Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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uwot
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by uwot »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:52 pmYou can think all you want, the ontology isn't going to reveal itself to you.
Well, all hypotheses are underdetermined, which is not the same thing.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Skepdick »

uwot wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:53 pm That's just a general problem with people thinking that because an interpretation works, it must be true.
Perhaps that's a second reason why computation/constructivism is kinda relevant for philosophers.

Mathematically speaking it's non-sensical to speak of "truth" outside of some particular model/interpretation. It's the crux of model theory.

But that's just coherentism for you.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by uwot »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:59 pmMathematically speaking it's non-sensical to speak of "truth" outside of some particular model/interpretation. It's the crux of model theory.
Good to see that mathematicians and computer dorks are up to speed with 1960's philosophy of science.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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uwot wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:11 pm Good to see that mathematicians and computer dorks are up to speed with 1960's philosophy of science.
Perhaps that's where Philosophers of science learned it from?

Since this is Chomsky's 1950s work on formal languages/contextualisation.
Or if you ask Mathematicians - round about the time Category Theory was born.

But hey, you win brownie points of you think science has a philosophy.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by uwot »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:13 pmPerhaps that's where Philosophers of science learned it from?

Since this is Chomsky's 1950s work on formal languages/contextualisation.
Or if you ask Mathematicians - round about the time Category Theory was born.
Maybe so. You could make a case for Wittgenstein. Leibniz is as far as I can go back off the top of my head, but then you could make a perfectly plausible case that Leibniz was a mathematician; which alongside being a philosopher, he was. There is a lot of cross fertilisation among thinkers who aren't determined to put everything into categories.
Skepdick wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:13 pmBut hey, you win brownie points of you think science has a philosophy.
Thank you.
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bahman
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

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Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:59 am I had opened the following threads; As usual those who opposed will argue the above is absurd because they interpret that I am claiming humans literally and physically created the whole universe like humans created physical objects like furniture, motor vehicles, airplanes, ships, trains, building, and the likes.

I had emphasized and I did NOT say humans literally or physically created the entire universe somehow. Don't associate my sense of co-creating with the above.

What I am stating is the emergence of the existence of reality [creation of] is inevitably entangled with the human conditions.
As such, humans are co-creators of the reality they are part and parcel of.

If anyone claimed otherwise, one cannot prove there is an existing independent-of-human-mind external world - reality-in-itself.

So, prove to me reality-in-itself exists independent of human conditions and I will withdraw my claim.
There is no emergence. Human is the byproduct of evolution so there was a moment that human did not exist and reality exists.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Atla »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:17 am In any case, I'm just interested in a broad understanding of his philosophical project, its purpose, his accomplishments and how he influenced those who came after him. This as a counterpoint to the philosophical project that I found to be more robust and intellectually fruitful: materialism.
Do you have a take on nondualism ("Eastern" type nondualism combined with indirect realism)?

Kant for example didn't seem to have realized the twofold nature of space and time, they are both apriori features of the human mind, and also different features of the natural world. And 'matter' from materialism seems to be just a made-up concept, typically viewed from a third-person-perspective, that has proven to be extremely useful in describing the natural world.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by owl of Minerva »

Ventas Acquitas:
"What I am stating is the emergence of the existence of reality [creation of] is inevitably entangled with the human conditions.
As such, humans are co-creators of the reality they are part and parcel of.

If anyone claimed otherwise, one cannot prove there is an existing independent-of-human-mind external world - reality-in-itself.

So, prove to me reality-in-itself exists independent of human conditions and I will withdraw my claim."
Top
.......................................

"A rose is only a rose because man sees it as such; without him it would be only a pattern of energy vortices."

In that sense man is co-creator. When it comes to the energy vortices, light, sound waves and gaseous molecules man transduces rather than creates them.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

bahman wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 3:35 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:59 am I had opened the following threads; As usual those who opposed will argue the above is absurd because they interpret that I am claiming humans literally and physically created the whole universe like humans created physical objects like furniture, motor vehicles, airplanes, ships, trains, building, and the likes.

I had emphasized and I did NOT say humans literally or physically created the entire universe somehow. Don't associate my sense of co-creating with the above.

What I am stating is the emergence of the existence of reality [creation of] is inevitably entangled with the human conditions.
As such, humans are co-creators of the reality they are part and parcel of.

If anyone claimed otherwise, one cannot prove there is an existing independent-of-human-mind external world - reality-in-itself.

So, prove to me reality-in-itself exists independent of human conditions and I will withdraw my claim.
There is no emergence. Human is the byproduct of evolution so there was a moment that human did not exist and reality exists.
I can agree with you on the above which is obvious but that is qualified to the conventional sense [of biology, evolution, etc.].

However the conventional sense is subsumed under the ultimate [not absolute] sense, i.e. the human conditions.
Therefore ultimately reality cannot be independent of the human conditions.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

owl of Minerva wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:40 pm Ventas Acquitas:
"What I am stating is the emergence of the existence of reality [creation of] is inevitably entangled with the human conditions.
As such, humans are co-creators of the reality they are part and parcel of.

