Phenomenalism
Dictionary: Phenomenalism, the doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses.
Wikipedia: Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, some forms of phenomenalism reduce all talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense data.
It seems to me phenomenalism is unarguably true. We have five physical senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. We have no tree-sensing sense. So, how can we experience a tree? The answer seems to be we dont directly experience a tree. Rather, we experience sense data (green patches that feel smooth, brown patches that feel rough, etc.) and our mind accesses the idea of tree because the idea makes sense of our sense data.
An analogous situation is watching a video on a computer. All we experience (all we can experience) is light on the computer monitor and sound from the speakers. We think we are seeing trees and people and buildings, etc. but all we are actually seeing is light from the computer monitor; our mind presents us with the ideas of trees and people and buildings.
So, it seems material objects are actually theoretical constructs, i.e., ideas we experience based on our sensory input. (Some philosophers go further and claim this disproves materialism. I dont agree. But it does reveal the epistemological basis of materialism, i.e., materialism is an ontological construct not an evident, directly experienced reality.)
Comments welcome.
P.S. For the above Im taking ideas as given. How we become acquainted with ideas is another topic.
Wikipedia: Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, some forms of phenomenalism reduce all talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense data.
It seems to me phenomenalism is unarguably true. We have five physical senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. We have no tree-sensing sense. So, how can we experience a tree? The answer seems to be we dont directly experience a tree. Rather, we experience sense data (green patches that feel smooth, brown patches that feel rough, etc.) and our mind accesses the idea of tree because the idea makes sense of our sense data.
An analogous situation is watching a video on a computer. All we experience (all we can experience) is light on the computer monitor and sound from the speakers. We think we are seeing trees and people and buildings, etc. but all we are actually seeing is light from the computer monitor; our mind presents us with the ideas of trees and people and buildings.
So, it seems material objects are actually theoretical constructs, i.e., ideas we experience based on our sensory input. (Some philosophers go further and claim this disproves materialism. I dont agree. But it does reveal the epistemological basis of materialism, i.e., materialism is an ontological construct not an evident, directly experienced reality.)
Comments welcome.
P.S. For the above Im taking ideas as given. How we become acquainted with ideas is another topic.
Comments (404)
Alas it seems unarguably false to me, but I have spent my working life not looking at trees so much as cutting them down, chopping them up into logs, and laboriously grubbing up the stumps and roots.
I think you need to add some physicality and action to the senses, and probably to your life; one comes to know a tree by climbing it, pulling off some leaves, falling out of it. The tree responds to my putting my weight on a branch by bending, perhaps breaking - with a snap if the branch is rotten, or else with a greenstick fracture. Watch out for splinters!
Eyes are not just for seeing, but for wiping and rubbing, and if you doubt the materiality of vision, just press a little harder, and the pain will convince you. Try to live on illustrations of food and drink, and you will discover the vital difference between the phenomenal representation in the mind and the visceral manifestation in the gut.
Is phenominalism different from phenomenology? My understanding of the later is that we take first person perspective first and work in theories so that they fit with our common sense
I'm also not sure I understand what you mean by seeing things in your head that is not outside. That sounds like some psychological thing. If you see something you perceive it, that's it. It's one field coming from a divine source. Trying to put the world in your mind would take away from the experience of perception
How are maths and logic accomodated by this theory?
I think phenomenalism is basically an arcane textbook entry in the history of philosophy. It has, at best, one part of the elephant, but there are many fundamental elements of knowledge it can't account for.
Quoting Gregory
Yes. The former is a minor strand in empirical philosophy, the latter is a major philosphical school in its own right.
I had the physical world in mind when I wrote the original post.We receive physical sense data via our five senses, then our mind accesses an appropriate idea which makes sense of the data.
As to maths and logic, our mind can access mathematical and logical ideas, too.
We experience a tree by looking, listening, tasting, touching, smelling. And as points out, by planting it, watering it, climbing it. We experience the tree via our senses, but it would be silly to conclude that therefore we do not experience the tree.
I think your question has been answered.
I think phenomenalism is from Hume's bundle theory, isn't it?
You can't imagine an object that has no properties. And somehow we get from there to: an object is a bundle of properties.
I'm missing a step. Do you remember what it is?
The 1792 writing by G.E.L. Schulze entitled "Aenesidemus" brought a Humean critique to Kant's work. Hume didn't doubt that matter was real because he had a 6th sense that it was. Hume thought that all we can know in itself was ourselves and Kant responded that we hold the world in our thoughts. Schulze came along and went back to Hume, arguing that we can know with certainty only the qualia of our mental and psychological states. The struggle to connect self with world persists in the thoughts of many to this day
Cool!
The issue is direct vs indirect experience. Physically, we can directly experience only the five senses. We directly experience the idea of a tree and indirectly experience the tree as a physical object. (An analogous situation is seeing a tree on a computer monitor. All we can see on a computer monitor is light.)
Think "brain in a vat". Or the movie, The Matrix. Both make a similar point.
It would seem to be true, but only in relation to an intrinsically dualistic human cognitive system.
But whether the basic human cognitive system is in fact intrinsically dualistic, remains questionable.
We don't. As I said in the other thread, if you're going to start saying that 'direct' requires no intervening data nodes, then we do not 'directly' experience the idea of a tree either. The closest we could get to 'the idea of a tree' might be some of specialised neural clusters in the frontal cortex. You don't 'directly' experience the output from there, you experience a reconstructed memory of neural events a few seconds ago.
The clusters directly understand the tree as well as the soul that is united with it. They have dual action on an object
Quoting Isaac
A second latter doesn't mean it's not direct perception. A few seconds doesn't have any meaning in that context. It's one direct experience
Why not?
You're being scrupulous. Why would time change anything, especially a second. You're in direct experience with something. A tiny time lag has no meaning in that context. You're united with the object in thought and your mind just thinks "that was a second before" but the experience of direct knowledge is still there. Even if it was a million years you still know the object and the fact that it's a second or so is felt in experience as meaningless
Well, it's not just time. Remembering something is a completely different brain process to the original inference and introduces several opportunities for data corruption, noise, and reinterpretation.
Those distort so that it doesn't see completely but perception can see accurately
And with English grammar...?
You can understand a tree without knowing everything about it. Shift from knowing nothing about the tree to knowing something
Yeah...shifting into Zen koan hasn't really clarified in the way you might have hoped.
A mistake of nearly as great a magnitude overwhelmed our tradition in the 17th century and after, and it is the mistake of supposing that we never directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world, but directly perceive only our subjective experiences. This mistake has many different names, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. After Kant it gets worse. Mill and Hegel, in spite of all their differences, would also have to be included.
A good book of a modern philosopher who attempts to expose the problem of this position and offers his own theory to clear up the confusion.
It is an error of novices. It stems from a little dabbling in philosophy. Hence...
Quoting Art48
Putnams goal in introducing the vatted brain was to refute the skeptical argument. Most folk only get as far as "we might be brains vats" and stop thinking there, never realising that the argument is against one being a brain in a vat.
Folk watch The Matrix and think "Gee, maybe I'm a brain in a vat", forgetting that the entire premise of the movie is that there is an actual world in which there are vats, from which to escape. The argument, never quite expressed in such lame terms, is that we might be brains in a vat, and hence phenomenalism. As if Neo were never evicted from his pod.
or gamers:
Quoting Art48
It is ubiquitous in these forums, but rare in those with more than an undergrad background.
Moving beyond the brain-in-a-vat argument is an indication of philosophical adulthood.
Of course all this is just Banno being a contemptuous prick, and folk needn't trouble themselves further. After all, what could be more comfortable than being a brain in a nice, warm vat?
David Hume will still be famous after I'm dead and buried, so I'll hold back on calling him a philosophical novice. :grin:
Fine.
Quoting Tate
A misquote? This seems to be your argument. Hs one misperceiv'd it?
The title of the OP is phenomenalism, not phenomenology.
Hume was a phenomenalist.
Quoting Tate
Here's logic! And hence we are, one and all, brains in vats. QED.
He also spoke of impressions, hence he was an impressionist...
The matter of identity rears its head again and again. All of what you said could be true if you identify as a brain, a mind, or some other small and limited observer existing within the body. But everyone in the entire world can see that you are no such entity.
The psychologist JJ Gibson has some good ideas about perception. Two good books, well worth the read, are The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception and The Perception of the Visual World.
Lets re-word this a bit and say: we directly experience the tree and come up with the concepts of a tree and physical object
I think we can all agree to this.
Thanks, something to explore
Seems very passive.
Searle disagrees. Can you tell me why in your own words?
Quoting Richard B
The OP doesn't mention "subjective experiences".
The OP points out we only have 5 ways of accessing the physical world: touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and smell. Can anyone describe another way to experience a physical tree?
The interesting thing about Putnam's argument is that it's about meaning, not about ontology, and depends on a causal theory of reference. I think it strange that in such a scenario the brain-in-a-vat cannot refer to itself as being a brain in a vat, and so I think that Putnam's argument is actually a reductio ad absurdum against a causal theory of reference.
"the sauce is the boss"
The point is I can directly experience only five physical senses.Based on what my senses tell me, I think of a tree.
Similarly, imagine a mirage. My eyes see light; my mind misinterprets what I see as water. Or imagine in a few decades, free-standing 3D holograms have been perfected so that the hologram appears exactly as a tree. Only when I pass my hand through the hologram do I realize it's not a genuine tree. My mind saw a tree until passing my hand through it showed the error.
I mentioned earlier all we can see on a computer monitor is light.
Check out the Adelson Checker-Shadow Illusion.
https://www.illusionsindex.org/ir/checkershadow
The squares A and B are exactly the same color. (I had to print the image and cut out the two squares to convince myself.) Our eyes see exactly the same color of squares A and B. But our mind creates the image where the squares appear different.
The point is we see only light; our mind does the rest.
Phenomenalism just advises we not invest too much in the idea of concrete objects which possess ever changing properties.
It says that an object basically is its properties. There's no extra "object" out there that has redness, or softness, or whatever.
"Light" and "mind" wouldn't be exceptions to that. See what I mean?
Light and ideas are exceptional, in that we experience them directly.
We experience objects "out there" indirectly via our physical senses and our mind.
I don't think that's what Hume was thinking. Would you want to explore his ideas more? By going through the logic of bundle theory?
I believe you would say that we do not directly experience electrons and proton but only indirectly. If I follow your views, I believe you will also need to say the same thing with regards "sense data". Let's take the electron/proton example. I do not directly experience electrons/protons; but with my senses and some scientific theory, I can infer their existence indirectly. Similarly, I do not directly experience sense data; but with my senses and some philosophical and analogical reasoning, I can infer their existence indirectly. What is unclear to me is if you mean the idea of sense data, or sense data itself. This confusion arise when you say "I indirectly experience the idea of a tree."
If you, and everyone else, experiences sense data directly, why do you explain what you mean by examples of illusions and other representations of reality? Does not one need a stable real external world to understand what an illusion or representation even is? (I understand what a mirage is because I actual consumed real water.) Imagine a world where the inhabitants never experience hallucinations, illusions, or vivid dreams, would they ever need a sense datum theory at all. But you might say, at least I can point to my direct experience of the sense data itself. Again, as I mentioned before, this is a private exercise that offer very little to how we actually learn, understand, and use language.
I'd be interested but I think it should be in another thread.
Quoting Richard B
I think this captures part of our disagreement. We have five physical senses and I'd say we experience the sense data from these sense directly. Question: do you believe we experience anything directly and, if so, what?
Quoting Richard B
One reason I like posting here is to get feedback on my ideas. Perhaps I didn't write the OP as clearly as I could have. With hindsight, it may have been better if I had expressed my thoughts as follows.
We may think of a human being as having four parts: body, emotion, mind, and consciousness. Our body has five physical senses: touch, taste, seeing, hearing, and smelling. Our consciousness directly experiences three types of input: physical, emotional, and mental.
Our mind automatically processes visual sense data to create a visual picture of reality. Sometimes the picture is accurate in that it corresponds to reality. Sometimes the picture is inaccurate as in the case of an illusion, a mirage.
In the checker illusion, our eyes experience visual sense data directly (our eyes experience the same shade of grey from square A and B). Our mind automatically processes physical sense data to create a picture of reality. Our mind creates the idea of a check board with square A and B differing in color.
So, I'd describe experience of the physical world as consciousness aware of pictures created in our mind based on sense data.
You may recall that our eyes see everything upside down but flip the image so we see rightside up.
Here's a quote from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91177/how-our-eyes-see-everything-upside-down
So why doesnt the world look upside down to us? The answer lies in the power of the brain to adapt the sensory information it receives and make it fit with what it already knows. Essentially, your brain takes the raw, inverted data and turns it into a coherent, right-side-up image.
Hume was a phenomenalist. Why would exploring his ideas go in a different thread?
OK, what ideas do you have in mind?
"Every modern philosopher accepted some version of the theory of ideasthe view that we immediately perceive certain mental entities called ideas, but dont have direct access to physical objects. Hume holds an empiricist version of the theory, because he thinks that everything we believe is ultimately traceable to experience."
