results of scientific investigation. [...]If we accept Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, then philosophy is not something that can be clearly demarcated from the special sciences. It is, rather, adjacent to, and overlaps with, other disciplines. Although philosophy is more general than other disciplines, its propositions do not have any special logical status or special logical priortiy with regard to the other disciplines.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am What you are missing is the need to differentiate between
1. absolutely absolute
2. relative absolute

If it is MY 'absolute' then it is a relative-absolute, i.e. it is relative to me.
A "relative absolute" is an oxymoron, completely absurd. Making up terms to escape logical contradictions is pure sophistry. Let's be reminded of what is the issue at stake here: you claimed your stance (empirical realism) is a relative realism, subsumed within transcendental idealism. This means that for anything to be called real, it is conditioned to be an ideal object of the human mind. Not YOUR human mind, but everyone's human mind, which you call "the human conditions". My reply was that this apparent relativization does not fulfill the requirements of relativity as such, since you still provide a fixed frame of reference with pretensions of objectivity outside your own experience: the human conditions. But if "your absolute reality" is only yours, relative to you, then it stays with you. You cannot wrap it up and send it to another person to engage in a discussion and still pretend that it is "relative to you", at best it would be relative to a group of people, but that raises the problem of those people ("the human conditions") being included inside your relative reality, leaving you and your frame of reference alone by themselves. This would not justify your belief in anything else but yourself (solipsism), and would make your participation in an internet forum to discuss matters with other people a vain exercise of self-delusion. So, it is either that or you actually distrust "your own absolute reality", aka relative reality, to posit the fixed frame of reference, which by not being conditioned to anything else, becomes your non-relative (absolute) reality, labeled as non-realism. Your non-relative non-realism is then your absolute non-realism. You're forced to claim that "the human conditions" do not exist in themselves. But then in what sense, relative or conditioned to what they exist? And the answer cannot be "conditioned to the human conditions"!!!
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Any "absolute" that is related to the human condition is a relative-absolute, e.g. absolute temperature is related to Science which is conditioned by human scientists and their consensus. Other similar are absolute monarchy, absolute power, and the likes.
And so, I repeat my question: do human conditions exist in themselves?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Note even any attempt to prove the absolutely-absolute already implied the precedence of the inclusion of the human conditions into it. Thus your claim of an absolutely-absolute existence of any thing-in-itself is an impossibility to start with. This is why your critical [philosophical] realism is not realistic nor tenable.
So, the existence of human conditions in themselves is also an impossibility to start with? Since we already know your answer has to be: "yes, it is also an impossibility", the next obvious question is: what conditions the human conditions?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:56 am This claim of yours reveals that you're the victim of your own arguments. The same phenomenological critique you apply to realism, ends up undermining your own stance, since you're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). If phenomenalists like you were coherent, they would apply the same skepticism to the reality of experience, landing on epistemological nihilism or Berkeley's solipsism.
Btw, rhetoric again, I don't agree with the phenomemalist label.

You are deflecting.
The onus is on you to prove your "supposed transcendental reality" exists independent of your own and general human conditions.
So prove it.
Note how how you insist with "prove it", while avoiding a proper logical response to my argument. Deal with the arguments first, and here it is again: You're just replacing the "supposed transcendental reality" of realists with your supposed immanent ideality, which operates exactly under the same assumption of direct contact with something real (the reality of sense data and ideas). So prove that sense data and ideas exist and you have direct contact with it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:56 am Btw, the point is not related to the 'Philosophy of Common Sense' in this case.

Note my point again;
The claim of invisible, mysterious, teleological forces and the likes is not common sense but rather an inference of reason, i.e. by the human crude and pure reason that produce fallacious inferences.

"Common sense" in the above is related to literally 'common sense'. This is not the main point.

