Objects exist.
Entities function.
This.
This is a human, mammal, animal.
One object; three entities.
Fidelity to objects, not to entities.
Category: philosophy
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Objects exist; entities function; all objects are entities, but not all entities are objects.
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PRM: Show how PRM navigates the realism vs anti-realism debates
ChatGPT: Here is a clear, direct explanation of how PRM navigates the realism vs anti-realism debate without falling into either extreme.
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1. The Classical Debate (Very Short Version)
Realism:
• There is a mind-independent world.
• Science describes that world (at least approximately).
• Unobservables (electrons, fields) are real.
Anti-realism:
• We cannot know the world-in-itself.
• Theories are tools, not truths.
• Success = prediction, not description.
Kant sits between them (phenomena vs noumena), but ultimately tends toward anti-realism because the world-in-itself is unknowable.
PRM rejects this entire framing.
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2. PRM’s Core Move: Restore Reality by Reordering the Chain
Your outline’s central claim is:
Encounter precedes experience.
Experience becomes knowledge.
Knowledge becomes knowing.
This means:
• Reality is not constructed by the mind.
• Reality is encountered before interpretation.
• Knowledge is fallible because it is derived, not foundational.
This gives PRM the power to take what is best in realism and in anti-realism without their contradictions.
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3. How PRM Incorporates Realism
PRM accepts:
✔ a mind-independent world
“Existents are spatiotemporally located and have causal effects.”
✔ direct encounter with reality
No veil of perceptions, no Kantian mediation.
✔ scientific realism about entities
If something is part of the causal web of matter-in-relation, it exists.
If not, it’s a nonexistent entity (like Erangel, Harry Potter, species as universals).
✔ causal structure is real
Not imposed by the mind.
This is robust, modern realism.
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4. How PRM Incorporates Anti-Realist Insight
PRM accepts anti-realism’s key epistemic points:
✔ knowledge is fallible
✔ models are imperfect
✔ abstraction != existence
Nonexistent entities are mappings and projections.
✔ no guarantee of perfect theories
✔ scientific change is expected
But PRM grounds these in biological and relational limits,
not in skepticism or Kantian barriers.
So PRM keeps:
• anti-realism’s humility
• anti-realism’s fallibilism
• anti-realism’s model-dependence
But rejects:
• anti-realism’s denial of reality
• anti-realism’s instrumentalism
• anti-realism’s phenomena-only worldview
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5. PRM’s “Third Position”: Realism Without Certainty
PRM does something rare:
Ontologically realist + epistemically fallibilist.
In one line:
Reality is certain; knowledge of it is not.
This lets PRM say:
• The world exists.
• We encounter it directly.
• Our knowledge is always partial.
• Theories improve but never finalize.
• Scientific change reflects deeper encounter, not mind-imposed revision.
This is a clean middle path:
Not realism with dogmatism.
Not anti-realism with skepticism.
Realism at the level of existence.
Anti-absolutism at the level of knowledge.
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6. Why PRM Avoids Kant’s Trap Entirely
Kant splits reality:
• noumena (real but unknowable)
• phenomena (knowable but mind-made)
PRM eliminates this split.
There is only:
matter-in-relation, knowable through encounter.
Thus PRM gives science a firm foundation:
• no veil of perception
• no world-in-itself beyond reach
• no mental structuring of space/time/causality
• no need to defend intersubjective agreement
• no solipsistic drift
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⭐ Final Summary
PRM navigates the realism vs anti-realism debate by combining:
Realism about reality
– matter-in-relation exists independently of minds.
Fallibilism about knowledge
– experience and theory are always incomplete.
Naturalism about encounter
– organisms meet the world directly.
Anti-Platonism about abstractions
– models and universals do not exist, they function.
So PRM occupies a stable, coherent third position:
A realist metaphysics with an anti-realist epistemology.
A certainty of reality with a humility of knowledge.
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Existence precedes all else. You cannot think, know, act, speak without first being an existent thing.
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« Se rappeler qu’un tableau, avant d’être un cheval de bataille, une femme nue ou une quelconque anecdote, est essentiellement une surface plane recouverte de couleurs en un certain ordre assemblées. » (Maurice Denis, 1890)
“Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” (Maurice Denis, 1890)
Denis essentially explained how the raw material of reality is turned into something we call art. There is nothing mysterious about it. Anything with colour can become colour for an artwork. Some artists use blood, urine, faeces, beverages to make their art. As long as it does the job then it can become an artwork.
“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” (Pablo Picasso, 1959)
Picasso explained what the mind (his mind) was doing when it makes art. His paintings do not reflect the world he sees. Our experiential representations in our minds look more like straight photograph prints than his works. Put the model next to the painting, take a photograph of them both, and you will already understand that the artwork looks nothing like the model. If it did it would either be called something like realism, or would mean we live in the stranger world than we think.
“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” (Pablo Picasso, 1935)
Picasso continued to explain that to create abstract art means the removal of details which are part of the reality. In the end, whatever is left is abstract art. And the artwork is not the same thing as the content from which it was drawn from. Again, compare the artwork to the model and setting.
These three quotes can be considered ideas leading to the foundations of expression and abstract expressionism in Western art.
To me, words in language work exactly in the same way as Picasso’s art—you take out details from the definition. Whatever is left in is the definition of that word. This is abstraction in the form of definitional stipulation. Definitions are not floating out there. They are wholly created by the language users. Our agreement upon using one definition over another is how we use words to communicate.
If words had fixed and perfect definitions that everyone knew prior then, yes, that would mean definitions are indeed independent entities in the world. But the fact that we even argue over what the definition of a word is already shows that language is created, shared, and agreed upon as a way to do something functional called communication. Non-agreement means language is a negotiated system.
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Encounter is not the same as experience. Experience is about epistemology, how we know what we know. Encounter is about metaphysics, about the nature of what exists, and is a word I dislike.
Objects, regardless of them of having the capacity to experience or not, encounter. To be an object is to be in relation to other objects. To be in relation in the field of reality is to be encounter-able.
Thus, a rock and the ground upon which it sits are encountering each other. The planet Earth and the sun are similarly encountering, as are the galaxies.
By simply existing an object is already in relation to other objects and already encountering whether they know it or not, or whether their encounter is significant or obvious.
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An entity is something which functions as a single, complete, or distinct unit. An object is something which exists as a single, complete, or distinct unit.
All objects are entities, but not all entities are objects.
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Everyday, I drive a car to go to work. I know that a car has an engine which gives it power to move forward but the exact details of how that works I do not know. That fuel ignites and releases energy, I know. But if you ask me how to repair or upkeep the car I cannot answer you that.
There are many things like this. I do not exactly know how it works but that it works is all I need to know.
Metaphysics in philosophy is like this. I do not know what is the nature of matter, but that matter is an important component of reality. And like a car, you do not need to know its underlying nature. In fact, there is no stopping of the regression. Even if you know the nature of reality you will continue to ask what is the nature of the nature of reality.
So why not stop the infinite regress at the very start and get on with what is important—living.
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The university institution is intuitively called an entity. One would be hard pushed to call it an object.
The term object is used to talk mostly about the physical aspects of something, rather than about the functional of non-physical aspects of it. For such non-physical aspects we generally use the term entity.
In other words, object is used when we want to highlight the static aspect of something, while entity is used to highlight the dynamic aspect of the same thing.
Materialism fails because it sees our highlights matter as a static inert lump. It should be noted matter is never static. Even when it is in what we call a state, it is in this state dynamically. One has to make an effort to be still in time. This is why matter is always matter-in-relation.
theoria 