"Impressions of sensation include the feelings we get from our five senses as well as pains and pleasures, all of which arise in us originally, from unknown causes (T 1.1.2.1/7). He calls them original because trying to determine their ultimate causes would take us beyond anything we can experience. Any intelligible investigation must stop with them.". -- SEP on Hume
Note that this is not an ontological view. This is epistemological: it's about what we can and can't determine. The question arises: how did we determine that our knowledge stops with experience?
Can I take this question in terms of Kant's thing-in-itself? Kant said we cannot know the thing-in-itself, only phenomena. I'm making a more modest claim: that what we know of the physical world is based on sensory input and ideas our mind creates in response. I don't deny the existence of the exterior physical world, only that we don't have direct access to it.
Yes, like I mentioned, if we both were standing in front of a tree, I am directly experiencing you looking at a tree, I dont directly experience your sense data of a tree. Another one, I have direct conversations and debates with other human beings not sense data.
I think our disagreements is our starting philosophical positions. Yours: An individuals private access to their sense data. Mine: Human beings public access to a shared external world.
Looking at something and seeing something are not the same thing. He might be blind.
That's phenomenalism as I understand it. I guess my question would be: what supports this claim?
Please explain what direct access means. What is an example of having direct access? If we want to confirm Yes, we have direct access don't we need some idea what that would be like when it is achieved?
For example, do you have direct access to the house? No, I don't have a key to the front door but I have indirect access, I climb to the second floor and enter thru the bedroom window.
I agree with this. There's a difference between making the conclusion that reality does not exist outside our own perception and that we cannot truly observe reality except through our own perception.
The latter is true because of the logic of our human nature. We do, in fact, not experience reality past our senses. We can use fantasy or mushrooms or whatever to enhance sensory experience, but we cannot transcend the perception that we have. Adding to this we have an extreme amount of scientific data that is testable and provable that tell us about a world past our perception, like how light consists of more wavelengths than what we can perceive.
That reality exists because of our perception of it has no real foundation in science or logic whatsoever. Therefore we can use the theories as a guide for us to have a better perspective of how to define reality and our sense of existence. We perceive a fraction of reality as the foundation for what we experience as reality.
Take for example all the people who has a different "wiring" of their brain. Like how some has interconnections between the perception of sound and visuals, meaning that they experience sound as visual artifacts, lights and shapes etc. Their perception of reality is vastly different from other people due to this physical defect, but it is an important aspect of the nature of our existence.
Imagine all the animals with different perceptions than us, how other animals experience the perception of time differently, how some see more colors and some less, how some have a sense of smell so intense that they almost perceive the air or water around them as a cloud of experiences informing them about their reality.
We don't have to accept the illogical conclusion of reality only existing because of our perception of reality in order to accept the importance of differentiating perception versus actual reality. And most importantly, including our perception of reality when defining ourselves as objects within that reality.
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting Christoffer
Isn't the scientific data about things that are past your senses?
Quoting Richard B
I think the section on The Character of Experience here gives a simple explanation: "the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary [mind-independent] objects."
What I understand this to mean is that if experience is direct and if I see something as white then that thing has that property of whiteness (as seen).
This is consistent with the motive of the direct and indirect realists to answer the epistemological problem of perception: does perception provide us with information about the nature of the mind-independent world?
As such, to answer Tate's question, Art48's assertion that we don't have direct access to the external world would be supported by showing either that a) the properties of mind-independent objects are not present in the experience or that b) the phenomenal character of experience is not a property of mind-independent objects.
I think that our scientific understanding of perception shows that both a) and b) are true. Pain and colour are not properties of mind-independent objects, and a mind-independent object being a collection of subatomic particles that absorb and/or reflect electromagnetic radiation isn't present in the experience.
Quoting Michael
So science has access to the properties of mind independent objects? How is this possible if those properties are not present in experience?
I'm not a scientist, I don't know how it works (I've only read about the results), but I presume scientists don't actually see subatomic particles.
I dont think this necessary follows. Take for instance a car painted with ChromaFlair. ChromaFlair is a pigment used in paint systems, primarily for automobiles. When the paint is applied, it changes color depending on the light source and viewing angle. There is not an actual/real color behind the ChromaFlair but many colors depending on the viewing angle.
You agree with phenomenalism because of subatomic particles?
I think that our understanding of visual perception, of electromagnetic radiation, of electrons absorbing and scattering photons, etc. shows that it's a category error to talk of external world objects as having a colour-property. Take for example this photo:
It's not the case that either humans or birds (or both) are seeing the wrong colour. It's just the case that humans and birds have a different brain and eye structure, and so different sense data is triggered by the same stimulus.
I think that the science of the Standard Model shows that the character of our experiences and the nature of the mind-independent world is very different.
And
Quoting Michael
I think there are two problems with this view:
1. Difficult to understand how a scientist would observe a subjects phenomenal character of experience since it is private to the subject.
2. Assuming that 1. Is achievable, how can a scientist compare it if mind independent objects are not directly accessible according to phenomenology
We're able to ask people what they see. For example, there was the infamous photo of a dress that some people saw as white and gold and some as black and blue. Of course, we can never look through someone's eyes to see what they see, and it's entirely possible that everyone saw the same colours and yet described what they see differently, but I think it more reasonable to just accept that different people saw different colours.
And this itself, I think, is evidence against direct realism. Given that the character of each group's experiences were different, for at least one group either a) the properties of the mind-independent object weren't present in their experience or b) the phenomenal character of their experience was not a property of the mind-independent object (or both). Unless you want to argue that the mind-independent object was in some sort of superposition of being both white and gold and black and blue, with each group having direct access to one "version"? But that seems like quite the reach.
Why do you have confidence the standard model if you learned about it through your senses?
Why wouldn't I?
Because:
Quoting Michael
I mean, if this is true, then how do you know about mind independent objects? What source of knowledge do you have other than your senses? How does this other source support your belief in mind independent objects?
They're inferred as it can be considered the best explanation for the occurrence and regularity of experience. Of course, some don't think this inference warranted and so opt for idealism instead. But I'm not sure I'm willing to commit to that.
Why do you think it's warranted?
I'm undecided actually. I just find it simpler to argue for indirect realism than for idealism. There's at least some common ground with the direct realist that makes for fruitful discussion.
Is it a matter of temperament? Indirect realism just suits you better?
Quoting Michael
Is this quite a reach?
I think we would both agree that the sense data is exactly the same whether you call it a image of a duck or an image of a rabbit.
I choose to argue for indirect realism because it's easier than arguing for idealism. What I actually believe is irrelevant.
https://images.app.goo.gl/HXd9kw7vuDCTQ1Tq9
But what do you actually believe?
I don't know. Perhaps we see different colours. Perhaps it's darker for me. Perhaps it's smaller for me. Perhaps your sense data is vertically or horizontally mirrored to mine. Perhaps all the lines are straight for me.
Regardless, even if in this case our sense data is the same, direct realism wouldn't follow. What you appear to be doing here is denying the antecedent. That two people having a different character experience shows that the mind-independent object isn't present in at least one of their experiences isn't that two people having the same character experience shows that the mind-independent object is present in both of their experiences. You might as well say that because everyone who sees the dress as black and blue sees the dress as black and blue then a mind-independent black and blue dress is present in the experience, ignoring the fact that there are (or can be) people who see the dress as white and gold.
In means no intermediary. I take it I have direct access to what my eyes see, my mind thinks, etc.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes.
Quoting Christoffer
And yes, again.
Quoting Richard B
It's reasonable to believe the table has no color independent of us.
A color-blind person does not see the table's color as we do.
An alien who sees in the infrared or ultraviolet or x-ray bands of the electromagnetic spectrum would see the table quite differently. Look at an infrared image of the table. Does the image show the table's "true" color? No, because the table has no true color independent of the perceiving being.
Ok, but this does prove there is anything we don't have access to when it comes to the table. Like my example with car painted in ChromaFlair, the car has multiple colors depending on the light and the angle of perceiver, but it does not follow that I don't have direct access to car, that there is something additional called the thing-in-itself.
Ok, your eyes don't see sense data of trees, they see trees. You mind constructs the idea of sense data of trees. This seems consistent with your views. Thus, you have direct access.
We have indirect access to physical objects.
Quoting Richard B
My eyes only see light. If free-standing 3D holograms existed indistinguishable from real trees, my eyes would see exactly the same thing.
All this shows is that we need to do a little more investigation into whether it is a real tree or a fake tree. However, it does not show we lack direct access to an external world or to a tree or the thing-in-itself.
What is this thing-in-itself that I do have direct access? To use my house example, it is like you are saying, I dont have direct access to the house because I need to indirectly access it by climbing thru the second floor window and all along you don't have a front door. I think you can say you have direct access thru the second floor window.
Such information isn't sensory information, but complex information that is backed up with mathematical logic. Our perception of an apple doesn't explain how outside objects can scan and analyze the apple arriving at repeatable conclusions. The end result is that the apple is still the apple, regardless of our perception of that apple. It might look vastly different from other perceptual perspectives, but if we and a bunch of aliens, with extremely different perceptions, were to analyze the apple, even with different types of tools, it would still confirm the existence of an object that we could apply definitions to that are descriptive of what we define as an apple. The aliens would also reach conclusions of the object, therefore the object exists outside of our perception, regardless of our experience of the object.
Can you give an example of an outside object (without just being programmed to detect what humans already think of as apples) detect apples. I can't think of a single example.
Again, "Science has made me into a skeptic".
If that was true, you would have become skeptical about the scientific findings as well and arrived at the top of the ladder. :razz:
Exactly!
I think of it as like being in a room and you're really preoccupied with something fascinating. Every now and then you glance at the walls and realize there's something wrong, but you don't pursue it. You just go back to being fascinated.
If you spend time allowing yourself to know what's wrong with the walls, you just laugh, and go right back. Do you know what I mean?
Something like this?
If what was true? I asked a question. Questions aren't true or false.
I guess this is important. The fascination of doubt, the sinking feeling one gets when contemplating one's cosmic ignorance. Socrates realized soon enough that we don't know much for sure. Oddly enough, one can get hooked on the contemplation of one's one insignificance, ignorance or confusion.
And yet, we still *know* some stuff for (almost) certain. We can approach certainty, apparently, or at least we all function daily -- and argue -- as if we could approach certainty.
Science certainly does so. It is predicated on the idea that careful human observation of phenomena and the careful application of human reason to such observations (classifying, comparing, theorizing) can help make sense of the world. If you don't believe in that, you're not a scientist.
:up:
Quoting Olivier5
Yep. :grin:
First of all: Kudos for bringing in definitions! :up:
I always applaud this because it is quite rare --even a lot are against it!-- and I find it very important, esp. in discussions taking place in media like this one.
Now, I'm not sure if you want to refer strictly to this term and not to "Phenomenology", which is much more commonly used in philosophy. (This is the problem with "-isms": they are used as frameworks in which a subject is confined and quite often in a wrong way. person's position on a subject is bound.)
Quoting Art48
There are a lot more senses, which are recognized today as such, beyond the classic 5 ones: balance, weight, motion/movement/kinaesthesia, velocity/speed, spatial/orientation, body position, pressure, vibration, temperature, pain, and more ...
Quoting Art48
Certainly. But it looks to me that this is a subject of Phenomenology and not Phenomenalism. The word "how" betrays it. But then, maybe I am wrong. That's why I avoid to use "-isms" if their mentioning is not necessary. And I believe that using "Phenomenalism" in order to ask this interesting question and describe the subject related to it, is not at all necessary.
Now, having an "experience" of something can mean different things, but here I believe we mean having an immediate contact of an object via our senses. Right? This then becomes a knowledge about that object. This, although it is usually the right sequence, it can also work the other way around. Here's an example:
In a botanical garden that I'm vesting for the first time, I see a quite weird object that looks like tree but I am not sure; it could also be a plant. I come nearer and read the tag. It says: "Bottle tree". There. I have an experience of such a tree. And the next time I see it I will recognize it, i.e. I will know what it is, because my first experience became knowledge.
Next day, I talk about my very interesting visit to the botanical garden --there were a lot more of interesting things there-- to a friend and show him some photos I took, including that of the "bottle tree". My friend was intrigued and he visited too the garden after a few days. When he reached at the location of the "bottle tree" he immediately recognized from a distance, because he had a knowledge of it from the info I had given to him. He then also got an experience of it.
Quoting Art48
Well, a tree is not an abstract idea so that we have an idea of it. It is an object, something concrete. So I would say that, independently of its name, i.e. the word "three", it exists in our mind as an image connected to various data (knowledge) we have about it.
Here's how the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte explains this phenomenon with his painting and a famous phrase:
"This is not a pipe". Indeed, it isn't; it's "an image of a pipe".
I think it also qualifies as representative realism because I'm leaving the existence of external, independently-existing object an open question.
Quoting Tate
Because for millennia human beings have worked to understand what they experience through their senses and the standard model is one result.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I'd classify them as variations of the sense of touch.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I'd say we have more than the image. We have the idea of a tree which tells us more than an image: tree begin as seeds, they grow slowly, etc. Whenever we learn something new about trees, we revise our idea of them.
Lets give an example how you would directly experience a tree. Lets say you would like to determine if it is a tree and what type. The first thing you would need to do is go directly to the tree, directly touch the tree, and directly take a sample of the tree. With this sample you can send it to a lab to test its DNA and see if it is a match to some type of tree. Would you want to say it was a sample of sense data of the tree I sent the lab? No, your sense data is what you have. Would you say the sample is the thing-in-itself? No, this is something we cannot know by our senses. Would you say the sample is part of a tree and you like confirmation? Exactly!
