Realismphilosophical.space/philosophy/Realism.pdfAristotle’s Argument for Realism • “Now the...

RealismSome things are independent of mind

Friday, November 25, 2016

Aristotle’s Argument for Realism

• “And, in general, if only the sensible exists, there would be nothing if animate things were not; for there would be no faculty of sense.”

• “Now the view that neither the sensible qualities nor the sensations would exist is doubtless true (for they are affections of the perceiver), but that the substrata which cause the sensation should not exist even apart from sensation is impossible.”

• “For sensation is surely not the sensation of itself, but there is something beyond the sensation, which must be prior to the sensation....”

Aristotle’s Argument

• Sensations are sensations of something

• Which must be prior to and independent of the sensation itself

• So, there are mind-independent causes of sensations: things-in-themselves

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Magical Realism

Argument for Idealism

• Suppose that the world is at least in some respects independent of the mind.

• How could we know anything about it?

• The world might be different, even though all our perceptions and thoughts of it might be the same.

• We would have no way of knowing which way the world truly is.

Skepticism —> Idealism

• If the world is independent of the mind, we can’t have knowledge of it

• The only way to have knowledge of the world is to treat the world as a mental construction

• Berkeley: “To be is to be perceived.”

Jorge Luis Borges

• Tlön: “Hume noted for all time that Berkeley's arguments did not admit the slightest refutation nor did they cause the slightest conviction. This dictum is entirely correct in its application to the earth, but entirely false in Tlön. The nations of this planet are congenitally idealist. Their language and the derivations of their language—religion, letters, metaphysics—all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts.”

The Heresy of Materialism

• “On Tuesday, X crosses a deserted road and loses nine copper coins. On Thursday, Y finds in the road four coins, somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain. On Friday, Z discovers three coins on the road. On Friday morning, X finds two coins in the corridor of his house.”

The Heresy of Materialism

• “The heresiarch would deduce from this story the reality— i.e., the continuity— of the nine coins which were recovered. It is absurd (he affirmed) to imagine that four of the coins have not existed between Tuesday and Thursday, three between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, two between Tuesday and Friday morning. It is logical to think they have existed-- at least in some secret way, hidden from the comprehension of men-- at every moment of those three periods.”

Missing Explanation Argument

• Realism explains our experiences

• Suppose everything were mind-dependent

• Why are there regularities in my experiences? Why does your experience align with mine?

• Realism explains this

• Idealism has no explanation

Best Explanation Argument

• Realism is the simplest explanation of our experiences

• Suppose the idealist is right

• Suppose things don’t exist, or obey natural laws when we aren’t looking

• But it’s simpler to suppose they do

Missing Explanation

• But why do we all eventually agree on, say, p?

• The realist/correspondence theorist can say, because p is true

• What can the idealist or pragmatist say?

The Realist’s Explanation

A cat!A cat!

The Idealist’s Explanation

A cat!A cat!

• Berkeley: The cat is an idea in the mind of God?

A cat!A cat!

• Kant: Things-in-themselves, whatever they are?

?Friday, November 25, 2016

A cat!A cat!

• Hegel: Historically conditioned, um, ….

?Friday, November 25, 2016

A cat!A cat!

• Nietzsche: ???

A cat!A cat!

• Solipsist: There’s really only one mind here….

=Friday, November 25, 2016

Movie Analogy

• Two theaters are playing the same movie!

• Explanation?

Creeping Idealism

• The fantasy world of Tlon begins invading reality.

• Orbis Tertius publishes a version of the encyclopedia of Tlon that catches the public imagination.

• Reality begins to yield.

• "The truth is that it longed to yield."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Argument for Idealism

• We have reason to believe that something exists only if we can know it

• We can know an object only by making it an object of consciousness

• Any object of consciousness is conditioned by consciousness

• Anything conditioned by consciousness is mind-dependent

• So, we have reason to believe that a thing exists only if it is mind-dependent

The Realists’ Critique

• Premises 3 and 4:

• Any object of consciousness is conditioned by consciousness

• Realists: I see a cat. It becomes an object of consciousness. So, the cat is conditioned by consciousness? So, the cat is mind-dependent? That’s absurd! The cat isn’t affected by my seeing or not seeing it.

Equivocation in Idealism

• G. E. Moore’s “The Refutation of Idealism”

• The idealists use ‘object of consciousness’ ambiguously

• Actual objects (causes of perception— things-in-themselves) vs. internal objects (effects— appearances)

Equivocation in Idealism

• We know actual objects by representing them as internal objects

• The internal object is conditioned and mind-dependent; the actual object is neither

• Common Sense: “There are at least two material objects in the universe.”

Actual Objects

• Actual objects— things-in-themselves— are not conditioned by being known

• But they can be known— by being represented as internal objects, as appearances

• Representationalism: We know things-in-themselves by representing them to ourselves as appearances

Locke’s Philosophy of Mind

IdeaAppearance

This is a triangle

Understanding

PerceptionThing in itself

Abstraction

Idealist’s Argument Revised• We have reason to believe that something [an actual object] exists

only if we can know it

• We can know an [actual] object only by making it an [internal] object of consciousness

• Any [internal] object of consciousness is conditioned by consciousness

• So, we have reason to believe that a thing [an actual object] exists only if there is a mind-dependent internal object.

• But doesn’t mean that the actual object is mind-dependent!

Russell against Pragmatism

• Pragmatism “seems to suggest that if I infer a world, there is a world. Yet I am not the Creator. Not all my inferences and explanations could prevent the world from coming to an end to-night, if so it were to happen.... Whatever accusations pragmatists may bring, I shall continue to protest that it was not I who made the world.”

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