iwpoe wrote:

Dennis wrote:

Well, that made me giggle. My main take is about whether the solipsist position could even be coherently formulated, given that their proposition would require some form of abstraction, and that abstraction would be dependent on some form of reception. If the solipsist is going to deny any form of reception itself, then it's hard to see how this is even slightly plausible or coherent.

Well, no one considers it plausible, but I don't know why it would be considered incoherant. Insofar as you have coherant system that refers to "the external world" (or whatever) as the "source" (or whatever) of "sense" (or whatever), simply replace "external world" with "my mind".

If the solipsist relies on the passive reception to gain the principles of abstraction necessary for the proposition that in itself somehow ends up attacking it, as how I see it, there is no way for the solipsist to do it coherently. For everything that the solipsist obtains, obtains from it. If this be demonstrable, and the solipsist will admit to some parts of the reception remaining passive, then it would suffice to maintain that the disconnect between the world and the mind is at least incoherent in formulation if not prima fascie incoherent.

Dennis wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

Dennis wrote:

Well, that made me giggle. My main take is about whether the solipsist position could even be coherently formulated, given that their proposition would require some form of abstraction, and that abstraction would be dependent on some form of reception. If the solipsist is going to deny any form of reception itself, then it's hard to see how this is even slightly plausible or coherent.

Well, no one considers it plausible, but I don't know why it would be considered incoherant. Insofar as you have coherant system that refers to "the external world" (or whatever) as the "source" (or whatever) of "sense" (or whatever), simply replace "external world" with "my mind".

If the solipsist relies on the passive reception to gain the principles of abstraction necessary for the proposition that in itself somehow ends up attacking it, as how I see it, there is no way for the solipsist to do it coherently. For everything that the solipsist obtains, obtains from it. If this be demonstrable, and the solipsist will admit to some parts of the reception remaining passive, then it would suffice to maintain that the disconnect between the world and the mind is at least incoherent in formulation if not prima fascie incoherent.

I think that begs the question against him, since he thinks that he is not "receiving" in your sense: he thinks he is making all that presents itself. I see no means by which you could deny him that premise if he wishes to hold it (though he cannot demonstrate it). This presupposes that he would replace "reception" with something analalogous enough to preserve the phenomna- something like non-volitional creation of things, as in a dream -and that he admits an experience very much like we understand it ourselves. In other words, I imagine myself as solipsist and then I agree with all of you "others" that my experience isn't radically different from what you all say yours is like, such that I don't understand myself, for instance, as if I was a God bringing things into existence by volition. I suppose, however, on a grander level I would have to think myself god, and then we run into the ontological-style problem I mentioned previously, wherein "my mind" as genesis of everything becomes distinct from my-mind* as the empirical thing I'm perceiving in my bodily and psychological actions, which can only the a product of the first. I'm not sure that's an incoherence, but once it's admitted the solipsist simply grants the whole of the world just as it was again.
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As for your long post, I take it that you're taking your bearings from the Kantian side of German Idealism, yes? The language is familiar to me that way.

Last edited by iwpoe (9/06/2015 7:18 am)

For now, definitions of a few of the terms. An entity, Q, supervenes upon entity P if and only if it is impossible that P should exist and Q not exist, where P is possible.

It's also worth defining it in terms of possible worlds, for those whose minds handle extensions better than intensions. Let a P-world be a world that contains an entity P, and a Q-world be a world that contains an entity Q. Q supervenes upon P if and only if there are P-worlds and all P-worlds are Q-worlds.

If Q supervenes on P and P supervenes on Q, then Q and P are strictly identical.

I'm not sure your interlocutor meant for it, but I'm also going to bring in Armstrong's doctrine of the ontological free lunch. The doctrine of the ontological free lunch states that whatever supervenes in this way is not ontologically additional to the subvenient. For instance, mereological wholes are not ontologically additional to all their parts. There is no addition of being involved.

I'm also going to assume that we all accept the law of non-contradiction (LNC). Denying the LNC allows that the LNC could be both false and true at once. It allows that your friend can be a human, a hippopotamus, and a giraffe at the same time, in the same respect. He literally can't make an argument without at least implicitly using the LNC.

The claim is that the entities of fields like biology, psychology, sociology, don't supervene on the entities of fundamental physics, but I'm not sure why it's being presented like a grand claim.

What I want to claim is that biology, sociology, psychology and even to some extent of chemistry cannot supervene on physics.

Most naturalists these days would agree with this statement. For instance, Rosenberg is called a mad dog naturalist by his colleagues for his view that everything can be reduced to physics. I'm pretty sure Quine would have agreed with it too. Regardless (and more importantly), every scholastic and everyone here would likely agree with it.