Do you agree or disagree with my point in blue?
I restate my point that you're completely ignorant of what the common sense view is. The "human crude and pure reason" is exactly what the Scottish school described as the sensations that "[...] in the actual perception of the average, unsophisticated man, [...] carry with them the belief in corresponding qualities as belonging to external objects." These beliefs that "belong to the common sense and reason of mankind" are the pre-theoretical view before philosophy and science were developed as formal, systematic disciplines.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Rhetoric again, I have never claimed to be anti-science as you are alluding above.
You don't need to claim it, you just need to show it. Whoever denies the real objective existence of electrons and the Moon is against science.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: But I have justified, that 'the Moon is not illusory since it predates humans' is based on a realization that is conditioned upon the human framework and conditions.
That's a non-sensical justification. If X is non-illusory and it predates humans, it existed for real before any human conditioning. If it existed before any human conditioning, it can certainly continue existing after human conditions, and therefore, its existence is independent of human conditions. The fact that at one moment in time both X and humans coincided, and X became knowledgeable by humans, does not imply that X can only exist when it is knowledgeable by humans.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: In normal convention within the human framework and conditions, yes, the Moon existed before humans, therefore existed as real conditionally, thus then and now.
But under the most rigorous philosophical reflection the above claim cannot be absolutely-absolute.
In this case philosophical reflection is far from being the "most rigorous", as it stays in an ivory tower of ethereal ideas, dismissing the hard evidence of human practice. There's simple no sensical philosophical justification for making a distinction between "normal convention within the human framework and conditions" and "the most rigorous philosophical reflection", as if the latter somehow magically avoided being human framework and conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thus in this case, one has to suspend judgment and just literally shut up on this point. To even start deliberating about would invoke the human conditions, than cannot be independent of it.

Note Wittgenstein's
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Note the difference between suspending judgement: "we cannot know whether it exists or not", and applying judgement: "it doesn't exist". You're not following your own advice.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: This has serious implications and consequences [potentially evil] because the next extension is claiming an independent soul and God exists as in-itself.

That is why some philosophers are claiming philosophical [critical realism] is theo-centric in the ultimate sense.
An entirely ridiculous claim, as the belief in the existence of things that appear in our real experience does not imply the belief in the existence of things out of pure imagination, such as souls and gods.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: I never claimed humans and things are illusory within ordinary empirical experiences
Yes, you did, because you claim ordinary empirical experience is no different than hallucination: things only exist in your own experience, but not outside of it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote:
I NEVER claimed they are ultimately illusory as a personal belief.
If the acknowledgement of their existence is completely dependent of an epistemological framework, and you claim there's nothing real outside any epistemological framework, then it is exactly the same as calling them ultimately illusory.
I would have to agree, for once, with Veritas. A relative-absolute exists. It exists as a phenomenon which exists only in relation to another yet both its existence and relations are constant an unchanging. An example would be the number 1. It exists relative to the other numbers with these other numbers being amalgamations of 1 existing in multiple states given all numbers are composed of 1. The continual relation of 1 to 1 results in all numbers. It exists through relations with itself given it exists in multiple positions which allow for numbers being composed of it.

One is relative in the respect it relates with other ones to form other numbers, and it is consistent in the respect this reflection of one through other numbers is infinite.
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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: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am I highlighted the addition meanings and senses of 'absolute'.
Thus to be more specific, the term absolutely absolute is not an issue.
Note "relative" = considered in relation or in proportion to something else.
So what is wrong relative-absolute where such an absolute is relative to something, while absolutely absolute means not related to anything at all.

"Relatively relative" can represent meta-relativity of relations.

