Philosophy Now Forum

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 4:37 am

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 6:44 pm But a image of a cat is not a cat. You only see the cat in your brain.
If you can't make that conceptual step then you have cut yourself off from a very interesting philosophical realm if understanding.

I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?
In my mind?
No!
The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.
As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

Here is Sculptor's perspective [as a Philosophical Realist] as I understand it.
[I don't agree with it in the Ultimate Sense as highlighted in the OP].

• 1. Sculptor is a Philosophical Realist.
  
  2. When Sculptor 'sees' a cat, there is an objective cat in reality out there.
  
  3. What is perceived is the phenomena-cat as a representation of the really real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.
  
  4. What is inaccessible is the really-real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.
  
  5. The noumena-cat is always separated from the phenomena cat due to the inherent human conditions to grasp its reality via intermediate elements.
  
  6. The above is the same with all of reality, thus reality-in-itself is inaccessible. But this inaccessible-reality nevertheless exists as an independent really-real-objective-reality 'out there.'

Note;

• [Philosophical] Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved..
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism

which imply the really-real-objective-reality will always and eternally be inaccessible.
Only its approximation can be improved but humans can never know 100% what reality really is.

The ultimate philosophical question is;
is there such a supposedly external independent really-real-objective-reality as claimed by the Philosophical Realists?
My answer is no, but my claim is not of Subjectivism.

Subjectivism claims what is real is ONLY in the mind, e.g. Berkeley's subjective Idealism and other similar others. Subjectivism do not recognize the existence of any noumena-cat-in-itself but only perceptions. Esse is Percipi.

Btw, in general, one is either a philosophical realist or anti-philosophical realist.
If you claim reality and its things exist externally and independent of the human mind [human conditions] then you are a Philosophical Realist and you must then agree with Sculptor.
There is no other way [rare exceptions] unless you are a typical subjectivist, idealists, and the likes who claimed things are all in the mind only.

As such Sculptor is not a subjectivist nor hold on to subjectivism.

My stance is empirical realism [totally different from philosophical realism] thus not subjectivism.

2. When Sculptor 'sees' a cat, there is an objective cat in reality out there.

3. What is perceived is the phenomena-cat as a representation of the really real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

4. What is inaccessible is the really-real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

5. The noumena-cat is always separated from the phenomena cat due to the inherent human conditions to grasp its reality via intermediate elements.

6. The above is the same with all of reality, thus reality-in-itself is inaccessible. But this inaccessible-reality nevertheless exists as an independent really-real-objective-reality 'out there.'

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:04 pm

2. When Sculptor 'sees' a cat, there is an objective cat in reality out there.

3. What is perceived is the phenomena-cat as a representation of the really real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

4. What is inaccessible is the really-real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

5. The noumena-cat is always separated from the phenomena cat due to the inherent human conditions to grasp its reality via intermediate elements.

6. The above is the same with all of reality, thus reality-in-itself is inaccessible. But this inaccessible-reality nevertheless exists as an independent really-real-objective-reality 'out there.'

Someone who would believe that they're only experiencing representations and that the external world is inaccessible has zero justification for believing that there are objective/external things in the first place.

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:00 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:04 pm

2. When Sculptor 'sees' a cat, there is an objective cat in reality out there.

3. What is perceived is the phenomena-cat as a representation of the really real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

4. What is inaccessible is the really-real objective noumena-cat-in-itself.

5. The noumena-cat is always separated from the phenomena cat due to the inherent human conditions to grasp its reality via intermediate elements.

6. The above is the same with all of reality, thus reality-in-itself is inaccessible. But this inaccessible-reality nevertheless exists as an independent really-real-objective-reality 'out there.'

Someone who would believe that they're only experiencing representations and that the external world is inaccessible has zero justification for believing that there are objective/external things in the first place.

This is the solipsistic dilemma. In Descartes Meditations, he doubts he has senses, or a body, and dismisses the real world as illusion - by imagining some evil demon is deceiving him, to establish the subjective certainty - cogito ergo sum, but what then? He knows he thinks, and therefore exists, but can know nothing else - because of the methods he used to reach that conclusion.

Descartes answer is to appeal to "the goodness of God" - who cannot be a deceiver, because deceit proceeds from defect - and God is perfect, to save him from the solipsistic corner he paints himself into with his unreasonable method of skeptical doubt.

And the whole argument is written while Galileo was on trial for life and soul, and intended to save Descartes from the tender mercies of the Church!

Rather than integrate and adapt to science as truth, it was supressed and denied. This was a mistake, and it's one evident in climate change - 70 years of climate change denial, and the application of the wrong technologies, both historically, and in response to the crisis. We are not doing the right things for the right reasons.