Here is also where "the web of belief" comes in, with it I would like to claim that different parts of it has different ontologies with incommensurable explanations (regarding the same thing, as the motion of the coin), and that is my main relativism.

But I'm baffled as to why—in relation to other fields supervening on physics, which is after all the matter at hand—these need be incommensurable in any meaningfully strong sense. They would just require positing additional entities above the level of fundamental physics. Almost everyone is fine doing this.

If he means something stronger like that the various components of his theory are broadly logically contradictory, then it follows from the law of non-contradiction that the totality of his theory is literally absurd. 

There also seems to be an attempt to draw a hard distinction between phenomena and noumena near the email's end. If so, the concievability objection I gave earlier applies there as well, and has so far went unanswered.

I'm out of time.

Sorry for the long delay and my typos above, I had some personal business to take care of, but now, hopefully I'm done with them for a bit. Now, let's get back to business.

iwpoe wrote:

I think that begs the question against him, since he thinks that he is not "receiving" in your sense: he thinks he is making all that presents itself. I see no means by which you could deny him that premise if he wishes to hold it (though he cannot demonstrate it). This presupposes that he would replace "reception" with something analalogous enough to preserve the phenomna- something like non-volitional creation of things, as in a dream -and that he admits an experience very much like we understand it ourselves. In other words, I imagine myself as solipsist and then I agree with all of you "others" that my experience isn't radically different from what you all say yours is like, such that I don't understand myself, for instance, as if I was a God bringing things into existence by volition. I suppose, however, on a grander level I would have to think myself god, and then we run into the ontological-style problem I mentioned previously, wherein "my mind" as genesis of everything becomes distinct from my-mind* as the empirical thing I'm perceiving in my bodily and psychological actions, which can only the a product of the first. I'm not sure that's an incoherence, but once it's admitted the solipsist simply grants the whole of the world just as it was again.
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As for your long post, I take it that you're taking your bearings from the Kantian side of German Idealism, yes? The language is familiar to me that way.

Consider the famous analysis of causation involved constant conjunction given by Hume. There can be cases where constant conjunction can happen, without the event actually being the cause of that thing, in other words, there can be coincidences. 


What this has to do with what we're talking of, is the primary distinction between primary and secondary substances. 

http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2012/05/quaeritur-are-secondary-substances-same.html

First and foremost, there's no such thing as free floating qualia, if there is qualia at all. And if primary notions are denied by the solipsist, even more worse for them. Every response of sensation is dependent on something material(something other than the mind), or something that which is other than the mind, it could be demonstrated that sensations do not freely float non-volitionally, but are always correlated to something materially, similar to the notion of constant conjunction which plays some role in Hume's analysis of sorts, so too is the notion of primary notions of thought. It is hard for me to see how the the solipsist would want to say that the creation of objects is non-volitional, when demonstrably the order of perceiving a subject requires the primacy of the substance and then a receptor.

Take Kant for example,

Experience or phenomena(appearance of the thing in itself), is always about noumena('the thing in itself', or 'reality itself’). We can know something of 'reality itself', because experience confirms its necessity, for it doesn't make sense, nor is it conceivable to posit that the 'appearance', or, experience is there, but of nothing. For 'nothing' is the absence of things/anything.

Kant well understands this, however, it seems that his critique lies hidden in his own understanding. That being said, if we understand that there are specific experiences following an event, let's grant that this is in the phenomena, there is no reason to assume that the noumena is different. Let's see how Kant's view pans out should we grant him the distinction between the two,

Consider that we have a subjective experience[touch] of the substance gold, let's call this A, and let's set it on fire, and let's call that B. Now suppose that we apply heat to it, to the extent that it melts. Either what we are calling gold melts, or fails to melt. If there is any actual change that the gold undergoes, then this change has to happen in the noumena first, and then the phenomena which we call A. Kant questions the validity of the senses, but there are many ways to look at this advancing doubt on the senses. In other words, the melting of A, has actual ontological grounding in the noumena, first. For if nothing had actually changed in the noumena, A's reaction to B, is purely illusory and no such change is happening, then that would require a different sort of argument against change altogether. If someone does concede that the change is happening, or that the senses are able to receive, a significant difference in substancehood prior to their passions for each other(A being met by B), and yet insist that we can't really know 'what it is,' is an unintelligible position. 

It makes absolutely no sense to say that we experience A, and then given the a certain causal interaction that we call 'B', it turns to 'C,' however, there's nothing really happening in the noumena, or that we can still remain skeptical about it. For regardless of what we are labeling them as, our abstraction is reflective of the change that is happening in the noumena. Even if we do not know what it 'actually is in the noumena,' it seems of no use to be bothered with such a distinction(proposition) since the terms A, B and C, would be reflective of the same thing even in the noumena. A would inherit B, and a generation of C would come about. A, B, and C would be representatives of the *unverifiable* events in the noumena. However, the *unverifiable* events in the noumena, will always have a causal dispositions, and our experiences of the phenomena will accordingly proceed. 