Show me where the above are wrong?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron
: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)
broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am I never state humans are not actually real at the end of the day.[...]
Yes, humans are only really-real within the 'empirical + philosophical' perspective. This is undeniable.
What you call undeniable here is that humans are not "really-real" outside of experience and thought frameworks. That is, they are not actually real at the end of the day, but a theoretical construction that dissolves as soon as experience and thought frameworks are not present. Then there's the big issue of whose experience and thought framework you are talking about.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Note as above what is really-real must be verified and justified empirically and philosophy which must be applied to humans claimed to be real.
As such 'hallucinated real humans' from someone taking LSD cannot qualify as really-real in the conventional and scientific sense.
The issue is that as soon as one employs that same verification process with the empirical and philosophical justification to prove that the Moon, as any other real thing, exists by itself, you jump to disqualify that method as unwarranted. You are forced to do that only when you need to justify that your view of reality actually makes it no different than hallucination.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am What I am claiming is based on solid and more sophisticated "empirical + philosophical" verification and justifications. I am saying your thinking is not sufficiently wide and deep, thus your inability to understand and expressed [not necessary agree with] my intended views.
There is depth in figuring out what is the actual age of the Moon. That your philosophical dogmas prevent you from making the obvious inference from that, shows how useless and silly your supposedly profound, "sophisticated" reflections, actually are.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am While we agree on the empirical claims of reality, you are making an additional speculation [philosophically] that there is a person-in-itself which is independent in a way and there are things-in-themselves that are independent of the human conditions.
See? Now that you think you have shook off the problematic non-distinction between reality and hallucination, you're back to finding empirical + philosophical verification and justifications, as purely speculative. Oh, yes, I remember, yours are "sophisticated".
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am What happened to your logical thinking?
I am human.
If human conditions are dependent on my own framework, then my [as human] framework cannot be independent from human conditions.
Yes, logical thinking. If C (what is real) depends on B (human conditions) and B depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework), then C (what is real) depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework). Nothing that you posit as true and real can leave your own framework, it is only valid for you, and you're not allowed by your own doctrine to make any objective claim, not even that there's something else in the universe but Veritas Aequitas's own framework. Humans? They're part of that same framework, too. What do we call when someone can only affirm their own existence (or at least their own experience) as "really real" and deny other's, except as some sort of dream? Solipsism.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Where did I place human conditions outside reality.
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:17 pmRight here: "As per definition of 'reality' it is relative upon something, either me or the human conditions, so it is a relative reality. "
That is your definition not mine. Such a definition is only from the vulgar and common sense.
I was just quoting you.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Note my argument which I have repeated many times, but you deliberately ignored.
1. Reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
2. ALL-THERE-IS covers all human conditions.
3. Human conditions [part and parcel of reality -2] cannot be independent of reality.
Note that your first premise does not accurately expresses what you actually claim (added in blue):
"1. Reality is ALL-THERE-IS...within the domain of human experience/conditions. There's nothing real beyond (independent of) human experience/conditions."
That takes us to your second premise, that you have actually inverted in your usual claims: "All human conditions cover ALL-THERE-IS". And then you conclude what you had already assumed in the first premise. You have also inverted in the conclusion your usual claim: "reality cannot be independent of human conditions", as can be seen literally in your next response:
"My main and commonly stated point is, Reality, i.e. all-there-is cannot be absolute independent of the human framework [conditions].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Einstein would have an opinion then a belief upon the self verification of his theory on relativity.
When he presented his papers to the scientific community [peers and relevant experts, journals], is tested and verified by empirical evidences, and his proposed theory is accepted, the theory is regarded as a Scientific [Physics] theory for all.
It is thus independent of Einstein and opinions of other individuals.
But the theory is still conditioned by the Scientific Community [collective of humans] which in essence is leveraged on human conditions.
So while it is independent of the individuals opinions and belief it is not independent of the collective of humans.
You're definitely clueless. About everything. The acceptance of a scientific theory by the scientific community is not the equivalent of the acceptance of dogmas as you're mostly acquainted with in your own philosophical endeavors. What this acceptance implies is precisely its objective truthfulness, its universal validity, in every time, in every place, independent of people's opinions. As inductive knowledge necessarily has to be cautious and provisional, these truths cannot be written in stone, and they're always subject to being tested again and again, but their intrinsic objectivity remains as a core principle.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Intersubjective [re scientific objectivity] is equivalent to the intersubjective consensus of scientific peers [human subjects].
I didn't ask what the concept of intersubjectivity entails. I asked you to prove that intersubjectivity is a real thing.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:17 pm Again, will you dare to answer the question: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with?
Not too sure what you mean here? I try ...
Of course, every time you want to avoid an issue you come up with that excuse "I don't know what you meant".
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am You as a critical realist claimed when you saw and experienced a tree external to your body and mind, that 'tree-in-itself' exists absolutely independent of your mind and body.
As such, according to me, you do not have "direct" contact with that tree-in-itself.
What you are doing is merely inferring from the best knowledge [common or scientific] you have that there is a tree-in-itself that is existing absolutely independent of your mind and body.
But scientific knowledge is merely polished conjectures thus not absolute knowledge.

