The moon could be an independent object, but it is not .
No man is an island, this is the order of nature.

You are leaving out that which is necessary for the moon to exist. .

What is it I am leaving out?

The moon is a part of nature, is it not? The moon is a dependent object, it is dependent at the very least, on the earth's gravity. It is also dependent upon the sun's gravity as it, like the earth, moves within the general atmosphere of the sun. It is also dependent upon the general laws of physics.

Maybe to a naive caveman the moon is an independent object, but not in the eyes of science.

The physical sciences have proved long ago that physical objects posess an underlying unity. Without this interdependence science as we know it would be an impossibility.

I have already stated that the moon is dependent upon natural processes. Read my previous post. The moon is not an independent object.

The Moon is causally dependent. But what has that to do with the fact that the Moon is independent of consciousness? Nothing.

It would help me if you could tell me your meaning of causal dependency concerning the moon's existence.


I would also like to ask you if you believe that consciousness is actually dependent or in what way it might be dependent for its existence upon other factors in nature.

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Consciousness, I would suppose, is something that evolved in nature just like other properties of matter.

scientific outlook would ever say the moon is an independent object. This is not good science, in my opinion.

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So, scientists don't think that the Moon antedates human beings, and therefore, antedates consciousness? Is that what you are claiming? That is a yes, or a no.

I am saying that realism removes the necessary connections in nature in a way that makes it untenable as a position.

As I said, the priority of independent objects, such as the moon's, doesn't remove the apparent interdependence within the natural world. Nor can it account for the effectiveness of science itself. Nor can it account for the ability of a property of matter (as you yourself called consciousness) to posess knowledge such that the moon antedated the appearance of homo sapiens.


Scientists are not in the business of attempting to obtain the conditions of knowledge in the same way as philosophers are. There is more at stake than having me admit that the moon antedates the appearance of homo sapiens.

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Either what you say makes no sense, or it it does, it is irrelevant.

The fact is that astronomers and other scientist know that the Moon antedated human beings, and it follows that consciousness has nothing at all to do with the existence of the Moon. Unless you have some good reason to doubt the astronomers and others, you have no case.

What is narrow about that, I would like to know. And I don't care what is at stake. The fact is that it is true, and known to be true, that the Moon antedates the existence of people. I advise you to deal with it. Just as others had to deal with the fact that Earth revolves around the Sun, and not conversely. Truth does not have to conform to your beliefs. It is the other way round.

I quess I would argue that the order of nature implies rationalism and inherent rational agent but I am not sure it says much about realism?

That is interesting prothero. I wonder how would rationalism then account for 'independent' objects?

I am of the opinon that objects and subjects are related by the fundamental processes, or the underlying order of nature and that science does not 'discover' individual things but rather science is, or should be, nothing less than the organization of human experience.

So realism then, is essentially an unscientific position - realism is error in that we are looking at unorganized, raw or unfiltered nature. And that time and space are falsely understood because we do not live in fully scientific environments.

Objects are connected. It takes a certain climate, for example, to produce a tree or a forest of trees. And it also takes a certain type of soil to produce a certain type of tree. So that the table that I am sitting at is, in reality, composed of the climate and the soil that exist inseperably within the wood as the past exists inseperably in the present. Reality is such a tight knit affair. And time and space are not objective features of reality but essentially bound up with mind and nature, idea and reality.


The future of science, as Francis Bacon once said, lies in the ultimate unification of the mind of man with the nature of things.

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I quess I would argue that the order of nature implies rationalism and inherent rational agent but I am not sure it says much about realism?

If, as philosophical realism suggests, that physical objects posess absolute existence independent of consciousness and knowledge, then how can there be a necessary relationship between the human subject and physical objects?

I say that there exists an underlying order of nature which encompasses both human subjects and so-called external physical objects. There exists definitive relations between subjects and objects such that they are both appearances in the natural world. The qualities posessed by human minds can not be reducible to the status of physical objects - human minds are nature's representations because we emanate from the natural world and abide within it. The mental ability to reason must, therefore, be a representation of natural intelligence.

