What is a thing?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
101

The former is in the head, an imagination, taking the form of a car, named as “car” when pointing to the imagination with a word.
The latter is in the world, transporting bodies, getting into crashes, reflecting light waves, etc.

You said “the latter is the former.” All I can say is, huh? That’s either idealism (which I know you didn’t intend), or I don’t know what you are trying to say. I’m trying to be metaphysical (observe something about all things being things), about physical objects.

I get that. Particular type thing like a car universalized as “car”, and general type entity like a thing, already universal. So what word do you want to use to refer to stuff in a room - chairs, computer screen, rug, cat, mat, etc? Can we understand that when I point to those things, I don’t want to focus our attention on the pointing, or the word “things”? I want see if I can point to how the cat and the computer keyboard aren’t one unit.

The question “what is a thing” is also “how can there be an individuated unit” or “what is whatness” or “what is identity” or “how can something have an identity” or “what makes a difference between this and that” - these are my single question. How in the continuum of motion, does any thing last long enough to stand out separate from the continuum as a unity, unlike the rest, to be called something particular? What is any one thing being one thing doing?

OR, am I living in my head, pretending the things I imagine about the things in the world have anything to do with the world? (My answer is, no wonder I am confused, the things in world only rest as “a thing” for small moments, and during those moments, they rest from change and motion and undoing and unresting, but I digress back to the metaphysical point I was trying to make!)

I think you are talking about the fact that we have to use words to point to anything. And further, you don’t like that I used a universal type - “Thing” - to start with. We can talk about language later. Is there anything we can say about why I believe my keyboard is a separate thing from my computer screen and my hand in the real, objective world of things? Or is it pure moving appearances, imagined in my mind, and actually there are no differences in the world, in these things I call “things”?

As soon as one says “no, it’s not all in your head, there are real differences between land and sea, and the shoreline is not a line only in your imagination” you are starting to build the components that address “what is a thing”. And to skip ahead, I’m saying now, the reason people something don’t bother to say anything clear and absolute differentiating land and sea in the world, is not just because we have such great power of imagination, it is because the line between land and sea itself is in motion, and land, standing all alone, all by itself, is itself resting as land from change. Change is what spins up whatness.

Definitely not. This is all counter-intuitive to me, and I am looking for someone who understands it, who gets inside of it, to show me where it is wrong. You seem to be saying there is nothing to get inside of here, or nothing deep to understand if anything, so nothing that needs to be refined from it, or nothing there to be completely dismantled. I am saying, you have dismissed it without seeming to be aware of what it is that I am saying - what Heraclitus said.

So you are skipping over my point! It’s a point that anti-realists and nominalists and even idealists in some cases cannot skip over.

You just said that what you suggested words do is point to a world outside, point to what I am calling things. So screw the words for a minute. You said there is a world of differences outside between this and that - a real world - an objective world in itself regardless of words and minds. Where I said words point in two different directions, one being back inward to the mind using the word, and the other direction being outward to the world of things - you said “This is, in fact, what I suggested it [a word] does.”

Ok. Great. On the same page.

What I said about this outward world is that it contains fixed things. I said one word pointing to one fixed thing. That is focused now on the one, outward direction of a functioning word. So again, let’s forget about the word and the mind that names things with words - let’s just talk about the thing, in the world.

That thing, stands still, as a distinct unit, different from all others for a moment, only while stirring, only while becoming. So standing still as a unit, happens in the world, from that unit’s particular spinning motions. We individual things are such as long as we are binding (verb) ourselves together, resisting (verb) from dissolution.

After we get this simple point about the world, we can go back to our words and say “but how come what I call a ‘sea’ you call it an ‘ocean’, and others call it a ‘body of water’, but I’ve heard of an ‘ocean of sand’ - what is it about ‘a sea’ that allows it to be distinct as a sea and nothing else?” Now we can have your conversation and talk about how hard it is to define words with words, and to place properties on bald “x entities” and call properties ‘essential’ - these are problems that come afterwards. The only reason I personally bother to struggle with you to figure out what you mean and show you what I mean, is because I think what I mean can be seen in the world. I’m not trying to get you to understand me - I’m trying to see if what I say about the world is something you would say about the world, thus providing further evidence to me that what we both say has to do with an objective world, and not just what is in our heads.

You seem to be focused on “something for the thinker’s thoughts to assess” regardless of the world. I am focused on an assessment of the world, regardless of thinker’s thoughts.

No one in this thread has really touched my point. That means to me one of two things: no one understands me, or I am imagining/speculating to such a degree it does not reflect anything concrete enough for anyone else to see. I think, because I cannot imagine the opposite of what I’m saying (because I can’t imagine things being things unless they remained things becoming things), that no one is really understanding this. It’s speculative, but so simple it’s clearly true, and so the fact that no one is impressed means I haven’t made it as clear to you as the world makes it clear to me.

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Yes, I follow you. I find that the man chained to the wall of Plato’s cave who thought shadows were real objects paints a similar image as the Kantian, constructivist subject. But Kant made this point most clearly, and philosophy will forever have to address this epistemological problem. I say we all live behind a veil of phenomenology, possibly completely cut off from any direct access to reality. (But what I am saying here in this post challenges this complete disconnection - I am saying things in the themselves rest from change, which is why the mind has categories “changing and resting permanent” - the mind’s categories follow from the world, and are not simply imposed upon the world - but let’s go on.)

