Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:03 am
The noumenal is not truly something [whatever is its substance] that is independent of mind.
This is a claim made by p-realism which is groundless and thus non-sensical.
Yes, I understand your position here.
The noumenal is actually a reified illusion which is claimed by delusional p-realists.
The noumenal is merely an intelligible thought without any possibility of being real.
Same as above.
The noumenal is something like the fictitious Santa Claus which can be real at all in the ordinary or whatever real sense.
Same as above.
Realistically, we should term the noumenon as a mind-dependent illusion, NOT as "something [whatever is its substance] that is independent of mind".
Got it.
According the Kant, whilst the noumenal is an illusion, it is a very useful illusion, like Santa Claus, God, and other fictitious thoughts and fantasies which are impossible to real in the empirical sense.
Understood.
Here's the thing: if someone reading you looks at the process of deciding X is a CLAIM that some noumenal thing, according to you, and sees that other minds would be a similar claim, then there may be a problem with your current version of antirealism.
And let's be clear: Let's assume for a moment that realism is solipsistic. That's not relevant.
If someone says antirealism implies solipsism, responding that realism is solipsistic is irrelevant. Both could be solipsistic. Perhaps some third view is better, for example.
It's not a defense of one's position to show that the other position is or may be false, unless it's just a battle.
Person A: your position on X is incorrect because of Y.
Person B: well you can't be right because your position doesn't work.
Well, actually both their positions could have problems. That kind of argument is only useful in a word war.
OK.
Your antirealism includes the idea that no thing exists independent of minds. That which exists, exists as part of perception, or what gets called perception. There are no unperceived things, things beyond perception, that are the source of phenomena.
Sometimes antirealism gets accused of being solipsism. Let's look at two possibilities.
Solipsism means that there is nothing outside of your mind. There is only one mind. Everything that happens and is, is part of that mind's experiencing. So, other people, the external world, this is all, really something like part of your dream.
A subtler version or antirealist explanation is subjective idealism. Here there are many minds that are real, but there is no reality beyond their minds.
The problem, for me, with the second is that for any individual mind, it does not have a way of determining if other minds are real. Sure, we can say and imagine that the other minds are real and have this as an axiom in our antirealism. But it's an axiom. For each individual mind the claim that other people in fact have minds, is a direct parallel to the claim by realists that there must be a continuous reality even when we are not perceiving it. A mind independent reality.
The antirealist is saying that behind the images of other people, the sounds of their voices, their postures and actions in my perception, there is another mind that, LIKE ME, is an experiencer.
Even though I never experience this experiencing on their part, I now that behind that face, those actions, that body posture, that changing tone of voice, there is a subjective entity like me. Something that exists
even when I am not looking at it. Even when I am not around.
That is a direct parallel to realism.
Sometimes people argue, but no, claiming there are other minds are not a claim about some noumena, those other minds are cocreating reality with the quantum foam.
But how does the antirealist know this?
It is justifying the assumption of other minds by saying that other minds exist and since they exist, they continue to exist, even when I am not around, due to their own consciousnesses.
Yeah, could be. But that's an axiom precisely like the realists axiom that things continue to exist when not perceived.
Why? because we do not go beyond our perceiving. You have no way to check if this idea is correct. That axiom is a realist axiom.
I know that X continues even when I am not around.
The antirealist objects.
No, but they are perceiving. They maintain their own continuation.
But that's a mere assumption. And one that is not allowed the realist. "I know that inside that X, there is something that allows it to continue." Or "I know that beyond my perceiving/experiencing there is something inside that X, that makes it an exception. Everything else disappears when I stop perceiving it, but not X.'
Implicit in this is that X is like me. It must, like me, be an experiencer. Because it is like me. Or, really, looks like me, it seems, and has other perceived similarities. So we deduce (actually merely assume at a certain state of human development) that those others are like me: experiencers. But just because we assume that or try, on the basis of similarity as adult to deduce, the existence of other minds, this is a specific case of realism sliding into antirealism.
Because realists either assume based as you have argued on an evolutionary default that there is a mind independent reality or deduce it.
And an antirealist either assumes (based on an evolutionary default or just built in habit) that other minds exist or they deduce it via similarity.
And this is the only X that antirealists allow themselves to deduce into existence the way realists do.