Philosophy Now Forum

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Jun 11, 2022 9:31 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Jun 11, 2022 7:04 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:54 am The description of subjectivity as mind-dependence, and objectivity as mind-independence, perpetuates the myth that there are two substances: the mental and the physical - a myth still promoted by many dictionaries, both philosophical and general. (Mentalist talk gets everywhere.)

I have countered the above a "million" times yet you are so stuck dogmatically with your archaic thinking.

Yes, subjectivity is mind-dependence [entangled with the mind].
But objectivity is mind-independence at one level but mind-dependence at a higher level.

Note scientific facts are supposedly objective. You deny this?
As such they are independent of the scientist's or any subject's opinion and beliefs.
But objective scientific facts are subjective in a higher perspective, i.e. it is intersubjective based on the scientific FSK which is created and sustained by human subjects and mind, thus subjective.
There is no myth of two substance in this case.
So what is objectivity is intersubjectivity, i.e. fundamentally 'subjective'.
How do you counter this?

And that myth is at the root of - and still causes - much philosophical confusion, not least in the debate about the nature of morality - what we call moral rightness and wrongness: are they mind-dependent or mind-independent?

Which ever individual claim his rightness or wrongness is moral and based on his personal FSK, that is purely subjective.
But any claims of moral facts from a credible moral FSK of near credibility to the scientific FSK, is objective based on intersubjectivity, thus fundamentally subjective.
Thus moral facts are possible when they meet the above criteria.

You have not countered my claim here,

There are Objective Moral Facts
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35002

The existence of a feature of reality (what we call a fact), such as the chemical composition of water, doesn't depend on a descriptive context. And it doesn't depend on our intersubjective consensus that it exists. So these two conditions for what constitutes a fact are not necessary - and therefore not jointly sufficient.

And the very reliabiity of natural science descriptions and the knowledge they embody - on which we agree - comes from an explicit rejection of these two conditions. A scientist who claimed that water is H2O simply because we agree it is, and agree how to describe it, would be rightly ignored or ridiculed.

• 1. The reality, fact and it by themselves which is absolutely independent of the human conditions.
  
  2. The emergence & realization of reality of which the participating person[s] are intricately part and parcel of.
  
  3. The empirical verification and justification of the realization of the entangled-reality via a specific FSK, e.g. the scientific FSK as the most credible.
  
  4. The reporting and description of the facts from 2 & 3.

• Rorty argues that philosophy has unduly relied on a representational theory of perception and a correspondence theory of truth, hoping our experience or language might mirror the way reality actually is.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph ... _of_Nature

Many of us have been suckered by a tired postmodern canard that was fashionable around seventy years ago: the arse-puckering, pernicious idea that scientists deal with merely polished conjectures about reality, not reality (nature) itself.

Meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with morality - opinions about moral rightness and wrongness.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 10:48 am There is a standard of objectivity that a feature of the world holds and which cannot be attained by features of mind under any circumstance.
It's the difference between a thing you point at and everyone can see the truth of it versus a thing you have to all agree to make up together.
Pete is trying to help VA see that. VA is in a desperate loop to avoid seeing it.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 4:23 am Here is a post demonstrating the "mirroring of reality" by Peter Holmes and Metaphysical /Philosophical Realists.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Jun 11, 2022 9:31 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Jun 11, 2022 7:04 am
I have countered the above a "million" times yet you are so stuck dogmatically with your archaic thinking.

Yes, subjectivity is mind-dependence [entangled with the mind].
But objectivity is mind-independence at one level but mind-dependence at a higher level.

Note scientific facts are supposedly objective. You deny this?
As such they are independent of the scientist's or any subject's opinion and beliefs.
But objective scientific facts are subjective in a higher perspective, i.e. it is intersubjective based on the scientific FSK which is created and sustained by human subjects and mind, thus subjective.
There is no myth of two substance in this case.
So what is objectivity is intersubjectivity, i.e. fundamentally 'subjective'.
How do you counter this?


Which ever individual claim his rightness or wrongness is moral and based on his personal FSK, that is purely subjective.
But any claims of moral facts from a credible moral FSK of near credibility to the scientific FSK, is objective based on intersubjectivity, thus fundamentally subjective.
Thus moral facts are possible when they meet the above criteria.