This is the big question. Are things in the themselves really a source of data? Does the difference between this thing and that thing that I see/perceive come from that thing in itself and the other thing in itself? Is there data to be merely gathered/observed/sensed/perceived before my mind invents distinctions? Or, without my mind, is there nothing distinct in itself?

I don’t even like calling anything “chaotic noise” when trying to make Kant’s point, because chaos requires many different things in themselves at once, foiling peace, such that a distinct “clang” has to overcome a simultaneously fading but distinct “honk” immediately replaced by a seeming “hum” that once paid attention to is completely drowned out by a sharp series of “blasts” - and we have many clear and ordered and distinct forms again, differentiating themselves from each other regardless of my mind that can only call them “chaos” because I am too slow-witted to assimilate and live in this chaotic world. Chaos itself is only noticed through short-lived peaceful moments of clarity. Otherwise, chaos would remain like a white noise, possibly calming and no different than oneness or nothingness.

So if Kant wants to retain the world of things in themselves as chaos, he is saying he has direct access to the world.

But your point is taken. The question is, how much of what I call “this thing” is the way that thing is, because of what I do in my head with experience, and how much of “this same thing” is the way this thing is, because of this thing in itself?

That seems like the right balance. It also seems like it could be made to be seen as an adaptation of Plato/Aristotle. The veto is the eternal form regardless of the particular approximation, or the veto is the essence regardless of secondary properties.

That move, to me, doesn’t add anything. That is just new words for the distinction between noumena and phenomena.

Then why ever speak of “effectiveness”? What slide-rule can there be to recognize “effective”? This is why this type of thinking does not really augment or add to the picture. He shouldn’t say “effectiveness” at all if there is no objective truth, but he does, which contradicts himself.

Right - if we allow the contradiction by talking about “effectiveness” regardless of whatever thing in themselves may actually be, if we find that phenomena (not noumena) seem to define themselves as effective phenomena, then really the subject who defines the phenomenal (who creates the phenomena) is the same subject who adjudicates its phenomenal effectiveness, and all such moments (phenomenal things and their effectiveness) are now relative, changing, with nowhere outside the subject to measure anything. All is as accurate as it is erroneous, as it is effective, as it fails - depending on the subject alone. This simply says “it’s okay to live the delusion of effectiveness because we are utterly cut-off from anything else anyway.” Which is where Kant left us, and brings us back to the basic epistemological question: how much of what we know relates to the world, and how much is shaped by our minds?

I think these conclusions muddle the moving parts that gave birth to the questions. The distinction between “laws of physics” and “models that describe them”, or between “reality is objective and independent” and “the way we know as not of the nature of existence itself” - these are not clarifying. They side-step. The notion: “The more accurately a model corresponds to the “questions” of reality, the greater its functional weight.” - this sounds profound, but, in forcing the word “accurately” it makes a sort of over-complication of an idea that is more like the Piaget notion: “knowledge is not simply ‘creativity’ but a continuous dialogue with the world, where reality has veto power.”

If we can never admit there can be knowledge of the world in itself, to some degree, in some direct and unmediated way, we become merely the fabricators of our own chaos. We each live alone in our own chaoses.

I would rather admit there is no knowledge, that we are deluded every time we say “that thing in itself really is harder than that other thing”, than admit that we can have no direct access to anything beyond the contents of the mind while we go on using words like “effectiveness” and “accurately”. Effective where? Accurate as opposed to what?

I agree with that statement. I think it is accurate. It would be effective to make this distinction as we manage our lives in the world. The reason I think it is accurate and would be effective, is from my direct access to things in the world - to some small but meaningful degree. “Human” refers to a distinct “what” or “thing” in the world, unlike any other thing.

Yes - although we haven’t really gotten to defining any particular thing, and the “human” is a particularly complex thing. I’m trying to define a barley-drink, in the world.

But only humans bother to try to define anything, or use symbolic representations called words like “thing”, that reflect both their inner mind AND objects in the world simultaneously.

I don’t think this helps resolve it - it restates it. My question remains. You assume here “we don’t live in the world directly.” This is clear since Kant. But I think that Kant is imprecise. We DO live in the world. In order to think about this life in the world we construct ideas about the world, and in order to communicate with each other about our ideas about the world, we construct words. But life in the world is the given; our minds and their contents are not the given. The categories of thought may be given, but these categories remain indiscernible and indistingushable from each other absent a world in itself to fill them with content (sort of Hegelian). Cutting the subject off from the world is a consequence of spinning up a thought about life in the world - but being cut-off from the world is an activity (like swimming cuts off the swimmer from the bottom of the sea). We aren’t fundamentally and unavoidably in a solipsistic state. This is why we bother to try to know - to bridge that gap we created in the first place by thinking about life in the world instead of just living in it. We are thinking, and in the moments we are thinking, we are cutting our ideas about the world off from the world that those ideas are about. But we never live anywhere else, we just add our own minds to the experience.

But all of this is, like you said, the epistemology of it. It brings up theories of mind as well - what is knowledge, and how do we think?

