Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?

[Aroura]

If you'd ask me, I'd say it is one of the fuzzy categories which the neural networks in our brains learn to lump together and associate with the word table.

This reminds me of this children's book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1s38H2-WKI

How humans learn language 101.

[The Grand Nudger]

That sounds like a pragmatic nominal definition of a table.  But my concern is what is the "stuff" of a table -- does it exist independently of my experience?

Yup.  There were tables before you were born, and there will be tables after you die.  Your individual experience doesn't seem to be doing anything to prop the existence of tables up.

What does it mean to speak of something that in principle is not experienced (namely, the table as it exists unperceived)?

Like, talking about a table in another room, that you cannot currently see, for example? Or talking about something which cannot be experienced? The noumenal world, as it were, lol?

Can I know that anything exists in such a way?  

Depends, if the former, above, I'd say so. If the latter, I don't think so.

What distinguishes "impressions of tables" from "ideas of tables" -- not merely in the sense that in perception a table appears more vivid while in thought or memory it is fuzzier and more abstract -- but what does it mean for something to be concrete vs. abstract and how do these relate to each other?

You'd find it difficult to set your dinner plate on the idea of a table, there's something different about the impression you have of a table in front of you that goes beyond fuzziness or abstraction in thought or memory.   Don't you think?

[Mudhammam]

Yup.  There were tables before you were born, and there will be tables after you die.  Your individual experience doesn't seem to be doing anything to prop the existence of tables up.

By "the existence of tables" I understand you to mean the nominal definition of "table" that you gave.  But that definition is derived only from one's experience of "tables."  Individual experience "doesn't seem to be doing anything to prop the existence of tables up" insofar as we postulate them as objects that exist in a reality that is independent of my experience, but I do not see that I am able to say anything positive about their phenomenal appearance which isn't contingent on how it is that my hominid brain evolved to organize and translate discrete bits of sense-data into what feels like a unified stream of conscious experience; and at least some of what this involves, for example, color, smell, sound (and others would add texture, shape, solidity) etc., is not in the both the object and the mind (and how lucky we must be if these are to be conceived as existing in a perfect one-to-one correspondence, like a reflection in a mirror! -- how this could be explained short of invoking a miracle, I'm not sure) but in my mind only.

Like, talking about a table in another room, that you cannot currently see, for example?  Or talking about something which cannot be experienced?  The noumenal world, as it were, lol?  

Whether we speak of the table as it exists when momentarily unperceived, or as it exists in objective reality as opposed to subjective appearance or representation in perception, perhaps comes to the same thing; the question that both must confront is, "Can we know what are its properties as a thing-in-itself?"

You'd find it difficult to set your dinner plate on the idea of a table, there's something different about the impression you have of a table in front of you that goes beyond fuzziness or abstraction in thought or memory.   Don't you think?

Yes, of course.  That sense impressions seem so radically different from concepts of reason or images in memory is one of the chief stumbling blocks that I encounter when trying to reconcile the latter with eliminative materialism.

[The Grand Nudger]

By "the existence of tables" I understand you to mean the nominal definition of "table" that you gave.  But that definition is derived only from one's experience of "tables." Individual experience "doesn't seem to be doing anything to prop the existence of tables up" insofar as we postulate them as objects that exist in a reality that is independent of my experience, but I do not see that I am able to say anything positive about their phenomenal appearance which isn't contingent on how it is that my hominid brain evolved to organize and translate discrete bits of sense-data into what feels like a unified stream of conscious experience; and at least some of what this involves, for example, color, smell, sound (and others would add texture, shape, solidity) etc., is not in the object itself but in my mind.

An empiricist would say the same.  That all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense experience.  Some of that certainly seems to occur in the mind, other bits don't (there is a chemistry to fragrance and we do have noses....).  To say that "it" is not in the object it self seems to miss out on some dependencies of sense apparatus.  Vanillan does contain the chemical compounds we call vanilla as a taste or a smell...we can even be fooled by synthetics.  A chemist can arrange for that experience by recipe.  There seems to be some "mind stuff" happening and some "other stuff" in each example of sensory perception. The ready made answer to that is any number of representationalist theories.

Whether we speak of the table as it exists when momentarily unperceived, or as it exists in objective reality as opposed to subjective appearance or representation in perception, perhaps comes to the same thing; the question that both must confront is, "Can we know what are its properties as a thing-in-itself?"

 Don't see why we couldn't.  The properties of the thing-in-itself and our idea of the thing might overlap.  They certainly seem to in the case of vanilla, vanillan, and synthetics.  

Yes, of course.  That sense impressions seem so radically different from concepts of reason or images in memory is one of the chief stumbling blocks that I encounter when trying to reconcile the latter with eliminative materialism.

Elaborate?   Why would memories being different, somehow, to sense experience, be a stumbling block for the position or for you?

[bennyboy]

Mudhammam, I have a couple questions about how you view things as we normally consider them. For example, in the case of a wave of water, what's a "wave," really? Is it an illusion? Is it a kind of pre-set form which expresses itself through a medium like water? Is it just a name for something water does in our experience?

Given that we know the properties we see in a table don't exist on the most fundamental level of physics (nothing is actually "hard" at the QM level, nothing is "flat" under a microscope, and it seems to be the way humans view things that make those concepts meaningful), would you describe the modern scientific view of reality as materialist, idealist, dualist, or something else?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Longer response later but why did you pass over an Aristotelian approach or Scholatic moderate realism?

[abaris]

But my concern is what is the "stuff" of a table -- does it exist independently of my experience?

By the same token you could ask if anything exists outside your experience. How do you know that the world does move on when you're not looking? Maybe it only loads whereever you are to give you the impression of existing. Is red the same red as you believe to see?

If you are out to open that can of wirms, the questions are endless.

[bennyboy]

But my concern is what is the "stuff" of a table -- does it exist independently of my experience?

By the same token you could ask if anything exists outside your experience. How do you know that the world does move on when you're not looking? Maybe it only loads whereever you are to give you the impression of existing. Is red the same red as you believe to see?

If you are out to open that can of wirms, the questions are endless.

Yep.  Interestingly, though, we've been able to answer some of those question.  For example, there's no color anywhere in the universe: color is not a property of material.  We know that only to be something we experience.  I'd argue the same goes for shapes, even something so simple as flatness.  There are no flat things in the universe-- there cannot be, since flatness implies a contiguous, uninterrupted surface, and molecules, under any configuration, cannot match that description. True flatness is clearly an idea and cannot be other than an idea.

So we don't know what things ARE, exactly, but we have figured out more and more about what they are not.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Not going to read the OP I'm afraid, too long and full of philosophical musings. But for me something is a table if it performs the function of a table. That is, it's stable, you can put stuff on top and sit down by the side with your legs underneath it.

Do you really need to add anything more than that?

And in walks Final Cause...

...no matter, never mind. :-)

[The Grand Nudger]

So we don't know what things ARE, exactly, but we have figured out more and more about what they are not.

At what point (if any point) do you think a list of things that some x is not becomes a credible ground for inference as to what it is?