You have not countered my claim here,

There are Objective Moral Facts
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35002

The existence of a feature of reality (what we call a fact), such as the chemical composition of water, doesn't depend on a descriptive context. And it doesn't depend on our intersubjective consensus that it exists. So these two conditions for what constitutes a fact are not necessary - and therefore not jointly sufficient.

And the very reliabiity of natural science descriptions and the knowledge they embody - on which we agree - comes from an explicit rejection of these two conditions. A scientist who claimed that water is H2O simply because we agree it is, and agree how to describe it, would be rightly ignored or ridiculed.

Your thinking above is too shallow, narrow and dogmatic.

Your reality, fact and it
are merely from your fictional illusory creations thus delusional.

What you failed to understand is the following 4 conditions;

• 1. The reality, fact and it by themselves which is absolutely independent of the human conditions.
  
  2. The emergence & realization of reality of which the participating person[s] are intricately part and parcel of.
  
  3. The empirical verification and justification of the realization of the entangled-reality via a specific FSK, e.g. the scientific FSK as the most credible.
  
  4. The reporting and description of the facts from 2 & 3.

What is really real is 2 & 3 and 1 is the fictional illusions that you [the majority] have necessarily invented.
Your reality, fact and it existing by themselves in 1 are those illusional realities which are inferred via the Correspondence Theory of Truth. [you are in it no matter how you deny you are not].
You are trying to mirror [correspond] your description with illusions as conceived in 1 above.
Thus you have ended with Nihilism and Solipsism.

That 'mirroring' is what Rorty had been condemning in his "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature".

• Rorty argues that philosophy has unduly relied on a representational theory of perception and a correspondence theory of truth, hoping our experience or language might mirror the way reality actually is.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph ... _of_Nature

Many of us have been suckered by a tired postmodern canard that was fashionable around seventy years ago: the arse-puckering, pernicious idea that scientists deal with merely polished conjectures about reality, not reality (nature) itself.

Meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with morality - opinions about moral rightness and wrongness.

From my argument above, it is realistic to see scientific facts at their best as mere 'polished conjectures'.

It has relevance to moral facts which are equated as of near credibility to scientific facts.

Of course! I agree there are no moral facts IF they are equated with your reality, fact and it existing by themselves [re 1], because there are no such "facts" such as your 1 which are illusory.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 12:11 pm There's no reason to think that, because we perceive, know and describe reality in a human way, what we perceive, know and describe is an illusion. If there's no reality-as-it-really-is, then there's no dichotomy, no contrast between reality-as-it-really-is and what we perceive, know and describe as reality. If there were a mirror, there's be nothing in it.

So the representational theory of perception and the correspondence theory of truth that Rorty rejected are straw men anyway, because realism has no need of either. And, like the consensus theory of truth to which it's closely related, the pragmatism theory is obviously incorrect, because what it means for a claim to 'work' is completely undefined and subjective.

And, to copy and paste my response to the last sighting of this claptrap...

The chemical composition of water has nothing to do with human beings or the way we describe it. It just is what it is. It was what it was before human beings turned up, and it will be what it is after we're gone.

Please consider the following.

1 The supposed polished conjectures (viz, guesses) of natural science are not about a model of reality. They're about reality itself. A scientific description is a description of something. And that something is not a model.

2 There's no reason to think a scientific claim about reality can never be true. The so-called problem of induction is not about the truth-value of a scientific conclusion. It's about our confidence in its truth-value. The expression 'certain knowledge' is a grammatical misattribution. And there can be doubt only against a background of certainty.

• "It just is what it is. It was what it was before human beings turned up, and it will be what it is after we're gone."

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 6:47 am Rorty maintained there is no such "it" to be mirrored or corresponded with.

You are so psychologically stuck in the primal paradigm it is unlikely you will be able to see sense in what I am and other scientists are proposing above.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:36 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 6:47 am Rorty maintained there is no such "it" to be mirrored or corresponded with.

OK, so we have an appeal to authority which is problematic in and of itself, but...
Rorty was not an anti-realist. He is more or less a pragmatist and he thinks both sides are barking up the wrong tree. He thinks both realism and ant-realism create pseuproblems. He is not claiming there is no 'it'. Nor is he claiming there is and it. And while he might think PH is causing problems with his position, he would also think VA is causing problems with his position.