To deny this relationship, as philosophical realists do, is to deny the logical priority of human minds and to place human minds in a physical continuum along with all other physical objects without any "law" or order to connect them. Philosophical realism entails the rejection of all such natural connections.

For philosophical realism, there can be no particular connection between subject and object. My question is, how can there be any natural relationship between subject and object when the subject is taken to be just another object?

Because if we are all independently existing objects then the order of nature has no intrinsic meaning, and I can see no difference between philosophical realism and pure meaningless chaos. If the mind itself is just another external object it can not be an organizing form of intelligence.

There are simply too many orderly connections between subjects and objects to admit that any one of them can exist independently from any other.

how can there be any natural relationship between subject and object when the subject is taken to be just another object?

I'm in tune with your sentiments here but I think your terminology is innaccurate.

I think you're actually protesting against materialism, or the idea that the universe comprises blind indifferent forces ultimately reducible to the laws of physics. I think that this attitude would necessarily be one of scientific realism, but a philosophical realist is something else, and not necessarily materialist at all. In fact, 'realism' in philosophy used to refer to Platonism and the idea of 'real universals' and was basically a religious philosophy. I guess you mean 'scientific realism' which basically views the Universe as largely a material phenomenon in which living beings appear solely as a result of what they regard as processes that can be explained by the natural sciences.

Your question: is a good one though. In my view, the materialist understanding is exactly that, namely the attempt to explain the subject of all experience as 'nothing but' a sideshow created by neuro-biology and the like. This is very much the approach of Daniel Dennett in 'Consciousness Explained' and scientific materialism generally. What this view fails to account for, as you say, is the very fact that the material universe is something that appears within our experience.

Now I don't mean by this that, without our experience, there is no material universe. The universe no doubt preceded H Sapiens and will in all likelihood outlive us as well. However the way in which this universe exists, outside our experience of it, is not known to us. It consists of an infinitely vast number of dimensions beyond what we are able to perceive. Meanwhile, the reality that we live in - our universe - is the nexus of the subject, the object, and the act of apprehension. But this nexus cannot in itself be the object of perception. We are not outside of it, or separate to it, but only this or that aspect of it. We can know and theorize about this or that aspect, this or that phenomenon, but we cannot for a moment know the whole, or reality in itself, this way. (There is a great Einstein quote about this somewhere....)

This is exactly where the perspective of nondualism comes in. Nonduality is realizing a perspective which is outside of the division of self and other. But it is not a discursive process, as the discursive intellect always assumes the dualist framework. Nor is it an easy thing to attain, as the perspective of duality deeply underpins our entire construction of reality. This duality is basic to how we see the world and to go beyond it is no small thing.

This was anticipated in American philosophy, to some extent, in the New England Transcendentalism (mainly because Thoreau, Emerson, Bucke, and James were familiar with the Upanisads). It is a religious philosophy, but not in the usual sense. And there is actually a fear of religious or spiritual attitudes in secular society. Some of it is well-founded of course, religious believers and institutions of various kinds are often extremely dangerous, illogical, bordering on the delusional. No contest in that regard. But modern secular culture has invested a great deal in the bet that we are just a natural phenomenon in a material universe. If it turns out that there really are other dimensions of existence, or other planes of reality, then we loose the bet, and maybe much else besides. When this comes up, we are disoriented, fearful, out-of-control. What does it mean? Do we have to go back to being religious? Prove it! and so on. I sense a deep undercurrent of fear which drives this hostility. Thomas Nagel has a good essay on this called Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion in his book called The Last Word.

Meanwhile, though, the task at hand is to try and find a way to develop this non-dualist perspective and outlook. I would recommend Thoreau and R.M. Bucke. But in the end, it is not something that can just come out of reading. Deep contemplation is needed.

As a matter of fact, I don't think the order of nature DOES refute realism. So I read between the lines and wrote a response to what I think the OP was REALLY about.