The Case for Idealism: Truth, Facts, and Existence
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 พ.ค. 2024
- By considering the nature of truth, I argue for idealism via the claim that facts are in the mind, and that all that exists, exists in thought.
For booking philosophy sessions with me please email: drnathanhawkins AT gmail dot com (calendar system coming).
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Video on Frege's sense and reference distinction: • FREGE: Sense and Refer...
#idealism #truth #existence
___Video Contents___
00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - Truth, truth bearers, and truth makers
03:42 - The nature of truth bearers
06:16 - Propositions as meanings
12:31 - Platonism and Conceptualism
20:43 - Facts as truth makers
28:47 - Ontology
33:28 - Ontological Realism
39:18 - A relaxed alternative
40:59 - How to count things
47:38 - Bringing it all together
___Channel description___
I am a graduate of Cambridge University with a PhD in Philosophy. My thesis was on the nature of truth, and I specialise in metaphysics, logic, and the history of analytic philosophy. I believe philosophy should be made accessible to the curious and philosophers have a duty to reenter the public debate on the questions of importance to our age. This channel is my attempt to do that!
___Memberships___
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this is a certified idealism classic
Woooh! Idealism gang where you at?
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 *🌍 Wittgenstein's Claim: The world is the totality of facts, not things.*
00:13 *🧠 Facts in the Mind: The speaker believes facts are mental constructs, supporting idealism.*
00:41 *🌟 Idealism: The video argues for idealism as the correct view of reality.*
01:06 *🧩 Facts and Existence: Everything exists as a constituent in a true thought, meaning existence is tied to truth.*
01:35 *📜 Aristotle on Truth: Aristotle's definition of truth involves saying what is in accordance with reality.*
02:17 *❓ Truth Bearers and Makers: Key questions are what can be true or false (truth bearers) and what determines their truth or falsity (truth makers).*
02:55 *🧩 Correspondence Theory: Truth is a relationship between truth bearers and truth makers.*
03:46 *💭 Propositions as Truth Bearers: Propositions, not sentences, are considered the primary truth bearers.*
04:53 *🔄 Meaning and Truth: The meaning of a sentence, not the sentence itself, determines its truth.*
06:29 *🗣️ Descriptive Sentences: Only descriptive sentences have meanings that can be true or false.*
07:08 *🔍 Exploring Propositions: Propositions are the meanings of sentences, and their nature is further examined.*
08:00 *💬 Frege and Russell: Discussion of their views on propositions, with Frege considering them as having sense and reference.*
09:34 *🏔️ Russell's View: Russell believed propositions included physical objects, making them mind-independent complexes.*
10:33 *🔄 Changing Views: Russell's view changed multiple times before abandoning the idea that propositions contain physical objects.*
11:15 *🌕 False Propositions: The problem with mind-independent propositions is distinguishing true from false ones, leading to issues.*
12:10 *🧠 Abstract vs. Mental Entities: Debate on whether propositions are abstract entities or mental entities.*
12:38 *🧮 Platonist Argument: Platonists argue that propositions can be true without minds, suggesting they are abstract entities.*
13:45 *💡 Conceptualist Argument: The speaker counters that propositions are mental entities, as they are contents of thoughts and beliefs.*
15:37 *🌐 Eternal Thoughts: Frege believed thoughts are eternal and public, existing in a third realm distinct from private ideas and physical objects.*
17:39 *🧠 Public Mind: Frege suggested thoughts are in a public, eternal mind, not individual consciousness.*
19:00 *💡 Facts as True Thoughts: Frege viewed facts as true thoughts, indicating they are mental entities in the eternal public mind.*
20:23 *🏛️ Precedent for Idealism: The belief that facts are true thoughts has strong philosophical precedent, supporting idealism.*
21:04 *🔄 Correspondence Theory: Revisited, emphasizing that a thought is true when it corresponds to a fact.*
22:25 *🏞️ Facts as Structured Entities: Facts are structured entities in reality, consisting of objects and their properties.*
23:22 *🧮 Mathematical Truths: Challenges in applying correspondence theory to mathematical truths, which don't rely on empirical facts.*
25:26 *🗺️ Descriptive Language: Examples of descriptive language that aren't based on direct observation, questioning the correspondence theory's applicability.*
26:37 *🐦 Metaphorical Truths: Thoughts like "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" don't correspond to literal facts.*
27:18 *🥋 Correspondence Theory Challenges: Belief in things like "sakes" for war efforts makes correspondence theory complex.*
28:14 *🧩 Truth and Facts Reversal: Contemporary philosophy often uses known truths to determine facts, not the other way around.*
29:09 *🧠 Quine's Dictum: "To be is to be the value of a bound variable," meaning existence is tied to what a logical theory of language talks about.*
30:04 *🧬 Scientific Approach: Like in science, philosophers use the best logical theory to determine what exists, such as dark matter or possible worlds.*
30:45 *🗣️ Ontologese: Creating a precise language that mirrors reality by only referring to existing entities.*
32:39 *🧮 Theory Plausibility: Different theories can make the same thoughts true but talk about different entities, complicating existence claims.*
33:18 *📜 Ontological Realism: This view holds that reality has an independent structure with objects, properties, and relations.*
34:53 *🔍 Truth and Theories: Without direct access to facts, we can't determine which theory corresponds to reality, complicating truth verification.*