If anyone claimed otherwise, one cannot prove there is an existing independent-of-human-mind external world - reality-in-itself.

So, prove to me reality-in-itself exists independent of human conditions and I will withdraw my claim."
Top
.......................................

"A rose is only a rose because man sees it as such; without him it would be only a pattern of energy vortices."

In that sense man is co-creator. When it comes to the energy vortices, light, sound waves and gaseous molecules man transduces rather than creates them.
Repeating the above;

I can agree with you on the above which is obvious but that is qualified to the conventional sense [of physics etc.].

However the conventional sense is subsumed under the ultimate [not absolute] sense, i.e. the human conditions.
Therefore ultimately reality cannot be independent of the human conditions.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by owl of Minerva »

Ventas Aequitas wrote:
" I can agree with you on the above which is obvious but that is qualified to the conventional sense [of physics etc.].

However the conventional sense is subsumed under the ultimate [not absolute] sense, i.e. the human conditions.
Therefore ultimately reality cannot be independent of the human conditions."
.........................................

Physics as science is the opposite of conventional; it is new territory. Reality, life itself does not depend on the human condition although knowing itself objectively does depend on it. The human cannot be independent of reality having evolved from it. The human role is relational rather than creative. It creates from what is already there in the sense that the brain is the transducer of the environment. The poet interacts from feeling, the scientist from the intellect.
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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: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:07 am Thus to Kant what is objective reality is confined to cognition and experiences, i.e. whatever is empirical only.
Kant never asserted the thing-in-itself is objectively real.
see the B397 quote from CPR in the later part of this post.
That is the opposite of what he said. His writing in the CPR gives ground to the strong phenomenalism interpretation, which he despised and proceeded to clarify in other writings and editions of the CPR. He does claim the thing in itself is objectively real, that its existence outside of us is guaranteed and it affects our sensibility, making phenomena foundationally grounded and possible, but we only know its form or appearance, contributing ourselves (so Kant thought) with space and time. So, there are real objects, they are not illusions. He uses very straight words to clarify his doctrine, he says he does not agree with the idealist interpretation about representations that "no object external to them corresponds in fact". He says that "things... existing outside us are given", that "there are bodies without us".

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (2nd edition) he goes on to say:
III. If I say: in space and time intuition represents both outer objects as well as the self-intuition of the mind as each affects our senses, i.e., as it appears, that is not to say that these objects would be a mere illusion. ... Thus I do not say that bodies merely seem to exist outside me or that my soul only seems to be given ... It would be my own fault if I made that which I should count as appearance into mere illusion.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:07 am The above passage was Kant's explanation on the conflation of Kant's idealism with the rest of idealism. That is why he used "contrary" explicit and impliedly.
The above passage is not an explanation of what the thing-in-itself really is which is explained in context within 834 pages in the CPR.
I'm not saying that this was an explanation of what the thing in itself really is, Kant clearly says we cannot know. What he is saying is that regardless of they merely appearing to us in one way, they are actual objects independent of us, "outside of us". He always talks about the ideality of space and time and of all the relations and properties attributed to objects, but that these objects are actually existing, not mere illusions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:07 am When Kant used the phrase "I grant by all means that there are bodies without us" he was using that within Empirical Realism.
I have stated many times [here? and elsewhere] the empirical realism of Kant recognized the reality of the independent external world within sensibility and experience, BUT this empirical realism is subsumed within Transcendental Idealism [as defined by Kant]. The grounding of Transcendental Idealism is grounded by human conditions, e.g. space and time.
The reality of the independent external world within sensibility and experience can only mean, in order to be a coherent statement, merely the reality of its appearance as forms in our sensibility. By definition, being real only in our sensibility would categorically deny the existence of the independent external world, which Kant says would put his doctrine along with Berkeley's (or how he interpreted Berkeley's), entailing the idea that the external world is an illusion, which Kant denies. Appearance, he says, does not entail illusion. The grounding by human conditions is what gives phenomena (according to Kant), but not the noumena:
For if the senses merely represent something to us as it appears, then this something must also be in itself a thing, and an object of a non-sensible intuition, i.e., of the understanding, i.e., a cognition must be possible in which no sensibility is encountered, and which alone has absolutely objective reality, through which, namely, objects are represented to us as they are, in contrast to the empirical use of our understanding, in which things are only cognized as they appear...