VA does not understand the philosophers and scientists he uses to support his positions. If he did he would either realize that in most cases they have a nuance or ambivalent relation to his positions or they actually disagree with him.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:36 am

You are so psychologically stuck in the primal paradigm it is unlikely you will be able to see sense in what I am and other scientists are proposing above.

VA is not a scientist.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 9:03 am Yeah, I mentioned Mirror of Nature to him a couple of years back becasue he as talking about attempting some more ambitious sounding read that I couldn't imagine him completing. So he went on a bit of an obsessive one as he thought I had exposed some soft underbelly - I kinda like one Rorty book a bit, nothing more.He never read it, he just converted it from PDF to Word and then formatted the text. He references it every now and then, but never in a way that indicates he actually ever fixed that omission.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:58 pm As I understand it, the claim is that, because we can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way, when we do so we aren't holding a mirror up to nature - reflecting it as it really is - but rather interpreting it in a contingent, contextual and partial way: perceiving, knowing and describing reality through our conceptual models or paradigms, which, crucially, can and do change.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:58 pm If that's the issue, then it reminds me of Kant's so-called Copernican Revolution, which set running the ineluctably elusive hare of 'reality-in-itself' - an impossibility that nonetheless serves as a polar term in a dichotomy, in opposition to 'reality-as-we-perceive-know-and-describe-it'.

My point is that an impossibility can't be a polar term in a dichotomy; and that realism isn't necessarily a claim about 'reality-in-itself' - that such a thing can be perceived, known and described - as it were, reflected in a mirror.

If we deny the possibility of one polar term in a dichotomy, there's no longer a dichotomy - no reason to say our perception, knowledge and descriptions of reality are merely contingent, contextual and partial.

If anyone who knows Rorty's work can explain how he addresses this problem - if he does - then that would be interesting.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 3:02 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:58 pm As I understand it, the claim is that, because we can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way, when we do so we aren't holding a mirror up to nature - reflecting it as it really is - but rather interpreting it in a contingent, contextual and partial way: perceiving, knowing and describing reality through our conceptual models or paradigms, which, crucially, can and do change.

When I accidentally provoked Vestigial Armpit into a big old discussion about the MoN I gamefied it by challenging him to say something relevant enough about the content of the book that I might have to crack my copy open and read some of it again. The first didn't happen so neither did the second and therefore I am a fuzzy and unreliable witness...

Nonetheless, the very basics - as I recall, with many errors - is that the introduction of substance dualism (as opposed to the hylomorphic stuff that the ancients and Henry Q preffer) created a mistaken set of ideas about what is mind and what is body and so on, and that this sort of a picture view of mind continued long after the form of dualism that provoked its creation disapeared. Obviously I think that we can consider "mirror of nature" to be a synonym for Wittgenstein's "picture theory", I am dimly aware that others might say it is more than that.

Then there's a lot of stuff about aliens, for some reason called Antipodeans which must be controversial in the land down under. You can comfortably skim read that section tbh. But it's a good book the first half anyway, I recommend it.

The downside as I recall of that book is the usual.... Philosophy books tend to be in two parts: One where you describe why everyone else has made all these mistakes, and a second where you sketch out how to proceed without repeating those errors. The second part is always the weaker part, but in Mirror of Nature I would say it is very damp indeed and Rorty has no follow through at all. This is probably a little too harsh, but I am a bastard, so that is predictable.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:58 pm If that's the issue, then it reminds me of Kant's so-called Copernican Revolution, which set running the ineluctably elusive hare of 'reality-in-itself' - an impossibility that nonetheless serves as a polar term in a dichotomy, in opposition to 'reality-as-we-perceive-know-and-describe-it'.

My point is that an impossibility can't be a polar term in a dichotomy; and that realism isn't necessarily a claim about 'reality-in-itself' - that such a thing can be perceived, known and described - as it were, reflected in a mirror.

If we deny the possibility of one polar term in a dichotomy, there's no longer a dichotomy - no reason to say our perception, knowledge and descriptions of reality are merely contingent, contextual and partial.

If anyone who knows Rorty's work can explain how he addresses this problem - if he does - then that would be interesting.

His view of realism vs antirealism is very much like my own. That it's a dogshit debate that runs entirely on confusion.