35:37 *📚 Timothy Williamson's Approach: Adopting scientific methods to determine ontology based on strength, simplicity, and elegance of theories.*
36:13 *🎨 Aesthetic Values: Strength, elegance, and simplicity are aesthetic features of a theory and don't determine truth.*
37:07 *🧬 Discipline Differences: Different scientific disciplines talk about different entities, complicating a unified ontology.*
38:28 *🔬 Physics as Ultimate: The assumption that physics is the ultimate science is an act of faith, given the incompatibility of theories like quantum mechanics.*
39:36 *🔢 Mathematics and Reality: The idea that reality is purely quantitative and lacks qualitative aspects is implausible.*
40:05 *🔄 Alternative Interpretation: Instead of deep ontological commitment, existence is just a way of talking within a theory.*
41:00 *🧩 Relaxed Existence: Different contexts (physical, biological, theological) can define existence, leading to a more flexible view.*
41:27 *🍎 Counting Objects: The number of objects depends on the conceptual framework used to define and count them.*
43:17 *🛠️ Mereology: The philosophy of parts and wholes, discussing how objects combine to form new objects.*
44:12 *🧪 Popular Mereological Positions: Mereological nihilism and universalism are the two main views, with different takes on object combination.*
45:09 *📏 Relative Quantities: There are no absolute quantities; they depend on the concepts used to structure experience.*
46:20 *📊 Sortal Concepts: These concepts define how we count objects, suggesting that quantities are properties of concepts, not objects.*
47:18 *🧠 Mental Structure: Mathematics and quantities are about the way we mentally structure the world, not the world itself.*
48:27 *💭 Truth Bearers as Thoughts: Thoughts are public entities in the mind, and facts are true thoughts.*
49:06 *🧠 Idealism Support: Accepting that facts are in the mind supports idealism but doesn't encompass all conscious experiences.*
50:47 *📚 Further Topics: More discussion is needed on the link between thought and sensory experience to fully develop an idealist worldview.*
Made with HARPA AI
Great explanation
Thank you
Amazing🙏
Am watching now. LFG!!!
Remarkably explained. Best of luck for your channel ❤
Thanks :)
top notch quality. simply awesome
greetings from a Schopenhauerian
Wow, thanks for the compliment!
Nathan once again delivers a brilliant and much needed idealist video! This was a great video, I appreciate all the work you do.
Thanks for the compliment Monistic!
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You're welcome! Thanks for all you do.
Great video
Thanks!
Great video! A suggestion, what is the view of an absolute idealist over time? I think Bradley and McTaggart denied the reality of time, but how can we explain the change we experience without appealing to time?
Which would you choose and why, Hegelian absolute idealism, or Berkelian subjective idealism?
Hi Absolute Philosophy 👋. I have become very interested recently in both idealism and panpsychism (as I have become dissatisfied with both substance dualism and materialism/physicalism). However, at the moment, I am an atheist, and it appears that most historical idealists (such as Berkeley and Hegel) have been theists of some kind (or belonging to some religious faith or tradition).
I was therefore wondering do you think it is possible to affirm both idealism and atheism (or non-theism, in-general) together? Would it be possible to have an ‘atheistic’ or ‘non-theistic’ idealistic metaphysical system for either a stricter all-encompassing 'monistic idealism' or a more ontologically diverse 'pluralistic idealism' (the same could apply to forms of 'objective idealism' and 'subjective idealism')? Essentially, can you have an “atheistic idealism” or “non-theistic idealist metaphysics?”
Have there also been any prominent philosophical idealists (either today or in the past) who have affirmed both idealism and atheism/non-theism simultaneously? Thanks.
There may well be others, but J.M.E. McTaggart is a good one. He is a pluralist idealist and an atheist. He does, however, believe in an afterlife interestingly.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks for the recommendation. J.M.E. McTaggart definitely seems to be an interesting case. I am about to watch your ‘Can British Idealism save God? video
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I recently watched that video and I enjoyed it 😊. I have a question though after watching it. In the video, when discussing F.H. Bradley, you mentioned how Bradley argued for a strict separation between the classical concept of God and the notion of the Absolute - which, for him, is the fundamental ground of reality (this is diametrically opposed to Royce’s view). Since this is the case, is it therefore appropriate to classify him as a “non-theistic idealist?”
I also don’t know if you would agree with this, but do you think Arthur Schopenhauer could also be classified as an atheistic idealist?
I've been trying my darndest to understand idealism, but it just does not compute to me. Definitely here to learn, so if you can, help me figure out where I'm going wrong!
Language is the tool we use to think and describe the world and I'll certainly grant that it's amazing, but language seems to be the whole basis of idealism. Mind without words is mind without names, concepts, ideas, structure, numbers, laws of logic, etc, so it seems like the implication of "all that exists, exists in thought" would necessarily HAVE to include language. Am I correct about that? It feels like you're saying "all that exists, exists in thoughts via language."
And when you say that, it feels like you're saying "all that exists, exists on my map" which sounds like you're confusing the map for the actual place!
Of course, I might be dense and just completely mistaking the whole concept, but like I said - I'm trying to understand! Help me out, TH-cam!
