The Concept of Independent Reality in Discussions of Philosophy

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Either a lie, or nice demonstration of the fallacy of affirming the consequent !

Calling me a liar? I eagerly await JLN's post scolding you for providing an insult rather than an answer.

@igm,

igm wrote:

I don’t have a position I lack the position that the concept of there being an ‘Independent Reality’ is provable. As I don’t have a position to defend and naïve realists do I differ in that respect.

That is so patently absurd and demonstrably false that I can only conclude you either have no interest in carrying on an honest discussion or you're incapable of understanding your own position. In either case, I really have no interest in pursuing a dialogue along these lines.

igm wrote:

So, 'you' the subject believes in the concept of an independent reality and are indifferent to the philosophical stance taken. This concept depends on there being a 'you' to be indifferent. Where do 'you' reside? Are you all of your body or part of it? Or are you separate from it? Or are you both or some other alternative e.g. your name? If you say it doesn't matter if there is a true self, then it follows that if there is no real self, then reality is 'one' and therefore not independent of 'you' because there is no 'you' to be independent from. This is relevant i.e. no subject then no independent object.

When my questions are met with evasions and sophistry, you are certainly not entitled to anything different from me. So I'll just say that I don't have a position. I lack a position that the concept of there being a "dependence" between observer and observed is provable. As I don't have a position to defend and you do I differ in that respect.

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

I thought the superior insult was "logician heal thyself", but we know why you might want to avoid that one. !

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

Quote:

It seems to me that Kant confined human knowledge to what humans can sense.

From what I remember, he divided it into "before senses" and "after senses". The words used in Norwegian translations are "a priori" and "a posteriori". I do not know if they are the same in English.
A priori knowledge are logical conclusions from definite facts, or experience achieved through reason alone. He talks about the transcendental prerequisites for all empirical perception; those acknowledgments of reason that enable empirical perception. Concepts like time and space are a priori, because it is not possible to make an acknowledgment without recognizing these.

That which is a priori is always valid and neccesarily always true. The way I understand it, these things are "hardwired" into us as part of the "human condition".

There are many problems with his view, especially in light of discoveries and ideas that came later, but as far as I know, Kant was the first of western philosophers who thought in terms of certain aspects of experience being supplied by the perceiver. Perhaps this is the beginning of the divide between "absolute reality" and "human reality"? To me, the consideration that human beings are inseparable parts of reality makes the distinction superfluous.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Excellent clarification of Kant. I particularly appreciate your monistic realization that whatever the structure of our innate contribution to making sense of the World it is part of the unity we share with it. Despite the obvious variations between what we refer to as "human reality" and everything else they are facets of a single Reality. For this reason I consider the "subjectivity" of Art to be as epistemologically valid and valuable as is the "objectivity" of Science. My only reservations regarding Kant is his division of the World into "this worldly" phenomena and--from the perspective of human experience--"other worldly" noumena. It is too consistent for my taste with the structure of Christian cosmology (Nietzsche's platonism for the people).

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

It seems that some schools of philosophy dismiss independent reality. My view is that without independent reality, we would have nothing to refer to, nothing to talk about, and no way to increase our knowledge.

To claim that there are no facts is to state a putative fact*. I wonder how philosophical anti-realists argue that this paradox doesn't reduce their position to nonsense.

-----
* Full disclosure: I stole this, pretty much verbatim, from a post of joefromchicago's in an earlier thread. I'd link to it, but can't seem to find it.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

wandeljw wrote:
It seems that some schools of philosophy dismiss independent reality. My view is that without independent reality, we would have nothing to refer to, nothing to talk about, and no way to increase our knowledge.

To claim that there are no facts is to state a putative fact*. I wonder how philosophical anti-realists argue that this paradox doesn't reduce their position to nonsense.

-----
* Full disclosure: I stole this, pretty much verbatim, from a post in an earlier thread of joefromchicago's. I'd link to it, but can't seem to find it.

There is plenty of nonsense, even in the metaphysics of Kant... The idea that people can learn without reasoning seems to have escaped him, especially in the area of morality... Perhaps we know better today; but people learn a lot before they have the maturity to reason logically... The fact is, that culture is knowledge, and much of that we accept at face value, as given to us... It is not because anything is reasonable that it is acceptable...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

There is plenty of nonsense, even in the metaphysics of Kant...

Is this supposed to be an attack on Kant or a vindication of nonsense in philosophy? I can't tell from the way you're phrasing this.