So your supposedly tree-in-itself is merely a speculation.
To INSIST - philosophically - there is an independent tree-in-itself is a delusion.
This is a sort of relative "necessary" unavoidable psychological aberration the majority is infected with which must be corrected by critical philosophy.
Surely, as expected, you went astray and avoided answering the question. I didn't ask what you thought I believed to be in direct contact with, I asked: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? You can answer "nothing" if you like.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am "Inherent" in this case is with reference to human nature.

I was referring to your,
"Things come into being only inside the framework."
which imply "inside" if not "outside".
When I used the term 'emergent' that is with no reference to inside or outside, it just 'is" and what-is is subject to verification and justification empirically and philosophically. [note critical philosophy].
"Being only inside the framework" is the equivalent of "being subsumed within the framework". You see, the term "within" means "on the inside of". But OK, let's have fun with this. We can then suppose, following your own argument, that everyone using the word "within" is implying "inside" if not "outside", is "entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor and stuck with the linguistic duality". Now I challenge you not to use the word "within" and the phrase "subsumed within". Agree?
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am I highlighted the addition meanings and senses of 'absolute'.
Thus to be more specific, the term absolutely absolute is not an issue.
Note "relative" = considered in relation or in proportion to something else.
So what is wrong relative-absolute where such an absolute is relative to something, while absolutely absolute means not related to anything at all.

"Relatively relative" can represent meta-relativity of relations.

Show me where the above are wrong?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron
: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)
broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements
Your vocab is limited.
Have you heard of the word 'paradox' or paradoxical?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am I never state humans are not actually real at the end of the day.[...]
Yes, humans are only really-real within the 'empirical + philosophical' perspective. This is undeniable.
What you call undeniable here is that humans are not "really-real" outside of experience and thought frameworks. That is, they are not actually real at the end of the day, but a theoretical construction that dissolves as soon as experience and thought frameworks are not present. Then there's the big issue of whose experience and thought framework you are talking about.
You are being rhetorical and reframing my point off tangent.

