Simple question: What is an object?

Phaedrus74 said:
Sounds to me like someone is mixing epistemology with ontology again...

D#mn amateurs....

Robin, I like your definition I would add a bit of modality (though it might be superfluous):

Anything that can have a description covering property and/or behaviour that is verifiable by independent observation.
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I would accept that change.
 
plumjam said:
You know what consciousness is. It's what you are now.
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I'm not sure that helps 'me' very much. This "I" appears to be many different things, including a body with ongoing thoughts, perceptions, awareness, etc. Do you mean awareness, perhaps? That is a common approach.


I said manifest, not present. Universal consciousness manifests itself to differing degrees in the many and varied 'forms' we see in the universe. The forms follow the consciousness (I.D. plus reincarnation), rather than the consciousness following the forms (Darwinist materialism)
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Here's one of the weird things -- since it's monism we're discussing, it doesn't matter that much what verb you use. OK, it manifests itself to differing degrees. So, in my body, it is manifest to one degree, but in my mind it is manifest to a different degree? How do different properties arise without committing oneself to property dualism? Because you've still got these two different properties.


What do you mean?
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The story we tell of atomic physics depends on observations. Those observations are inter-subjective. We experience these structures (whatever their ontology) as the building blocks of what we call the material world (again, whatever the ontology). You have previously stated that you are not a solipsist and that it is the universal consciousness which keeps these 'substances' around for us to see even when we are not looking. If the universal consciousness manifests differently to create these different objects that is fine -- we experience these different manifestations as the story we tell of nuclear physics. But, according to you, this manifestation into what we perceive as physics cannot directly account for human forms of consciousness. There we apparently see direct consciousness laid bare from the universal consciousness. But this is a different property that you are assigning this universal consciousness. You can't have one part of reality follow one set of laws (physical laws) and another part of reality follow a different set of laws and stick to a monistic position.


You don't.
You never ever see "matter". It's just an idea in your head. A very popular idea, but false.
All you see are conscious perceptions of various kinds.
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It is very clear that, whatever monism we adopt, what we experience occurs within 'mind', so sure, it's an idea in my head that corresponds to something 'out there', whether or not 'out there' is real or not. Material monism, idealist monism, the proposition is the same. Speaking of seeing the word is just part of our usual language game which encodes dualism, so the point is moot for either perspective.


You like this property dualism thing, don't you ;) Is it some sort of crime you get frowned at for in the phil. departments these days?
The answer may well lie in (from the POV of universal consciousness) the 'material' world being an illusion.
See maya in hinduism and buddhism.

Anyway Wasp, t'was a pleasure. I'm leaving this thread for now. I'm off to have a couple of beers and do some lurking. All the best.
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I neither like it nor dislike it, and I have no idea what happens in philosophy departments these days. I try to stay away from those people. They scare me.

The material world being an illusion in some deep sense is the end-result of all monisms -- idealist, material, etc. Even within material monism there is the very real probability that 'everything' is really 'nothing' -- there may be one grand equation in which all the pluses and minuses cancel and it's all just one big nothing. Illusion, nah, that doesn't solve any of these issues. Unless you are willing to commit to -- there is nothing 'out there' at all. And this would necessarily include 'us'. As a monist there can only be 'universal consciousness' if that consciousness does not maintain what we see as the universe. There is still no 'us' to be conscious of this 'universal consciousness'.

As for the beers........that's the only reasonable response to any philosophical talk as far as I can see, so good choice.

And, if I'm messing up any of this, please Phaedrus, or Robin, or Dglas (if you're lurking) correct me. They are the real philosophers.
 
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plumjam said:
I sleep and dream. If, during a dream, I perceive a chair and describe it, and another character in my dream describes the chair similarly to myself.. then would you say that the chair was a real, external, and objective object?
You probably would not.. you would probably argue that it was just perception and description relating to a non-real non-external non-objective experience.
Exactly the same could be said of our waking experience. There's no difference.
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Ah, this precisely proves my contention that Idealism is the philosophy of the mind that forgets to take other minds into account.
 
plumjam said:
To me at least, it is no different from the kind of leap of faith needed to escape from the solipsism/circularity which I discussed with Phaedrus. Which, let's face it, all of us have already taken.
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Silly to escape solipsism with faith when we can reason our way out of it.
 
plumjam said:
If you think there's no difference between the ultimate substance being matter, and it being consciousness, then that's a pretty remarkable statement. Not one I see any sense in, and not an avenue I'll be going down.
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Ah, time for my metaphysics refresher:

Materialism = there is stuff
Idealism = There is no stuff, there is only other stuff
Dualism = You are both wrong, there is stuff and other stuff.

Just pinning a label does not explain anything at all. When you say the ultimate substance is "consciousness" you have just arbitrarily pinned a label on the ultimate stuff.

What properties does this ultimate stuff have?
 
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Robin said:
Ah, time for my metaphysics refresher:

Materialism = there is stuff
Idealism = There is no stuff, there is only other stuff
Dualism = You are both wrong, there is stuff and other stuff.

Just pinning a label does not explain anything at all. When you say the ultimate substance is "consciousness" you have just arbitrarily pinned a label on the ultimate stuff.

What properties does this ultimate stuff have?
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[plumjam]I could spend 20 minutes doing that for you. However, I think I won't bother. You don't seem of a mindset for whom my effort would be worthwhile.[/plumjam]
 
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Been thinking about this a bit more.

For this to matter Plumjam must be a substance dualist. If this all consists of the universal consciousness understanding that it is a universal consciousness, what difference does it make? And how did it not know that it was the universal consciusness? That doesn't sound much like God to me.
 
plumjam said:
How is your life completely distinguishable from an act of imagination? It isn't really.
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Just so long as you are prepared to believe that you composed Bach and Mozart's works, wrote Paradise Lost and The Tempest and that you formulated Einstien's Theory of Relativity then no, there is no difference.

But if it is possible that one or more of those artifacts might be beyond your own talents and skills then there would seem to be a very, very big distinction between imagination and life.
 
volatile said:
[plumjam]I could spend 20 minutes doing that for you. However, I think I won't bother. You don't seem of a mindset for whom my effort would be worthwhile.[/plumjam]
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Indeed he is always running out of time when it comes to providing detail, reasoning and evidence.

One day he will realise that he can save even more time by not making these silly claims in the first place.
 
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