Higgs particle is something we cannot perceive but is detectable in a repeatable fashion by equipment built through theories backed up by mathematical logic.
Human perception cannot explain how this chain of prediction and detection can logically sum up in a factual end point. We can only make the phenomenological point of ourselves not able to perceive the Higgs particle, or perceive the effects it has on mass and temporal movement, but never the object of the particle itself, and we cannot conclude that it doesn't exist because "it's just perception" when logic, predictability, analyzed data, repeatable tests all confirm the particle exists.
The perception of science data does not render the science data wrong just because we perceive the result of those tests. They have no correlation with each other.
Quoting Olivier5
Mathematical logic is not based on any human perception. You lump together imagination with logic, but logic is not a human concept. To be able to, through math, predict outcomes of external reality and then confirm that through analytical machines has nothing to do with our perception.
If we build a detector, like the one in CERN, to detect particles we cannot possibly perceive, our perception does not dictate its function, which is what you mean with what you say when you lump in human perception with science.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method, of how science and math works. You are not speaking about our ability to detect external reality past our perception, you are speaking of people making assumptions and assertions out of those results.
That's more close to philosophy than science. Philosophy's role is to speculate, through as much logic as possible, what the facts of the world (science) actually mean for us as human beings. But that is just what it is, philosophy, not science.
This is why the assumption that the phenomenological conclusion of our perception dictating reality is wrong. The correct phenomenological conclusion is that we can only perceive reality in a certain and very specific way and understanding how those limitations of actual reality influence our conclusions of that reality.
Rarely, if ever, have I talked to scientists who make any conclusions past what their data has actually showed them. That's closer to what TV documentaries about science does, they create pretty stupid interpretations of actual science for the effect of entertainment, they have no actual valid conclusions because that would require a dry read-through of the reports and papers published, after all the necessary scrutiny has been applied.
I think this is why people have such a skewed image of what science is and misinterpret it as having too much human input to be valid. That's really not a correct image of how science actually works and knowing the processes that scientists apply to their work just demonstrates the illogical idea of perception dictating reality, that's just a delusional fantasy for humans who want to attribute humans with more power over the universe than they actually have.
Most people cannot grasp the cosmic horror that is our existence in the universe, so we invent interpretations of religious proportions just to cope with the actual reality of our existence. But the truth is that our perception is an extremely limited way of "seeing" the world and the universe... so we build machines to extend our ability to perceive and those machines confirms a reality past ourselves, a reality indifferent to us in every way possible. To think otherwise is just as delusional as when people thought the sun and universe rotated around the earth and us as the center of everything. Everyone is small, insignificant and pointless and it's more or less proven today, regardless of any collective narcissism people delude themselves with otherwise.
It's half the story. While it is undoubtedly true that we "only" perceive our own ideas - something that was taken for granted during the Golden Age of philosophy (from Descartes to Kant, with some minor exceptions like Thomas Reid.), "the way of ideas" is now somehow controversial.
Nevertheless, I think one needs to add either a "substance" of some kind, as articulated specifically by Locke, or "things in themselves" as developed by Kant, and anticipated by others.
We cannot prove that substances in Locke's sense exist, neither Cudworth or Kant's "thing in themselves", it is a posit which gives coherence to the world. It may not exist, but it's problematic if it didn't.
Physics, for instance, has to postulate 95% of the universe as being composed of stuff we cannot detect, or the 5% we do know won't work.
If we don't do this and make such postulates, we are left with the argument that there are appearances, and nothing else. But this would render modern science obsolete: we have this scientific picture which is about appearances, instead of it being about the world.
The last issue here is that, it seems to me to be incoherent to say that there isn't something in the objects that makes us recognize them as objects - other animals seem to treat the world is a similar-ish manner.
The general outline, however, is sound, all it needs is some supplementation.
Good example.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree.
...but we were talking about apples. I'm not seeing the logical link between the Higgs Boson being identified by purely mathematically programmed machines and apples.
Your claim was that...
Quoting Christoffer
...that even a machine, an alien, would confirm the existence of an apple. You've shown that machines see Higgs Bosons, but not apples. Apples are collections of these mathematical constructs (quarks and gluons, and all the others I don't know the name of). The properties of fundamental particles are mathematically determined (as you said) the idea that some collection of them ends there and not over there, is not mathematically determined, it's determined by our form of life, our activities, they way we treat and interact with these collections of particles. I don't see an argument that aliens would see the same boundaries as we do when their form of life might be entirely different.
I'm inclined to agree as per this particular argument. However the sentiment behind the argument, the rejection of radical scepticism by showing that it undermines itself, remains. Neo was evicted from his pod, and hence there is a world in which there is a pod. For the brain in the vat, there is a vat. The phenomenalist conclusion, that Quoting Art48
fails because the pod and the vat are not just "theoretical constructs".
Indirect realism lives on, though. It's got science behind it. It's a conundrum.
So we repeat the mantra "It's got science behind it" in the place of thinking?
The debate between direct and indirect realism was settled a ways back in favour of dropping the distinction. Austin won. @Richard B has been doing a reasonable job of presenting that account.
You misunderstand. It's not a view I favor or dislike. I'm just explaining where we are.
Quoting Banno
Could be. Nevertheless, indirect realism is on the table. Ignoring it won't help.
I believe the transition from his analysis of senses to his conclusion is not evident. But for the Indirect Realist, this may be the area to clarify to help their position.
Yes. It's fatally flawed, but an analysis of our nervous systems leads straight to that conclusion.
Maybe a scientific revolution is required.
Don't know. Is he attacking his own theory of acquaintance there?
Quoting Tate
Depends on what one understands by "direct".
As discussed at length with @Isaac, who knows about such things, one does not see the results of one's nervous system, as it where; one sees with one's nervous system.
So when one looks at a tree or a cup or some such standard item, there is a narrative that says that what one sees is not the tree but the product of one's eyes and optical nerves and so on. But that's a mistaken narrative. What one sees is the tree, and these are seen using one's eyeballs and optical nerves and so on.
And this is the usual sense in which 'indirect realism" is misused; that science shows that we never see the tree directly. It's often case of Stove's Gem.
That's one case. There are others, in which indirect realism becomes a form of antirealism or worse, idealism.
The arguments are detailed, and get lost in the noise of the forums.
I'd like to leave the "one who sees" out of it because I think the ego is probably constructed as much as the visual field is.
Point is, the brain isn't a video recorder, it's more like an organic computer, calculating and estimating.
Predicting, as I understand it.
None of which implies that we see things only indirectly.
Better, drop the notion of direct and indirect and just say we see the tree.
Then the realism/antirealism discussion can move back to choosing between a logic in which there are unknown truths and one in which there are not.
Quoting Banno
It's what we would say of any other species, that its experience is a construction in which its particular strengths and needs are highlighted.
Yes, I run into a problem when I try to say the same thing about myself: as Wittgenstein pointed out, I'm trying to form a picture of something that isn't in my world. I think that's why nonsense appears.
You're saying the solution is to finesse the conundrum with a certain phrasing that leaves out the nonsense producing portion?
Why not just face the nonsense head on?
Same thing. Dissolving philosophical problems often (always?) consists in finding the better way to say something, of looking at the problem differently,
By far the best solution. The matter of how we see is being confused with the matter of what we see.
Folk seem confused by the idea of active inference into thinking that the subject of perception must therefore be in the mind, but this could not be further from what active inference is saying. It is, quite literally, predicated on the idea that the subject of our inference hierarchies (the process of seeing being one such) is the external hidden states, not the internal ones. The entire mathematical structure of active inference - from Fokker-Plank equations though gradient climbing formulations to the famous Bayesian model error functions - would simply fail if it were not assumed that the external world were the subject of the process. There'd be no gradient to climb (no external world forces to resist the decay to Gaussian distribution from).
Logic is a very human concept. Maybe you mean to say that logic is not limited to humans, which I would agree with.
I think you would agree that a group of blind and deaf people could not build and operate the CERN accelerator. Even if they could, how would they know what the results of their experiments are?
We can build tools to expand on our senses but someone still needs to look into the telescope. With one's eyes.
:roll:
What an utterly hopeless piece of thinking.
What part did you fail to understand?
If you can prove the existence of an object like the Higgs particle then you can logically prove the existence of a larger object that we humans refer to as "an apple" through the same methods of testing and using instruments that bypass our perception. We can provide all the data about the apple that confirms it to be that kind of an object, based on how it correlates with what our perception tells us. We can also further test our perception with having a large sample size of people going into a room and then out and then describing the object in there and then use that data from a thousand different individuals to confirm that we have a collective perception of the object as an apple, then compare that to the scientific data from the instruments to conclude the existence of the object both outside our perception as well as through our perception.
It's basically "Mary in the black and white room". The black and white data is the external, the emotional experience of the outside is the perception of humans.
Quoting Olivier5
That we discovered, invented or stumbled upon a logical system that we merely give a name and wrap uses around does not mean the concept in itself is human. Mathematical logic is, for example, universal. It doesn't matter how our perception is, it never changes such logic, only the interpretation of that logic is based on perception.
Quoting Olivier5
We are still blind and deaf to the existence of a Higgs particle, or the concept of its function is still so alien to us that we cannot perceive it as a function of reality. That doesn't mean the detector doesn't detect the particle.
The data is not dependent on our interpretation, it's dependent on logic. If the detector finds a particle characterized by the mathematical prediction of its function and the detector confirms this particle in existence, it doesn't matter what perception or level of perception we have as humans. A blind person will be able to understand the data just as well as a seeing person since there's nothing to see or perceive, it's the machine that sees the particle and tells us that it matches our prediction made through logic. In no part of this process is there any human perception that defines the detection of the particle. The perception you describe is reading the conclusion on a screen at CERN or conceptualizing the meaning of the particles existence outside of the scientific logic behind the detection of it.
But the bottom line is still that there is a reality that exists past our human perception and that the only clear use of phenomenology is to guide our philosophical thinking of how we perceive reality versus how reality actually is. Like how light consists of wavelengths that we use every day in the form of radio, radar and x-rays, but we can only see a fraction of these wavelengths with our eyes.
The brain-in-a-vat and other such hypotheses are just analogies. The underlying principle is best exemplified by Kant's transcendental idealism. There is indeed something that is the cause of experience, but given the logical possibility of such things as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, it is not a given that everyday experiences show us the cause of experience. The causal world might be very unlike what is seen. And that includes being very unlike the material world as is understood in modern physics. So it's not that we could just be some brain-in-a-vat, it's that we could just be some conscious thing in some otherwise ineffable noumena.
At the very least this might warrant skepticism (in the weaker sense of understanding that we might be wrong, not in the stronger sense of believing that we're likely wrong). However, it might not warrant phenomenalism. That we can't know that the causal world is like the world we experience isn't that the causal world isn't like the world we experience. Something more than just the skepticial hypothesis is required to defend phenomenalism.
Regarding this latter point, let's say that there are two possible worlds, one which is phenomenalist (e.g. Kant's transcendental idealism obtains) and one which is direct realist. Unless such a scenario necessarily entails that the character of their inhabitants' experiences differ, skepticism is warranted in both the phenomenalist world and the direct realist world (none of the inhabitants can know which of the two worlds they live in), but phenomenalism is false in the direct realist world (and direct realism is false in the phenomenalist world).
So what we need to discuss is the assumption made in this hypothesis. Would the character of one's experiences in a phenomenalist world differ from the character of one's experiences in a direct realist world? If so, what character would we expect in each, and which of these (if either) is the character of our experiences?
Something like: the kind of thing that we hear in the case of a veridical perception is the same kind of thing that we hear in the case of an hallucinatory perception (e.g. the schizophrenic who hears voices). The difference between a veridical perception and an hallucinatory perception is that in the case of a veridical perception the thing that we hear is causally covariant with some external stimulus (and, if a representationalist kind of indirect realism, that the character of the thing that we hear is isomorphic with the nature of this external stimulus).
And, I suppose: the kind of thing that we read about in true factual literature is the same kind of thing that we read about in fiction?
Yes.
So the true factual literature "my dog has fleas" isn't about an actual dog?
Or is it that actual things are the same kind of things as made-up things?
Reading a history textbox doesn't give us direct access to history.
But the book itself: is it directly about the historical events, or only indirectly?
I don't know what "directly" means in this context.
Regardless, as I said above, reading a history textbook doesn't give us direct access to history, and similarly (according to indirect realism) seeing an apple doesn't give us direct access to the causal world. But that's not to say that nothing in history "corresponds" to what is said in the history textbook, or that nothing in the causal world "corresponds" to what is seen. So I don't understand the point you are trying to make. You just appear to be trying to play some kind of word game.
Does the schizophrenic who sees people who arent there see a picture of people (who arent there)?
Your Cartesian theatre grammar is a strawman.
That's my question. Prompted by,
Quoting Michael
What kind of thing is it, if not an actual voice, and now apparently not a mental image either?
I didnt say its not a mental image. When a schizophrenic hears voices those voices are just mental imagery but its bad grammar to then describe this as hearing mental imagery.
So a question back to you: do you accept that schizophrenics see and hear things that arent there? If so, what is it that they see and hear?
