But I’m not sure that everyday perception is as “direct” or relation-free as it might seem.
Even in immediate experience, we seem to distinguish — between object and background, between one thing and another, or even between perceiver and perceived.
Those distinctions don’t appear as separate objects, but they seem to structure the experience itself.
So I’m wondering whether what feels like “direct perception” is already shaped by relational structure, rather than being independent of it.
I think that’s part of what makes this so interesting — the way philosophy and science intersect.
They seem to approach similar questions from different angles, and bringing them together often opens up new ways of thinking.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it sounding “unscientific” — these kinds of questions are difficult precisely because they sit at the boundary between the two.
That’s interesting — I can see the connection to transcendental idealism.
At the same time, I’m not entirely sure I want to frame it in terms of mind or cognition alone.
What I’m trying to get at is perhaps a bit more structural — whether what we call “existence” depends on relations or distinctions more generally, rather than on the mind specifically.
So I’m still trying to understand whether this should be thought of primarily as a feature of cognition, or as something more fundamental to how anything can appear at all.
Can mind exist on its own? In both Buddhism and phenomenology mind and world are said to be co-arising, although they come to that from very different backgrounds.
Yes, that’s very close to how I’ve been thinking about it.
It seems that the moment we try to think of something “on its own,” it is already situated within a network of relations — at least between thinker and thought, and between different elements within thought.
Which makes me wonder whether the idea of something truly “on its own” is not just difficult, but perhaps impossible to even formulate clearly.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that mind and world co-arise — especially in both Buddhist and phenomenological traditions.
At the same time, this is partly why I’m hesitant to frame the issue primarily in terms of mind.
If mind and world always arise together, then neither seems to stand on its own, and the more basic question might be about the structure that allows for this co-arising in the first place.
So I’m wondering whether “relation” might be a better way to approach this — not as something between independently existing things, but as what makes both mind and world possible at all.
It would sound odd to say “I am related to the tree, because I am standing in front of it.” It makes sense just to say “I am standing in front of the tree.”
Immediate perception is able to tell the objects and also the back ground, and our judgement and understanding can make further knowledge with the expressions.
Every material objects exist independently on their own. They could work together when assembled to perform certain jobs. Maybe in that case, they could be looked as related? But they are related in the sense of performing the job, not because we see them next to each other.
As @Wayfarer has been saying, this topic is gigantic. But just to follow up on one thing:
I’ve said a lot - maybe too much! – in other threads about why I think it would be better to retire the term “existence” from philosophical discourse. (I know this will never happen; it’s a bit of a Modest Proposal.) But let’s say we take Quine’s use of the term, as referenced above by @noAxioms. If “to be” means “to be the value of a bound variable,” then we have our answer to @Jin’s question: Such a formulation is relational through and through. “Being a value” is not a natural kind, an essence, etc.
This also speaks to what Jin says above, concerning “the conceptual structures through which we apprehend” objects. A Quinean ontology is not idealist. The role of the mind is ineliminable in order to speak meaningfully of “what exists,” but not because mind creates these things.
I find Quine’s position very compelling, especially the idea that “to be is to be the value of a bound variable.”
In that sense, he gives us something like the grammar of existence — a way to speak clearly about what there is within a logical framework.
But at the same time, I’m not sure that this grammar is self-sufficient.
In order for something to count as “the value of a variable,” there must already be a field in which distinctions can be drawn, identities can be tracked, and relations can obtain.
That is, the very possibility of applying Quine’s criterion seems to presuppose a more basic relational structure.
So while Quine clarifies how we talk about existence, I’m inclined to question the ground that makes such talk possible in the first place.
In that sense, I’m not denying the logical framework, but asking whether the conditions that make it intelligible are themselves relational.
Quite rightly. Quine was only half-serious when he proposed this formula; he offered it in the spirit of, “Well, if you insist on arguing about existence and being, why not confine yourself to what logic requires?” I think the idea is fairly useful, though. However, it raises what we might call a “level-up” question: Are the terms “value” and “bound variable” themselves candidates for quantification? I think they would have to be, or else we’d be talking in a meaningless way. But then, if they already “exist” on Quine’s formula, how can they be constitutive of what it means to exist? Again, there is something Zen-like and playful about Quine’s position here – kind of like “Unask the question!” – but I like that.
I cannot see any relations working at all, when I see a guitar, oranges and apples. They are all independent and separate objects just happen to be in the space.
If I think they are related, then it would be my imagination. I don’t see anything called “relation” in the space or world.
It is just a concept in the mind. I don’t need “relation” to be able to tell the each objects. I just know them by immediate perception.
Seems it would be at the discretion of each individual, most choosing a distinction they find pragmatic, thus avoiding any problems like “why is there something and not nothing?”. Answer: It’s pragmatic to consider things available to you to exist, i.e. to acknowledge that they relate to you.
So consider the current ID argument for a deity: The universe has all these universal constants and settings (like say the fine structure constant. Only very precise settings of all these constants allows for structures that evolve observers. How to explain this? Naive answer is by intelligent design. But it’s a real problem if you only consider this universe to exist and not any other. If the die was rolled only once, yea, it’s super improbable that it came up with numbers optimal for humans.
Heh… I did a topic on that as well. ‘Thing’, like ‘exists’, seems to be an ideal, a concept only. Physics seems not to recognize a ‘thing’. Read the topic if you’re interested.
You can always define existence as ‘part of the structure’, which of course is a relation to the structure, not an objective definition.