Consider the following list of things: unicorns, the planet saturn, cantaloupe, neon gray, the Eiffel tower, the 15th emperor of Antarctica
If we remove all experiencing entities from the equation, can we sort this list into “exists” or “doesn’t exist”? Is existence only a meaningful concept by virtue of the fact that we experience some things and not others? Is objective reality made up of all possible things until an “experiencer” is introduced to distinguish what is real from what is not?
As a related question, what is the ontological status of things which “are” but can’t be verified. Does “to be” only apply to things that we know to exist?
As another thought experiment, imagine that there are two possibilities for the universe: 1) the universe is spatially boundless 2) somewhere out there, there is a boundary to the universe we cannot cross.
If the universe is boundless, there will always be corners of the universe where there are things we canot verify. If there is an impassable boundary, then there could still be something outside of the boundary which we could never prove the existence of. Are such things “real” or does reality only include what can be shown to exist?
I may have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick here but it sounds like you’re asking the question “would the world still exist in the absence of anything that experiences it?”
Quantum mechanics is moving inexorably towards the view that we must reject what Robert Griffiths (in his Consistent Histories interpretation of quantum mechanics) called “unicity” – the view that there is a metaphysically real world that we, as observers, are discovering as we go along.
In his paper On Quantum Mechanics Carlo Rovelli writes “the incorrect notion that generates the unease with quantum mechanics is the notion of observer-independent state of a system.”
John Wheeler writes “We used to think the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, we the observer safely hidden behind a one-foot thick slab of plate glass, not getting involved, only observing. However, we’ve concluded in the meantime that that isn’t the way the world works. In fact we have to smash the glass, reach in.”
Have you looked into Meinong ? I have to understand what “unicorn” means to understand that it’s an example of an entity that doesn’t “exist” in the dominant practical/empirical sense of the word “exist.” But unicorns exist in a broader sense for us to meaningfully debate their ( merely) empirical existence.
Some people believe in ghosts, because ( they’d say ) they’ve seen them, etc. Others believe in Bigfoot. For context, I’m on the skeptical side. No ghosts, no Bigfoot. So I’m likely to think that others hallucinated or misinterpreted. Until I see Bigfoot or ghosts myself !
I refer again to Meinong. But also emphasize that people use “exist” in “trillions” of ways. To me philosophy is not Chess with universal fixed concept stuff. There’s a monological style in philosophy that obscures “how meaning works.” Basically philosophers tend to need a certain kind of concept Chess to be possible. Ergo, tacitly, concepts are whatever they need to be so that such a game is secured.
I think Kant used something like this to argue for the “unreality” of space. To me it at least helps us find a glitch in what we take for granted. Can’t imagine endless space. Can’t imagine a boundary.
For a phenomenalist ( and some of Kant’s passages are like this ), the empirically real refers at least to possible experience.
The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience.
There is nothing actually given—we can be conscious of nothing as real, except a perception and the empirical progression from it to other possible perceptions.
But folks disagree about Kant’s “things in themselves.” To me the least mystified view is to understand such “things in themselves” as the logical grip that we share on an object that we allow further manifestation. The thing isn’t finished showing up yet. Maybe aliens tell us something we didn’t know about sardines, because they have sense organs that we don’t, etc.
Very cool that some physicists, for their own reasons, end up with an analogy of a move within philosophy.
This “plate glass” between us and the object can be pointed out as an assumption. A deep assumption that is difficult to question at first. Because it is so “obvious” within this or that community.
Inquiry has tended to try and see itself as hovering over the situation like a god with perfectly clean hands. We get the metaphor of a pure seeing. At the everyday scale, seeing doesn’t disturb the object. Or we don’t see the disturbance of the object implicit in our seeing.
You can’t really ‘experience’ mathematical proofs in any meaningful sense. You can understand them, but I don’t think you could describe that as any kind of experience. ‘Someone asked me what 8 plus 7 is, and I experienced the answer as 15’. I don’t think so.
They’re all very big questions deserving of an essay-length response. My view, which is not mainstream, is that the reality of any object in a general sense does always include a subject for whom the object of definition is real. That is Schopenhauer’s ‘no object without a subject’. But it has to be interpreted carefully. It shouldn’t be taken to mean that ‘the thing ceases to exist when not perceived’. When it’s not perceived or considered then plainly nothing can be said about it but that doesn’t imply its non-existence. Imagining it not existing is a projection. (I’ve written an essay on this topic, The Mind-Created World.)