Oh, so it's a picture, after all?
Quoting Michael
But you just did:
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Literally, they obviously don't. They 'see and hear things'.
They don't see a picture. They see an apple. And the apple is mental imagery. Your mistake is in conflating two different domains of discourse. It's like saying that Frodo carried the One Ring to Mordor, that the One Ring is a fiction, and so that Frodo carried a fiction to Mordor. It's just bad grammar.
Quoting bongo fury
That's just playing word games.
What matters is that the visual and auditory imagery that occurs in the case of veridical perception is no more "direct access" to their external cause than the visual and auditory imagery that occurs in the case of hallucinatory perception. The difference is that in veridical perception the visual and auditory imagery is causally covariant with some external stimulus, and maybe also that the character of this visual and auditory imagery is isomorphic with the nature of the external stimulus. That's indirect realism. You cannot simply dismiss this by appealing to some strawman Cartesian theatre grammar.
Logic, hopefully.
Quoting Michael
Do you mean, they notice an apple (shape) in their mental picture?
Quoting Michael
You're not being serious. Ok.
Yes, there needs to be someone reading the data, and interpreting the data. Machines don't do science. They do not bypass human perception either, they just enhance it. And the logic behind the apparatus itself and its design and correct operation is theory-based and theory-ladden. The questions that are being tested, the theories that are built to make sense to the data, are all human ideas.
This is not to say that there is no "outside reality" (outside of what, exactly?). Reality is whatever there is, and to my knowledge, that includes ideas, which are real, and stuff that are not ideas.
In my view, dissolving the paradox requires defining the notion of 'absence' in terms of present information, whereupon the notion of reference is reduced to a set of relationships within present information.
From such a perspective , the concepts of doubt and epistemic error are reinterpreted as semantic notions rather than metaphysical notions related to unobserved truth values. Essentially, semantics becomes holistic, immanent, and under-determined, comprising of partial-definitions that change over time in such a fashion as to alleviate the concerns of idealists who reject transcendental signification, and realists who reject epistemic infallibility.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of my argument. The machine works outside of anyone reading the data, it still detects the object, independently of anyone interpreting the data.
Let's say we establish an AI that has the purpose of interpreting the data. Its only job is to read and conclude the data to be correct. Now, it hasn't any kind of perception like humans do, and the output will be a binary "yes" or "no". "Is there a Higgs particle?", it answers "Yes". The interpretation of this data will be binary, its mathematical and bypasses human perception at every level. The output is either positive or negative, it has no human interpretational value.
Quoting Olivier5
A logical machine working with mathematical equations bypass human perception. It's based on physical laws, not perception.
Quoting Olivier5
A "scientific theory" is different from lay-man definitions of "theory". A scientific theory, especially within physics, are bound to logical and mathematical truths. Math is not a human perception. So if the machine is based on such mathematical theories, it does NOT become influence by human perception.
These theories are also testable. An atomic clock that shifts according to relativity is a result that has a binary interpretation, it's either relative or it is not. Then utilizing the same result as a foundation for functional GPS systems means we have a system that couldn't work without a scientific theory informing us how to build it. There's no perception at all to this other than perceiving the result of these machines and functions.
To apply perception as a causational factor to something that acts upon the functions of universal physics is a fundamental error in reasoning for phenomenology.
Quoting Olivier5
Any interpretation of data is philosophy if it only acts upon a conjecture. But a binary output of a machine analyzing universal physics through mathematical logic is not conjecture. If you build a machine that on a macro scale shows either a Red light or a Green light, the spectrum can be read by a machine as either red or green per definition of wavelengths, regardless of the human eye and brain seeing those lights with interpretational values. The fact that there are waves and photons is detectable through detectors that works upon physical laws, not our perceptions. The CERN Atlas detector wasn't built through "human perception", it was built according to mathematical logic, and that bypass any kind of human interpretation.
That a nine looks like this: "9", doesn't mean the function of "nine" is a "human perception" within math. Nine is nine regardless of our perception and the aesthetics of how we talk about "nine" in text, speech, countable objects etc. "Nine" as a mathematical and logical concept is a rule of physical law in the universe, the results of predictability calculations using "nine" within mathematical equations can predict things we haven't even found out about the universe yet, since it doesn't rely on "human perception", it relies on physical laws and logic, i.e it is external to human perception.
Quoting Olivier5
"Outside reality" in terms of phenomenology is "outside human perception". Some think that phenomenology is about our human perception being responsible for the external world, that our perception is, in lack of a better explanation, a religious cause for reality and that any external reality outside of human perception doesn't exist.
This is the fundamental issue I have with that sub-section of phenomenology and why I say that phenomenology should be considered to be about the duality of reality being both something interpreted and perceived by humans and external reality that exists in a far more complex manner than we can even conceptualize.
I.e the way people speak about human perception in phenomenology is more akin to the Von NeumannWigner interpretation of quantum physics and that interpretation, that our consciousness collapse quantum states is almost a laughable conclusion that isn't really taken seriously by quantum physicists.
I think such conclusions are pure human narcissism on a religious scale. We attribute life with having control over external reality in a way that fits more in a X-Men comic than actual logical and rational deduction about our relation to physical reality.
Like with a blindfold on? :razz:
Quoting Michael
Yes that's much better than
Quoting Michael
But then what's indirect about it? You say the homunculus is straw, but don't you need him, for indirectness?
It is this visual and auditory imagery that informs our intellectual considerations, not whatever distal causes are responsible for such imagery.
He's straw but intellectual?
Why the denial about the Cartesian theatre?
Or, better denial, please.
It's just a strawman. The grammar of ordinary conversation doesn't dictate the (meta-)physics of perception. You need something better than "saying that we see the mental image of an apple sounds stupid, so indirect realism is false", or whatever it is you're trying to say.
No worries.
Right. So we tell the machine how to distinguish an apple, and it does so. How does that prove that aliens would also distinguish apples? The machine only did it because we told it to, and told it how.
Different thread, same issue. What are the steps that the visual and auditory imagery take to inform our intellectual considerations? Do they do so directly, straight from the "I see a post box" cortex to the "I think I'll put my letter in it" region?
You seem to think that the hidden states' steps (light scattering, retinal stimulation, occipital modelling...) mean that the connection is indirect, but the steps that the visual image takes to our response (hippocampus re-firing, working memory channel, sensorimotor inference, proprioceptive cascade...) are direct. Why? Both processes seem to have steps. There are a number of steps between object and model. There are a number of steps between model and response. Why are the latter steps direct and the former indirect?
It might be worth us looking into what is actually meant by direct perception. The SEP article is a good place to start:
And to better explain what I have said above:
If its not direct then its indirect (unless theres some third alternative?).
I don't disagree about the indirectness of perception.
You said...
Quoting Michael
If it is not distal causes which informs our intellectual consideration on the grounds of indirectness, then it is not the visual and auditory imagery either, because that too is indirect.
I'm not contesting your claim that perception is indirect. I'm disputing your claim that indirectness prevents aboutness.
The AI would still be human-made to emulate a human scientist. It wouldn't be in effect very different from a human scientist. It would be able to fail, in particular. It would also rely on data fed to it, by a system which can fail. This system is also man-made and based on human theories and perceptions.
I wouldnt make such a claim. To borrow bongos example, a history textbook is about history, but it doesnt provide direct access. The indirect realists claim just amounts to the claim that when reading about history were just reading words, which is true.
Just because we can imagine something does not mean it is possible.
Lets suppose one day a scientist demonstrates that the "brain-in-a-vat" is not possible due to the "Laws of Nature".
What would be the skeptic's reaction? Well, they could just say, "it could just be another scientist manipulating a "brain-in-a-vat" to think it is not physical possible to create a "brain-in-a-vat" due to the "Laws of Nature".
What are you going to believe? Someone's imagination(hypothesis), or someone's demonstration by theory and experiment that such an idea from someone's imagination(hypothesis) is not possible.
At times, the empirical needs to set the boundaries for the creative mind.
Kant has a lot to answer for.
The hypothesis is that what we see might be totally different to a conjectured, inaccessible world about which we can say nothing.
Let's think on that for a bit.
If this world is inaccessible, and if we can say nothing about it, then how could it be the cause of what we do see? And if it is the cause of what we do see, then we can talk about it, hence it is not inaccessible.
Kant was working in a time when microscopes were a novelty, a time prior to the discovery of sodium and potassium, before electrochemistry, before Dalton's Law of Multiple Proportions, before electrons. After his death, we began to work out what was going on behind the scenes, in ways that Kant did not imagine. We accessed what Kant had taken to be an inaccessible world.
I suspect that if we could bring Kant back and show him what happened over the hundred years after his death, he'd just say "well, I go that wrong".
There are two philosophical points here. The first is that, since the "unseen" world causes what we see, we can and have used those causes to grasp the nature of that unseen world. Science did what Kant imagined to be impossible.
The second philosophical point imagines a Kantian chauvinist, who makes the claim that these scientific advances do not show us this invisible world; that by definition the supposed "actual" world still lies outside our ken. The reply to him is simply that since such a world is utterly outside of what we can comprehend, it cannot act as the cause of what we experience. Such a world drops out of our considerations.
One can't have it both ways, supposing that the hypothesised unseen world both causes what we see and yet remains outside of our considerations.
This applies to the vatted brain. Should one hypothesis that what one sees is an illusion, one thereby hypothesises a meta-world, a world in which the illusion may take place. For the vatted brain, this is the vat; for Neo, his pod. What one cannot conclude is that everything is an illusion.
If the phenomenalist supposes that we cannot deduce from our perceptions what the world is like, he has been shown to be mistaken. If the phenomenalist supposes that we cannot say anything about how the world actually is, his view is utterly irrelevant.
But we are able to recognise hallucinations. Hence the kind of thing that we hear in the case of a veridical perception is not the same kind of thing that we hear in the case of an hallucinatory perception.
That is, as the SEP article points out, the common kind claim fails.
Recall the scene in A Beautiful Mind where Nash asks a passing stranger if they can see the representative from the Nobel Foundation.
The ability to tell the difference can be taken off line with drugs. Datura is one.
Ketamine is another.
If you were on Ketamine you wouldn't be able to tell that you were hallucinating and if someone tried to tell you, you wouldn't believe them.
There are times when there's no difference.
Hence, Phenomenalism?
Why is that significant?
My suspicion is that when you try to put your argument sequentially, you will find that it was an illusion.
I don't think this is justified. If I dream of a churchyard covered in snow I cannot decide to move around it, walk up to and touch its cold wet stones, turn my back on it and see the surrounding landscape, look up and see the grey dismal skies and then turn back and see the church looking just as it did when I first looked at it. In any case that has been my experience at least, with dream imagery and drug experiences where I have been able to tell the difference when moved to do so, which is the closest I have ever come to having such a realistic hallucination. So, in my experience at least, it is certainly not the same kind of experiential event occurring in each case.
Quoting Tate
I have had extensive experience with psilocybin, LSD, DMT. mescaline and salvinorin, although not with ketamine. What you claim has not been my experience, however powerful the hallucinatory experience has been, if I have had the presence of mind to test it in the way I outlined with the 'churchyard' example I have always been able to tell the difference. On the other hand if one becomes absorbed by, lost in, the hallucination there is no thought of doing such testing which makes the claim moot.
Do you have personal experience to back up your claims about ketamine or are you relying on hearsay? If it is personal experience, did you have the presence of mind to test whether you were hallucinating in the kind of way I outlined?
I would not agree these ever could be the same kind of experiential event. An hallucinatory experience is private to the subject. There is no verification of a subject's hallucinatory reporting, while a veridical experience can in principle be verified since they can report on a public environment.
I do not know how in principle you can make a claim that they a fundamentally the same. How is this comparison to see if in fact they are exactly the same done? Ask the person to describe their hallucination? By seeing how detailed they speak of it? But what if they talk about a book they never read, and I ask him to open it to read page ##. Would they be able to do it? And how do I verify they get it right? If I ask them to examine their hallucinated Plato's Republic which they never read, could they get the passages right?
The common kind claim, that hallucination or dreams are of the same kind as our seeing a tree or a cup, seems to involve a mild form of solipsism, along the lines of that if it seems real to me alone, then it is real. That's the problem with 's contention.
Quoting Banno
You made a further claim about what does inform our intellectual considerations. You did not merely claim that the external object does not inform our intellectual considerations directly. You made the claim that it does not tout court, and that something else does.
Quoting Banno
These are absolutely spot on. It's how the problem is solved in active inference, it's the active part.
Inference (perception in this case) is an active process. We do not passively receive data from the external world, we actively sample it. From saccades in perception, all the way up to the construction of a skyscraper (which matches our image of the skyscraper we intended to be there). There's no active inference without interaction. If you can't sample your image, can't move you eyes around it, reach out to it, give part of it to someone else, drink from the cup in it and feel that in your stomach... then you're not perceiving it, you're hallucinating it, or dreaming it.
The fact that hallucinations and dreams both make use of a part of the system of perception is interesting scientifically, and has yield some really good research (not to mention a few promising therapies for mental illness) but is has no bearing on the question of what we see, it is related to the question of how we see.