The irony is that subjectivism is the philosophical justification for disregarding science as truth, and applying technology, or withholding technology as the politics and economics dictate; a left wing narrative underpinning right wing irresponsibility, such that one has to wonder whether "the left" might not be better served by an objectivist ideology - holding the feet of "the traditionalists" to the fire of 'responsibility to a scientific understanding of reality.'

The left cannot claim to be doing that with climate protest, because the policies the left advocate for are quite clearly filtered through the lens of anti-capitalist politics - and couched in terms of Malthusian pessimism and limits to growth; neither of which stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Malthus was proven wrong by the invention of tractors and fertilizers; food production outpaced population growth through the application of technology - yet its central to the left wing dominated environmental narrative that sacrifice and authoritarianism unto communism are necessary to secure the future. Not so.

Limits to growth can be transcended. Physics implies resources are a function of the energy available to develop them. And there's a virtually limitless amount of energy in the molten interior of the earth. Would not forcing capitalism to defeat scarcity through responsibility to scientific truth be a better revenge for the equalitarians, than equality of poverty forever after? Is not post material equality a better problem to have to deal with than climate catastrophe; missing the window to overcome climate change by mis-applying energy technology now, and so hobbling future industrial capacity to apply the right technologies, and condemning humankind to a spiral of entropic decline?

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?

In my mind?

No!

The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.

As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:04 pm Someone who would believe that they're only experiencing representations and that the external world is inaccessible has zero justification for believing that there are objective/external things in the first place.

certainty is stupid to worry about

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:43 pm

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?

In my mind?

No!

The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.

As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

There is a mental represenation of a cat in your mind AND a cat out there that is being represented. These are two spatiotemporal events. We can never really tell what the cat out there is actually like.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:08 pm
I wouldn't frame it as (some general) subjectivism versus objectivism. I'm a subjectivist on some things, but that's simply because some things are clearly ONLY phenomena of people and their dispositions, feelings, etc. Many things are not, however. So for example, whether we should do certain things with respect to climate change is subjective--it's a matter of one's preferences, what one desires, and so on--but the consequences of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are not subjective--they're objective, external phenomena, and they're knowable as such.

jayjacobus wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:12 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:43 pm

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?

In my mind?

No!

The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.

As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

There is a mental represenation of a cat in your mind AND a cat out there that is being represented. These are two spatiotemporal events. We can never really tell what the cat out there is actually like.

The cat could be like other cats that you have known about. The cat you refer to could be like a tree, but you probably should not cut it down.

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?

In my mind?

No!

The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.

As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:43 pm There is a mental represenation of a cat in your mind AND a cat out there that is being represented. These are two spatiotemporal events. We can never really tell what the cat out there is actually like.

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:48 pm

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:29 pm I don't see a cat when a cat is not there. So where is the cat?

In my mind?

No!

The cat is out there - objective with respect to the observer.

As for - "a very interesting realm of philosophical understanding" subjectivism is sophistry that denies the possibility of truth.

It's a liar's charter!

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:43 pm There is a mental represenation of a cat in your mind AND a cat out there that is being represented. These are two spatiotemporal events. We can never really tell what the cat out there is actually like.

No deal. We can tell quite a lot about the cat. Not only that, things we know about the cat are related to what we know about other things. This is because the reality we experience, actually exists - and our sensory perception is accurate to (not comprehensive of) what exists.

It must be so because we evolved in relation to a challenging reality where our senses were tested against our ability to survive, algorithmically, over and over, generation after generation - the grinding necessity carving a masterpiece from a mountain and discarding the tailings. If our senses were not accurate to reality, we'd have gone the way of 99% of all previous species.

Furthermore, there are things like traffic lights, art, writing, colour coded electrical wires - and a thousand other things, that depend upon commonality of perception between people, which could not occur were reality subjectively constructed, such that 'we can never really tell what the cat out there is actually like.' Yes we can,. To argue we can't is absurd, patently false, and deadly dangerous.

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:04 pm It gives a perfectly consistent picture of everything, so it has the highest justification, not zero justification.

but at the same time reject representationalism, because it can't be justified with certainty . . .

Vitruvius wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:20 pm Is it really? I don't think it is of the last consequence. Rather, I think people are imbued with a moral sense

- and a capacity to understand facts; and human reason is poised between these two - the 'is' and the 'ought' - and that's exactly where we should be, knowing what's true and doing what's right in terms of what's true.

With regard to the climate change problem - one need only assume humans value our existence

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:39 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:04 pm It gives a perfectly consistent picture of everything, so it has the highest justification, not zero justification.

That doesn't work because there's nothing logically inconsistent about a solipsistic view. So logical consistency doesn't favor one hypothesis over the other there.

but at the same time reject representationalism, because it can't be justified with certainty . . .

I'm not saying anything about certainty.

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:10 pm Then looks like you aren't even applying probabilities to different possibilities.