Thanks
Happy to explain in more detail too if needed.
Good questions and good thinking. And I'm glad you are putting in the effort to understand. It's worth it!
There are different kinds of Idealism. And I am walking a line between presenting something that is within the expectations of the Idealism community online (fans of Kastrup, Hoffman, etc.) and a version of Idealism I favour, which has roots in 19th Century Idealism, particularly of the British idealists.
I don't think reality consists merely of thought. As I say at the end this doesn't include the world we sense (better 'feel') or the moral sphere. I'll discuss those later.
But I do think all that 'exists' exists in thought. And that is for the reasons I have given. Existence as a notion is derivative of truth, and truth is the value (or 'point') of thinking. So things only exist because it is true to say of them that they exist, or to say anything of them truly. As for language itself, yes, that exists in facts for the same reason. I can speak of symbols and words by enclosing them in quotation marks, and I can speak of meanings or thoughts by say things like 'the meaning of...' or 'the thought that...'. And as I can speak/think of them, they exist in thought.
As a glimpse into my fuller position, I think language and thought is only one aspect of experience. One of the others is the experiences of the senses that is prior to thought. What is sometimes called 'the given' or 'immediate experience' or 'phenomenal experience'. It is this from which our thought abstracts its concepts. The 'map', to use your terminology, is where existence lies, as the thing separated and distinguished from its surrounds. But _being_ (we might say) in its undifferentiated state, is encountered in our feeling of the world given to us, but prior to cognition.
My idealism then, is one that sees reality as _experience_ but not as fully exhausted by _thought_ . But I do believe that facts are purely entities in thought, since they are cognisable and structured entities. Hope that helps, but it might just add to your confusion until I can get the time to spell it out more.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thank you for answering! I think I see what you're saying better, but I'm still confused. I will continue to follow your videos.
If you're still interested in responding, I'd like to quote your comment and hone in on it:
You said "The 'map', to use your terminology, is where existence lies, as the thing separated and distinguished from its surrounds. But being (we might say) in its undifferentiated state, is encountered in our feeling of the world given to us, but prior to cognition."
So the "map" is the kind of existence we develop as we distinguish ourselves from our surroundings via cognition, and BEING is.... the reality that the map refers to? The pre-cognitive state of existing? Or is that the unmarked blank page that is yet to be a map?
This makes sense if you define reality AS experience, but I just can't shake the sense that I am experiencing something external to me and trying to find words to explain it. To me seeing reality as experience feels like some sort of faulty equivocation.
My brain is tried. I'll watch more of your videos to try to understand. Thank you for taking the time to comment back to me.
I would strongly suggest getting three books & take your time with them : Immanuel Kant's - Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics & Schopenhauer's - The World As Will & Representation & my favorite... Berkeley's - A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy "... facts are purely entities in thought... "
What would your reply be to : " The fallacy ultimately lies in the view taken of ideas as merely contents of thought, so that their being lies in being thought of. It is as if one shoud say that what is eaten, has no being apart from the process of eating it. The apple, it is true, is FOOD only inasmuch as it is eaten or eatable. But in order to be food for someone, it must have a being of its own independent of the process of eating. Similarly NOTHING is an idea except that in so far as it may be thought by someone; but in order to be an idea it must have a being of its own independently of anyone thinking of it. Our judgements, whether true or false, can be so only as referring to something which is in this sense real. "
To me, then, the external object as that - object - by definition... must be a fact of existence for the subject to know it as object, or an objectively existing thing. It must be a fact of existence for you as a subject to know it as an object or a fact of existence...
The CAUSE of your knowing it as a fact of existence, is that it is, its being is... a fact of existence.
Seems to me that you may be treading close to, if not actually concluding the Kantian fallacy of a Thing In Itself that causes our representations.
Or as Schopenhauer would say, to paraphrase... ' you are concluding an object that has no subject, ' which would actually be a rejection of Idealism...
Interesting video, I had no idea there was anything like idealism coming out the analytic tradition. One thing I was confused about was the distinction between "Platonism" and "Conceptualism". What you describe as Conceptualism sounds a lot like Plato, but what you describe as Platonism doesn't sound like Plato at all. Plato never would have said you can have thoughts/ideas/forms outside of Mind. That's what the idea of the Good is-nous, Mind, being itself, that which gives all of the Ideas their being and in which our ideas/thoughts participate. The Good (or Mind) includes the public sphere of our discourse, is eternal, and includes, well, everything.
I'll take your word on Plato's own understanding of the forms. But in analytic philosophy, Platonism is usually just taken to involve belief in abstract objects, such as numbers etc.
Pretty thought provoking, are you family with David Deutsch? I would be really curious about your thoughts on his view of reality. He is heavily influenced by Karl Popper. He talks a lot about the the topics covered in this video in his book Fabric Of Reality.
No, not familiar. Sounds good though. In philosophy of science, I like what I read by Cartwright at the moment. But need to go deeper.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I'll look into him!
@35:00 oh no. Bad start. "Facts" can be both in our mind and in the external world, in the case there is an external reality and minds. In other words, "fact" can have a dual meaning. Like lots of other words. An internal meaning and an external reference too, even if the external reference is a fictional character in a story. I think Kripke does this better than old Ludwig. Did anyone tap Wittgenstein on the shoulder to tell him he was being simplistic and way too binary? My concept of an electron is for sure in my mind, but there might also be actual electrons. I'm going to listen to the rest now with some suspicion. If you don't mush my trust I'll leave a final comment in self-reply.