What is undeniable the default is experience, there is no way we can do away with experience.
As for framework, that can be from common sense to the most credible, i.e. the scientific framework.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Note as above what is really-real must be verified and justified empirically and philosophy which must be applied to humans claimed to be real.
As such 'hallucinated real humans' from someone taking LSD cannot qualify as really-real in the conventional and scientific sense.
The issue is that as soon as one employs that same verification process with the empirical and philosophical justification to prove that the Moon, as any other real thing, exists by itself, you jump to disqualify that method as unwarranted. You are forced to do that only when you need to justify that your view of reality actually makes it no different than hallucination.
You are missing the point.
Whether you verify the moon existed before humans or differentiate LSD experience, the fundamental in both are grounded on human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am What I am claiming is based on solid and more sophisticated "empirical + philosophical" verification and justifications. I am saying your thinking is not sufficiently wide and deep, thus your inability to understand and expressed [not necessary agree with] my intended views.
There is depth in figuring out what is the actual age of the Moon. That your philosophical dogmas prevent you from making the obvious inference from that, shows how useless and silly your supposedly profound, "sophisticated" reflections, actually are.
There is depth but not deep enough.
You should dig into the 'figuring out' and the whole shebang entangled in such processes, but you don't.
You are just applying 'faith' is believing what the scientists tell you.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am While we agree on the empirical claims of reality, you are making an additional speculation [philosophically] that there is a person-in-itself which is independent in a way and there are things-in-themselves that are independent of the human conditions.
See? Now that you think you have shook off the problematic non-distinction between reality and hallucination, you're back to finding empirical + philosophical verification and justifications, as purely speculative. Oh, yes, I remember, yours are "sophisticated".
Yes, I am insisting your empirical + philosophical is speculative and not real in the ultimate sense.
This is like a theist who agrees with everyone [normal], a person is a real physical human [verified and justified] but then joined the wrong bandwagon that the real person has a more real essence, i.e. a soul that survives physical death.
In your case you believe the real phenomena also has a very-real-noumena [false belief].
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am What happened to your logical thinking?
I am human.
If human conditions are dependent on my own framework, then my [as human] framework cannot be independent from human conditions.
Yes, logical thinking.
If C (what is real) depends on B (human conditions) and B depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework), then C (what is real) depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework).
Nothing that you posit as true and real can leave your own framework, it is only valid for you, and you're not allowed by your own doctrine to make any objective claim, not even that there's something else in the universe but Veritas Aequitas's own framework. Humans? They're part of that same framework, too. What do we call when someone can only affirm their own existence (or at least their own experience) as "really real" and deny other's, except as some sort of dream? Solipsism.
Strawman.
Note my reality is ALL-there-IS argument.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Note my argument which I have repeated many times, but you deliberately ignored.
1. Reality is ALL-THERE-IS.
2. ALL-THERE-IS covers all human conditions.
3. Human conditions [part and parcel of reality -2] cannot be independent of reality.
Note that your first premise does not accurately expresses what you actually claim (added in blue):
"1. Reality is ALL-THERE-IS...within the domain of human experience/conditions. There's nothing real beyond (independent of) human experience/conditions."
That takes us to your second premise, that you have actually inverted in your usual claims: "All human conditions cover ALL-THERE-IS".
And then you conclude what you had already assumed in the first premise. You have also inverted in the conclusion your usual claim: "reality cannot be independent of human conditions", as can be seen literally in your next response:
"My main and commonly stated point is, Reality, i.e. all-there-is cannot be absolute independent of the human framework [conditions].
I never stated "All human conditions cover ALL-THERE-IS".
The implication of 2 is
All Human conditions are part and parcel of reality, thus
3. cannot be independent of Reality - ALL-THERE-IS".
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Einstein would have an opinion then a belief upon the self verification of his theory on relativity.
When he presented his papers to the scientific community [peers and relevant experts, journals], is tested and verified by empirical evidences, and his proposed theory is accepted, the theory is regarded as a Scientific [Physics] theory for all.
It is thus independent of Einstein and opinions of other individuals.
But the theory is still conditioned by the Scientific Community [collective of humans] which in essence is leveraged on human conditions.
So while it is independent of the individuals opinions and belief it is not independent of the collective of humans.
You're definitely clueless. About everything. The acceptance of a scientific theory by the scientific community is not the equivalent of the acceptance of dogmas as you're mostly acquainted with in your own philosophical endeavors.
What this acceptance implies is precisely its objective truthfulness, its universal validity, in every time, in every place, independent of people's opinions. As inductive knowledge necessarily has to be cautious and provisional, these truths cannot be written in stone, and they're always subject to being tested again and again, but their intrinsic objectivity remains as a core principle.
Rhetoric again. Seem you are the one who is clueless.
The issue here is 'what is objectivity' which is independent of a person's opinion and beliefs.
I am using scientific objectivity [the most reliable] as an example.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am Intersubjective [re scientific objectivity] is equivalent to the intersubjective consensus of scientific peers [human subjects].
I didn't ask what the concept of intersubjectivity entails. I asked you to prove that intersubjectivity is a real thing.
You are clueless in this case.
Intersubjectivity is not a physical thing but a shared-belief among subjects which may be true or false, thus need verification and justification empirically and philosophically.
The intersubjectivity re intersubjective consensus of scientific peers is the most reliable in contract to the shared-consensus among theists in their belief 'God exists'.
See! you are clueless.

Note I gave you an example of the US Dollar as a case of intersubjectivity where the US Dollar is real and translatable to real things.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:17 pm Again, will you dare to answer the question: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with?
Not too sure what you mean here? I try ...
Of course, every time you want to avoid an issue you come up with that excuse "I don't know what you meant".
Such a declaration is necessary so you don't blame me for missing the point and going off tangent. Then, note I still attempt to guess your intended point not avoiding it as you are doing with some of my points.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am You as a critical realist claimed when you saw and experienced a tree external to your body and mind, that 'tree-in-itself' exists absolutely independent of your mind and body.
As such, according to me, you do not have "direct" contact with that tree-in-itself.
What you are doing is merely inferring from the best knowledge [common or scientific] you have that there is a tree-in-itself that is existing absolutely independent of your mind and body.
But scientific knowledge is merely polished conjectures thus not absolute knowledge.

