Cheerskep partly writes... I take the very "realistic" position of assuming there are indeed "material" objects "out there" (as well as other minds, and the notions of those other minds). When my sensors "encounter" one of those material objects, I think of the object as the thing that is "being sensed". Thus I "sense" my coffee mug over there. ...I don't think of those material objects as "subjective mental makings" of my mind. Just the opposite. My mug is a material object there even if no one in this household is "sensing" it at a given moment. With that line Frances is asserting she "senses" such things as relations and facts. I counter-assert: No she does not. Nor do I, or anyone else. I "sense" through my "sensors" such things as these: through my eyes, light reflected off a material object; through my ears, air/sound waves impinging on my ear-drums; through the tactile nerve endings in my fingers, the feelings of hardness, smoothness etc of the mug. At no time whatever do my sensors pick up any sense data occasioned by a relation, class, or fact. They are notional abstractions created by our minds.
Frances rightly writes... (1) You are wrong variously on both the objective and the subjective counts. When a person senses an object, be the object either mystical or material or mental, they do not get the object itself directly, but only as moderated by signs, so that what seems sensed is merely a "phenomenal" object. These sensed objects are phenomenal dispositions. Even when sensing our own inner stuff, such psyche also is merely phenomenal. (2) The realist position holds that all things of sense exist indirectly as phenomenal objects of fact, in that they only "seem" to be as they are, due to the moderating limits of sense. Furthermore, if something of an object is experienced it is thus found to be given uncontrolled to sense; and if the factual object is sensed, then it is also real, but this reality of factuality is a subjective mental construct. If nothing suspected of some existent factual object is given to sense, then it may indeed be felt to exist in fact as phenomena, but it will not be real until some aspect of it is sensed. An object is only as real as sense. When some aspect of it is sensed and thus made real, it will be moderated indirectly as phenomena through the representation of objects acting as signs of other objects. The objective is thereby made relative to the subjective. It is however the object that is found to be sensed, and not the sense of the object. (3) The thorn of contention is perhaps whether some things deemed to be say global classes and phenomenal existents and contextual relations and formal beauties are objective material constructs that exist independent of sense and mind. The philosophy of realism posits that general tones and special tokens and universal types do exist aside from mind, and that all three are sensed simultaneously together in the sole singular object given uncontrolled and indirectly to sense. For example, to sense an individual human as a particular token is to also sense in them humanness as a qualitative tone and humanity as a typical class of object. (4) The overall metaphysics of naturalist pragmatism under idealist realism posits that the world continues as a phenomenal being of feeling and then evolves as a representational thing of seeming, and then becomes an existential object of sensing, and then an experiential sign of signing. The continuant and the existent of phenomena are related by evolution. Once continua are made to exist as objects by the process of representation, such phenomenal objects may be phantomical and mystical as abstract possible objects of signs, or physical and material as concrete actual objects of signs, or psychical and mental as discrete agreeable objects of signs. (5) The main problem for me with subjectivist theories like notionalism attempting to act as a global approach to some things it denies can exist objectively like classes and facts and signs is that it cannot adequately account for the causal origins of mental notions or mental associations, which for subjectivism must preexist the very sense of stuff it claims excites psychical states; unless notionalism holds that the brain and its mind can generate their own mental notions and associations like images and ideas solely alone epiphenomenally, which of course is impossible for the psyche to do without its having the prior sense of experienced phenomena stored in memory and ready for recall as a notion or association. (6) Furthermore, objects with tonal qualities in token facts by typical laws give of themselves to be incited in the sentient psyche as being continuant and existent and as related to other objects, and this objective state of phenomenal stuff evokes signs like propositions in the mind. (7) My feeling is that inside every notionalist there is a realist lurking inside struggling to get out.