Can you talk about solipsism?
There is no way no mind can exist. Things exist because we experience them.
And any arguments against this is incoherent nonsense IMO. Mind is the very ground of existence itself, and it appears to me that people using their minds to argue against that proposition are trying to saw off the branch they’re sitting on. But I’m just a mechanic, what do I know?
What is The mind and minds mean?
By 'minds' Frege means the individual consciousness of humans, the realm of psychology. By 'mind' Frege means the objective (or at least intersubjective) reason that we all share, the realm of logic.
This idea seems a bit odd to us now, but in the late 19th and early 20th century it was not odd. There was still a strong notion of the _logos_ of Greek and Christian thinking that was understood to be the rational aspect of reality. And I think this is what Frege is gesturing to.
37:31 to fit in the textbook 😂
So, are you an idealist in the sense that you believe in a “mind-at-large” or “absolute idea”?
Also, interesting how your notions of “counting” do relate a lot to Schopenhauer’s concept of “the principal of individuation”
What is the eternal mind?
I love the video, but I think you're mistaken on ontological realism, and in particular the rule of parsimony. It's more than an aesthetic principle. The more assumptions one adds to their theory, the more uncertainty they're adding to it as well. "As simple as simple can be, but not simpler than that."
our gracious and insightful teacher may need to save his breath. @amigur1335 are you hearing "simple as possible"? Einstein clearly intends the accent on "but not simpler". we might even delete the first words and keep "But not simpler" only. Not for parsimony sake and not to commend parsimony in any way! But to make our ideas clear (Peirce, my man). remember for example there is a certain parsimony in Darwin. But it expresses a millefiore flowering of species of flowers and finches. The number of words is unrelated to the complexity of the truth (truth is in the thought - not in the sentence etc) and a little introspection takes us further: simplicity equates most often to ennui or fascism (probably going too far with that.). Beauty is found in complexity. Our greatest and truest musicians and artists. Btw I am afraid AI music performance will in near future relieve us of our delusion of the human requirement in art. We will soon pass from anthropocene to (AI)_cene. Ilya Sutskever has said as much though he is on a short leash ever since. Speaking as one of the finches, I am quite interested in AbsolutePhilosophy views on this.
19:31 what for ?
So, how would Wittgenstein object to your position? He would have argued for a correspondence theory of truth right? Which I assume the picture theory of meaning is a form of? But he did think that the Tractatus only told half the story, so where did he think the other half was? Outside the world, if the world is the mere totality of facts? Perhaps I'll book some time to talk to you about these things. How much do you charge?
Sounds like an interesting chat. I'm not sure I'll know more than you about what Witt's early views would have been but happy to discuss them with you. If you are looking for a one-off chat online, I charge £60 for an hour. Email me on the email in the description.
Do you have books? :)
Thanks for asking. Not currently. But I am under contract with an academic publisher to write a book on Frege's views on truth based on my PhD thesis. I'll submit that in the summer and it should hopefully be available soon after. But its aimed at Frege scholars. I do hope to write more general audience books in the future though.
Nice! I'm from Brazil and despite the barrier of language I could understand your video perfectly. Very good explanation. Do you recommend any book about idealism? Maybe some introductory... @@AbsolutePhilosophy
Can you do it on a digital board, it's interesting for the audience to be lazy. 😅
It is an embarrassment that there are scientists and philosophers who try to solve the hard problem of consciousness by attempting to discover how the brain or the body causes consciousness (it is a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to argue for causation given only correlation) - the fact is that the scientist or philosopher who tries to discover how consciousness is caused by body is either dogmatic or naïve, and he may as well try to discover how a rendered object in a digital video game world causes the rendering of the video game world (in the same way that a rendered object in a video game world is only a property of the video game world rendered, so too is the phenomenal body a property of (a set of qualia in) consciousness, for, in Hume’s words, “properly speaking, ’tis not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the senses”, and, as Berkeley writes, “It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?”).
th-cam.com/video/6r2r0LtJIjg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=9FJsI_XJoefpWyXD
Let me play Devil's Advocate.
If you say that one cannot correlate consciousness to having a brain ( of course, a physical entity ) while at the same time saying that consciousness is a Hard Problem... other than saying we don't know or consciousness is actually an illusion... what would your inference to the best explanation be for the existence of consciousness?
One could use Common Sense & say, well, show me consciousness in a human or higher order being that doesn't have a brain.
A correlation as strong as no brain no consciousness/brain = consciousness... is as strong as the Common Sense correlation that the sun will rise on the ' morrow as it has " risen " for 4.54 billion years.
Just argue persuasively that in view of it being called a Hard Problem... we can infer that consciousness is anything but an illusion, if it can't be inferred that it is a product of physical processes.
PS: I do " ghost " hunting with my gf & I actually believe that I get intelligent responses on devices after I ask questions out loud.
Other than this type of paranormal evidence gained in the physical environment, can you show me any other kind of evidence that would show that a brain isn't necessary for consciousness to exist?