I agree these areas are necessary to address for anything I say about the world to be made wisdom. There is much more I need to say besides “life is bound up in change, as all is an exchange, fire for all things and all things for fire.”

These are other motions and activities to me. They have their own “things” (like ideas, or knowledge, or representation, or thought). I am saying, if we call it a thing, it can only distinguish itself as a thing where it rests from change.

This is straight metaphysics, or ontology.

As an aside, I see why you brought up the epistemology. And why @AmadeusD brought up language. Another of my ideas is that one cannot simply do metaphysics, or simply do ontology, or simply do physics, or simply discuss how the mind operates, or reduce things to language - these subjects must all be addressed at once for any one of them to be addressed at all. This is an overwhelming realization.

The only way to really make one tiny point like “it rests from change” one needs to write a few volumes.

I sum this reality up like this: In order to say one thing, I must say many things. If I just say “that thing is” I’ve conjured up a world where over here is me, and over there is something else, and I’ve called it a “thing”, and implicated “being”, and language, and likely I’m am not saying this just to myself… In order to say one thing, I’ve already said many things.

But I digress. Despite the fact that I’ve said many things, I am trying to simply say “A thing is that which stands in the stirring.” (And no wonder when we try to say one thing we say many things at once: one thing is a stirring, a resting, a dynamism.)

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It doesn’t quite ring my bell. A thing is, to me, as said somewhere previously, a conceptual container, which holds the objects in the world by their names, like the river holds water and let it flow.

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Oh, I understand you perfectly. Well, the text cited here is clearly not what you’re looking for. The fact is, for the practical purposes I set myself, this justification is more than sufficient (as I mentioned, the work on social philosophy).

In the context of what you’re looking for, this is too simple a resolution. But you’ve astutely grasped that without studying how we know and what we can know (epistemology), we won’t be able to make progress in resolving what you’re holding in suspense (if that’s even possible in a single lifetime).

On the other hand, perhaps this holding back of the barley drink so it doesn’t settle is precisely the “being” itself. As you know, this is precisely the conclusion I came to earlier.

But we need to somehow continue living. We have to constantly resolve this very tension. Take mathematics, for example. It begins with the equation A = A. But here’s the interesting thing: I can’t think of a real-life example where two things are completely equal. Perhaps someone will succeed; it would be interesting to discuss. Therefore, as far as I can tell, there is no A in the world identical to any other A. Does this mean it’s nothing more than a construct?

So how can we understand the nature of being using the lenses (such as words or concepts) that we ourselves have invented for cognition?

This problem is a serious obstacle to any ontology. But this doesn’t mean we should stop there. It doesn’t mean we should follow in the footsteps of those who have resigned themselves to the “unknowable.”

Now a little about Glasersfeld. He writes about the Functional or the Useful. This is nothing more than an attempt to reconcile postpositivism with pragmatism. For what purpose? To avoid going crazy while performing everyday tasks. Understanding the dynamic nature of being opens many doors for us, opening the possibility of looking at ourselves differently, of rethinking our own nature. But this is likely a task for future generations, if we can focus on rethinking things (as dynamic) and engage people in it.

Finally, one last thing. Observing my dog and cat daily, I can’t say whether they lack abstract reason entirely or possess it to a sufficient degree. Of course, they fall short of humans in this regard. But sometimes it seems they have a greater access to immediate existence in the world than we do. At the very least, they are not as permeated with “concepts” and “categories.” The same can probably be said of a child: their pure mind is not yet burdened with constructs, hence the questions: “Daddy, tell me about love”… (we discussed this earlier).

Continuing this, we come to the conclusion that the more we know, the further we detach ourselves from reality itself and the more we don’t know (here Socrates is particularly appropriate). But phenomenology comes to our aid. It allows us to feel into the thing anew, in order to… take new photographs (which we will then dissect with new enthusiasm)!

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A few more important points that made me think:

Notice how you write: “I perform [operations] in my head, based on experience.” That phrase says a lot. For example, how do you know you’re doing this specifically “in my head”? Why not in your soul? Not in your heart, not in your body? Not in your spinal cord? Not outside yourself? =)

Aymara would chuckle =) The thing is, I’ve heard at least three or four different approaches to where this thinking process occurs. But we say “in my head.” It seems self-evident, so much so that we simply take it and use it. But we don’t know that! We don’t know where our thinking process takes place. I don’t want to go into all of this; what was important to me here was to show how dependent we are on dominant ideas!!!

And here I’d like to expand on this a bit. I did some research on it. The problem of identity has been known for quite some time, dating back to Leibniz. Here’s a short excerpt:

But, as has been noted innumerable times, although this thesis is true, it is trivially true (e.g., Adams 1979: 11, Van Cleve 2002: 389–90, to mention just two philosophers who have made the point). For no two objects, a and b, can share all their properties. For if they did, they would also share their properties of identity (i.e., the properties of being identical with a and being identical with b > ) and their properties of difference (e.g., the properties of being numerically different from a and being numerically different from b > ), and many other similar properties. But if they shared these properties, a and b would not be two objects. Therefore, necessarily, any two objects must differ in at least some such properties—but that any two objects differ at least with respect to their properties of identity and difference is a triviality.

In short, A can only be exactly equal to A if they are the same thing.