"we may say that my gray idea of the cherry, formed in dim light, is not in itself wrong and forms a part of the bundle-object just as much as your red idea, formed in daylight. However, if I judge that the cherry would look gray in bright light, Im in error. Furthermore, following Berkeleys directive to speak with the vulgar, I ought not to say (in ordinary circumstances) that the cherry is gray, since that will be taken to imply that the cherry would look gray to humans in daylight."
Berkeley grammatically rule out indirect realism in his constructive logic of perception via his so-called "master argument" , that amounts to defining the meaning of an 'unperceived object ' in terms of present acts of cognition in combination with immediate sense-data.
His uniform treatment of the cases of veridical perception and non-veridical perception as both pertaining to immediate ideas, implies that for Berkeley "reality" means coherence of thought and perception.
Yes. Just like it is not history that informs us about history but the words written in the textbook that do. But its still about history.
Why?
Quoting Richard B
From the SEP article:
That we can determine whether or not an experience is an hallucination by trying to verify them with other people has no bearing on the Common Kind Claim.
And to take it out of the hypothetical and into what actually happens; the schizophrenic hears voices and these voices are just in the head, and so the indirect realists general claim that there is something like sense data that can be the direct object of perception should be understandable. They just claim that this is what happens in the case of a veridical perception as well. Veridical perceptions just differ in that they have some shared external cause that causes the same kind of experience in other people. And so, again, your objections here do not undermine, or even address, the indirect realists claim.
Scientific realism isnt a given, and even if it were true, the world as described by the Standard Model is very unlike the world as seen in everyday experience, and so something like Kants transcendental idealism (just less extreme) is suggested. This is the position I tend to take.
Quoting Banno
That doesnt follow. A dog cannot comprehend the physical causes of his experiences but his experiences nonetheless are caused by these physical things. We dont need to be able to make sense of some cause for it to be a cause.
"Why is it the words and not the events that inform us?" ?
Or "why are the words still about the events?" ?
Yup. Effects, like a visual experiences, carry information about their causes, like the object and the light reflected off the object and into your eye. Information is the relationship between cause and effect.
How do we know the difference between our experience of the world and the way the world is independent of our experience? You must have had some experience to even make this claim, so there must be some experience that has informed you how the world is independent if your experience. Or your experience is sufficient to know how the world is independent of your own experience. There must be something in your experience that informs you of how the world is unlike your experience, but how could that be if not by some experience?
Seems to me that you've misused language.
My experience doesnt show me the nature of the world independent of experience, the Standard Model and other scientific theories do.
In other words, when judging the veracity of a perception, does the verdict only hold at the time of the verdict?
The former.
There seems to be chain of causality - events -> (various perception processes) -> (various executive process) -> writing words to convey the events -> looking at words conveying the event -> (various perception processes) -> (various linguistic process) -> (various executive processes) -> (working memory storage) -> (more executive functions and long term memory processes - collectively called 'learning').
There seems a lot of stages between words and learning, so if stages between is what leads to the charge of indirectness, then the we indirectly learn from the words too.
One of a suite of reasons why beliefs in cognitive science are often treated as 'propensities to act as if...'
Your dreaming self has no propensity to act as if you were awake, so it has no belief that you are awake. It's merely rehearsing some of the neural processes that having such a belief would use.
But how if all you have is your experience? How did we come to have scientific theories of how the world is independent of experience if not by some experience? You seem to be saying that you have knowledge of the world independent of experience. How is that possible unless you're omniscient?
Right. Reading words informs us as much as reading someone's behavior, or the color of an apple, or the sound of waves crashing, etc. Scribbles and utterances (can be) just as informative as any other visual and auditory experience. The "philosophers" on this forum tend to separate language from the world much like theists separate humans from the world. That is a mistake.
Much in the same way that Fitchs paradox shows that the knowability and non-omniscience principles are incompatible, direct realism and scientific realism are incompatible: if the mind-independent world is as the Standard Model says it is then it isnt as we ordinarily perceive it to be and vice-versa.
So pick your poison: either indirect realism or scientific instrumentalism.
But then if you want to say that scientific realism is incompatible with indirect realism as well then unless theres some third alternative we have to reject scientific realism in favour of scientific instrumentalism.
And if we reject scientific realism then we lose all empirical evidence of there being a mind-independent world at all, and so we lose any kind of realism and are left with something like phenomenalism or idealism.
Direct realism doesnt appear to work under any scenario.
The distinction between direct vs. direct realism is non-sensical when you include the experience as part of the world your experiencing, and understand that effects carry information about their causes. The (right or wrong) interpretation of that causal relationship is what creates the distinction between direct and indirect. A mirage is exactly what you'd expect to experience given the nature of light and and it's interaction with an eye-brain system when you arrive at the correct interpretation and not the false one (interpreting it as a pool of water).
Quoting Michael
Do you not have direct access to your experience and isn't your experience part of the world as much as what your experience is of?
You still seem to know what the case is even though your experience is indirect. So what's missing? What's the difference between indirect and direct if you are still able to know what the case is in either case if not the interpretation itself?
....That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time....
Quoting Banno
Not a hypothesis, but a logically provable axiomatic principle.
....we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition....
Quoting Banno
The cause of what we do see must be accessible.....
....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appearswhich would be absurd....
The cause for perception in us, re: human sensibility (cause = object/effect = representation of object), is not the kind of cause for that which is perceived by us, re: principled natural law (cause = object/effect = object).
The corrected hypothesis, therefore, should be......for us, apodeictic certainty that what we know corresponds precisely with what actually is, is impossible.
Quoting Banno
As does anyone who isnt perfect.
(Cue soundtrack of one hand clapping)
And yet you've still failed to even present an argument as to why it cannot be both.
You didn't enter into a dissociative state, then. As it pertains to the thread, just the fact that you had to check makes the point that experience of the world and hallucinations are very similar in character.
A poster had denied that, but the discussion was a dead end.
Its certainly possible that the Standard Model is deficient and fails to uncover what ordinary perception shows, but I think that less likely than what is shown in perception being a product of the perception and not a way the mind-independent causes are.
I was talking about both being true. As I've mentioned before, it is true that the stars in Orion are in the shape of a man with a bow. It is also true that they are in the shape of a rainbow.
Reality can be exactly as the standard model describes, and as we ordinarily perceive it. Nothing I perceive is in contradiction with the standard model.
I agree, but this discussion isnt about truth, its about whether or not the things we see are mind-independent. I see an apple, the apple is red, I eat the apple, the apple nourishes me, etc. All of this is true but none of this is some mind-independent state-of-affairs that is directly perceived.
It is empirically under-determined a priori what observations the entities of the Standard Model refer to. Yet the same is equally true regarding the ordinary public meaning of "redness". For what precisely, under all publicly stateable contexts, are the set of experiences to which "redness" refers?
Phenomenalism, i.e. logical positivism, has been said to fail as an epistemological enterprise, due to the impossibility of defining how theoretical terms should be reduced to observation terms, where the latter refer to pre-theoretic 'givens' of private experience. But a reply is to say that this only rules out phenomenalism with a priori definable semantics. One can nevertheless argue that the meaning of the standard model is empirical (after all, isn't it supposed to answer to experience?), but where it's empirical meaning is determined in situ and post hoc through judgements for which rules cannot be stated a priori.
Wittgenstein makes this point in the Tractacus 3.221:
"Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is."
In other words, language itself implies something beyond it: something that can't be spoken: the reference. References can only be named, though. Naming them and relating them to each other is all we do. We don't fathom what they are .
Wittgenstein is really doing a kind of phenomenology here: just describing the nature of language use.
We place an orange and the robot reports out "orange". We place an apple and the robot reports out "apple". The scientist seems satisfied of the the performance. However, on occasion he places a particular apple and the robot reports "orange". On another occasion the is no object and just suddenly reports "apple". The scientist response is to examine the hardware or software and determine if there is a problem. And in these scenarios that's exactly what they find, a revision to the software and the robot no longer report "orange" when there is an apple; and a repair to the hardware and the robot no longer reports "apple" when there is no object. Should the scientist wonder if these scenarios indicate they don't have access to the "real" apple or orange? Seems absurd to say such a thing.
If a human does the same, why should our reaction be any different. What if we can re-wire human beings where they don't hallucinate, experience illusion, never dream, can we now say they directly perceive objects?
I don't understand. Answering your second proposition there would seem to entail a truth claim.
Quoting Michael
True. I don't think any of us are disagreeing about the directness of perception, we're disagreeing about the implication of that indirectness for reference/aboutness.
You seem to be simply assuming that if you see the apple indirectly you must not 'really' be seeing the apple. What I've been trying to get across is that you don't directly respond to the model either. For directness to be the criteria for aboutness, we only directly respond to fragments of action potentials in our working memory.
We know exactly how the computer's analog to digital converter works and what the computer does with that data. No, the computer does not have direct access to the apple.
I dont believe that truth consists in a propositions correspondence to some mind-independent state of affairs, and so I dont believe that an apple being red requires an apple being red to be a mind-independent state of affairs.
Quoting Isaac
Im not. Ive mentioned before that direct and indirect realists tend to talk past each other. The direct realist says something comparable to we read about history and the indirect realist says something comparable to we read words. Both are true. But in terms of the metaphysics, reading doesnt provide us direct access to history, and perception doesnt provide us direct access to their external cause. This by itself says nothing about aboutness.
Regarding my stronger phenomenalist/anti-realist claims, its not that we dont really see an apple, its that an apple isnt whatever mind-independent things causes me to see an apple. Something more than just a causal connection is required to say that the external thing is an apple. The vat or the computers that control it are not the apple that they cause the brain-in-a-vat to see. At the very least there needs to be some sort of resemblance between the thing I see and what causes me to see what I see. I think that this resemblance fails in the case of so-called secondary qualities like colour, and even, contrary to perhaps many indirect realists, that this resemblance fails in the case of so-called primary qualities like shape. And so it is a mistake to say that an apple is whatever causes us to see an apple. The apple that I see and the mind-independent wave-particles that are responsible for me seeing an apple are two very different things.
I don't think what I'm asking requires an explanation of your theory of truth. Merely that when one says "X is Y" one is making a truth claim about X. For us to say "the things we see are mind-dependent" one is saying that's the way things are. The world is such that the things we see are mind-dependent, X is Y.
Quoting Michael
Neither do the events.
Quoting Michael
This just begs the question. The counterargument is that the thing you see is what causes you to see what you see.
So if I put a brain in a vat and configure it to cause the brain to see a cat then the cat that the brain sees is the vat (or me)? Seems to me that it would be more accurate to say that the brain doesnt see the vat (or me).
Or for a more realistic example, when I see crazy shit after taking LSD Im seeing the LSD?
It's whatever inputs you used (probes, computers, whatever). The brain has modeled them as a cat. It's not a very good model. When it tries to interact with the cat it may find that out.
If, however, it lived in a society of other BIVs who all refer to the same hidden state (judged by joint interaction) as 'cat' then that's clearly what the word means in that language community.
I dont find this interpretation at all reasonable. I think a far more reasonable interpretation is to accept that the brain doesnt see the vat that it is contained in, or whatever mechanical devices control its sight.
You may have missed my edit, so to reiterate: after taking LSD I dont then see that LSD when seeing the things it causes me to see. Even a direct realist can accept that. Theyll say that the LSD is in my stomach and bloodstream and that I cant see through my skin to see it.
LSD disrupts neurotransmitters which allows for an abnormal data exchange (among other things). What you see is whatever triggers the image (often an actual object, but sometimes an interocepted internal state). You're still modeling hidden states, the subject of your inferences. I really can't see how the fact that your inferences aren't very good changes what the subject of them is. It strikes me as a really odd way of doing things.
Consider a child's drawing of a cow. It's rubbish, doesn't look anything like a cow. The drawing is still a drawing of a cow. It's just a really bad one.
The alternative seems to be that we say a model of a thing is only a model of that thing if it exactly corresponds to that thing. Well then it's no longer a model.
According to you I dont know enough about cognitive science to address this comment so I wont bother. Weve already gone through it enough in the other thread anyway. Suffice it to say, I dont find the attempt to Bayes qualia at all convincing.
Can't say fairer than that. What is unpersuasive is unpersuasive.
We can easily witness any person and the objects he interacts to see how direct perception really is. Its so direct that some of the objects, like apples, can be consumed, physically entering the so-called inner world and passing through it. So we can put the directness of perception, or at least interaction, to the side.
Since the indirect realist neither has the periphery or range of sense to examine what is really going on during perception we can say his experience is invariably a limited and impoverished view of his own biology. His eyes and ears dont point inward, and thus needs other instruments, other people, to fill in the blanks where his senses cannot reach. For example, all it takes is one or two other observers to confirm that a person is hallucinating or dreaming.
So why the indirect realist prefers the limited and impoverished view of his own biology is the real question.
Or perhaps I should say, given that I dont know much about cognitive science, I cant understand the attempt to Bayes qualia.
So the best I can do is withhold judgement until it becomes accepted by the wider scientific community. And from what I understand its just Clarks/Fristons/Wilkinsons theory and not something that has been scientifically demonstrated?
Because they prefer the certainty of appearances and/or immediate sense data of their private world.
Quoting Richard B
Its not about what people prefer but about what they find the evidence and reasoning shows.
If you watch someone eat an apple, what does the evidence show regarding the directness of his perception?