I must say, however, that it is hard for me to see how one can say that in a universe that is made of physical entities called particles of matter... it cannot be concluded that everything in it... is a product of matter.
Furthermore, it is also a fallacy to exclude a possible answer, especially one that has a strong correlative value... while at the same time saying... we don't know THE ANSWER...
It is a fallacy to say there is an answer and then exclude propositions based on inference to the best explanation simply because of an ad hoc standard...
If you haven't a better answer, well then...
It just seems to me that when one says that strict causation is the standard, we eliminate inference & much of our existence is based on inference to the best explanation which sometimes gives us direct cause or extremely strong correlations that could be considered such...
All of this seems to set the stage for extreme Skepticism...
Berkeley's argument was based on the presupposition that God exists & that His perceiving of the universe maintained the universe so that it could be perceived by us...
I'll leave you with sorting that out, because if you don't grant the presupposition, you get an independently existing world of external objects that are the cause of our concepts & ideas...as Berkeley freely admits in his writing.
The Understanding & Ideas are products of the Intellect/ Forms of A Priori Conceptual Knowledge... which are products of brain processes.
A stimulus or a sensation from the nervous system goes where?
To the brain & its processes/a priori Forms of Knowledge, which give us Understanding or ideas & concepts of the objects of the external world.
So, when one argues against physical processes causing Understanding & consciousness per se... it seems to me that one is arguing against Kant's extremely persuasive synthetic process of understanding the external world, as well as his argument for a priori forms of knowledge within the brain... and I, for one... will not argue against Kant on these points...
A simpler fact does not guarantee it's truthiness in comparison to competing ones, however, probabilistically speaking, a simpler explanation has less points of failure. Take for instance predicting the outcome of a single coin-flip versus predicting the outcome of many coins flipped simultaneously.
Moreover, selecting a "truth" based on pragmatic criteria is useful since it reconnects the idea with material reality. Without this type of validation, ideas accumulate an increasing amount of speculative baggage over time, rendering it useless. Think of it as philosophical inbreeding.
Thanks for the comments.
I don't agree with that reasoning (but I've heard it before). Which is simpler? That the ten coins will be 'all heads' or that 'five will be heads and five will be tails'? Clearly the first is a simpler prediction. But it is less likely to be true.
And as for simpler explanations, I see no metric for that enough to make it useful. Isn't 'God did it' a simpler explanation of the universe than the big bang, evolution, etc.? How on earth can you measure 'points of failure'. Seems very fuzzy to me.
And how do pragmatic concerns of 'truth selection' help connect with material reality? Besides which, as you may have guessed, I'm not a materialist, and I don't adhere to a correspondence notion of truth anyway. And I'm not averse to a bit of metaphysical speculation, as long as its done in a principled and rigorous way. I think it is unavoidable, although some are better at disguising it than others!
Consciousness living a mind wake as subject and objects. So called reality is mind's interpretation / version of consciousness.
The world, viewed as a totality of facts or thoughts, cannot be both consistent and complete while remaining symbolic （propositional), which the world is.
If mathematics is regarded as a language:
It provides the symbolic primitives, axioms, rules of expression and operations for describing and quantifying the physical world. Math is the fundamental lingua franca spanning the observable and theoretical realms.
Then physics could indeed be viewed as the philosophy of math:
Physics takes the symbolic language of mathematics and develops conceptual models, interpretive frameworks, and coherent narratives to explain the behavior of matter, energy, space, and time. It is an extended meditation on the metaphysical implications of our mathematical descriptions.
Following this analogy:
Chemistry could be the "linguistics" of physics:
It studies the rules by which the fundamental mathematical objects of physics (subatomic particles, forces) combine and relate to one another at the molecular scale. Chemistry decodes the rich language patterns constructed from the physics alphabet.
Biology could be the "literature/poetry" of chemistry:
It examines the self-organized, dynamical, informationally-complex systems that emerge from the linguistic rules of chemistry interacting over time. The molecules are the "words", but biology studies the living, evolving "narratives" they collectively construct.
Throughout we see a progression of epistemological layers:
Mathematics -> Symbolic framework
Physics -> Conceptual models interpreting the symbols
Chemistry -> Combination rules and linguistic mechanics
Biology -> Dynamical, informationally-complex systems and narratives
Each level builds upon the foundational primitives of mathematics, while introducing new degrees of contingent complexity, contextualized interpretation and narrative meaning. The symbolic logic enables and constrains the possible conceptual structures, which dictate the allowed chemical rules, from which biological storylines ultimately automate.
So in summary:
Math is the linguistic bedrock
Physics is the conceptual philosophy elaborating upon that bedrock
Chemistry is the combinatoric linguistics deriving word-formation rules
Biology is the dynamical narrative/poetry expressing highest complexity
This nested hierarchy preserves coherence, while allowing increasingly context-specific, contingent patterns of organization and meaning to emergently crystallize.
By recognizing mathematics as our formal symbolic language, we can appreciate how physics, chemistry and biology represent successive epistemological stages philosophizing upon that originating expressive framework - interpreting, recombining and dynamically instantiating mathematical descriptions into maximally information-rich experiential narratives.
The layers build hereditarily upon the foundational symbolic truths, exemplifying how mathematics enables derivations transcending its pristine origins - expressing itself cosmologically through an invisible hand of self-organized complexity climbing towards maximal richness of experience.
