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Laird: What if what you're imagining corresponds to something in external reality?

Robert: You're imagining an object and imagining correspondence to an external reality you are also imagining. All of this is within the field of language. '... a second hand universe is not real, neither in its whole nor in its aspects.'

Huh? There's no such thing as external reality? It's just an artifact of language? Is that what you're trying to say?

Laird: I try not to assert that I have proved anything, because it's such a bold claim. I thought, though, that I had at least demonstrated it in my discussion of chemical/phase boundaries. You didn't respond to that argument.

Robert: You demonstrated (second-hand) focus on an object but did you in any way prove that objects exist independently or separately? Boundaries - amply discussed - are the products of focus.

More than that though, there are fairly objective places upon which to "focus" upon a boundary - namely, as I have been arguing, such places as where chemical composition or phase changes. Or, looking at particle physics, the edge of the particle itself. I find it hard to believe that you are trying to deny these preexisting, natural boundaries.

You are certainly answered in 'You believe they are separate ...' You believe that the chemical constituencies of objects make them separate from all other objects and while there are certainly worse beliefs they are all fictions.

All beliefs are fictions? There is no such thing as a belief that is truthful?

If an object has chemical constituencies how is it separate from all the other chemical constituencies of all the other objects?

I'm not sure what this question is asking. I see it fairly simply: as you reach the boundary of an object the chemical constituency, or phase, of the underlying matter/reality changes, hence demarcating the object.

What you did fail to answer is that of an object '... it is we who are assigning it its boundaries in an inseparable process of boundary and boundary-maker.' There is focus and he who focuses, both necessary in human evolution, but he who believes his focus is magic is not.

My contention, though, is that focus is unnecessary for some boundaries, which exist innately. Form and structure, Robby - think about what that implies.

Your problem is that not one object has the quality 'exists separately from all other objects'. That is a fiction we are adding to our focus. It is not some measurable or even observable property. One can certainly make use of focus without believing that the object upon which one is focusing is separate from the rest of the universe; it's really quite unnecessary.

It's not so much a belief that any object is completely separate, because of course it interacts with the rest of the universe - in that photons and other particles hit it; gravity affects it; electromagnetic forces affect it; etc - but that it is best conceptualised as separate and interacting (not to mention that that's the way that we naturally perceive objects - as separate from one another).

Belief is the ending of rational argument.

Belief is rather the result of rational argument.