> Go 4th wrote:

>> andy-k wrote:

>>> Surely this entire system assumes an "external world" --
>>> i.e. a "reality" independent of any consciousness of it
>>> (and this is precisely what cannot be known)?

>>
>> The quasi-solipsism of the neopositivists died out for the most part
>> in Philosophy of Science. Even the remaining antirealists
>> (postmodernists) of today aren't denying that there's an external
>> world (re: exists independent of humans), but contesting the notion
>> that any description could be some kind of absolute truth about it
>> (because of the contribution of social and methodological biases in
>> formulating them, so forth).
>>
>> Note that Bhaskar also recognizes the latter --in "the ontic fallacy,
>> knowledge is analyzed as a direct, unmediated relation between a
>> subject and being. The ontic fallacy ignores the cognitive and social
>> mechanisms by which knowledge is produced from antecedent knowledge,
>> leaving an ontology of empirical knowledge events (raw perceptions)
>> and a de-socialized epistemology."
>>
>> His "Critical Realism" is more like something in between scientific
>> realism and antirealism, that helps sort-out the confusion generated
>> not only by authoritarians but by those who delusionally believe that
>> pure epistemology is possible when they've actually always been
>> conflating it with ontology (both are too intertwined to be completely
>> separated). Again, this results in ludicrous circumstances like the
>> empirical or scientifically described brain producing consciousness
>> when it would be whatever a metaphysical "brain" ultimately is
>> independent of those human-contributed appearances and artificial
>> schematics.
>>
>> Perhaps the best example for how postmodernists and neopragmatists
>> aren't denying the existence of an external world is the late Richard
>> Rorty. He rejected both "realism" and "antirealism", yet John Searle
>> has testified in conversations that he had with him that "Rorty really
>> did believe in an external world", but that he thought we shouldn't
>> enslave ourselves to convictions about it. So there comes a point
>> where this silliness of pretending that there's system for avoiding an
>> "external world" (or any reference to such) when these philosophers
>> actually don't have one (or practice what they preach), has to cease
>> because of the ambiguity it generates.

>
> It's not the "external world" per se that I'm calling into question here,
> but the existence of a world that exists independently of any consciousness
> of it. This doesn't entail solipsism since that external world is postulated
> to consist of other subjective perspectives, consistent with Whitehead's
> metaphysics (note that his notion of Mutual Immanence circumvents the
> obvious objection that applies to Leibniz' monads).