But hes touching it, destroying it, consuming it. At no point are the interactions indirect, so we need not say the experience is indirect.
Read up on the arguments presented in the SEP article. Nothing youre saying here has any relevance to what is meant by direct or indirect realism.
Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Dir
An apple is an ordinary object.
Active inference or Bayesing qualia?
The former is probably the leading theory in perception, it's standard in most cognitive science departments. Tons of experimental data confirming the utility of the model.
The latter, not so much. I haven't heard it talked about outside that paper. Other models are certainly out there (Bayesing qualia is not my favorite either, though I perhaps found it more persuasive than you did). None have qualia as real though, nor the subject of perception. None that I know of, that is, I don't know every theory out there, of course. The work coming out of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at Sussex is the closest I know of to a substantial body of actual experimental evidence on conscious awareness (qualia-like experiences). The work is still based on Friston's free energy model though.
Before evidence and reason, we need to understand what we are talking about. The private world of sense data has some problems getting us to this point.
Wittgenstein says the following "Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing is the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant."
The latter. The former doesnt address the hard problem of consciousness and makes no ontological commitments as one of the papers I referenced explicitly says.
Maybe I chose the wrong bit to make the point about indirectness.
Not that "the visual and auditory imagery is causally covariant with" isn't much better than "the thing that we hear is causally covariant with". It's a lot better, at least when comparing with hallucination, for the same reason that referring to Frodo-discourse is better than referring to Frodo, in literal-minded analysis.
But causation is one of many varieties of (roughly speaking) binary relation that appear to warrant inference of indirectness, willy-nilly. Any cause and effect step is plausibly a causal chain or story. We need merely zoom in, to see more steps.
The other varieties sharing this apparent warrant include acquaintance, information, access, trace, [etc, suggestions welcome].
(I do think it's weird that making the theatre Cartesian by having an audience appears to satisfy a (vain?) urge to insert a properly direct step; but that may be beside the point.)
So, I shouldn't have to ask what's potentially indirect about "causally covariant with". Every step of causation might be a chain.
Whereas,
Quoting Michael
Yes that's much better than
Quoting Michael
... for the same reason that it avoids equivocating between real and imagined. But it's also a better example of directness, in the relation between image and (if there is one) object. The isomorphism is perfectly direct. So are: conventional (i.e. an agreed pretence of) reference between word and object, and derivative notions of about-ness, such as Putnam's or Goodman's.
So, one reason to question the doctrine of indirect realism is to resist the one-way or "bottom-up" notion of learning, as a transmission of knowledge along a chain or channel or conveyer belt.
Admittedly, dispensing with causation, acquaintance, information, access, trace etc., might leave the success or truth of the imagery (and hence learning) unexplained. If reference (including pictorial reference, according to Goodman) is conventional and pretended, it can't convey anything intrinsic about objects. If perceptual imagery is the directly-about-history book re-writing itself, how does it get to be true, as well as direct?
Ok. But the notion of a causal or other chain-like process might still be wrong.
Quoting bongo fury
Advocates of causation, acquaintance, information, access, trace etc., may find the caricature in terms of chain and channel to be libelous. The author takes full responsibility.
The problem here is that Witt failed to apply his own arguement to the rules of language use, which would end up pulling the rug out from under his own arguement.
Language is composed of scribbles and sounds. If everyone had a different "beetle in their box" when reading the scribbles on this screen then we would never be able to communicate, or play a game. The rules for playing the game would be different for each person, just like the "beetle in the box".
The world is the box and we, along with beetles, are all in the same box. People are similar enough that we experience the world similarly, or else we'd never be able to communicate or play the game using the same rules.
Theres still something inside each persons box. I dont understand the point youre trying to make.
Yeah.....about that....
.....Suppose everyone had a box with something in it....
.....the box might even be empty...
In what sense, given a box, can that box both have something in it and not have something in it?
(Sigh)
Ahhhhh...so Erwin plagiarized Ludwig. Bet they werent best of friends.
But the major is not an either/or propositional dichotomy. Everyone has a box with something in it, so the box that one has, has something in it.
The reconciliation is that beetle might be not anything (...the box might be empty...). Hence arises the absurdity, for then the box, being empty, still contains not anything.
(Double sigh)
Everyone has a box with something in it.....major premise;
The something is a beetle....minor premise;
The box might be empty....minor premise.
Conclusion?
It shows that he is directly interacting with an apple. Nothing appears to be mediating his experience or perception, or otherwise hindering his experience of the apple. The contact between him and the apple is direct, therefor the experience is direct.
If a schizophrenic says he is hearing voices, yet others do not, we can confirm that he is in fact not hearing voices or any other sounds from anyones mouth, but that something else is occurring somewhere in his biology.
Quoting NOS4A2
Bodily interaction is not phenomenological experience. The former being direct says nothing about the latter being direct. A blind man can pick up and eat an apple, therefore picking up and eating an apple is not evidence that someone has a direct visual perception of the apple.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is just playing a word game. He has the phenomenological experience of hearing voices, the same as someone having a veridical experience. The difference between the two concerns the nature of the cause.
Given the Common Kind Claim that the phenomenological experience of an hallucination is of the same kind as the phenomenological experience of a veridical experience, and given that mind-independent objects are not directly present in an hallucination, it follows that mind-independent objects are not directly present in a veridical experience.
A causal connection does not entail direct presentation. Even the direct realist should accept this, given the everyday cases of CCTV cameras and mirrors.
It is experience viewed objectively, from a view independent of any phenomenological account. From this view, to watch a blind man directly eat an apple on the one hand and say he is not experiencing the apple directly on the other is absurd. There is neither the evidence nor the reason to suppose that he is experiencing it indirectly.
Until you actually read, like, any science ever...
Surely you can name or point to what prohibits direct experience.
Air.
Does the blind man have a direct visual perception of the apple?
Does air prohibit us from directly experiencing air?
He's blind. He cannot see the apple.
Then picking up and eating an apple isnt evidence that someone has a direct visual experience of an apple.
There are other senses, though.
Picking up and eating an apple isnt evidence of a direct auditory experience, or a direct olfactory experience, or a direct taste experience, or a direct tactile experience, etc.
Sure it is. Im watching him experiencing an Apple directly.
Youre assuming that the apple is being presented in something called experience. But there is no evidence of such a place, let alone that apples appear in them.
I know from experience that I have phenomenological experiences. I cant speak for you; perhaps youre a p-zombie. Which again shows why me seeing someone else eat an apple isnt evidence that they have a direct realist experience.
But I can watch you directly eat an apple. There is literally nothing between the experienced and the experiencer prohibiting one from directly experiencing the other.
Then theres no evidence for direct realism, because as the SEP article says, and as you yourself referenced, direct realism is the position that ordinary, mind-independent objects are directly presented in experience.
And as I said before, direct bodily interaction isnt direct phenomenological experience. So again, read the SEP article so that you can actually understood what direct (and indirect) realism is actually saying.
At the moment youre just misappropriating the phrase direct perception to mean something completely different, and arguably irrelevant.
I have read the article, and if you want to quibble about definitions be my guest. The thread is about phenomenalism. Im speaking of Perceptual Directness, section 2.1.3 in your article. We either directly perceive the world or we do not.
And seeing that someones hands are in contact with an apple isnt evidence that we directly perceive the world. It isnt evidence for Direct Realist Presentation as is defined in the article.
Yes it is and for the same reasons I already stated. There is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer, so the experience is not indirect.
What do you mean by this? If youre saying that apples directly stimulate our sense receptors then except in the case of touch this is false; apples dont directly stimulate the rods and cones in our eyes, so visual perception under your account isnt direct.
Or do you mean something else?
No, but it clearly prevents us from directly perceiving the apple. The light from the apple is affected by the air before it reaches our eyes.
Quoting NOS4A2
There literally is.
Air, dust, microbes, water, oils...
From what I can tell, if it has to do with the five senses, it is not direct. If link to scientific theory, not direct. If you ask, well then what will meet the definition of direct. The answer you get will be something that does not have an intermediary. And if you ask that, there is no answer other than I believe it when I see it. Wait that is already excluded.
So you claim; but where is the proof?
Set out that transcendental argument for us again, so we can se how it (doesn't) work.
Direct in the sense that we directly perceive the environment, including the lights, smells, touch, taste, of apples. Indirect in the sense that we perceive the environment through some kind of medium.
I'm getting the impression now that I misunderstood you before when you said perception is inferential; I had thought that you were talking about the bare sensory fact of what is immediately perceived, but now it seems you were talking about the whole process of learning to perceive the world as this and that. Now it seems you meant 'inferential' to signify the exploratory nature of that process of learning, and that makes sense to me; it's a somewhat difference usage of "inferential" than I am used to, but it makes sense now in the context.
Then explain to me how someone else picking up and eating an apple shows that no medium is involved when they see an apple.
....we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition....
Now thats only a premise in the transcendental argument, but you know how it is, that....
Quoting Banno
...and other argument are ever putative, never presented.
No medium appears at any point in the scenario. The evidence for a medium is zero.
There's air, light, and in some cases glasses or contact lenses.
But this just shows that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of direct and indirect realism. Indirect realism claims that the "medium" is the sense-data that occurs "in the head". You and I look at the same photo of a dress and yet you see a black and blue dress and I see a white and gold dress. We have different sense-data, and this sense-data is the immediate object of perception.
You may disagree with this claim, but saying that you can see someone pick up and eat an apple says nothing that addresses it. It's a non sequitur.
Again, viewing things in the world such as air, glasses, light, and so on is direct realism.
The mediums I speak of are the ones that are assumed, made up without evidence. Sense-data is another such medium.
The air, light, glasses, and contact lenses are the medium between the apple and one's eyes. Hence why, according to your account, seeing an apple isn't direct.
Quoting NOS4A2
You can't dismiss the medium of sense data by saying that you can see someone pick up and and eat an apple. As I have repeatedly said, your claim here is irrelevant to the discussion.
Of course Im not speaking of sight only. But you keep limiting it to sight. Nonetheless, we see everything in our periphery, including light, air, glasses, etc. directly.
Point to me the sense-data. No sense-data appears between observer and observed. Sense-data is irrelevant if it cannot be shown to exist.
But do we see the apple directly?
Quoting NOS4A2
Sense data is an emergent phenomenon, brought about by brain activity. If you're asking me to point to something that is physically situated between the apple and someone's eyes then your request is misguided.
In terms of direct realism, yes.
Does it have a physical structure or chemical make-up? Can we put some of it under a microscope?
But there's a number of mediums between the apple and the sense receptors in our eyes (air, light, sometimes glasses or contact lenses), so by your own account it isn't direct. You now seem to mean something else by "direct". What is it?
Quoting NOS4A2
We don't know yet, the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved. Regardless, there is something which is sense-data, whether physical or not, as proved by the fact that you and I can look at the same photo of a dress and yet see different colours. These colours are sense-data.
And, again, you seeing someone pick up and eat an apple isn't evidence that such sense-data doesn't exist and so isn't evidence against indirect realism.
Youre confusing a actual medium in the world with the mediums made up by indirect realists.
It only proves that we see it differently, not that something called sense-data is an emergent phenomenon from the brain.
Air, light, glasses, and contact lenses aren't made up mediums.
Quoting NOS4A2
And what does it mean to "see something differently"? It means that we experience different sense-data. I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. The colours we experience are the medium by which we indirectly see the photo of a dress.
Exactly. Sense-data is.
You experience the image your way, I experience it my way. Our bodies are different and occupy different positions in space and time. There is no need to evoke sense-data or some other medium to explain it when there are actual things that can account for these differences.
Quoting NOS4A2
Then you admit that our visual perception of an apple is mediated by air, light, and sometimes glasses or contact lenses. Therefore, by your own account, we don't directly see apples.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, which is to say that our sensory systems elicit different sense-data.
Quoting NOS4A2
Given that the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved, clearly this is false.
Im not sure that is the case. We directly perceive apples through light. I dont think were viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light.
What sense-data? Its better to say the biology is different. Then you can point to actual differences.
Now you're changing what you mean by perception being direct. First you said that perception being direct means that "there is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer" and yet in the case of seeing an apple the air, the light, and glasses or contact lenses are a mediating factor between what is experienced (the apple) and the experiencer.
What do you mean now? Just throwing in the word "direct" but admitting of a mediator is no answer at all. You might as well say that we directly perceive things that happened in the past and in another location through a CCTV recording. Saying that such a perception here is "direct" just makes the word "direct" meaningless and doesn't address the metaphysical question of perception at all.
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Michael
It means that we reach for different pictures and exemplars.
Quoting Michael
You reach for uncontroversially white and gold pictures and exemplars, I reach for uncontroversially black and blue.
As I mentioned before, the duck/rabbit image is the same sense data, yet we can report out there is an image of a duck or there is an image of a rabbit.
And what does it mean to "see something differently"? It means that we experience different sense-data. I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. The colours we experience are the medium by which we indirectly see the photo of a dress.
Based on your logic because two people can report out two different sets of colors, we conclude that they must experience different sense data. But in this case the sense data is the same but they report out two different images. Do we give up the sense datum theory as immediate? Then what, we are immediately aware of the idea of a duck and the sense data is indirect? Are we back to idealism?