Thanks for the lengthy comment. There's some good stuff in here. Frege thought mathematics was reducible to logic (although his project faltered). He also thought logic was the fundamental science, which had truth itself as its subject matter. There's lots to be said for that understanding. But I do think there is more to reality than truth. For reality also encompasses the Good and the Beautiful. Science is silent on these things, so it is not the whole story.
So we if we have a nuclear war, is that "just in your mind"?
No. As I say at the end, I don't think everything is in thought. Only facts are. So the fact that there is a nuclear war is in the mind (note it is not in my mind, but in the public mind of reason). The action and the feeling of that war are not in the mind. But they are in _experience_ so I am not a physicalist.
Everything is in mind at large, i think
@@AbsolutePhilosophy So the world started when you became conscious?
He's using world to refer to the experienced world, which he argued is made of facts. Existence would have all the things, including things outside the world, if there are any.
@tgrogan6049
What is your objection to viewing thoughts as a modeling system of reality? Why can’t facts be the cookie cutter models of a more complicated reality
Nice. But if fats are thought-contents (or something) i can't see how this conceptualism leads to idealism at large. As you said, if one doesn't accept that the world is made of facts, then i cant see how this leads to idealism. IMO, one could simply commit to some type of conceptualism or nominalism and state that all that stuff are cognitive contents, not world features (simple i guess?). If somneone is gonna say that the world is made of facts, then she kinda presupposes idealism, that which must be proven (alternatively, if not full blown ontological idealism, maybe a type of epistemic idealism which doesnt entail ontological idealism as well). In my opinion, knowledge can be made of facts, not the world!
In any case, an excellent video, i would like to see some more high tier analytic philosophy content.
Facts are learned phenomena and they gain a place within the conceptual hierarchy of one's mind as other experiences are evaluated, that is to say; facts do not have inherent existence, they are created by the mind to make sense of the world. Facts come into existence IN TIME, after the initial meeting between awareness and what is not awareness, that is, the surrounding environment. Imagine a human being who has never seen or been in a thunderstorm. This person experiences one for the first time and gets struck by lightning and dies. This whole phenomenon was not produced by thought nor awareness.
Nothing has intrinsic existence, not even the mind or phenomenal experience.
@@Everywhere4 Exactly, that is why idealism is problematic.
Idealism is interesting, but it doesn't seem to be able to find a place outside of just specific fields of philosophy.
Maybe one day we'll develop methodological idealism, but for now, we're sort of stuck with materialism since truth and utility are so disconnected.
Maybe truth doesn't matter aside from being an end in itself, and that's ok.
All idealist schools are derived from the only undeniable fact that we have, which is our conscious minds.
Think about it, what you and I call matter is nothing more than a collection of sense experiences and mental concepts. A table is nothing more than colours on our eyes, the solidness in our hands, the woodness sound in our ears, the pain we feel when we hit it hard, etc. If you lose all your senses there will be no table.
Since idealism has its root from this fact then it is the only fact that we can know of. All the other materialist philosophies fall once you ask the materialist (what is matter outside the scope of your experience and understanding?)
@@aiething9281 I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that utility in any currently in use methodology is seemingly detached from truth.
If you want to solve a murder case or a new cure for an illness, you're currently forced to think like a physicalist.
Truth may have no instrumental value, which is ok. Like I said, it's fine to just treat truth as an end in itself.
@@xenoblad I also dont disagree with you, however I would replace the word physicalist with Objective idealist.
There are two different ways to think about idealism, either a solipcist view in which you only exist and nothing else, or objective idealism in which you know that there is an external reality separate from you, Like Hegel's absoloute idealism for example.
The objective idealist will think exactly like a physicalist because he knows that the world is made of facts and ideas (not things as Ludwig said). These ideas are expressed in the form of laws of nature and laws of logic and language etc..
Your objection applies more to solipcist views of idealism which I dont think many take seriously.
Metaphysics is not about the absolute nature of reality, but instead a form of conceptual art.
Edit:
Both Idealism and materialism are the byproduct of one’s axiology, to be a Idealist is a product of valuing concepts as the „mind“ and other mental concepts related to it as more important then material concepts.
For this reason, the Idealist judges the material to be a illusion.
Whitehead?
17:54 “… Frege might seem like a confused kind of Platonist...”
That was precisely the impression I got.
To say that thoughts are the content of the mind, not of the minds, is to say thoughts are mind independent entities in a mind independent realm accessible to all minds. How does that establish Idealism? It strikes me as a pure equivocation.
To establish Idealism means to establish they are mind dependent according to what is meant by “minds” which is this private inner realm of ideas/thoughts, not what is meant by the “mind”. Idealists typically start with the human mind and relocate all the qualities of the world to the mind, rendering them subjective/mind dependent (basically what Berkeley did). Then they make the claim the reality is fundamentally like that and put themselves in conundrums to avoid collapse into solipsism.
I am not necessarily saying that this view is false. It just strikes me as not Idealism. You only establish Idealism by using “mind” in two different senses (equivocation).
Overall, the video was great and there are so many things to comment about. I just don't see Idealism following here. At least not what I understand by Idealism or what Kastrup, Hoffman and co preach.
