I suggest you look back at his last post. The concept of time itself may just be a useful construct, that is the point. So our ideas about cause and effect concerning past events may be incomplete or just another useful construct. If the construct of time deteriorates as science progresses, then all hell breaks loose as far as the cause of the universe. Giving idealists just as much say as anyone else on the matter, with common sense out the window.

To help the image of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster (may he shower me with his noodly appendages) I must explain that the idea was invented to help stop a school board from teaching creationism as science. It simply pointed out that "divine intervention" is by definition supernatural or metaphysical and therefore belongs nowhere in the science classroom.

George felt pretty smart. He knew all that there was worth knowing. Or so he thought. But Bobby came along and suggested some errors in his reasoning. George found it more comfortable to believe that Bobby was full of hot air. He didn't really listen to George, because this threatened to interrupt his self-satisfaction.

"What our understanding acquires through this concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is to say, understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something".[24

Yes, people are fallible, and they should always mix a "tincture of skepticism" into their beliefs. But that does not mean that some beliefs are not true, and even clearly true. I might be wrong, but then again, I might be right too. And I might have excellent reasons to think I am right. What should I do then: Not think I am right because I might be wrong?

Hey thanks. I never knew that. I thought from my experience on the Dawkins forum that it was a general form of ridicule directed at anything faintly metaphysical.

I still reckon that many current scientific speculations, such as the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, and the Multiverse theory of cosmology, are no more scientific than anything in Plato, and considerably less elegant.

I'll worry about it after you have shown that "time itself may just be a useful construct". In the meantime, it is not just commonsense that the Moon is older than people. Indeed, what makes you think it is commonsense at all?

I think the point that is being missed here is that the moon as we conceive it, as an object in a web of causality, is largely the creation of our mental faculties.

Hypothesis are justified largely by their ability to predict. One does not predict the past. One can apply a justified hypothesis backward, but one should not forget that one is driving in reverse. As Hegel knew, time is impossible without concepts. The present is eternal (that is timeless) unless the past subsists as memory/concept and the future exists as a project(ion). Both past and future are concepts existing in the present. Human time is conceptual, lingual. Time is made of logos or discourse.

We are all too quick to take useful concepts for "mind-independent" reality -- which is itself a concept, and a paradoxical concept.

You need not worry about it unless you are truly interested, but it is important in understanding where some of these arguments are coming from. They reach beyond a limited human view of such concepts and tackle the world on much larger and smaller scales, revealing new information to consider.

By common sense I mean intuitive. The theory of relativity is in no way intuitive, but it is a correct view of the concept of time. Our intuitive concept of time is a useful approximation that has no need to account for time at mind boggling speeds.

First of all, if there is a mind-independent reality, it is not a concept. The concept of a mind-independent reality is a concept. You continually confuse concepts with what they are concepts of.

Have you or anyone you know experience mind-independent reality? No. You have experience that concept of such, and nothing else. Honestly, I think you're the one that's confused here. Mind-independent-reality is only a concept, not a possible human experience. Thus the paradox.

If that means (as I think it does) that our concept of the Moon is largely a creation of our mental faculties, then I would go further and say it was entirely a creation of our mental faculties. But then, of course, there is the Moon, and the Moon is not at all a creation of our mental faculties.

I have seen the Moon. Haven't you? And, the Moon is a piece of mind-independent reality.

My experience of seeing my left shoe is not my left shoe.

I have seen the Moon. Haven't you? And, the Moon is a piece of mind-independent reality. So, I have experienced mind-independent reality. QED. Of course, my experience is not mind-independent, but what I have experienced is. It obviously does not follow that what I experience is not my experience of it. Although that is one of the many idealist fallacies. My experience of seeing my left shoe is not my left shoe.

Mind-independent-reality is only a concept

Don't you mean to say that there is only the concept of mind-independent reality, but no mind-independent reality? If there is mind-independent reality, then it isn't only a concept as you say it is. In fact, it is not a concept at all. It is what the concept of mind-independent reality is the concept of. See how tricky this is? And, if that is what you are saying, then, of course, you are begging the question, since exactly that is at issue; whether there is mind-independent reality.

Logic is sooo useful, isn't it?

Don't you mean to say that there is only the concept of mind-independent reality, but no mind-independent reality?

I find it hard to grasp how your experience of the moon is mind-independent due to the fact that it is precisely your mind that is required to experience it.

Without some sort of mind there would be no experience of anything.

But it is not intuitive that the Moon is older than people. That had to be discovered. I agree (of course) with the rest of what you say. But I never have held that what is commonsense must be true.

I'm saying that "mind-independent reality," when carefully considered, is as absurd as a "round square." It's about as likely as waking up dead.

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 10:16 PM ----------



Exactly! The moon is experienced as a concept that organizes qualia. This concept is placed in a nexus of causality, etc. In everyday life, we talk about things and forget that things are impossible without concepts. A thing is substance and unity. Substance is dependent upon causality. Minus concept, the world is who knows what? But it's nothing human.

But you can't go too far in either direction. There is actually a nexus of the thing seen, the seer, and the act of seeing. Tilt too far in one direction, and you have materialism, too far in the the other and you have solipsism. (I think...)

But doesn't this just go back to justification? Kenneth's points on experience not being the thing experienced are also important. It comes down to which is more justified in my opinion, and I will always be a certain breed of materialist (probably a representational realist of sorts) in that respect. I see Reconstructo's ideas about concepts being the means of experience but this in itself does not seem to mean to be justification for solipsism or idealism, though I will never be a dogmatic materialist.

What entails justification? Must something be proved empirically to be considered true?