Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Karpel Tunnel]

BigBango wrote: ↑Yesterday, 6:35 am
I certainly agree with Tamminen. There is no world without subjects.

Sculptor1: And yet the earth will abide regardless of humans; began before we existed and shall persist long after we are extinct.

BigBango wrote:
I certainly agree with Tamminen. There is no [perceived] world without subjects.

RJG wrote: "[perceived]" inserted by RJG for clarity.

You mean to say "There is no perceived world without subjects." ...right?

A "perceived world" is not the same as a "real world", ...true?

Falsely conflating the "perceived world" (subjective) as the real "world" (objective) is the error in Tamminen's philosophy.

Basically we have assertion, then counterassertion in both these exchanges (RJG's response is more complicated, but it asserts that it is a conflation, and implicity asserts that the world is independent of subjects perceiving it.

So we have assertion and counter-assertion. And as far as I can tell no good way to get past this.

[Tamminen]

Tamminen said: "By 'object' I mean material objects, not objects of consciousness."

No, you do not mean that

I usually mean what I say.

Material objects are clearly not dependent upon subjects for their existence, subjects come and go, but material objects persist. Since they persist when individual subjects pass away, it is reasonable to assume (as Consul has), that they would persist if all subjects passed away. But you refuse to acknowledge this.

Right, I refuse to acknowledge this, and I think I have given strong arguments against it. But it seems to need a special kind of insight to make this clear to oneself, perhaps something similar to your own way of seeing things, which I have difficulties to understand. But so it goes.

If Consciousness is truly transcendental and eternal, it does not "need" material subject/objects, it's existence does not depend on them, they are instruments for Its creative expression.

Conciousness cannot create its instruments from nothing. They are given to it, like the material for our hammers is given to us.

The main difference I see is that, agree with it or not, materialistic theory is logically consistent while your thesis is not.

If materialism says that the world without conscious beings is possible, it cannot be logically consistent.

There is absolutely nothing contradictory about the idea of a world without world-experience.

I think you still do not get what exactly I mean. See my description of the dependence structure above. The only, but decisive, difference compared with materialism is the one pointed out.

...subjects are conscious, experiencing objects

This is exactly what makes materialism absurd.

[Tamminen]

Consul: "There is absolutely nothing contradictory about the idea of a world without world-experience."

That would mean that any world we can imagine is real, doesn't matter if we experience it or not, because experience does not count.

We can imagine all kinds of things. We can imagine a round square by just putting together the idea of circle and the idea of square. But as we immediately see, this leads to a contradiction. This is an easy case. The impossibility of the world without world-experience is not as obvious but eventually as clear after a basic insight needed. As I said, we can easily imagine abstractions like this, but the difficult part, as it seems, is to make these abstractions concrete possibilities. To imagine a concrete reality is extremely difficult. Therefore empirical evidence always beats rational thinking, but also rational thinking must try to be as concrete as possible. And in this case rational thinking has stopped half-way, on the abstract level. There is one step left to be taken to see reality in proper light. Many have failed to take this step, as can be seen from the variety of metaphysical positions. Kant, Husserl and Wittgenstein, among others, have seen this very clearly, and they all have been criticized by those who have not seen matter as mere abstraction that needs its transcendental condition to make it concrete.

You show your finger. A scientist says: "There is a finger". A philosopher says: "I see that there is a finger". A materialist is like that scientist.

[Tamminen]

The world is where we live. It is something that surrounds us. If we remove this surrounding "property" from it, it loses its essence, it becomes an empty concept, an abstraction. Speaking of the possibility of such a world does not make sense.

[Sculptor1]

Science is about description…

Not only, because it does explain things.

Only by describing how things work.
There is no real reason for anything to exist the way it does. Nature is nature.
Neural matter works. And materialism, the idea that changed the intellectual landscape is the means by which all this happens.
To see what I mean; you can readjust ANY scientific question starting with a "why" and improve it if you substitute "how".
Why questions are for the church.

[RJG]

You mean to say "There is no perceived world without subjects." ...right?
A "perceived world" is not the same as a "real world", ...true?

A real world that we cannot perceive has nothing to do with us. It does not matter whether it exists or not! Of course if that "real world" bites us in the butt then we revise our world view. What is more important to us the "perceived world" or the world that cannot be perceived.

