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In science we start with the immediately given, the sense data that are of course the contents of minds. From these sense data that are shapes, colors, sounds, feels, and meter readings, we develop theoretical constructs such as solid objects, atoms, electrons, and probability waves. The constructs, as Kant points out, are not the incompletely knowable "thing in itself", but deal with the contents of our minds. Science starts with the mind, both the perceiver of sensations and the postulator of constructs. Science also assumes a community of minds who can agree on the sense data and the verifiability of consequences of the constructs. Regardless of one's philosophical position, science begins with the mind and is a public activity. Constructs have a hierarchy from quarks to atoms to molecules to organisms. The contemporary position of most neurobiologists is to try to go up the hierarchy from atoms to minds to understand the emergence of mind in terms of the underlying members of the hierarchy.

This of course presents an epistemic circle. One starts with the mind as the primitive and goes around the circle of constructs in an effort to explain mind. I have no trouble with this circularity, but it comes as a surprise to many scientists. It is an epistemology that somehow accords with the emergence view of the evolving universe, or at least our part of it.

In terms of this view, one can understand materialists or naive realists as individuals who believe that the constructs of particles are more real than the midns that constructed them. Idealists in the philosophical sense are individuals who believe that the minds are more real than the hierarchy of things that constitute the world out there, the things in themselves. I find both views much less enlightening than accepting the circle as the ontological sequel of this type of epistemology. It recognizes the existence of the world out there without requiring people, but also recognizes that the kind of knowledge we have of that world is not independant of us, and we will never have God's knowledge of the thing in itself.

Harold Morowitz, "The Emergence of Everything", p.8-9

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and we will never have God's knowledge of the thing in itself.

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Seuss said:

I think it would be much easier to understand if he simply asked, "If a tree drops in the woods with nobody around, does it still make a sound?"

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Swami said:

For more information , please refer to the thread: "The circular explanation"...

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Funny