...This was the result of the entire Transcendental Aesthetic, and it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something must correspond to it which is not in it­self appearance, for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus...the word "appearance" must already indicate a relation to something...which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of sensibility.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:07 am The something which we know is the supposed 'thing-in-itself' you are referring to above, but it has no qualities of sensibilities and experience.
But due to psychological desperations, the majority of humans, speculated and REIFY that inevitable illusion [the thing-in-itself] which they ascribe Objective Reality even when there are no empirical elements nor empirical concepts.
This Illusion will unceasingly mocks and torments him. This is why some realists like Peter, Sculptor, PantFlashers and their likes [not you] are so desperate and aggressive to condemn others who do not agree with them, with venom, just like the arrogant logical positivists [defunct] and the classical analytic philosophers of old.
You are just misrepresenting Kant's view, which is not necessarily a huge mistake, given that he gave good grounds himself for being misrepresented, specially along the lines of strong phenomenalism, a view that he tried to correct from his interpreters. Things are for him only illusions in the sense of the properties related to time and space that we attribute them, but not illusions in the sense of their existence. So, following Kant's view, they are not "ultimately" illusions, but realities of which we supposedly know nothing else.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:07 am You will not have any credibility to represent nor express Kant's view accurately unless you are very familiar [not necessary agree] with what are in the 834 pages of Kant's CPR.
Being very familiar with what is entailed in Kant's Critique and his whole philosophical project means being familiar, among other things, with the scholarship on Kant. Since I don't claim expertise myself, nor you claim expertise by yourself either, we are left with our better of worse informed opinions on the matter. That, of course, at best would only settle how is Kant to be interpreted, but will leave still open the full critique of his work, including the refutations that came along later. Transcendental Idealism by all means is now a defunct doctrine.
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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: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:54 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:11 am
I have read your points and responded accordingly.

No, you didn't. I derived the logical consequences of your answer to the question 'does the universe exists if there are no humans?'. Saying "none of the above" is not a response.
Then that is a straw man.
I never agreed to your 'does the universe exists if there are no humans?'.
There are a lot of difference in the manner of phrasing the issue.

Well, no, I took care of quoting your exact words. It should be reminded also that you said this was the point to address:
Veritas Aequitas wrote: The contention here is 'does the universe exists if there are no humans'. Your claim is 'yes' while I claim 'no'

And so, I proceeded to derive the logical consequences of that statement of yours, which you said yourself was the point to address. And right up to this moment, you have simply evaded the argument. We can go back to it anytime, it is a simple question: do humans exist?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am Mine is;
"reality is never independent of the human conditions"
the above has to be considered within transcendental idealism and empirical realism.

Is there a reality of humans actually existing?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am Thereafter no philosopher can accuse Kant's work as the same as Berkeley version of idealism nor any Kantian should do the same.
The fact is that Kant took on the task of clarifying his position to distance himself from Berkeley, and that was as a response to his critics.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: While you say you endorse Kant's idealism, your words point to Berkeley's.
Didn't you read your own quote from the Prolegomena where Kant rejected Berkeley's type of idealism as problematic-idealism?
You're assuming that I'm assuming that you're accurately representing Kant's position, but I'm not.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am Berkeley had debunked 'materialism' in the first of his two phase argument in rejecting the existence of matter.
That is why the current view is not 'matter' but' physical' defined as anything that is studied by Physics. [Have you read Berkeley's argument?]
Not only Berkeley never debunked materialism, but it is still a pending project for idealists.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:14 am Philosophical Realism is not ultimately realistic - note the "ism".
Natural science is most useful but at best scientific knowledge are merely polished conjectures.
Science simply would not work without its materialistic foundation. Materialism is the ontology of science and realism its epistemology. Idealism, on the other hand, only has mysticism in all its varieties.
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by Sculptor »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:59 am I had opened the following threads;
...
As usual those who opposed will argue the above is absurd because they interpret that I am claiming humans literally and physically created the whole universe like humans created physical objects like furniture, motor vehicles, airplanes, ships, trains, building, and the likes.

I had emphasized and I did NOT say humans literally or physically created the entire universe somehow. Don't associate my sense of co-creating with the above.

What I am stating is the emergence of the existence of reality [creation of] is inevitably entangled with the human conditions.
As such, humans are co-creators of the reality they are part and parcel of.

If anyone claimed otherwise, one cannot prove there is an existing independent-of-human-mind external world - reality-in-itself.

So, prove to me reality-in-itself exists independent of human conditions and I will withdraw my claim.
Surely this is just another strawman?

I think you are either deliberately or mistakenly misconceiving the position of your opposition.

It seems to me that the conclusion that you think " humans literally or physically created the entire universe somehow", is because you have so much unfounded faith in what you conceive of the "objectivity" of clearly man-made cultural and ethical systems that it would be necessary for " humans [to have] literally or physically created the entire universe somehow", for your naive faith in objectivity to be true.

But since the edifice of all ethical systems are by their very nature culturally, historically and oh too humanly subjective and relative, for these system to be, as you say, purely objective, the enitre universe would have to have been fully and completely created by humanity. As that is the only way your "FSK" could be true.
uwot
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Re: Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

Post by uwot »

Conde Lucanor wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:15 pmScience simply would not work without its materialistic foundation.
Granted it feels counterintuitive, but what makes Berkeley an important philosopher is that he demonstrated that idealism is entirely consistent with empiricism. It's not the full 90 minutes, but that is a goal to the nutjobs - science looks the same to realists, idealists and pragmatists.
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