It wouldn't be enough for the solipsist to say that the creation of objects is non-volitional, how is it created, how do our wills impose itself on matter in such fashion that such a creation is possible? I do not see how this is reduces the solipsists position to mere possibility because we can demonstrate that sensation and experience itself is not as how the solipsist wants to state it is. Certainly, the proposition can be made by the solipsist without being incoherent prima fascie, but given a proper analysis of causation, substancehood and etc. I do not think this to be the case, since any kind of possibility has to be grounded in some sort of actuality at the very leasts, and I do not think that solipsism passes the test.

As I've said prior to this, so call this experience 'A,' or call it 'B,' whatever the 'reality' of the substance is(so to say it's common causal disposition to the collective), it will still retain its identity, and that even though filtered by the senses, whether proper or corrupted, will not change the fact that we are experiencing 'A, or B.' Nor can it be logically conceived, that the disposition of the substance is such that it changes anytime, non-volitionally. We simply do not experience reality in that fashion, so my main objection is why give such a possibility to the solipsist when it is unfounded, given the analysis? To my mind, solipsism fails as a thesis because, similar to constant conjunction in Hume's thesis, it can be observed that there can be instances of constant conjunction[coincidences] and not causation, and the same goes for the solipsist, that the substances grant the possibility of some sort of effect, without necessitating it, and has a primacy for any kind of sense reception, and this leaves no room for the view of the 'non-volitional' creation, unless it can be demonstrated to be the case.

And yes, you are right, my acquaintance[she] is coming from the Kantian side, without realising it, and this language is Kantian and I too, am familiar with it. If you are worried about Kant, iwpoe, I suggest you pick up Peter Coffey's Epistemology Part I & II[if you haven't picked them up already], and get ready for some fierce works, I don't like to miss out on chances to recommend Peter Coffey.

John West wrote:

The claim is that the entities of fields like biology, psychology, sociology, don't supervene on the entities of fundamental physics, but I'm not sure why it's being presented like a grand claim.

I would attribute this to my acquaintance's youth in metaphysical ventures, so this can be pardoned. But if I were to say more, she is more of the type who thinks that the problems of mereology is a pseudo problem, given Plato's text about Parmenides, I've not asked her to expand more on this, but in some sense, my acquaintance would either like to deny micro, or macro level objects. So we're perhaps looking at mereological nihilism or a complete nihilism of the sort. With that said, feel free to continue on whatever you feel needs expanding upon, I was more interested in knowing the objections towards metaphysics via underdetermination, if she doesn't pursue the objections, I would ask you to render the strongest positions of underdetermination and then come to refute them totally and how we would do it if you have the time, since I've not studied this specific realm of metaphysics and would happily take requests on what I have to read, but do go on and explain on anything you wish.


EDIT : Here will be my acquaintance's reply to John West.

"If chemistry is a mereological description of chemistry without additional information, the relation of the temperature I depicted cannot exist. And my description is also sufficient of the supervenience relation. Therefore we have that the mereological whole of two states, where the whole supervenes on the more fundamental, are contradictory, since they give two different descriptions.

What we notice are thus:
They are antagnostic. 
They are describing the same thing.

Imagine two very sporadic physical systems. They are in two different worlds and cannot interact in any way. They have the same number of atoms and the same size. However, the individual atoms velocities and positions differ. Let in the first universe that the all the energy sums up to a certain constant P. In the other another constant. Let the temperature be defined by this constant. The constant P is defined by the atoms. Let T be an explanation in the system of chemistry.

Now instead of velocity at given times you can think of more higher theories, like pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure is mainly defined by how many times per a time unit the gas interacts with the walls one would claim from the physical system. If you have these two physical systems, then if there is an indetereministic element (and even without it) they will after a time coincide exactly, since they have the same P. It is possible for them doing so from different states before the exact time they happen to be the same. Therefore, just at the moment they happen to be the same, their temperatures differ. So we have two same physical states with the same P and a differing T. If no information was added in the system of chemistry, the supervenience relation doesn't hold. Therefore, information needed to be added, and that would seem to be some kind of intervention from what we wouldn't want to accept into our fundamental physical theory. What I claim is simply that both describe the same thing, yes. But we've idealised them. This is why they can be different, talk about the same thing, both be true, and why I call myself a relativist."


This was pretty cryptic to me, so I dared to ask the following in accordance to what I saw. See. I can't help but see that you deny a hierarchy in nature. Is this true?

The answer: Yes.

Last edited by Dennis (9/16/2015 4:02 pm)