You mean that if I prove the Pythagorean theorem, then the Pythagorean theorem is the proof? That would mean that I could not know what the Pythagorean theorem was unless I could prove it. But that is clearly false.

We have already agreed that to establish that the moon existed before people existed requires human science, which exists only in human minds. So we can in no way infer that the existence of the moon before the existence of people was a fact at the beginning. This is not the case with your example. You can know the Pythagorean theorem without knowing the proof. But in our agreed example, we cannot know of the existence of the moon before the existence of people out side of science which itself does not exist outside of human minds.


We are not talking about proofs per se.

If science exists exclusively in human minds, and if science is required to establish that the moon existed before people, then the fact that the moon existed before people is also dependent upon human minds.

the first thing to note here is how the interpretation of key words like mind, ideas, representation and real are critically important when it comes to people apparently agreeing or disagreeing.

So , do representational and indirect realists believe that the room you are now sitting in as you percieve it, is entirely constructed from the brain?

The indirect realist however by believing that we have 'interpretations of sense data derived from a real external world' might include the sense data as 'real and external' in the sense that they are external to the interpretation.

But the idealist position is also open to ambiguity, and can cross over to representational realism. eg .......

We are not talking about proofs per se.

If science exists exclusively in human minds, and if science is required to establish that the moon existed before people, then the fact that the moon existed before people is also dependent upon human minds.

But scientists have proved that the moon existed before people.

If science exists exclusively in human minds, and if science is required to establish that the moon existed before people, then the fact that the moon existed before people is also dependent upon human minds.

5.62 This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there
is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it
cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this
is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language
which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.


5.621 The world and life are one.


5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)


5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains
ideas. If I wrote a book called The World as l found it, I should have
to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were
subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of
isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense
there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.--


5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of
the world.


5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will
say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field.
But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field
allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.


5.6331 For the form of the visual field is surely not like this


5.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is
at the same time a priori. Whatever we see could be other than it is.
Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a
priori order of things.


5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are
followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of
solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the
reality co-ordinated with it.


5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk
about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into
philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical
self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with
which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit
of the world--not a part of it.

Pragmatically speaking, I agree. Transcendentally speaking, no. It's the lack of this primary distinction that seems to me to be at the root of this debate.

Our knowledge of the fact requires a mind, but the fact does not. Distinguish between the fact and the knowledge of the fact.

Something can exists without any knowledge that it exists.

Pragmatically speaking, I agree. Transcendentally speaking, no. It's the lack of this primary distinction that seems to me to be at the root of this debate.

There is a specific perspective which is required to penetrate this conundrum, which is the non-dualist perspective. It says that we don't have 'the fact' on one side and 'the mind which recognises it' on the other. What we always have is 'the mind recognizing the fact'.

You might imagine the moon existing prior to our perception of it. But it is beyond doubt that your imagined image is implicitly dependent upon the picture you have of the moon within your human imagination from the standpoint of being on the earth. You might imagine the ancient moon, floating above an uninhabited earth. This is still imagined from a viewpoint. You might imagine the non-existence of the moon. But this is also an imaginative act on your part. Anything you can say about the moon, including its mass, composition, distance, direction of movement, and age, is predicated upon the fact that there is someone saying or thinking it. What it might be outside this context is impossible to say, as per Kant.

Now the non-dualist perspective: what we have at all times is the cognition-object. The object itself is embedded in a cognitive context. But the cognitive context in which it is embedded is much greater than 'an idea of the moon'. It is that within which both the idea and the perception of the moon occur. It is not 'an idea of the idea of the moon'. This is a very difficult point to grasp.

Non-dualism is usually associated with Eastern philosophy. However there are some contemporary US philosophers who are now providing this perspective, coming out of the tradition of William James and Dewey. I will provide more info on that later.

The mind may recognize the fact, but how does it follow from that, that the fact cannot exist without the mind? For example, I may recognize the fact that I had parents, but my parents obviously existed before I recognize that they existed. Unless they did, I would not have existed to recognize that they exist.
?

How could your parents have existed before they were your parents?

You are needed to make them your parents, therefore without you they wouldn't be your parents. They would either be someone else's parents, or no parents at all, depending on whether or not you have siblings.

The existence of you is directly intertwined with your parents' existence.

Is that like asking how my brother could have existed before he was my brother? Well he did. However, he was not my brother then. In fact, unless he existed before he was my brother, he could not have become my brother. That my parents were not my parents at one time does not mean that they did not exist. They did exist, but they were not my parents.

I am referring throughout to the model suggested by what is popularly referred to as Kant's Copernican Revolution, which is, specficially, that the mind does not conform to objects, but objects conform to the mind. This is stated in the Critique of Pure Reason. Now Kant was also an empirical realist. He accepted that scientific knowledge provided the best possible account of the nature of empirical reality. This seems paradoxical but again it is because I think we have an incorrect notion of what exactly we mean by 'mind', 'fact', and the correspondence between them.

I do understand your (or anyone's) perplexity over this point. But I still believe that if one maintains this common-sense view of the nature of reality and mind, then there really is no purpose in pursuing philosophy, as any answers we are likely to get about the reality which is 'simply there' are likely to be provided by science (as Scottydaimon more or less says). Again, I think the role of the philosopher is to critique our sense of normality, but not everyone sees it that way.

If they were not your parents before you were born, then your parents did not exist before you were born.

If they were not your parents before you were born, then your parents did not exist before you were born.

Your parents became your parents upon your birth, and before that, they were different, as you already pointed out. But how can someone be the same person and be different at the same time?

Unless you concede to the existence of a universal mind, in which case it may have always been necessary that the people who are now your parents eventually conceive you, allowing for them to have always been your parents due an intellect which views existence atemporally.

But being my parents is not an essential property of those two people. No more than being born on the East Coast of the United States is one of their essential properties.

It is true that necessarily if they were my parents, then they were my parents.
But it not true that if they were my parents, they were necessarily my parents.

Look at the difference between the above two sentences. And notice where the term "necessarily" is placed.

In technical talk, to think those two sentences mean the same thing is to commit a modal fallacy. That is the fallacy you have committed.

"Philosophy is a constant battle against the bewitchment of the intelligence by language" (Wittgenstein)

I think the role of the philosopher is to critique our sense of normality, but not everyone sees it that way.