And here’s where the most difficult part for processual ontology begins. In mathematics, A = A. Mathematics doesn’t require two apples to be identical. It requires the “one” at the beginning of the equation to be the same “one” at the end. When we speak of being-as-process, we are essentially declaring: “There is no ‘A,’ there is only process” (essentially consisting of a process of retention and a process of change).

According to Nietzsche, Reality is a constant process of becoming. But a being that sees the world as an endless chaos of change finds it difficult to hunt and reproduce. He concludes that the will to truth can only exist under conditions of falsification of reality.

For example, aphorism 512 from his book “The Will to Power”

Logic is tied to the condition: if there are identical cases. In reality, logical thinking and inference require that these conditions be accepted as already fulfilled. This means: the will to logical truth can only be realized when a fundamental falsification of everything that happens is undertaken. Hence the dominance of instinct, capable of both: first falsification and then the implementation of a particular point of view; logic does not originate in the will to truth.

And here we come to the problem: If we begin to deny even the idea that a thing is equal to itself in time, we can fall into such a radical tide that it is impossible to construct even equations at all. After all, the unit at the end of the equation (if we take ontology exclusively) ceases to be the unit it was at the beginning: to it must be added (or subtracted) exo-tension and endo-tension multiplied by the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the formula (and moreover, dynamism is most often a nonlinear process).

So we come to the center of the whole problem: Even if we manage to grasp something at a certain moment in time (which postmodern philosophers consider a foolish idea), this will not solve all our problems, since objects are alive. They keep changing.

Hence, I can say with great confidence that “dynamic cognition,” even if pure, is extremely difficult for a single person. Phenomenology is, of course, good, but look how costly (in terms of the body’s resources) one single simple act of “feeling into how a thing is given before experience” can be! Perhaps in the future, this limitation can be overcome, thanks to quantum computers.

Therefore, I see the role of the contemporary philosopher not as approaching the truth, but as suggesting a path forward. But this is only my humble opinion.

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A thing to me is, as you say, an “object in the world”. Like, I’ve never had to duck to avoid getting hit by a conceptual container - I had to duck to avoid getting hit by some thing, some object in the world.

So my post, for you, should have been titled, “What is an object in the world.” Heraclitus said “it rests with change.” I think Heraclitus’ concept of a thing, of an object in the world, rings my bell.

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So, my reference to “in my head” was imprecise. I meant something “because of my influence on the thing I am observing” - this influence could come from metaphors like my head, my heart, my soul, my neural activity…" This is all theory of mind stuff. I merely meant, like Kant meant by the categorical conditions of experience - how much of a distinction between ocean and land comes from the water and the earth, and how much comes from subjective categorical conditions like extension, space/time, cause/effect, my ways of thinking. “My head” was shorthand for the conditions of experience that reshape noumena (presumably) into the phenomena I experience.

I agree. Even if you have “X” here, and an identical “X” next to it, they take up two different spaces, so they can be distinguished, and so “X = X” must mean something else besides, the two Xs are the same X.

I think this issue opens up the question: what is the ontology of an idea? How can an idea, or mental construct, be a thing? You have to be assuming something when you ask “Does this mean it’s nothing more than a construct?” You have to say that regular things in the world are of a different type than ideal constructs (say, in the mind/head/heart/soul/functioning conscious brain). Maybe so. I’m not directly dealing with that question here. It is immediately an important and obvious question, and I am looking forward to getting there, but for now, I am just saying something about things, such that, each thing might not be identical to any other thing - each thing might be unique.

Maybe I can’t avoid going there.

There are things.
There are ideas we construct about these things
There are words used to communicate about these ideas, which are about things.

I am trying not to make a thing out of the ideas, nor of the words. I am trying to just see one thing. I am trying to just let the world speak for itself - and provide direct access - sort of equate knowing with seeing or touching (but not as equals, as metaphor). What is THAT type of thing doing in order to maintain itself as a unit, as a thing?

I would say, this problem is a serious obstacle to metaphysics, and to communicating metaphysically about the physical world. But if we sit naively for a bit longer, let the flowing change of becoming wash us, I find that I am always left with things, resting among their own changes.

I agree. We can stop there. I think if one concludes from motion that there is no thing-in-itself to be known about things, that all is tainted with the conditions of understanding, and/or that nothing is ever fixed long enough to be a thing, we should stop there, because speaking requiring fixing things still, stipulating definitions and meanings, and such definite meanings would be lies and falsities if nothing is ever fixed in itself. I say “there is an apple” but can only always mean “there is what I do not know and what will be gone before I can say more, if there is anything there at all.”

I would agree. If metaphysics is a fantasy, psychology and therapy against going crazy are the only remaining use of theoretical thinking; we must reconcile how it feels to be seeking knowledge while knowing there will never be anything satisfying ever. Philosophy and metaphysics are dead ends, so let’s be psychologists to see if we can build feelings of satisfaction some other way anyway.

This says a lot. I do agree we can learn a lot from animals about our own animal natures - we live in a physical world full of distinctions and moving objects where, absent direct access to this world, we would surely be killed by it. Animals survive for years with relative ease, probably due to the fact that concepts and thinking is not getting in their way, halting the flow that guides as it pushes.

