Realismphilosophical.space/philosophy/Realism.pdfAristotle’s Argument for Realism • “Now the...
Transcript of Realismphilosophical.space/philosophy/Realism.pdfAristotle’s Argument for Realism • “Now the...
RealismSome things are independent of mind
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
Aristotle’s Argument for Realism
• “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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
Aristotle’s Argument for Realism
• “For sensation is surely not the sensation of itself, but there is something beyond the sensation, which must be prior to the sensation....”
Friday, November 25, 2016
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
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Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
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Magical Realism
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
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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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
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
Friday, November 25, 2016
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
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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?
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The Realist’s Explanation
Friday, November 25, 2016
The Realist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
Friday, November 25, 2016
The Idealist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
Friday, November 25, 2016
The Idealist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
• Berkeley: The cat is an idea in the mind of God?
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The Idealist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
• Kant: Things-in-themselves, whatever they are?
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The Idealist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
• Hegel: Historically conditioned, um, ….
?Friday, November 25, 2016
The Idealist’s Explanation
A cat!A cat!
• Nietzsche: ???
?
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The Idealist’s Explanation
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?
Friday, November 25, 2016
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."
Friday, November 25, 2016
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Friday, November 25, 2016
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
Friday, November 25, 2016
The Realists’ Critique
• Premises 3 and 4:
• Any object of consciousness is conditioned by consciousness
• Anything conditioned by consciousness is mind-dependent
• 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.
Friday, November 25, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
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)
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016
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
Friday, November 25, 2016
Locke’s Philosophy of Mind
•
IdeaAppearance
This is a triangle
Understanding
PerceptionThing in itself
Abstraction
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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
• Anything conditioned by consciousness is mind-dependent
• 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!
Friday, November 25, 2016
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.”
Friday, November 25, 2016