Thats right. We experience light, air, glasses, apples, heat, gravity, pressure, the tree, the leaves and so on. We directly perceive the environment. There is no mediating factor between the environment you experience, and you the experiencer. Ive said this a few times now.
You're not addressing the question. According to your account we don't directly see apples because air, light, and glasses are a mediating factor between the apple and you. Deflecting by saying that we directly experience the light doesn't say anything about whether or not we directly see the apple.
One could instead argue that we directly see the environment, of which the apple is part of, and environments have lighting conditions. It's a mistake to just focus on the apple, as if it had independent existence from everything else. Of course there has to be physical relation between the object and the perceiver.
If you're not considering air, light, or glasses to be a mediating factor between the apple and one's sense receptors then I don't understand that is meant by "mediating factor". This just seems like special pleading.
Does echolocation involve the "direct" perception of a wall? Are the features of the auditory experience mind-independent features of the wall? Presumably echolocation involves the experience of such things as pitch and tone and pace? Does the wall have a pitch, a tone, and a pace? I don't think this at all sensible. So why would sight be any different?
As I said in the other thread, I think people are just bewitched by the complexity of visual experiences. It confuses them into adopting the naive view of perception which modern science has shown to be wrong.
Look at it. Get hit by it. Climb it.
You figure we're looking at, getting hit by, and climbing green bundles of texture???
:wink:
Quoting Michael
How does modern science tell us walls don't have a pitch? This is about language use, not science.
If we were bats we might well describe walls as having a pitch. We don't because it's not part of our form of life.
That we might say this isn't that, as a mind-independent fact, walls have a pitch. As I mentioned in the other thread, I think you're conflating our model of the external world with the external world. That's a mistake.
We wouldn't, no. Because we are humans and the word 'pitch' in human language doesn't describe a property of a wall reflecting sound.
The word 'colour' does describe the property of an object reflecting light of particular wavelengths.
Quoting Michael
How could I possibly be doing that? All we have is our model(s) of the external world. I have no direct access to the external world to conflate it with anything. I can't talk about it, can't even mention it without all I'm saying actually deriving only from a model of it.
You can't say the only access we have to the real world is our models, and then go about apparently comparing our models to the real world and finding them to differ. We have no non-modelled access to the external world, so how is it featuring in your comparison?
Then what the hell have you been saying for the last few days when you talk about the external cause of one's perception being a red apple?
Are you just saying that we think of the external cause of one's perception as being a red apple? Because that's the point I've been trying to make all along. Contrary to the direct realist who says that the external cause of one's perception being a red apple isn't just something we think to be the case but also mind-independently is the case.
Ordinary perception doesn't provide us access to the external world (outside our models), but assuming scientific realism the Standard Model does. Given that direct realists tend to be scientific realists the arguments I have been making show that their direct realism is incompatible with scientific realism. I'm not particularly wedded to scientific realism and am willing to accept scientific instrumentalism, but that's not relevant to the argument I'm making, which is just that assuming scientific realism and the Standard Model, indirect realism follows.
I'm saying that the term 'red apple' refers to the hidden state we model as a red apple. And additionally that this is consistent with our best model of how our brains work (also hidden states).
I'm saying that the term 'red apple' does not normally refer to the actual model, and, more importantly, to the extent it might be used that way by some subset of philosophers, it is not consistent with our best model of how our brains work.
Quoting Michael
It's literally called a model.
Yes, and assuming scientific realism, the nature of the external world "matches" the model. It's not just an instrumental tool.
Quoting Isaac
Which means what, exactly? That the hidden state resembles our model of a red apple, such that it is as a red apple appears to us?
But you just said above "I can't talk about [the external cause], can't even mention it."
So which is it?
What does it mean to 'match' a model? Are you saying that scientific realism says we've got our models right?
Quoting Michael
I don't see why resemblance even enters into reference. If I say "Jack, come over here!" when the man's name is John, I'm still referencing the man, I just got his name wrong. If I say "bring me that green cup", pointing to a red cup, I'm still referencing the cup, I just got its colour wrong.
We don't have to be right about something's properties in order to reference it.
Quoting Michael
I was following the conclusion of the state of affairs you describe (where nothing refers to our external world, hence we cannot talk about it).
The existence of M-theory doesn't entail that the things it models strings, branes, the ninth spatial dimension, etc. exist outside the model. It attempts to explain observable phenomena, but it would be wrong to say that its terms "strings", "branes", "the ninth spatial dimension" refer to whatever "hidden states" explain observable phenomena. If these hidden states don't "match" the models then these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension they're something else. And if these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension then it isn't that "strings", "branes", and "the ninth spatial dimension" are non-referring terms, it's that they refer only to the models.
And the same is true of everyday perception. If the hidden states don't "match" our model (or sense-data) of the colour red then they are not the colour red, they're something else, and colour terms like "red" refer only to the model (or sense-data).
Begging the question. That's the matter we're disagreeing on.
Quoting Michael
So when you said...
Quoting Michael
...what did you mean? The Standard Model might (as you admit above) not match the external world, so it doesn't provide access to it any more than our perception does. I'm sure scientific realists aren't claiming our current models are all right.
Quoting Michael
Again, a re-statement of the very proposition we're disagreeing on.
Quoting Michael
You've not explained what you mean by 'match'.
Ive answered the question already. We directly perceive apples through light. I dont think were viewing sense-data, representations, or images of apples in the light, like we would on indirect mediums like photos and televisions.
How is this relevant to direct or indirect realism and phenomenalism?
This is as meaningless as saying that we directly perceive distant events through a camera feed.
Do you think we directly perceive the light but indirectly perceive apples?
No, I think something like the Sense-Datum Theory of perception is correct.
What I'm saying here is that your account of perception that A directly perceives B if there is no "mediating factor" between B and A entails that we directly perceive light and indirectly perceive apples, given that light is a mediating factor between us and the apple but that there (presumably) is no mediating factor between us and the light. And I'm saying that your rephrasing of your account to say that we directly perceive apples "through light" is as meaningless as saying that we directly perceive distant events "through a camera feed". It's just special pleading.
But that's the thing - how did scientists show it to be wrong if they can only indirectly experience the environment? If you can show something to be wrong regardless of whether or not you have direct or indirect access, then what is the problem? It seems to me that you must directly experience something and by that direct experience you logically work your way back to the original cause which is an object reflecting light. What is missing with indirect access because either way you have access to accurate information? And if you can show what you're missing with indirect access when you only have indirect access, then again you are still able to show what is the case without anything missing.
I addressed your concerns here.
Scientific realism and direct realism are incompatible, therefore one (or both) is wrong.
What does scientific realism and [in]direct realism say about the [visual or auditory] experience itself and access to it?
We're directly aware of the effects and through that indirectly aware of their cause.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes. But it doesn't follow from this that I am directly aware of the cause of my experience. The part of the world that is my experience isn't the part of the world that is the apple. I'm directly aware of the former, and through that indirectly aware of the latter.
Consciousness doesn't extend beyond the body.
Then both direct and indirect realism are the case?
I would need to know what "we" is and it's relation with an experience. Is access to the we, or the I, direct or indirect?
Quoting Michael
The part of the world that is the table is not the part of the world that is the apple. When the apple sits on top of the table, is it directly or indirectly accessing the table?
Is the "we" a different part of the world than the experience? If so, then "we" indirectly access our experience, but then what would the medium be by which the "we" access the experience to say that it is indirect? If not, then is the "we" and "experience" the same thing and it wouldn't make sense to say that we are directly aware of the effects (experience). We are the experience. Then we must ask, how does the experience access the body? If the experience is not the body, then by what medium does the experience access the body? Indirect realism seems to create an infinite regress where there must always be a medium between the perceiver and the perceived and in turn requires another medium for the perceiver to access the medium, the medium of the medium, etc. which ends up creating an infinite chasm between the perceiver and what is perceived.
What does it mean to be "aware"? Is the apple aware of the table in sitting on it? What does it mean for the "we", or "I", to directly be aware of the effects? Isn't the "effects" awareness of their causes? Does it make sense to say that "we", or "I", is directly aware of the awareness of the causes?
It seems to me that both direct and indirect realism are nonsensical.
Hmmmm... Atman = Brahman?
I said there is no mediating factor between experienced and experiencer, between man and the rest of his environment, between A and B. Light is of A which is directly perceived by B, man.
If sense data is of A it is of the rest of the environment. If it is of B it is of man. And if it is of either world or man, it is identifiable, detectable, and measurable. If it does not lie in either, but is a mediating factor between both, where is the evidence for this?
"Common Kind Claim: veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences (as) of an F are fundamentally the same; they form a common kind.
Thus, a veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experience, all alike in being experiences (as) of a churchyard covered in white snow, are not merely superficially similar, they are fundamentally the same: these experiences have the same nature, fundamentally the same kind of experiential event is occurring in each case. Any differences between them are external to their nature as experiences (e.g., to do with how they are caused)."
There are significantly problems with what is stated concerning the Common Kind Claim.
(1) The Common Kind Claim is un-verifiable in principle. The non-veridical experiences are private to the subject having them. Thus, there is nothing to verify whether the claim is true or not. Also, that is how we learn that certain experiences are non-veridical because we come to understand that there is nothing to verify when one makes reports on a non-veridical experience.
(2) What is in common to both experiences, veridical and non-veridical. They have the same kind of churchyard and the same kind of white snow. But this is the subject of the experience, not what makes these experiences fundamentally the same. For example, lets say we take a picture of this churchyard with a camera, a mobile phone, and have an artist create a super realistic painting. Would we say the churchyard makes them fundamentally the same. True, the subject, the churchyard, could be said to be what is common in each picture. But fundamentally? If there was a different subject in each picture, what would be in common fundamentally? The subject should not matter, but what is fundamental between the pictures or the experiences excluding the subject?
(3) Lastly,Is it true that any differences between veridical and non-veridical are external to their nature (e.g. to do with how they are caused)? I do not think so. I could report that I had a hallucinatory experience, and we determine this because it made no sense. The report was of flying rocks and people with four heads. You may have no idea what the external causes might be but the report of the experience is so absurd you can likely draw the conclusion it was a hallucination.
This is why I said in either this or the other topic that too many people are getting lost in irrelevant arguments over grammar and vocabulary. It's like arguing over whether we read words or read about history. This isn't a dichotomy. We do both. This quote from Austin leads us into a few simple examples:
Do we smell the pie or do we smell the chemicals that are floating in the air? Do I hear the radio or do I hear the music that it plays? And even with vision: do I see myself in the mirror or do I see my reflection? These are all equally correct.
This is why I think the issue of perception needs to be addressed in such a way as to address the epistemological problem; is the world independently as it appears, and if so can we trust that our experiences are accurate?
And in fact, this is where I disagree with Austin above. I would instead say that it is direct realism that is not naturally at home with senses other than sight, where direct realism is understood as claiming that the world is independently as it appears. Whereas there might be a case to argue that an apple independently has a shape and colour as it is seen to have, can we say the same about its taste and smell? Or is the way an apple tastes and smells determined as much by the perceiver?
I think that this very limitation of direct realism is why this short introduction says "naïve realism is a theory in the philosophy of perception: primarily, the philosophy of vision" and "as for whether there can be naïve realist theories of senses other than vision, this is an issue that awaits a more detailed exploration" and why the SEP article on auditory perception says "the unique phenomenology of olfaction and smells has been used to argue that vision is atypical in supporting the transparency of perceptual experience (Lycan 2000, 282; cf. Batty 2010) and that perceptual objectivity does not require spatiality (Smith 2002, ch 5). Lycan (2000) even suggests that the philosophy of perception would have taken a different course had it focused upon olfaction instead of vision (see also Batty 2011)."
Whereas I don't think that indirect theories like the sense-datum theory have any special difficulty with non-visual senses. Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity.
I think the final question in the quote above is subject to the same strong points you make at the beginning. Various uses of various words are approximately equally acceptable, and this can be read as the rules for using such concepts being insufficiently determinate in the first place for metaphysical 'theorems.' What in fact do we already tend to trust enough to act upon?
One possible test for whether we are stuck in a mere language trap is to look at the practical ramifications of this or that position (a pragmatist insight.)
I'm not sure if there's any connection here. Is the disagreement between mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism, or between scientific realism and scientific instrumentalism, or between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics just a "language trap" despite there being no practical ramifications by any side of the debate?
I don't think it makes a difference to our way of life which of transcendental idealism and naive realism (or other) is the case, and yet the disagreement between these positions isn't just a "language trap".
The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, whereas we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. I think naive realism about hearing is false; drills don't have the auditory features that we hear them to have. And I don't think that vision works any differently (in any philosophically significant sense; obviously there's the physical difference that hearing involves stimulation by sound and vision involves stimulation by light).
If I agreed that your examples were situations with no practical ramifications, then I'd probably answer yes. But it occurs to me (thanks to your examples) that it's not trivial to decide in every case whether the issue touches practice.
For instance: on the QM issue, influenced by Popper's understanding of metaphysics as a kind of prescientific source of ideas that sometimes ripen into science, I can imagine different interpretations leading to the discovery of different (relatively) 'neutral' mathematical patterns in the measurements.
Or it's all learnt classification of the external stimuli. Types of illumination event, types of sound event, types of chemical diffusion event, types of eating event, types of bodily trauma event (in case you forgot pains).