So your supposedly tree-in-itself is merely a speculation.
To INSIST - philosophically - there is an independent tree-in-itself is a delusion.
This is a sort of relative "necessary" unavoidable psychological aberration the majority is infected with which must be corrected by critical philosophy.
Surely, as expected, you went astray and avoided answering the question. I didn't ask what you thought I believed to be in direct contact with, I asked: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? You can answer "nothing" if you like.
See! this is where 'I don't understand what you meant' is very relevant.
Most of the time where you accuse me of going astray is actually due to your own fault in not communicating effectively.
I do admit I have a problem with this because the point is very complex as in the case of this whole OP and you are stuck dogmatically with confirmation bias.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:10 am "Inherent" in this case is with reference to human nature.

I was referring to your,
"Things come into being only inside the framework."
which imply "inside" if not "outside".
When I used the term 'emergent' that is with no reference to inside or outside, it just 'is" and what-is is subject to verification and justification empirically and philosophically. [note critical philosophy].
"Being only inside the framework" is the equivalent of "being subsumed within the framework". You see, the term "within" means "on the inside of".
But OK, let's have fun with this.
We can then suppose, following your own argument, that everyone using the word "within" is implying "inside" if not "outside", is "entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor and stuck with the linguistic duality".
Now I challenge you not to use the word "within" and the phrase "subsumed within". Agree?
That is not my point.
I will continue to use the term 'within' and "subsumed" with the proper and necessary context.
The PRIMAL container metaphor re "inside" or "outside" by default is a necessary and useful one.