BB, my point was that perceptions-of-X are not the same as X itself. Your earlier post seemingly implied that X (the "real world") would disappear altogether without a "subject" to perceive it.

But now you seemingly agree with me that -- Without a subject (perceiver), it is only the "perceptions" (of-the-"real world") themselves that disappear, and not the actual "real world" itself.

RJG's response is more complicated, but it asserts that it is a conflation, and implicity asserts that the world is independent of subjects perceiving it.

Huh? ...there is nothing complicated about what I said. The perception-of-X is not the same as X. The experiencing-of-something is not the same as the something itself, ...wouldn't you agree???

Experiences (of objects) are 'experiences'.
And objects are 'objects'.
Experiences are NOT objects.
'Experiences' and 'objects' are TWO different things.
Conflating them as the SAME was the error made by BigBango (and Tamminen?).

[Tamminen]

The world is 'everything there is', 'everything that is the case', 'the totality of facts'. Now these facts are facts for me, and when I am dead, they are facts for someone else. And if there is no one for whom the facts are facts, they are facts in the world of facts that has no relationship with anyone. So the world is transcendent. We have created the concept of transcendence to denote something that has no relationship with us. So we think. But this is impossible. We tried to create a concept of transcendence that is logically consistent, but failed. Transcendence with no relationship with us is against all logic. Transcendence is transcendence in relation to immanence. This is the only rational meaning of transcendence. A concept cannot denote anything beyond the scope of logic, and everything within the scope of logic has a connection to the subject, the user of logic. So transcendence as “in-itself”, a completely independent realm of being, is impossible. In spite of the relative independence of the world of facts, its being depends on the being of the subject. The ontological unity of everything lies very deep in the heart of reality. This is how I see the world and our existence in it.

[Karpel Tunnel]

RJG's response is more complicated, but it asserts that it is a conflation, and implicity asserts that the world is independent of subjects perceiving it.

Huh? ...there is nothing complicated about what I said. The perception-of-X is not the same as X. The experiencing-of-something is not the same as the something itself, ...wouldn't you agree???

Experiences (of objects) are 'experiences'.
And objects are 'objects'.
Experiences are NOT objects.
'Experiences' and 'objects' are TWO different things.
Conflating them as the SAME was the error made by BigBango (and Tamminen?).

It was more complicated in the sense it was not just a counterassertion. I was not saying the idea you were presenting was complicated. I noted a couple of exchanges where people were telling people how things are. Statements, counterstatements. Yours was a little more involved, but still essentially a single assertion.

It seemed to me at least one of them was saying that without a subject experiencing, there would be no things. I am not sure if it is an idealism - where out there is more or less actually in here. Or if it is more like to exist things need to be perceived - which might not be an idealism.

Here you are saying they are making an error. I think it makes more sense to say they have a different metaphysics than you do. They state theirs, you state yours.

[Tamminen]

It seemed to me at least one of them was saying that without a subject experiencing, there would be no things. I am not sure if it is an idealism - where out there is more or less actually in here. Or if it is more like to exist things need to be perceived - which might not be an idealism.

There are many kinds of idealism. Let us say that the world consists of two material objects A and B. Then there is the subject. I can see at least these versions of idealism here:

1. The subject perceives A, and reality consists of the subject's perception of A.
2. The subject perceives A, and reality consists of A + the subject's perception of A.
3. The subject perceives A, and reality consists of A and B + the subject's perception of A.

In each of these cases, if there is no subject, there is no reality either.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Experiences (of objects) are 'experiences'.
And objects are 'objects'.
Experiences are NOT objects.
'Experiences' and 'objects' are TWO different things.
Conflating them as the SAME was the error made by BigBango (and Tamminen?).

Let me muss things up by throwing out another issue. Let's say that there is something that is not dependent on being experienced to exist. IOW realism. But what is it? Take the issue of time. Let's say some physicists are right and time is a dimension. IOW we experience is as this exists, then this exists, and yes, what existed in the past seems to exist now, or in any case we will re-experience it soon or possibly. It is there though perhaps changed. And there are these objects going through time, changing. But in a block universe, there is no change and arguably no objects. There is this whole either infinitely 'long' or finitely 'long object, in the time dimension. And the portions of that block which are not separable are there in their full evolution, all the stages of their changing are simply a dimension of them. Then all of this is not like we see, feel, hear, touch this. Apart from the issue of there not being time, we know these perceptions are distortions, creative processes, translations. What can we say about such a reality? or the things in it? The ding an sich.