But this again brings up theory of mind. Humans don’t need to think. We are animals. Being a musician taught me that. My best music is produced when my self-awareness and thought is turned off - I sort of become the song, and am carried by the rhythm and simple “muscle memory” (a metaphor), so much so, that I can improvise and create new melodies without planning or concern. There is a reason the greeks thought of inspiration coming from the Muses, coming from somewhere outside the mind and conscious thought. They reified art as inspired by the muses, but really, any physical activity can be perfected without thought - sports, repetitive manual labor - these things are animal, and require absolute connection from this thing in the world, with that other thing in the world. There are no concepts imposing or drawing lines between them.

But we aren’t just animals. And although thought and knowledge and intention can be likened to a disease or misfiring or over-baking of natural connection, thought and knowledge, I think, can reflect actual reality, and can be called “truth”.

And now we get back to epistemology. When I say “that apple is red” am I saying anything about an object in the world, or am I just saying something about a phenomena constructed for my experience, in my self? We could get into that, but to leap back to where I began this post, I would say, the apple might not be red, and it might not be an apple, or fruit, but if we don’t at least say, "it must be different than the table on which it sits (even if that table might be a desk, or a ledge); there are objective truths things declare of themselves enabling me to develop the contents of my experience in the phenomenal manner in which it comes to be developed. Our minds are accessing the world. And this is because there are things. And so I start there, and asked “but what makes a thing, a thing?” and agree with Heraclitus first.

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But a thing which is depicted for the scary or horror creatures which you hate, would make you cringe or run?

In that sense a thing could be an object. A mental object, which can move your body.

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I very much disagree. I cannot see how that could be the case. All you’ve done is describe the idea so that someone else knows what you’re thinking. You’re not actually pointing to anything. There is a semantic trick you can do here, though (you may be doing it?? Hard to tell.. You don’t look like you are though!) by saying “No, i am talking about the thing to which my idea attaches”. I find that empty, but in a Kantian sense, I guess I see where it could lead: No where, but a nowhere that one must accept to even accept that we get ideas from without. So I accept there’s a certain necessity involved here, but your two “versions” are the same thing to my mind, and od not delineate something from the idea. The idea is the thing (on my view, obviously).

Yes, and I find it hard to see how. I’ve been pretty explicit in both rejecting idealism, and telling you why my point stands: It has absolutely nothing to do with metaphysics. There is no indication, whatever, in my position, that I think there are no “things” out in the world. That is a different conversation to what “a thing” is. Because either its something we know, and can know, literally nothing about (as I see you picked up in your replies to Astorre) or it’s an idea that we use to talk about those things we know nothing about, by accepting phenomenology. These are all empirical situations and descriptions - at no point is there a suggestion (of any kind) about idealism/realism considerations. I am trying to get you to see (and I may be wrong obviously, but I don’t think so) that your question is semantic, and you’re looking for metaphysical answers. It, to me, is a dead end.

Yes, I understand wink

You sure can, but they are also a “thing” in concert, as is the room. Again, this is a semantic issue.

I thikn you’re very, very much jumping the gun heading towards those questions of “what is a thing” because what we mean by “thing” or what can even be done with “thing” are nowhere to be seen - those questions, then, are floating on an ocean of hot air imo.

I really do not understand what you could think you are asking here (that is not to be dismissive). I don’t know what you’re pointing at with any of these terms. “something in particular” seems to just be anything our senses can delineate. There’s nothing fancy going on there. It might be that the world is an amorphous blob. What do we care? We use words to understand our experiences. I cannot understand where you’re going…

Exactly what you’ve said it’s doing?? Sorry, can you be a bit more clear about what you might expect to see on the other side of that question? It seems you’ve answred it to me.

You don’t have access to it, so you can’t think that with any aplomb. To the question i think you’re probbaly asking: Because your eyes, ears, touch and taste tell you that things are different. You experience differentiates them, whether they are actually different or not. It doesn’t matter. Its the same logic as the simulation: It wouldn’t matter - we’re still conscious. Consciousness cannot be an illusion, because we are able to contemplate it. Whether or not the world is composed of different things (a safe bet, to be fair) that is exactly how we experience it - and that is what the word is for. Not the underlying stuff, whatever it might be (largely, because, as you accept, we have no access to it).

I think the next paragraph with the sea example quite explicitly states this confusion:

Is because almost everyone has the same experience of difference and that’s actually how we assess those things. The blue/gold dress example looms large..

Interesting - these all fall out of your posts as intuitions without any real argument behind them, it seems to me. I am sorry if that comes across derogatory - it’s not meant to be - I just genuinely cannot understand how this is counter-intuitive for you, but you’re not grokking basic, experience-based facts about how we use words to adjust those priors.

This is the exact attitude that has me thinking you are emotionally attached to this conclusion about “thingness”. I think (and obviously, I could be wrong, but i’ve reviewed the exchange a couple of times now) you have almost entirely ignored the crux of what i’ve said. If we’re talking past one another, then that’s a shame - but I am directly addressing your points as best I can tell - you just aren[t quite seeing the relevance of mine.

Not at all. Pointing out toward the world is completely different to pointing to a thing. This, to me, makes it very, very clear you are not understanding that you’re playing a semantic game for which there is no accessible underlying substrate. You seem to accept we can’t access the noumenal world. So, why are you pointing to it? Or pretending to, as I think is the case?