Thanks for the comment.
Berkeley's Master Argument was the claim that to be is to be perceived. But he then appealed to God as the one who maintains the world through perception of it. So 'the perceiver' or 'the mind' could be understood, in Berkeley's idealism, as God, which is not our individual minds at all. I don't know Hoffman's work, but Kastrup posits a universal mind too, so his idealism doesn't reduce to human minds and contend with solipsism either.
I think Frege is drawing on the notion of universal reason, often linked with the Greek/Christian idea of the logos. I see no equivocation here. Since we experience a mental world that includes both the private and the communicable/public sphere, why could not both aspects be part of an Idealist view of reality? Certainly the Idealism I favour is more expansive in its understanding of the mind, and it has historical precedent.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy The problem with Berkeley's master argument is that, at the same time, it leaves no room for Berkeley to postulate God and other minds. If that argument was good, it would be equally a strike against god and other minds. It is difficult to avoid solipsism unless you resort to ad hoc maneuvers. It also strikes me as unintelligible because it conceives of god as a deceiver that feeds the same perceptions to everyone, giving the illusion of an objective mind independent world.
I say equivocation because in order to maintain Idealism, this universal “mind” has to be of the same ontological category as the “minds”. You start with your mind as the primitive example of a mind. To posit a universal mind but at the same time to say it's totally unlike the “minds” is to posit something of a different ontological category which is independent of all “minds”. Shortly, it is not a mind at all because it's totally unlike the “minds”.
Kastrup is explicit about that. The universal mind is of the same ontological category, it is like the “minds” (though he just refers to phenomenal consciousness). He even admits he is a subjective idealist in that sense, like Berkeley. I don't think he maintains coherence when it comes to accounting for an objective shared world because according to him the same thing is objective and subjective at the same time. Basically, Schopenhauer's Idealism (the world as will and representation).
@@AbsolutePhilosophy The problem with Berkeley's master argument is that, at the same time, it leaves no room for Berkeley to invoke God and other minds. If that argument was good, it would be equally a strike against god and other minds. It is difficult to avoid solipsism unless you resort to ad hoc maneuvers. It also strikes me as unintelligible because it conceives of god as a deceiver that feeds the same perceptions to everyone, giving the illusion of an objective mind independent world.
I say equivocation because in order to maintain Idealism, this universal “mind” has to be of the same ontological category as the “minds”. You start with your mind as the primitive example of a mind. To posit a universal mind but at the same time to say it's totally unlike the “minds” is to posit something of a different ontological category which is independent of all “minds”. Shortly, it is not a mind at all because it's totally unlike the “minds”.
Kastrup is explicit about that. The universal mind is of the same ontological category, it is like the “minds” (though he just refers to phenomenal consciousness). He even admits he is a subjective idealist in that sense, like Berkeley. I don't think he maintains coherence when it comes to accounting for an objective shared world because according to him the same thing is objective and subjective at the same time. Basically, Schopenhauer's Idealism (the world as will and representation).
@@AbsolutePhilosophy The problem with master argument is that, at the same time, it leaves no room for Berkeley to invoke God and other minds. If that argument was good, it would be equally a strike against god and other minds. It is difficult to avoid solipsism unless you resort to ad hoc maneuvers. It also strikes me as unintelligible because it conceives of god as a deceiver that feeds the same perceptions to everyone, giving the illusion of an objective mind independent world.
I say equivocation because in order to maintain Idealism, this universal “mind” has to be of the same ontological category as the “minds”. You start with your mind as the primitive example of a mind. To posit a universal mind but at the same time to say it's totally unlike the “minds” is to posit something of a different ontological category which is independent of all “minds”. Shortly, it is not a mind at all because it's totally unlike the “minds”.
Kastrup is explicit about that. The universal mind is of the same ontological category, it is like the “minds” (though he just refers to phenomenal consciousness). He even admits he is a subjective idealist in that sense, like Berkeley. I don't think he maintains coherence when it comes to accounting for an objective shared world because according to him the same thing is objective and subjective at the same time. Basically, Schopenhauer's Idealism (the world as will and representation).
@@AbsolutePhilosophy The problem with master argument is that, at the same time, it leaves no room for Berkeley to invoke God and other minds. If that argument was good, it would be equally a strike against god and other minds. It is difficult to avoid solipsism unless you resort to ad hoc maneuvers. It also strikes me as unintelligible because it conceives of god as a deceiver that feeds the same perceptions to everyone, giving the illusion of an objective mind independent world.
I say equivocation because in order to maintain Idealism, this universal “mind” has to be of the same ontological category as the “minds”. You start with your mind as the primitive example of a mind. To posit a universal mind but at the same time to say it's totally unlike the “minds” is to posit something of a different ontological category which is independent of all “minds”. Shortly, it is not a mind at all because it's totally unlike the “minds”.
Kastrup is explicit about that. The universal mind is of the same ontological category, it is like the “minds” (though he just refers to phenomenal consciousness). He even admits he is a subjective idealist in that sense, like Berkeley. I don't think he maintains coherence when it comes to accounting for an objective shared world because according to him the same thing is objective and subjective at the same time. It is basically Schopenhauer's Idealism.
The world is in the mind yes…the catch is that *we* are in a mind greater than our own, that’s why we can’t all turn into Neo, even if the world is in our minds too, huh?