Metaphysical realism, as it is called. This is the aspect of quantum physics that Einstein could never accept. Wheeler said, in another paper Law without Law, that
The dependence of of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists “out there” independent of all acts of observation.
No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon. …A phenomenon is not yet a phenomenon until it has been brought to a close by an irreversible act of amplification such as the blackening of a silver bromide emulsion or the triggering of a photodetector. In broader terms, we find that nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes on its inexorable way. Instead what answer we get depends upon the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to happen.
The lesson of quantum mechanics is that before that ‘irreversible act’, it can’t be said what, actually, exists in terms other than the probabilistic.
I have often heard it argued that we cannot apply categories, including existence, that have evolved within the human lifeworld outside that context. I can see a certain point to this assertion, but I also think that when we are asking whether things exist wholly independently of humans we are not asking whether they exist in the same sense (as their sensory apprehensions) but whether the things we perceive are “in themselves” real somehow distinct complexes or structures, even if strictly unimaginable to our sense-world evolved minds.
Everything exists. But they exist in categories.
Unicorns exist in imagination. The planet Saturn exists in the space. The Eiffel tower exists in Paris France on Earth. Cantaloupe exists in the market. Neon gray exists on some products.
Even nothing exists in space, where we see nothing but space in the space.
Existence means something exists it doesn’t matter where.
Existence can be classified into imagined, physical (material, real), believed and possible existence.
“God exists.” means the claimer believes that God exists unless he saw God in real life.
This is a typical case of imagined / possible existence. There is no proof either the edge of the universe exists or doesn’t exist.
Even if the material existence is unknown, the imagined / possible existence exists.
Easy answer—“Reality” and “existence” are metaphysical entities, absolute presuppositions. In the Collingwoodian universe, and mine, absolute presuppositions are not true or false. They are useful—they have what Collingwood called “logical efficacy”—or they are not.
It is my understanding cosmologists say the universe is finite but unbounded. There is no end, like the surface of a sphere has no end.
Although the universe is unbounded, you can’t get there from here. Most of it is so far away that it’s moving away from us faster than the speed of light. And yes, it can travel faster than the speed of light because that limit applies only to travel within space, not to the expansion of space itself.
The idea that the universe comes into existence only when there are conscious observers is a common metaphysical position which has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. The one I’m most familiar with is Taoism. This is from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Let’s say you blindfold me, take me to some unknown location, remove the blindfold, and ask me to describe or draw what I see. Then you do the same with someone from another part of the world who I do not know, or know of, and who does not know, or know of, me. If we describe or draw the same thing, is that not evidence that what we saw exists regardless of anyone seeing it?
Perhaps mathematical proofs exist, but their nature is such that understanding them is how they are experienced? What I mean is, maybe we cannot limit experienced to “what our organs of perception experience”, or something like that?
Social constructs are examples of things that “are” but as things they can’t be verified (directly).
For example, a marriage doesn’t reflect light, it doesn’t propagate sound, emit particles etc. Its ontological status depends on an entrenched habit, tradition, beliefs, etc. As far as verification goes, marriages are “verified” indirectly by a written contract and witnesses of the authenticity of the signatures or the ceremony.
Unlike molecules, for instance. Molecules exist regardless of witnesses or our knowledge or use of the word ‘molecule’ etc.
Conversely, the nature of fundamental physics won’t change the ontological status of social constructs. Not even if there was some underlying wholeness that unifies everything (as suggested by David Bohm).
There’s basic distinction in philosophy between the sensible (able to be sensed) and the rational (able to be understood or grasped by reason.) Mathematical proofs are the latter; the symbols are acquired by sense but their interpretation is performed by reason.
David Bohm, I believe. Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
I understand. But I’m wondering if understanding or interpreting are types of experiencing. Different types of experiencing than the ways we experience the existence of things with our physical senses.
The notion of “experience” used in the OP is much broader than just human visual experience. @Wayfarer gives a description in his essay for which he provided a link in this post: Experience defines existence? - #5 by Wayfarer
Regardless of the manner of experiencing the environment, if two people have the same specific experience of the environment, is that not evidence that there is something objective and consistent in the environment?