We literally cannot do this. I cannot understand how this is still being missed.

This, to me, is a literal nothing. I hate to say it, because I’m at risk of Jamal wading in and pretending I’ve been dismissive. This, to me, says absolutely nothing whatsoever. What is “while becoming” meant to mean? What experience am I suppose to attach that to? It smacks of new age language to me.

I think you are actively rejecting decent objections and then colouring it as “you just don’t get it”. I don’t like this. I think you’re above it.

The basic point is all of this is that I think you want to know what “a thing” is besides something we use to “point to” objects of experience. I don’t think that’s something available to the human mind. We invented to the word to do exactly that: point to objects of experience. They may not actually be different things, but in our experience we get that feeling, and describe that as “seeing multiple things” or whatever. Your questions seem to neglect this, and so come with no sense to which I can really glom on for the discusison. Does that at least clarify where I’m not getting you?

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You just differentiated between words that point to, and “objects of experience.”

What is the difference between them?

I think you think “objects of experience” are phenomenal only, not noumenal, because you said above “we don’t have access to it”.

You can end the conversation there. Kant did. And pretty much most philosophy since does.

Instead I wonder, how does Kant even know there is noumena triggering or contributing to the reconstructed data of our phenomenal experience? He doesn’t. His critique makes sense logically. My senses and thoughts re-conform the world to me, so I don’t access the actual, noumenal objects of experience - I access what I create for myself. This may be why you said above the world (presumably the noumenal world) may be an amorphous blob.

I am more Hegelian about all of that. I don’t care about the influence of my mind on the shape of experience, at least not for this inquiry. We will have to get to epistemology and language later.

I still find individuated, fixed units, or objects or simply things. They generate the categories of my mind as much as I do (in a sense). Not “things” in quotes. I’m not talking about me, or my mind, or language.

I think it makes more sense that there are things and we have direct access to them as we reshape them in only the way they can be reshaped, that the noumenal aspect of things is irrelevant and what we make of them is not merely a mental construction, but made in the objective world of other objects.

Otherwise, we could not communicate at all. But we do communicate (maybe not so much here, although I think I am following you.) You didn’t just accidentally above make a distinction between “things” in quotes and objects of experience. I make the same distinction here in my experience because, we share the same objective world and this distinction is made to us, for us, by us being in a world, because of the shape and nature of things being things and the nature of people being people. Kant basically says to me, be careful, because it is easy to be wrong.

But when he says unity and thinghood is all l, only mental construction and conditioning - I say, that works ina solipsistic universe of one subject only - but me and my dog when we are playing frisbee just don’t think Kant said enough.

We do need to address all of that, but I skipped ahead, with the bold metaphysical assertion (not argument) that there is motion. And from this motion, I found things persisting in it, and further, how thinghood appears is from the motion.

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No, not quite. What i did here was point out that the phrase “a thing” is literally a phrase used to pick out objects of experience, and does not have a metaphysical substrate. That is my entire point. You are missing it. Completely. I have to say, if I am drawn to this distinction again, I think i’ll need to leave off the discussion. I can only repeat myself so many times my friend. If you cannot understand what I’m saying, now that you have the above explication, I can’t help. I have no idea how to be clearer than I have been. I’d be happy to take that to DMs if you’re not grokking.

To get to your question: One of them (objects of experience) exist in the mind. These are hte objects about which we speak, and to which “thing” can be applied.

The other is noumena, to whcih we have no access. These are the assumed objects beyond perception about whihc we cannot speak. Therefore “a thing” has zero relevance to this facet of reality (if we can call it that). We have never, and can never, have language which refers to it(besides the trick i outlined in the previous reply).

I am again, have an extremely hard time understanding how this is missed. I’ve been directly explicit about it several times, in the appropriate places to the point that it doens’t quite feel like you’re reading me now. I do not say this to blather and complain - I say it to to be super-clear about why I can’t understand this, and why I may have to leave off.

You did this in your replies to Astorre, which is what I relied on in hopes you would understand what I’m trying to say - you do not have to be a Kantian for my point to be made. It’s just way, way stronger in Kantian terms.

It is a requirement of the system. It is a requirement of us having an experienec at all, unless we’re to take seriously some other vision of reality like idealism or simulation. I understand that Kant basically folds idealism and realism together to get this “transcendental” system going. I have no problem with it, but I’m not a Kantian in this sense. I expect that there’s a world beyond my sense, because I cannot understand anything if that’s not hte case. I clearly understand things. So there’s a clear conclusion to be drawn. Kant is just super nerdy about it and brings us to a place where it nigh-on impossible to deny.

That’s right - it may be that the world beyond our senses is just some blob of ectoplasmic nonsense. But our senses interpret this in a way to keep us alive - and ouila! Objects! THINGS!! LOL.

But this would squarely defeat even the premise of your enquiry. If you’re not interested in this aspect of “thing” I seems fairly clear why you’re not quite getting my side of the discussion at this point.

In your experience. Not in “the world” which you cannot access. How is this not landing?

But that is where "things’ or things, insofar as you can mention them, exist. Nowhere else (or, nowhere else intelligible).

