I'm not the Platonic realist, you are. I know the material existince I perceive is real, indepedent of anyone's consciousness and contingent on no one's whim, will, or action. You are the one who thinks the qualtities of material existence are only manifestation of some Platonic universals.
Reality is that which is, independent of anyone's knowledge of it, or even awareness or consciousness of it. Truth pertains to our knowledge of reality, not reality itself. It is because reality exists independently of our consciousness or knowledge of it, that it is the standard of truth, the ultimate arbiter of what is true or not true, the basis of all objective truth.
But just so you don't misunderstand me, I do not reduce reality to material (physical) existence only, because reality includes life, consciousness, and volition, which are not themselves physical.
I describe all existence as natural, including life, consciousness, and volition, though these three are not themselves physical, and do not "arise" out of the physical by any manipulation or behavior of the physical, as some emergent quality, for example. They are, nevertheless aspects of the same reality as physical existence and cannot exist independently of the physical, for their function (life is self-sustained process of a living physical entity called an organism), awareness, (consciousness is perception of physical existense) and action (all living action, including volitional action, is physical action, whether overt or only an act of consciousness). Others mean by natural, only the physical, in which case they would call life, consciousness, and volition supernatural.
I disagree that the physcial universe (excluding living beings) is not totally determined. It is determined, not by laws, or formulas, or fields, or wave functions, or any of the other things physics uses to describe how the entities of the universe behave, but by nature of the entities themselves, and their relationships to each other. First you have the entities, behaving as they do because they are what they are, then you observe how they behave, then you attempt to find ways to describe that behavior and to measure it. The result of that process is the laws, formulas, fields, and wave functions, of physics. But all the laws and all the wave functions in the world cannot cause anything to exist or to happen.
When physicists make the mistake of reifying their discovered principles, giving them ontological significance, it is precisely the same mistake one would make in assumeing the weatherman's predictions make the weather happen.
Here we will just have to disagree, Hank. For I do not think "truth has no meaning outside the context of conceptual knowledge."
As I said, it would be mighty dull discussion if we all just agreed on everything.
Hank
And yet a whole raft of contemporary scientific thinkers (especially in biology) describe life, consciousness, and volition precisely as "emergent qualities." They may have a basis in the physical; but they are not reducible to the physical. And yes, they are "natural."
I get the sense in reading you, Hank, that you imagine the universe is some kind of "finished product," already complete and thus eminently specifiable to a high degree of certainty. That is, for you, the universe is a steady-state, "closed system," and you are able to observe it in its completeness as if somehow you were standing outside of it, at some Archimedian point outside of universal space and time. And then you've taken a great deal of time and trouble to write out its full specification in doctrinal form, and voila! Now we can know what reality "is," right down to every jot and tittle.
For me -- Platonist realist if you wish to call me such, since you seem to want to classify me -- the universe is evolving; and to the extent that it is comprised of emergent processes occurring in its parts, it ain't finished yet. In that sense, it is not reducible to a simple set of propositional statements. Plus we humans are evolving right along with it, and are the source of at least some of the universe's emergent properties. Further, at no time can we stand outside of the universe of which we are constituting parts, and see the whole thing "finished" in time, complete.
You want to make the finite the measure of a putatively infinite process. In effect, to reduce the universe down to a set of mental propositions that can all live conveniently inside your head. And then you take this description for the reality.
A lot of the "school philosophers" do this sort of thing. But a thinker who is "open" towards being and the truth of reality -- which has not yet been fully manifested -- cannot adopt this strategy. Such a strategy typically results, not in a more complete understanding of the reality we've already got, but in the construction of a Second, or alternative reality.
Which is, in effect, a kind of flight from reality. FWIW.
Thanks for writing, Hank.