Fido wrote:

The fact is, that culture is knowledge, and much of that we accept at face value, as given to us... It is not because anything is reasonable that it is acceptable...

That's a red herring. To realists, reality is reality, whether we accept it or not. From their perspective, it's perfectly sound to suppose that some claims about the world may be universally accepted as true without actually being true. Accordingly, anti-realists cannot refute realists by pointing out what people accept as true. The observation is simply irrelevant to the thesis that anti-realists seek to rebut.

1 Reply

POINT OF INFORMATION

Quote:

To claim that there are no facts is to state a putative fact

...is a version of Russell's paradox whose "paradoxical status" is based "on naive set theory". (The attempted resolution of the paradox formally involved a revision of set theory) In various discussions of reality I have pointed out that "naive set theory" goes hand in glove with "naive realism".

The etymological view of "fact" as a construction (as in French fait from faire to make) is the non-naive version. Using this point leads to a restatement of the sentence in quotes as follows.
"To claim there are no facts independent of a construction process is to state a tautology"

3 Replies

@fresco,

Speaking of Russell:

Quote:

Is there a rhinoceros in the room? One of the earliest encounters between Bertrand Russell and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein involved a discussion about whether there was a rhinoceros in their room. Apparently, when Wittgenstein 'refused to admit that it was certain that there was not a rhinoceros in the room,' Russell half-jokingly looked underneath the desks to prove it. But to no avail. 'My German engineer, I think, is a fool,' concluded Russell. 'He thinks nothing empirical is knowable-I asked him to admit that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, but he wouldn't.'
-from "Russell, Wittgenstein and the problem of the rhinoceros," J. F. MacDonald, 1993.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I thought the superior insult was "logician heal thyself", but we know why you might want to avoid that one. !

So you admit that you were trying to insult me. Where's JLN? Why hasn't he rushed to my defense?

2 Replies

@fresco,

Common usage of the word "fact", as documented in Webster's dictionary, disagrees with yours. Words have meanings. By redefining them to mean whatever you want, rather than what they're commonly understood to mean, you can prove everything. I have no interest in arguing against such arbitrary maneuvers.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Of course ! As ye sow, so shall ye reap !
So stop changing the subject and play your game. Your comment on your logical fallacy is.....? Twisted Evil

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Hardly arbitrary when such a discussion has dominated the recent literature on "reality".
Your reference to "common usage" is merely an endorsement of naive realism.

http://www.vonglasersfeld.com/122

2 Replies

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Your reference to "common usage" is merely an endorsement of naive realism.

So what? Just because you call a position a bad name,"naive", that doesn't mean it's invalid. Indeed, it doesn't even mean you have an argument. And, to repeat, I see no point in a conversation where the meaning of words depends on your whim---or, for that matter, Ernst von Glasfeld's whim, or a journalful of constructivists' whim.

3 Replies

@wandeljw,

Ah yes... that's the early Wittgenstein of logical positivism.
I would imagine that the later Wittgenstein might have altered his position in "On Certainty" which was published after his death.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

The question of "validity" can only be answered by the terms of reference of the OP. Current "discussions of philosophy" have been concerned with language as paradigmatic constraint. Nobody is likely to learn anything about "reality" here, but they might learn something the significance of the term and its associates like "fact", in the history of philosophical discussion.

0 Replies

@fresco,

I'll try something else fresco. Since this is supposed to be a philosophy thread, I'll try to explore your word usage with a bit of Socratic questioning.

You contend that facts are really human constructions. In your usage of words, is the reverse also true? Are all human constructions facts? Or are there some human constructions that are facts and some that aren't?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

I'll get back to you with a fuller answer, but in the interim I will say that my reply will be based on Wittgenstein's "meaning is use".

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
That's only because, as extrapolations go, it's a particularly robust one.

Said the lawyer...but not the cognitive scientist, or philosopher !

If you want to play a game of rank-pulling, I can play it, too. I am a physicist by training, and the work on my thesis depended on understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics correctly. In this capacity, I hereby attest that everything you've said about this physical law is meaningless mumbo-jumbo, or to use a term from the philosophical literature, bullshit.

The reality is just the opposite: Ever since Robert Claudius (1850), natural scientists have been stating the second law of thermodynamics with a distinct sense of what you call "naive realism". The law apodictically states that certain phenomena simply don't occur in the world. Joe is correct to point out the irony in your attempt to seize its authority for your rebuttal of naive realism.

0 Replies

The Concept of Independent Reality in Discussions of Philosophy

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know