Trying to come up with an argument that demonstrates that to deny the existence of objective reality is also to deny the existence of mind. Can anyone help?

[Frank]

Basically, it seems fundamentally flawed to claim objective reality doesn't exist, as this surely must refute mind  as well. Any logic used to claim matter and objective reality are unreal can just as easily refute mind as well. However, I'm not the most articulate on these matters, and so I look to you fine people.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Frank

[StrictlyLogical]

27 minutes ago, Frank said:

Basically, it seems fundamentally flawed to claim objective reality doesn't exist, as this surely must refute mind  as well. Any logic used to claim matter and objective reality are unreal can just as easily refute mind as well. However, I'm not the most articulate on these matters, and so I look to you fine people.

If someone claims "mind" means everything that exists, claiming "objective reality does not exist", literally adds nothing, all it does is restate/confirm what they have already baldly asserted. 

If mind is not all there is which exists, then there is that which is non-mind, being non-mind it is not subjective, i.e. it is objective.  The only issue then, is mind then some non-objective part of reality.  Then we see the ideas of ghosts and machines, and the like...

you should know that some objectivists are dualists.  Some are not, while at the same time they are not mechanists, nor determinists.  All objectivists (not misidentifying themselves) believe in free will.  I.e. that a  person could have done otherwise after time 0 ... even given the same Leibniz hypothetical universe (including all that the person is) at Time 0.

Edited January 27, 2023 by StrictlyLogical

[Reidy]

Another suggestion: minds (i.e. certain capacities and activities of certain living organisms) are a part of reality. They require (which is not to say that they are) certain physical equipment in the external world. Try to give an account of even the most primitive consciousness without it.

[Boydstun]

Frank, have you ever read or heard someone claim "objective reality does not exist."

Or are you thinking of when someone, such as George Berkeley, argues that there is nothing real that is not being discerned by a mind? That is, when you consider the possible claim "objective reality does not exist", are you really considering the possible claim "all things to be real must be discerned by a mind, and they aren't anything until discerned. So there are no physical things not depending on mind."?

Nothing in this post is rhetorical. I'm simply asking you, Frank, which meaning do you have in mind.

I'd like to know which. But meanwhile I think you are on to something when you note that a claim that "objective reality [is] unreal can just as easily refute mind as well." The being God is alleged to exist, to be immaterial, to be all-knowing, and to not require any sort of process for Its knowledge. It has been said to speak things to humans, and to non-existent things to bring them into existence. Before speaking the world into existence, It would not seem sensible for God to say to Itself "I and my speaking do not exist". And supposing It did not say that, but upon the occasion of speaking the world into existence, it followed by remarking "the world does not exist." It seems this being would be disinclined to make either such statement in those situations. And characters like Leibniz would argue that God would not make such remarks as those. Then too, if a regular person, a human being, were to say "objective reality does not exist," that would be inconsistent with any claim to have made such a statement. To claim "objective reality does not exist, and I made that claim" really puts me in a pickle because the act of making a claim is an existent.

[Leonid]

Mind is secondary to existence since mind is a faculty of awareness. To be aware one should be aware of something. To deny existence is more than to deny mind. It’s a contradiction in terms since the process of denial is an action of mind. If there is no existence than there is no mind and one can’t deny anything.

[KyaryPamyu]

You're in good company with your struggle. Saying that something exists, and that 'it is what it is' is not terribly specific. This is why, when we try to say something a little more, um, useful, we have to smuggle in some additional assumptions. 

Such assumptions include substance ('the world is made of X'), quantity ('there's lots of stuff'), and so on. Where do these extra assumptions come from? The Objectivist answer is pretty straight-forward: they come from sense perception. Idealists echo this, so what's the difference?

Well, for starters, thinking has no shape, lenght, face or color. But when we describe it, we use sense-based metaphors, such as 'I thought deeply, long and hard'. You can see where the idealist argument is going: the spatio-temporal world is a figurative, symbolic representation of the thinking activity.

In the West, some of the most ferociously smart metaphysicians operated in post-Kantian idealism. IMO that's a great thing to study in parallel with Objectivism. Whenever I get curious about the O'ist view on [insert kantian claim], I discover that Stephen Boydstun has already posted an extensive study on that, somewhere on this forum.

[Boydstun]

KyaryPamyu, thank you for the mention and link. 

From my fundamental paper "Existence, We" in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (V21N1, July 2021):

Quote

 

Metaphysical axiom fundamental to knowledge: Existence exists. Without Existence, without existence of Existence: Nothing is or could or must; nothing is one or two or three; nothing is whole or part; nothing is of anything; nothing happens, follows, or precedes; nothing alters or remains the same; nothing is present, resident, or absent; nothing is living or problematic; nothing is thought, shown, or said. In place of the One of Parmenides: Existence is all. Placing Existence where Spinoza had placed God, Rand and I could join a motif of Spinoza: “Whatever is, is in Existence, and nothing can be or be conceived without Existence” (1677, 420 [1P15] ).

. . .

“Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists” (Rand 1957, 1015). With substantial additions, I concur in that statement of Rand’s and its foundational standing. Existence and consciousness are axiomatic concepts in Rand’s mature philosophy (Rand 1957, 1015–16, 1040; Rand 1966–67, 55–60). All knowledge is through, under, and of existence and consciousness in one or another of their districts. Consciousness is itself a way of existence.

. . .

Existence exists is not only a claim about existence per se and as a totality. It is a claim about particulars: they exist. There are particular existents. Indeed, the comprehensive setting that Existence exists is only the summation of the existence of particular, more qualified things. For every exhaustive division A/B of the entirety of existence, that Existence exists is only that the A’s exist and the B’s exist.

. . .

Part of Rand’s elucidation in corollaries of grasping the statement Existence exists is a definition: Consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists. This formula tells which conception we here mean by consciousness. This definition is, further, the focal meaning of consciousness, in Rand’s view and in (half of) mine. That is, all varieties of consciousness are tied to this fundamental one, and their conceptual formulas should include those ties. Elucidation of axioms by foundational corollaries can contribute elements towards definitions, such as definition of concrete existent. We provide specification to the concept concrete when we remark that Existence exists includes the circumstance that there are detectible particulars and that grasp of that circumstance entails the further circumstance that concrete existents present some potentials of themselves under our actions or under other sorts of actions. 

Concrete particulars are the premier type of particular existents in the order of knowing. One must learn of hardcopy books, or other objects of that general six-faced shape (parallelepiped), before learning of the orthogonal group of proper rotations inextricable from such an object. (70–71)

 

 

[Grames]

On 1/27/2023 at 2:39 PM, Frank said:

Basically, it seems fundamentally flawed to claim objective reality doesn't exist, as this surely must refute mind  as well. Any logic used to claim matter and objective reality are unreal can just as easily refute mind as well. However, I'm not the most articulate on these matters, and so I look to you fine people.

An objective reality must exist in order for there to be truth and falsehood.  To claim "objective reality does not exist" is a statement which is true or false.  Also, it is stated in such a way that proving the statement requires proving a negative which can only be done by inventorying the Universe and determining that every last corner of it is non-objective.  If that could somehow be accomplished, that would immediately create at least that one objectively true fact and the effort refutes itself.