But this is explicitly contradictory. If your experience is one of mind (it is, factually) then you cannot claim to have direct access to any “objective” reality. That said, I do no deny you this specific:

I expect that the noumenal objects have parameters, just as our phenomenal ones do, and that there is a relationship between them. I can’t prove that, but it seems extremely parsimonious, if we’re going with ‘no direct access’ as I do. But this conflicts with the next line:

But the noumenal aspect, on either reading, is the exact underlying cause of whatever you want to call a “thing” so it is not only relevant, it is fundamental. Which is why “thing” is empty in a metaphysical sense - you couldnt be talking about any thing beyond perception. If you’re just a direct realist, then you get to move on from this and continue. I just think thats highly misguided, but I accept it’s a reasonable view in the round.

You should now see how this is not a problem for those claiming noumena/phenomena as distinct classes. They can overlap. We often do not know what’s causing a shadow, and often it is a completely different shape to what caused it - because of perspective and perception. I see no reason to move from this framework to obtain “objects” of experience (btw, I’m only using quotes because these are the questionable terms we’re using, not because I don’t think they’re legit).

This begs the question. It assumes “things” are what you assume them to be, and leapfrogs the discussion about what’s being referred to. I contend you cannot refer to things outside of perception. I cannot see how, and you have not presented anything that would bring me there. Additionally, people are phenomenal things too, so there’s no safety there - any perception is of a “thing” in experience, Not necessarily the world. This is probably why we also apply “thing” to plenty of non-physical items/objects/choses(a legal term for an item like a right or commercial situation defined as “a thing in action” (i make nothing of that phrase belying your take on “object in motion” or whatever).

But that’s special pleading. His system allows for all of this (perhaps he didn’t, and I did, add that we can expect those noumena to both be consistent, and consistently affective of our perception - but then, I could be charged with special pleading there - i would just 100% cop to it being metaphysically speculative).

I grasp the concept of motion as used here (i think). I grasp the concept of persistence as used here (i think). I do not grasp how this has anything, at all, to do with thinghood.

NB: One small addition to clarify what could be a big issue: That things exist only in the mind is misleading. “thing” is defined as an object of hte mind, leaving hte possibility of objects outside the mind completely open (and on my take, necessary). I wont have any of this “idealism lite” type accusation because this position doesn’t come close to invoking it.

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I’ve been following along here, from the back of the room, and of all that’s been said, I found this to be quite remarkable……

…….in that I wonder how any metaphysics as such, is at all predicated on mere observation. If it is the case nothing whatsoever is done with things, but only with the effect of them on some intelligence, it follows necessarily observation of things alone, does not indicate what metaphysical activity is being done, or even that there is any to do.

As humans, we are scientific about physical objects. So either our science is grounded in metaphysics, or, it isn’t things we’re being metaphysical about.

Anyway…..just sayin’.

Carry on.

113

A thing
Something
Everything

Is “a thing” part of everything? Or something totally separate?

“Everything” seems to be vague in what it refers to. “Something” sounds a bit more clearer, but not quite, which forces the reasoned conclusion to “may be”.

A thing is definite in reference as long as it is clear what it is referring to.

114

I like your approach. What does a stop sign do in order to be a stop sign ? Not clear. Maybe it’s best to look at what we do for it be stop sign.

In my “visual field,” there is a red octagon, and I put my foot on the brake. There is a ( already categorized ) red octagon, one among others. Yet this perception is fugitive, a unique event never repeated. The “category,” which is the unity or synthesis of many same-enough fugitive perceptions, is enacted ? By us ? Does that make it less “real” ?

115

I appreciate you bearing through your frustration.

I think we agree more than you know (which is why you see me contradicting myself). I get Kant completely. Noumena will forever elude my experience.

My point is a very narrow sliver of small contention with this, and from this tiny foothold, opens a whole door to direct experience again. We have direct access to tiny bits of noumena, the bits that are the objective fact of the experience a particular noumena generates in a particular subjective experience.

We sense that thing is sweet. But is it “sweet” without my tongue touching it? No, but, to me, objectively, there is something about that thing in itself that allows me to produce a sweet experience for myself. So I say “that thing is sweet” but I mean that “my phenomenon I call ‘sweet’ can be made to happen when that thing and my tongue-brain-consciousness combine.”

Yes, no access to whatever that thing is entirely, and even calling it “sweet in itself” is not precise - but saying there is a thing called ‘tongues tasting sweetness’ and it only arises because of what must be the nature of certain things apart from my tongue, in the world, it itself.

“Objects have parameters.” This is the narrow space of this inquiry.

Parametered objects, I am calling “things” and I ask “what must they be, in themselves.” I am assigning a certain in-itself-ness to phenomenal experience and recovering a small bit of direct noumenal presence about things, about what a thing has to be.

Each time I pick out a new thing, even as it becomes newer and newer and changes, I see a tension of motion (becoming) and stillness (definition) at war. I am not always constructing both the motion and the stillness. They imposing themselves on me, as I am a thing.

This seems impossible not to see. And it is true of things whether you assign to them the ontology of phenomenon or noumenal thing in itself.

116

I appreciate the participation.

Not “mere” observation. Observation here, might be a bit of a metaphorical term. We observe with eyes for sure. Metaphysically, we are drawing out the intelligible. (Do we draw metaphysical line whole cloth? or are they ever drawn for us?) So observation is a crude term and something long abandoned when applied to metaphysical speculation. I think that our fear of absolute truth and dogma have clouded our judgment of the nature of things in themselves.