Horses ARE beautiful creatures!
Indeed!
first!
22 mins in and we’re at… true thoughts are facts… which everyone already knows…
The analytics tried to escape Hegelian idealism only to return to it
Agreed.
Ineffable
The Universe is fundamentally discrete and computational; quantum. Mind (and therefore thought) emerges from the physical machinery of computation. The circle closes, and this entire philosophy root is now profoundly subject to renewed inquiry and critical review.
Reality is how you make of it..🐡🤯
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@9:00 Russell was an idiot. By his account "Mont Blanc itself" is not a mountain. Only an extreme absurdist Idealist could possibly believe a mountain with a rather large gravitational field and dead bodies on it is part of a proposition one can hold in one's mind or scribble on a paper napkin.
Wow, taking something anti-metaphysical like the TLP and using that as a piece to get to Idealism
Yeah, and using Quine and a relaxed ontology is pretty unusual, associated as it also is with anti-metaphysics. But they seem right to me.
Truth is the conceptual model that has the greatest probability of corresponding to reality (external reality exists and you are contained in it).
It is not true that a human can assure that he possesses an absolute truth. It is not among human capabilities.
What are facts, from your point of view?
It is true that you construct representations of external reality using data provided by the senses.
It is true that you can only make considerations about those representations.
But it is the exercise of your agency and its effectiveness that will determine which of those representations are most likely to produce the desired effect.
Propositions are boxes in a system that relates them according to a simplified synthesis of the causal relationships that humans have noted up to the present.
One can fill the box with any contents.
Meaning is our assessment of different aspects of reality in relation to our convenience.
Every source of information results from inductive inferences. Generalizations can be made about them. But they will always be bets.
Logical systems (mathematics, geometry, etc.) are simplifications synthesized by humans from the proportions noted in nature. In reality there are no two equal units nor is there a practical way to divide an entity into halves. These are just conventions for practical use.
Determining that it exists is extremely simple. Only that which interacts with something else exists. That which does not interact with anything should not be considered existing, for practical purposes.
It's getting very long!
\\Only that which interacts with something else exists. \\
If the only thing you actually know is your perceptions and thoughts, then how do you know that there is "something" with interact with "something" else. Even "interaction" and "existence" are only your mind-fabricated concepts.
@@eugenei7170 Yeah. I understand your point.
But one must be consistent. Either one accepts the rules of the game that reality shows and one uses them or one rejects them and all consideration is stupid.
I don't know anything. Not in an absolute sense. I only use the concepts that are most likely "true."
I don't know my perceptions. My mind builds a conceptual model with them. I use those conceptual models to manage myself. They are those models that one refers to by knowledge.
But as with any representation, model or mock-up, it is absurd (if one uses the rules of the game that shows reality) to assume that all these representations are not actually representations.
Do you deny that every concept is a representation? Do you deny that every representation is the representation of something?
Denying the existence of entities is absurd. And what determines that something is an entity is its characteristic of affecting something else. It will not be possible for you to "say anything about anything" unless you accept (as is most likely) that entities exist even though we can only consider their representations.
\\Denying the existence of entities is absurd. \\
Asserting the existence of entities is at least an unprovable hypothesis, and at most it is a religion. And the point is that it is not necessary, and therefore it is not parsimonious. We can develop science and we can function in reality without such religious beliefs or unprovable hypotheses. Science is all about developing abstract theories that model and predict correlations of phenomena. No assumptions of existing entities or any other ontological assumptions are necessary.
"Do not attribute existence to that which is unknowable in principle." W. Heizenberg
"I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something" Carlo Rovelli
@@eugenei7170 No. Assuming the existence of entities is the most likely correct interpretation. If by unprovable you understand that one should discard that position because it is possible to achieve "to prove" something outside the limits of probability, you should demonstrate how it is that you assume that this can be done.
Science constructs and tests hypotheses (conceptual models) with data from reality (which it considers existing and through interactions) and mathematically calculates the probability of correspondence between the hypothesis and the data used.
What is your definition of phenomenon?
You say ""Do not attribute existence to that which is unknowable in principle." W. Heizenberg"
The problem with this is that it is an oxymoron. Only what interacts with something else (and with us being within that chain of causalities) is possible to form part of our considerations. That produces data with which to build a conceptual model of it. This is producing data.
Do you deny the existence of "data"?
You say ""I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something" Carl Rovelli"
I completely agree with Rovelli. It is not possible to affirm that one has absolute knowledge.
It is only possible to establish a spectrum of probabilities on any aspect of reality.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd you're correct in regard to the claim that we are unable to obtain absolute truth, however, I think the best understanding of "truth" is to consider it as an ethic, a fictional that has persisted due to its usefulness. If we choose to agree to the terms of this "truth game" we can align our understandings and share information more readily, furthermore, it creates an incentive structure which penalises deception and rewards those "truths" which most closely align with some explicitly defined outcome.
Begin with a conclusion.
Why didn't I think of that?
I listened for 51 minutes and no case for idealism was presented 🤷♂️
The case for idealism is presented with ease by nonduality teachings such as advaita vedanta, more importantly they make it experientially verifiable. Bernardo Kastrup’s analytic idealism is also a good offer.