The problem is when the container metaphor and above terms are used wrongly by you in relation to your dogmatic physical realism where you end up with claiming the things you see outside [the noumena] is absolutely independent of your mind or body.
On this more refined philosophical issue we cannot use the PRIMAL container metaphor.
You are too primitive [your current status] in your philosophical deliberations instead of using the appropriate wisdom.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Conde Lucanor »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 amhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron
: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)
broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements
Your vocab is limited.
Have you heard of the word 'paradox' or paradoxical?
Your two-word terms don't just seem contradictory, they are indeed. A soft hardness is not just a paradox, it is an oxymoron, just as a relative absolute. No playing with words will make that nonsensical concept invented by you less absurd.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am What you call undeniable here is that humans are not "really-real" outside of experience and thought frameworks. That is, they are not actually real at the end of the day, but a theoretical construction that dissolves as soon as experience and thought frameworks are not present. Then there's the big issue of whose experience and thought framework you are talking about.
What is undeniable the default is experience, there is no way we can do away with experience.
As for framework, that can be from common sense to the most credible, i.e. the scientific framework.
No one is doing away with experience, but calling it "the default" implies a conceptualization process structured within a framework that you put as mere convention and not indicative of something objectively real. Then what you call "undeniable" boils down to a mere convention, too. So, the default actually ends up being the convention, the framework. By your choice of argument, not mine. While you can go on the rest of your life advocating for the convention of your choice, that is, anti-realism, there's nothing you can say about the supposed convention embraced by realists in terms of its truthfulness and legitimacy. That is, if you had any coherence in your thoughts and arguments, because you evidently then go on to contradict yourself and ask for proofs and justifications that your own framework cannot allow. That's the price of relativism.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am You are missing the point.
Whether you verify the moon existed before humans or differentiate LSD experience, the fundamental in both are grounded on human conditions.
No, you're missing the point. Your relativism dissolves any grounding and you get "human conditions" back into the conventional framework. You said it yourself: there are no human conditions in themselves, just the concept of human conditions subsumed within a framework. But you cannot even justify the existence of that framework, only make assumptions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
There is depth but not deep enough.
You should dig into the 'figuring out' and the whole shebang entangled in such processes, but you don't.
You are just applying 'faith' is believing what the scientists tell you.
Sure, I always knew you actually don't find the scientific framework credible. Your choice. At least be faithful to it.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Yes, I am insisting your empirical + philosophical is speculative and not real in the ultimate sense.
Problem is: you cannot get rid of your speculative assertions yourself, especially since your stance involves, in order to oppose realism, that you deny the possibility of grabbing reality in the ultimate sense.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
In your case you believe the real phenomena also has a very-real-noumena [false belief].
Again, the problem is that you cannot prove it is a false belief. You can only choose to say it is a conceptual framework you don't embrace yourself. The price of your relativism.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am Yes, logical thinking.
If C (what is real) depends on B (human conditions) and B depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework), then C (what is real) depends on A (Veritas Aequitas' own framework).
Nothing that you posit as true and real can leave your own framework, it is only valid for you, and you're not allowed by your own doctrine to make any objective claim, not even that there's something else in the universe but Veritas Aequitas's own framework. Humans? They're part of that same framework, too. What do we call when someone can only affirm their own existence (or at least their own experience) as "really real" and deny other's, except as some sort of dream? Solipsism.
Strawman.
Note my reality is ALL-there-IS argument.
OK, then prove it is a straw man, tell me which of these statements do not reflect your position:
1. C (what is real) is grounded on B (human conditions)
2. B (human conditions) is grounded on A (thought frameworks)
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am I never stated "All human conditions cover ALL-THERE-IS".
You said reality (all there is) is grounded on human conditions. If there's some part of reality that is not grounded on human conditions, tell us what it is. That's the only possible way to deny that you don't believe "All human conditions cover ALL-THERE-IS".
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am All Human conditions are part and parcel of reality, thus
That sounds OK at first glance, until you go on to detail what you mean: you mean that all human conditions have been, are, and will be, always, unavoidably, part of reality, because...reality is grounded on human conditions. That is the deeply problematic statement that is being addressed here. What empirical evidence and analysis show is that a world of things, even sentient things, existed prior to humans, and humans emerged contingently from that same domain, thus being part of that domain, but such present entanglement can dissolve and it is obviously not required for the domain of reality to exist. If what empirical evidence and analysis show is that humans emerged from pre-existing material conditions, then it is human conditions that our grounded on material conditions, not the other way around. If water emerged from the union of oxygen and hydrogen molecules, oxygen and hydrogen are the conditions for the existence of water, so that there could be oxygen and hydrogen separately, and no water at all, but not the other way around.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am The issue here is 'what is objectivity' which is independent of a person's opinion and beliefs.
I am using scientific objectivity [the most reliable] as an example.
Pure bluffing. You don't value science at all. Not strange, since you apply to it the same dogmatic stance that you apply to everything.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am I didn't ask what the concept of intersubjectivity entails. I asked you to prove that intersubjectivity is a real thing.
Intersubjectivity is not a physical thing but a shared-belief among subjects which may be true or false, thus need verification and justification empirically and philosophically.
The intersubjectivity re intersubjective consensus of scientific peers is the most reliable in contract to the shared-consensus among theists in their belief 'God exists'.
The straw man will not save you from dealing with the straigthforward question!! I never said intersubjectivity was meant to be a physical thing. So, answer the question: prove that intersubjectivity is something real. Note that if it happens that intersubjectivity is real by way of scientific consensus, then the Moon in itself is real by way of scientific consensus.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am I didn't ask what you thought I believed to be in direct contact with, I asked: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? You can answer "nothing" if you like.
See! this is where 'I don't understand what you meant' is very relevant.
Most of the time where you accuse me of going astray is actually due to your own fault in not communicating effectively.
I do admit I have a problem with this because the point is very complex as in the case of this whole OP and you are stuck dogmatically with confirmation bias.
It is a very straigthforward question, don't give bad excuses: what, according to you, we DO have direct contact with? You can answer "nothing" if you like.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am "Being only inside the framework" is the equivalent of "being subsumed within the framework". You see, the term "within" means "on the inside of".
But OK, let's have fun with this.
We can then suppose, following your own argument, that everyone using the word "within" is implying "inside" if not "outside", is "entrapped by the use of the inherent habitualized container metaphor and stuck with the linguistic duality".
Now I challenge you not to use the word "within" and the phrase "subsumed within". Agree?
That is not my point.
I will continue to use the term 'within' and "subsumed" with the proper and necessary context.
The PRIMAL container metaphor re "inside" or "outside" by default is a necessary and useful one.
See? You lost the challenge pretty quickly.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am The problem is when the container metaphor and above terms are used wrongly by you in relation to your dogmatic physical realism where you end up with claiming the things you see outside [the noumena] is absolutely independent of your mind or body.
On this more refined philosophical issue we cannot use the PRIMAL container metaphor.
You are too primitive [your current status] in your philosophical deliberations instead of using the appropriate wisdom.
Idealists are typical in believing that the bigger the mystical nonsense, the greater the depth and refinement. Lost in ethereal heights and ivory towers, cannot even see and understand what's in front of their eyes. That's why their reactionary philosophy is completely useless for humanity.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:52 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 amhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron
: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)
broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements
Your vocab is limited.
Have you heard of the word 'paradox' or paradoxical?
Your two-word terms don't just seem contradictory, they are indeed. A soft hardness is not just a paradox, it is an oxymoron, just as a relative absolute. No playing with words will make that nonsensical concept invented by you less absurd.
You are too rigid on this. If that is insisted as literally without details, contexts and argument, then that would be an oxymoron.
In context and with the details arguments I present, the absolutely-absolute is not an oxymoron.

