Clivedurdle

I have begun to wonder over the years whether there weren't one thing-in-itself after all; namely, the entire cosmos.



I tend to agree with this. Spinoza said this, it is a native american idea and is related to Gaian thinking. It is possibly what Jung was trying to say. The concept of God with us - Emmanuel can also be seen as pantheistic.

But how does this relate to Idealism and Materialism?

Is this a valid synthesis of these concepts?

Keith Russell

Totalitarian, how I think about (conceptualize) a tree does not (it's true) affect the tree.

But, how I conceptualize the tree definitely affects how I choose to interact with the tree (perhaps via protective legislation--perhaps a sawblade).

Our minds interact with (and thus partially control) our bodies, and our bodies interact with reality. Concepts do not affect reality directly, but they do affect reality, nonetheless.

K

Totalitarianist

[quote]Can you be clearer?

The thing-in-itself is a supposition untenable. Try all you want: you can never come up with a good reason to suppose it true.

By the way, Spinoza's philosophy is old and has already been refuted.

It is laughable that someone in this day and age would believe in the thing-in-itself.

Totalitarianist

Keith: I never said any of that. Perhaps you should read this again:

Nothing can exist outside "mind" in general. It is a logical impossiblity. "Existence", "being", "plurality", etc are concepts of the mind. Concepts only exist within the mind. It is self-contradictory to suppose that concepts exist outside the mind. "Existence" cannot apply to anything outside the mind, i.e. the thing-in-itself. There is no such thing as the thing-in-itself. If there is such a thing, describe it.

This "reality" that you speak of which we apparently cannot affect is none other than our mind. Any other supposition proves to be untenable in all cases.

Bluenose

I would think that some aspects of Spinoza live on in the legacy of Albert Einstein who conducted a philosophy seminar for a couple years, around 1900 IIRC.

We could do worse than using the presentation method of Spinoza or Euclid, ie working from basic definitions to axioms, postulates etc. Even if our conclusions don't stand the test of time, at least how we reached them will be clear.

sodium

It seems to me that concepts exist inside the mind, but they are usually intended to refer to things outside the mind. The concept of a horse exists inside the mind, but actual horses are assumed to exist outside the mind.

If I say that horses exist, I'm saying that something matches the description given by my horse concept. This is unlike my unicorn concept, which tells me how to spot unicorns, but which doesn't apply to anything that I'm aware of.

It's a mistake to believe that concepts of the mind can only be used to describe things internal to the mind, at least without some argument.

Totalitarianist

No, it is a practical question. Practically speaking, they exist outside the mind. Logically speaking, we have no way of proving that.

No, subject and object are two sides of the same reality. When you speak of a horse, you are speaking of something within thought itself. When I see a horse, I am thinking about a thought. It is thought thinking about thought.

The arguments (proofs) are numerous and lengthy.

If a horse exists outside the mind, you must have knowledge of this horse, for otherwise you would not be able to say that truthfully. If you have knowledge of something, you ought to be able to describe it. Describe this horse as it exists outside the mind.

excreationist

Totalitarianist:

But has the existence of horses in some form external to our mind (brain) (whether within "the Matrix", etc) been disproven? It seems that it is ultimately uncertain about whether or not horses outside of our mind exist. [But as far as science goes, we usually assume that horses exist because of the large amount of evidence that they do.]

When you see a horse you'd also be receiving processed information that came from your eyes, that is light reflected by the horse... I'm saying that there is input from an external source when you're seeing a horse... unless it is a hallucination...

From Grolier Encyclopedia:
You said that the objective idealists (and materialists) seem correct to you... but that quote says that objective idealists reject Naturalism... so do you believe that awareness is a non-physical thing? In materialism it would be a purely physical process... Or perhaps you aren't sure...

Clivedurdle

i was quoting the cave ( sorry I don't know how to bold things, i get wierd boxes up I don't undestand ) and trying to present a possible synthesis of the viewpoints of idealism and materialism for discussion, but it has not been taken up.

What if mind and the universe are one and inseperable?

excreationist

Clivedurdle:
sorry I don't know how to bold things

To make something bold, insert [b] before the start of the text and add [/b.] to the end of the text (without the dot).
If you press the "B" button which makes a pop-up window appear, you can type in text and it will add it to the end of your post, with [B.] at the start of that new text and [/B.] at the end of it. (without those dots)