Good point, although philosophers are not likely to talk about this as it’s more a theological issue.
We are probably unable to think in terms of union in this sense as everything we know and experience is composed of two, or more parts.
To perceive an object, you just need the object to be present in the space. To say objects are related, they must work together to produce action, movement or operation, or another object.
Or you could say you and your brother is related, because you are originated from the same parents sharing the gene.
Well, yes, I think it does. My original response to your OP question was that it’s possible to think about existence in essentialist or natural-kind terms, but it’s incorrect. What’s interesting is that, in this very abstract case, the difference between “meaningful” and “correct” (or “meaningless” and “incorrect”) is thin! I think it’s perfectly reasonable for different philosophers to come down on either side of that difference.
I think we’re getting very close here.
I also find it more convincing to see “existence” as something that emerges from structure, rather than something simply assigned as a label.
The only point I would still question is whether this makes relation merely relative or subjective.
It seems to me that the structure itself — the distinctions that allow anything to appear as “something” — might not depend on any particular subject, but instead be what makes both subject and object possible in the first place.
Thanks for sharing the archive thread. I’ll take a look.
That’s a really interesting point.
If the distinction between “meaningful” and “correct” becomes so thin at this level, it seems to suggest that the framework in which we draw such distinctions is itself not as fixed as we might assume.
I see your point about immediate perception.
But when you say you “just see an apple,” do you mean you see it as an apple, rather than something else?
If so, doesn’t that already involve a kind of differentiation — even if we don’t explicitly think of it as a relation?
OK, I am trying to understand the point you are making here. Why would you see an apple as something else?
What differentiation could it be? In other words, differentiation from what? Are there any other objects nearby the apple which hinders to see the apple as apple?
I see what you mean — I’m not suggesting that there needs to be another object nearby.
What I have in mind is not a physical distinction, but a conceptual one.
When we see something as an apple, it seems to already involve distinguishing it from not-apple — even if no other object is present.
So the differentiation I’m pointing to is not between objects in space, but between what something is and what it is not.
I see what you mean. Clearly we agree that there is “what it is”, which you are seeing, but there is no “what is not” which doesn’t exist.
Why do you want to differentiate which exists from which doesn’t exist? Isn’t seeing the existence as it appears not enough?
That’s a really good point — I agree that “what is not” doesn’t exist in the same way as what is.
I’m not suggesting that “what is not” exists as a thing.
Rather, I’m wondering whether it still plays a role in how something can appear as what it is.
In other words, even if “not-apple” is not something that exists, it might still be involved in what allows something to be recognized as an apple.
The reason you can perceive apple as apple is, because you have eyes which is your visual sense organ. If you want to test and verify it, it is simple.
Please close your eyes, and try to see. You will see nothing. You will only see the total darkness, and everything will disappear. Now open your eyes, and you will see the apple, and whatever is in front of you.
Your eyes are connected to your brain which operates your thought. Your thought can tell what is seen with your eyes, and differentiate it is an apple, not orange.
I think that’s a very clear explanation of the perceptual process, and I agree with you that vision and the brain play an essential role.
What I’m wondering about is slightly different: even within that process, when the brain identifies something as an apple rather than an orange, it seems to rely on a kind of differentiation.
So my question is not about the biological mechanism, but about the structure that makes that identification possible at all — what allows something to be taken as this and not that.
Sure, constraint is by definition relational.
I mean anything we talk about is going to be relative to the creature in question - in our case human beings.
All I’m raising is that the possibility of something existing absent anything else is not logically impossible. It may not hold of the world as we experience it, but again, nature does not care what we are able to think.
It may also be metaphysically impossible to have an object absent anything else. But we don’t know enough to say if it is possible or impossible.
So, it boils down to logical possibility and metaphysical possibility. We are in terrain in which we quickly cease to make much headway that would give us a confident answer in either direction (as I see it).
My explanation was not purely biological, but the chain of perception starting with the visual organ (eyes) which is connected to the brain via the neural networks. The brain performs thinking process using your past experience and consciousness to identify the perceived objects.
The thinking process, although is based on the biological system, it is important to understand that they are mental processes, which emanated from the cognitive network which is composed of the sense organ, neural network and brain, and generates reasoning and judgements, and even linguistic expressions.
Maybe this is where I’m heading, and I might be wrong — but I’m starting to wonder whether this has something to do with the limits of our cognition.
Since our perception and thinking always operate through distinctions, it might be that we cannot but experience the world in relational terms.
So even if relations are not something we “see” directly, they might be unavoidable in how the world appears to us.
I’ve been following the conversation with interest.
One scenario invokes the picture of our experience as inevitably operating through distinctions, so we must experience the world in relational terms. Another scenario invokes the picture of a world that can be seen directly, one in which relations could be seen as such, without the modification described in the first scenario.
Here’s my question: How could we tell the difference? Phrasing it slightly differently: What would count as confirmation of one scenario versus the other?
That’s a really important question, and I’m not sure that there is a clear way to empirically distinguish between the two scenarios.
It might be that any attempt to confirm one over the other would already rely on the very structures in question — namely, distinctions and relations.
If that’s the case, then the difference between the two scenarios may not be something we can step outside of our experience to verify, but rather something that shows up as a limit of how we can think about experience at all.
The only problem is that I can perceive an object without any other objects next to it, or related to it.
That’s my suspicion too. So the other direction to take is a transcendental argument, which is where you’re going, I think. If we can show that one or the other scenario is necessary in order to explain the possibility of X, that would justify choosing that scenario. I’m saying “X” rather than, say, “experience” or “reality” or something equally unclear, because part of the problem with “going transcendental” is specifying exactly what thing/event/perspective we’re trying to establish the grounds for.
I think that’s a very helpful way of framing it, and yes — I do find myself moving in that transcendental direction.
And I agree that the key difficulty is specifying what exactly “X” is.
If I had to put it provisionally, I think the “X” I have in mind is something like the possibility of identifying something as this rather than that — the possibility of differentiation itself.
My intuition is that whatever makes that possible might already involve something like a relational structure.