This is different from saying that things would not exist without us, but it is a caution that perhaps that's all we can say. Sort of like the difference between fullout solipsism and epistemological solipsism, is parallel to what I am suggesting about the universe as experienced and what it is. Full out idealism says without subjects it is gone. Epistemological 'idealists' might want to say there's not much we can say about it. Different ontologies, but still a difference from realism. When realists imagine a plague killing all sentient creatures, and let's say thy are all on earth, they imagine things chugging along from the vantage of disembodied eyes. Rivers will still flow and all that. But all the nouns they would refer to and are represented in this imagining are not at all like we think. Add in relativity and qm with no absolute time and not absolute motion and quantum foam and perhaps many worlds or a multiverse, with the old block universe or block multiverse. I mean, what is 'still there' if all experiencers are gone, is not something we can easily talk about with any certainty at all and with the words we have built up using the motor cortex of our primate utterly embodied, time experiencing brains.

[Atla]

You can't explain ANYTHING. Science is about description and materialism is the method of science.
All matter experiences.
Since you have nothing better - in fact nothing at all, you can't even describe your problem.

Oh now I get. You think that only materialism is compatible with describing the world as a material structure. And therefore those who aren't materialists in the philosophical sense, necessarily disagree with science or any "physical" stuff.

Maybe you shouldn't participate on a philosophy forum then?

[Consul]

I think the fundamental ontology that is so often employed in this thread is that of substance and attribute.

Right, but materialism/physicalism isn't wedded to any particular fundamental ontology. For example, it is compatible with process ontology, with trope ontology, and with nominalism about attributes (properties).

[Consul]

So you don't know why experiental states go with matter. Materialism explains everything just fine, except this one. So why can't you just accept that there is one big anomaly that the materialist worldview can't explain, therefore it must be incomplete, to put it mildly?

Natural/physical evolution is a continuous process, and materialists cannot believe that consciousness is a hyperphysical "anomaly" in nature that is scientifically inexplicable (in physicalistic terms) in principle. Abiogenesis (the evolutionary transition from nonlife to life) wasn't a supernatural miracle, and materialists are convinced that apsychogenesis (the evolutionary transition from nonconscious life to conscious life) wasn't one either.

"How could a nonphysical property or entity suddenly arise in the course of animal evolution? A change in a gene is a change in a complex molecule which causes a change in the biochemistry of the cell. This may lead to changes in the shape or organization of the developing embryo. But what sort of chemical process could lead to the springing into existence of something nonphysical? No enzyme can catalyze the production of a spook!"

(Smart, J. J. C. "Materialism." Journal of Philosophy 60/22 (1963): 651-662. p. 660)

There's a new natural science: the neuroscience of consciousness. It is still in its infancy, and nobody knows whether it will succeed in (reductively) explaining (phenomenal) consciousness/(subjective) experience; but the antimaterialists' prediction that it will never be successful is unsubstantiated and unjustified. "X hasn't been explained yet" isn't synonymous with "X is unexplainable in principle"! As Doris Day sings: "The future's not ours to see."

[Sculptor1]

You can't explain ANYTHING. Science is about description and materialism is the method of science.
All matter experiences.
Since you have nothing better - in fact nothing at all, you can't even describe your problem.

Oh now I get. You think that only materialism is compatible with describing the world as a material structure. And therefore those who aren't materialists in the philosophical sense, necessarily disagree with science or any "physical" stuff.

Maybe you shouldn't participate on a philosophy forum then?

Non sequitur.
There is a difference between the contents of a book and the paper upon which that content appears, yet there is no story without the book.
Think it through.

[Consul]

Consul: "There is absolutely nothing contradictory about the idea of a world without world-experience."
That would mean that any world we can imagine is real, doesn't matter if we experience it or not, because experience does not count.

???
That doesn't follow from what I say. By "a world without world-experience" I simply mean a world devoid of experiencing/perceiving beings.