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Originally Posted by bianca  Can objects exist independently of cognition, or the mind level? Is that what you mean? Aren't objects composed of ideas? If gravity for instance occurs independently of cognition, than it also exists above sense-perception. Or, can things beyond human thoughts and speech be recognized as objective at all?
The falling apple could just as well be an idea (subject level). |
Objects aren't objects, if no subject perceives them. In so far "objects"
are composed of ideas. But that's on the subject level.
No subject has direct access to the object, i.e. the object level is ultimately an unresolvable mystery. Still, on the subject level we construe objects so that they have "constituents". Some of these "constituents" involve matter (according to the subject's concept of the object), and some involve meaning.
For example, you have a rock and a nutcracker. You can use both to crack open a nut. The nutcracker function of the rock is imposed on the concept of the rock by the subject. The nutcracker function of the nutcracker is what makes the nutcracker a nutcracker. We have no name for a nutcracker viewed as a thing without inherent nutcracker function. The intention, the meaning, of the object is inherent to the concept.
The object level is not the "thing level". Nutcrackers and phonemes don't exist on the "thing level". Rocks and trees do. The operative difference is that we create nutcrackers and phonemes with specific goals in mind. If we didn't want to communicate, there would be no phonemes. If we didn't want to crack nuts, there would be no nutcrackers.
We can, of course, doubt the existance of everything; there are no things at all. We can doubt away things and objects, until all that remains is faint glow of the dubter (subject), doubting. I don't see, though, how that is relevant to science. Science doesn't care about things; it's all about "experience" - empirical science, at least (is there any other kind?). "Experience" always already involves an object and a subject, "tainted" things - if you will. As long as you manipulate the relations between object and subject in a way that maximises communication and minimises subject-subject conflict ("rules of the game"), science works.