Merely the term Soft-hardness without explanation is an oxymoron.
But with details and arguments, it can be a paradox or even a reality.
Note I had argued p and not-p can exist at the same time but not in the same perspective.

A diamond can be presented in the context of soft-hardness, it is hard if based on touch but not to an electron probe which can penetrate the carbon atoms EASILY. Some even label an erection as soft-hardness and most will dispute it is an oxymoron. Water under strong pressure is hard and can even cut the hardest steel.
There are so many situations where p is not-p [not in the same sense] and you are so ignorant of such a point, which reflect the low level of your whole philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:36 am What you call undeniable here is that humans are not "really-real" outside of experience and thought frameworks. That is, they are not actually real at the end of the day, but a theoretical construction that dissolves as soon as experience and thought frameworks are not present. Then there's the big issue of whose experience and thought framework you are talking about.
What is undeniable the default is experience, there is no way we can do away with experience.
As for framework, that can be from common sense to the most credible, i.e. the scientific framework.
No one is doing away with experience, but calling it "the default" implies a conceptualization process structured within a framework that you put as mere convention and not indicative of something objectively real.
Then what you call "undeniable" boils down to a mere convention, too.
So, the default actually ends up being the convention, the framework.
By your choice of argument, not mine.
While you can go on the rest of your life advocating for the convention of your choice, that is, anti-realism, there's nothing you can say about the supposed convention embraced by realists in terms of its truthfulness and legitimacy. That is, if you had any coherence in your thoughts and arguments, because you evidently then go on to contradict yourself and ask for proofs and justifications that your own framework cannot allow. That's the price of relativism.
You are very lost on the above.
When I refer to 'experience' as the default, that hinges to the most credible convention framework, i.e. Science. You dispute this?
My anti-realism leverages on Science and reinforced with critical philosophy.

You insist your philosophical [critical] realism is better than Science?
No, philosophical realism leveraged upon speculations that the thing-in-itself independent of all human conditions, conventions and framework exists as real.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:45 am You are missing the point.
Whether you verify the moon existed before humans or differentiate LSD experience, the fundamental in both are grounded on human conditions.
No, you're missing the point. Your relativism dissolves any grounding and you get "human conditions" back into the conventional framework. You said it yourself: there are no human conditions in themselves, just the concept of human conditions subsumed within a framework. But you cannot even justify the existence of that framework, only make assumptions.
Yes there are no human conditions-in-themselves as souls herewith and in heaven.

My justifications of a human framework is just that, in principle its foundation is always human related.
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