I agree with that. Ever since the notion of constructivism, rooted in Hume/Kant, and reified in post-modernism, there is no such thing as a metaphysical ground. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as science either, not without a metaphysical commitment underlying it, or concurrent with it. And I like science, so I find myself forced to deny an absolute wall that decouples the phenomena of subjective experience from its direct, corresponding access to the noumena of things in the world that are experiencable.

117

It has to be both. It is part as it becomes and is changed. It is separate in each instant it is being a single part.

118

You have made a thing of a sign, or a word, or an idea. This still works as a starting place but it is a bit different say that had your starting point been “In my visual field there is a red apple.”

A “stop sign” is the thing that it is because of the world of representational meaning in language and constructions such as “traffic management.” We have to invent the game of driving BEFORE we can individuate this moving part (car) from that one (intersection, stop sign). The function of thing called “stop sign” is itself abstract, so it is a special type of thing. We have to make abstractions, we have to be abstracting with our minds, before a “stop sign” can be observed.

If the thing is instead, an apple, we can ask a more clear question: is this merely a thing shaped by my mind, constructed to be a part in an order called “eating food” that I have imposed on the inherently amorphous apple thing? Or is there a thing? Is there an apple that I can call “apple” shaped and formed in itself regardless of what meaning I construct around it?

My point in this post is, no matter what type of thing, no matter where the source of the distinction between this part and that part comes from (between this stop sign, that car; or this apple, that meal), be it the mind or the world in itself, all things that would be individuated things are held as such in tension.

119

All of hte previous: Appreciated. Thanks - you’re probably right.

On this: I don’t agree with this framing. We do not have access to noumena. We do have access to experience which has been cause by it - but like a shadow, there is no logical requirement that our senses perceive the object causing the shadow. I’m not so much making a dispositive claim, as much as sayings its unneeded so I wont cop to it.

I understand where this is coming from. I’m unsure it’s correct, but I’m following you.

This could be the case. The issue is that we know not what is causing it. Just that something must be causing it. I don’t think its responsible to say anything about it (like the connection made here). But it is satisfying, reasonable and I’m still following you.

I think this is as far as we can go, personally. It’s more a frustrated table-thumping “must”. But we don’t know. That’s my sticking point i guess.

Thanks for saying this so clearly - I couldn’t get myself there. But this is what I take issue with: I do not understand how we’re getting anything direct from the noumena in a given setting. It’s not available. I can’t see how “bits” can be accessed. Perhaps you mean that hte inference is particularly strong when draw up this way? I agree.

The next paragraph is totally elusive to me. I have no idea what you’re pointing at or describing. So this, as you can imagine, came as a bit of a wallop:

I suggest the reason is that you’ve started from that conclusion, whether you noted it or not. I do not think your reasoning and elucidation can get you to this position, based on this exchange. I should be a bit more impressive with this: I cannot even understand what concept you’re drawing out to be discussed. It is entirely lost - your language doesn’t seem to point to anything.

This, to me, is a jumble of words that grammatically fit and nothing more. I will need some serious help to get further, I think.

120

It seems coherent to me to say full stop: we do not have access to noumena. But it seems incoherent with this framing of noumena to then add: we have access to experience which has been caused by it (noumena). It would be more coherent to just admit that, because we do not have access to noumena, we have no idea what is causing our experience. To instead say that noumena is what is causing the peculiarities of some of my experiences - that opens the small door into the nature of things in themselves that I believe Heraclitus looked into at described in the most succinct manner.

No, but, by this experience, we can perceive that it is some object that is causing the shadow. Meaning, maybe whatever we think is causing the shadow is nothing at all like I think it is by my reasoning from shadows - but just because I won’t clumsily claim I know the object in itself, doesn’t mean I have to throw out knowing that there is an object, in itself, contributing to the shape of the shadow in my experience.

Right here, you state my last point above, and it’s worth repeating: “The issue is that we know not what is causing it. Just that something must be causing it.” So that is now our working hypothesis of some of the components of phenomenological experience - something third-party to me, is causing experiences in my first party consciousness.

But now, we get specific about this general hypothesis. Some noumena is causing the sweetness experience in me - I define it as “eating chocolate.” It is responsible to say “eat that chocolate, because it will taste good, but don’t eat that arsenic, because, it will taste bad, and it could kill you.” I’m speaking as if I know things about things in themselves called chocolate and arsenic. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t - but only a philosopher could be satisfied to say “Although I could be wrong, but chocolate is good to eat, and arsenic is bad to eat” as if there was nothing known about any things in themselves.

It seems to me like we use epistemology and language barriers to delegitimize the fact of our working hypothesis, namely, that “The issue is that we know not what is causing it. Just that something must be causing it.” If we still know something is causing it (namely, sweetness or bitter death), why bother to take it away from the chocolate-named noumena and the separate arsenic-named noumena, and say instead that my sweet experience or my choking death are my own constructions, since I have no access to the noumenal world in itself? Why not just admit, chocolate is a thing, and arsenic is a different thing, in themselves, producing different shadows in me, a third different thing?