To me it's not simply true or false that drills do or do not have such features. The answer is not out there, waiting to be revealed. We can look at how we tend to talk about things while also discussing how we ought to talk about things.
Descartes already claimed that the same kind of pressure on the nerves could generate or cause (reports of) seeing and hearing. Dwelling on this fact, we are tempted to say that drills-in-themselves are soundless. But there's no reason to stop there. The idea of a drill, its shape, the number that represents its mass, maybe time and space themselves, are thrown up by the nervous system that is somehow paradoxically in this time and space, itself a mere piece of a dream that no longer makes sense as a dream.
I always return to us and practical, social beings, and insist that meaning is 'between' us in the norms that mostly implicitly govern our word-trading. And this is why a computer, presumable a ghostless machine, can be pretty good and translation. A loss function is minimized by gradient descent. The automaton is slapped around till it gets things less wrong.
I never pinpointed the machine or aliens to detect the object as an apple as we humans perceive the object, but that they detect "an object", meaning, the object exists outside of human perception, i.e the human perception does not "create reality", but reality exists and we perceive it in a limited manner.
The point of my argument is that there's an idea within phenomenology that concludes that our consciousness "creates reality", much like the heavily criticized Von NeumannWigner interpretation. This kind of concept is a heavily human-narcissistic interpretation of reality, closer to the human arrogance of putting the earth in the center of the universe. It's religious hogwash for people who can't cope with the meaninglessness of existence, so they need to put themselves and their consciousness at the center of the universe and be responsible for reality itself.
Phenomenology is only worth using if it is used as a point of limitation for human perception. Like when trying to grasp concepts outside of our perception and being able to differentiate between our perceived reality and actual reality.
A good example is the James Webb telescope compared to Hubble. Disregarding the magnitude difference, the James Webb telescope has an emphasis on infrared instead of the visual spectrum. Because we know infrared has the ability to perceive more light through gas and other matter, it can "see more" than Hubble, which focuses on the visual spectrum. Hubble is in this case our phenomenological perception of the universe and James Webb sees beyond that. And since we understand this difference, we can harness that capability, tailor it to our perception and augment ourselves to see further. Without the concept and knowledge of human perception vs actual reality, we wouldn't be able to gain power over these ways of observing reality past ourselves.
Why would it emulate a human scientist? AI algorithms do not emulate humans, this is a misconception of AI and algorithmic synthetic intelligence. And it doesn't matter if theories human-made if they're calculated with mathematical logic. 2 + 2 = 4 is not a human invention, 2 asteroids getting into orbit with 2 other asteroids means there are 4 asteroids and that can happen anywhere in the universe regardless of us humans creating a language system to calculate it. Therefore your idea of "human theories" in physics does not make sense because the only thing invented is the language system we use to calculate the math, the math itself is based on reality logic. Math can predict physics systems and the conclusions we humans arrive at when calculating are never invented, they are discovered.
The Higgs field and particle theories are based on complex math. They are predictions of particle behavior. The Atlas detector at CERN does not detect particles because we invented a theory and in turn that "invented" those particles. The theory predicts the existence of those particles and the experiments verify that prediction. Like Einstein predicted general relativity, it was verified by experiments and later we utilized the proof to make things like GPS. How in the world can you conclude that GPS works because we invent it without realizing that relativity needs to be true in order for clocks to sync correctly between the GPS on earth and the satellite? Regardless of any human concepts or inventions, the theory, the concept of general relativity has to be true in order for it to work.
I think you mix up what is a human concept/invention and what exists beyond us. Mathematical logic is not "invented by us", only the language to interpret it. Just like the camera isn't creating the reality in the picture, it's only an invention that detects light photons and captures them. The camera is an invention, but the chemistry and physics of reality that enables the camera to work are not invented by us.
It's crucial to understand the difference between the two, otherwise, phenomenology becomes a mess of religious proportions.
Well that hardly needs a hazard warning. I hear, am witness to, the sound event involving the drill. The room, vibrating. Either of the two phrases is innocent glossed as such.
What the event tells us about the drill itself is an interesting question of physics, probably triggering hypotheses about the whole class of sound events involving the same drill.
Further investigation might involve an appropriately defined class of sound events involving loudspeakers, instead of the drill.
(Aesthetic interest may create a fascination with similarly defined classes of events: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/410733.)
Quoting Michael
No, the above are correct, but this version too easily suggests a little loudspeaker in the head, that I'm listening to. Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it.
Quoting Michael
No we shouldn't, we should just clarify whether we are talking about whether they have certain physical features, causing certain kinds of acoustical (sound) event, or about the sound events themselves.
Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. That's the language trap as @Pie mentioned.
Is there a Cartesian theatre when we say that we feel pain and that pain is a sensation? There's no philosophical difference between feeling a sensation and hearing a sensation or seeing a sensation. The nouns simplify signify a different modality of perception. It might not be the ordinary way of speaking but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language that doesn't reveal, dictate, or entail deeper, ontological or epistemological facts about our interaction with the world.
Right. But what evidence do you have for that assertion? Why would a machine, or an alien consider the change of atoms at the boundary of the apple any more significant than the change of atoms between the flesh and the pips. An alien might well look at the apple and declare it two objects (flesh and pips), or three objects (all that is solid, all that is liquid and all that is gaseous). An alien with enormously long life might consider the apple to be such a fleeting thing that is merely a temporary state of the ecosystem (the only true 'object' it sees).
Good, if that problem assumes we see and hear internal imagery.
Quoting Michael
... not "talking past each other", suddenly?
Quoting Michael
If you mean disputing what elements of folk psychology stand the scrutiny of literal interpretation then I don't see why that should be meaningless. Seems like you're just losing your temper.
Quoting Michael
No.
Quoting Michael
Yes, if that's in deliberate conjunction with the first. It's obviously setting up a dubious scenario in which a you inside you perceives a representation inside you, instead of just the whole of you perceiving the thing itself, in this case the bodily trauma.
Quoting Michael
Yes, they all set up the same dubious scenario, if we aren't careful. They all say, sensing a sensation, or feeling a feeling, seeing a seeing.
Quoting Michael
Right, so it's the careful way, that we're meant to take literally?
Quoting Michael
I'm lost from here on. Again, seems like bluster.
What is it isnt the conventional English sentence for describing the act of perception has nothing to do with the ontology or epistemology of perception.
Quoting bongo fury
Losing my patience with irrelevance perhaps.
Quoting Art48
Quite possibly presented to, not by.
Just saying.
My point didn't exclude this (their) kind of interpretation of the atoms in space that we interpret as an apple. My point is that there are a measurable amount of atoms at a certain temporal moment in the universe, i.e "there is something there at a certain amount of time" that constitutes a part of reality that they interpret differently from us, but nonetheless exists outside of any idea that our human consciousness creates reality itself. It's this, within phenomenology, that I object against, not that phenomenology describes the process of different interpretations depending on if it's us, a machine or aliens that analyze the atoms in space, that is the part I value within phenomenology.
I'd agree, but I'm not sure this is sufficient to supports opposition to...
Quoting Christoffer
It's not my understanding of phenomenalism that it posits no external world, only that 'reality' is constructed (like all Lego models are 'constructed', irrespective of the fact that they're all still made of Lego bricks).
But I may be wrong. I was just interested in what appeared to be a claim about natural kinds, but has turned out not to be.
This is strange statement that what matters is whether or not things independently have shapes .that they are perceived to have. Why should one worry about such a thing. If I look at what appears to be an apple and grab it, smell it, cut it, and taste it, and by all indication it is an apple. What error am I concerned about making in this scenario. My biological apparatus did a good job of picking out an object to nourish myself. What matters is if another human being has difficulties picking out such an object and what scientific/medical discoveries have be made to help that human being correct their biological apparatus to make better judgements about the external world around them. Additionally, if my apparatus is functioning as expected but I am fooled somehow that what appears to be an apple turns out not to be, and it becomes a consistent problem, well it may be time to do some creative thinking and come up with new detection method to help screen out the false positives.
Because it would be built and programmed by a human scientist to emulate a human scientist. Why would it NOT do what it is built to do, ie emulate a human scientist?
Lots of good points above. You stress practical relevance, and I'd extend that emphasis to semantics as well. What does it mean to take something as an apple ? Is the apple 'behind' all its appearences somehow? Or is 'apple' just the way we organize various conventional behaviors, including ways of talking?
That's you applying a function to the AI that it does not have. Algorithmic AI does not have the function of emulating humans, it has a specific function and purpose based on statistical math and probability-based self-learning. What you are talking about is like saying we build a construction crane to emulate a human arm through human consciousness, it makes no sense.
If the AI is built to detect a very specific particle that is predicted by mathematical physics equations and detected by a non-bias detector, there's no human emulation whatsoever involved with that process. I really don't know what you are talking about, but you apply attributes to the process that does not exist in order to argue some vague idea that our tools are biased toward being part of our human consciousness because we constructed them. That is a false conclusion.
If you're asking about what practically matters then I'd say nothing. I don't think philosophy has any practical ramifications at all. Whatever philosophical theory turns out to be correct, our lives will continue as they have always done.
But I'm not talking about what practically matters. I'm talking about what matters to the philosophical questions on epistemology and ontology. We want to know if the things we see exist independently of us, and if they are (independently) as they appear to be. We want to know if a thing's appearance justifies any claims we make about what that thing is (independently) like. If you're not interested in these questions then by all means ignore them, but if you are then you can't address them simply by arguing that "I see a tree" is the conventional way to speak in English, and this seems to be where so many in this discussion get lost.
I don't see how the answer to this question isn't determined entirely by what we mean by 'exist independently of us' and what we mean by 'as they appear to be'.
The problem is that the meaning of both terms cannot be set outside of a context which already begs the question.
We cannot consider the idea of 'independent of us' to have a meaning which shares snh common ground between the phenomenalist and the direct realist. To say something is 'independent of us' already imports concepts which require us to have a policy already on phenomena vs world.
Likewise with 'as they appear to be'. The idea of there being some way objects appear to be which we could compare to the way they 'actually are' to search for a match, imports a ton of concepts about the status of the external world, the status of our reports (both introspective and scientific)...
You'd come to such an investigation with your cup already full to the brim (to paraphrase the Buddhist parable).
Except Philosophy has essentially and foundationally informed and steered humanity to the point we're at today in science, politics, morality, religion, and people's sense of existence itself.
Phenomenology has especially had a tremendous impact on 20th-century philosophy and helped distinguish what is from what we think is. In science, that's practically the foundation for quantum physics and how we theorize it as a foundational part of nature. The practical consequence of that is essential for many recent technological achievements made as well as future development.
Except your experiment is set up, designed by a human being, the theoretical framework underpinning the experiment (eg here QM) is human too, and the AI was built by humans.
I don't think you understand what mathematical logic is or that math as a language wasn't invented by us, but instead, is a language derived from that logic. The world around us wouldn't react through the knowledge we have if there wasn't verifiable feedback from the universe based on our scientific theories.
Why does a GPS work in relation to general relativity? Did we invent general relativity or is our language around it merely a way for us to communicate with other humans about those facts of nature?
If you design an AI that has the function of recognizing the properties of a molecular structure, it doesn't matter one bit that it was designed by humans, because the only human factor is the language it uses to relay that information and data to us. The fact that it detects the properties of molecules is not an invention.
You seem to mix together something we designed with a function that acts upon universal laws. Just because we named things and have a language of communication around it, does not mean it gets invented by us. General relativity didn't get invented, it was discovered and communicated within science through the language of math. It's verified with technology that acts upon these laws of nature regardless of the form, shape, or function we attribute to those inventions.
I am aware of this theory.
Quoting Christoffer
That there exist laws of nature is debated. But we know for sure that certain human beings historically did put together the concepts, the math and the interpretation of General Relativity. They did not receive those things from the gods.
Phenomenology as the basis for quantum physics...?
Hmm. "derived" might not be the right word here. Russell's project failed. We know that for any mathematical axiomatisation there will be truths that cannot be derived.
Do you mean to say that there are now laws of nature? Like, you don't fall to the ground if you jump out the window? There's no gravity, it's just in your head?
Quoting Olivier5
Who's saying anything about gods? We didn't invent general relativity, we discovered these fundamental functions of reality, and we invented concepts to be able to calculate, measure and harness those functions. I absolutely don't understand how you can attribute a scientific discovery with either it coming from gods or that it was invented by us, that's just a fundamentally wrong way of viewing all of this.
No, just that the nature of measuring and also observing is a large part of that research. It's also fundamental to understanding quantum physics that our mathematical equations detach themselves from the internal logic of our human perception. You can logically understand most concepts in science through our human perception, but much of quantum physics breaks down time and space so fundamentally chaotic that anyone researching this field needs to heavily conceptualize past our own internal logic. Phenomenology puts a spotlight on the difference between our internal, human perception of something and the actual reality we measure and research. That is what I meant, not that phenomenology "founded" quantum physics.
Quoting Banno
My point was merely that the logic of math for measuring reality does not rely on our perception or the "aesthetics" of math as an invented language. While we are limited by the invention of the language of math, the equations used can often lead to discoveries through pure logic rather than us inventing something as an interpretation. This is why I think people get confused thinking we "invent theories". General relativity, for instance, wasn't invented, it was discovered, and upon that a theory was formed that we tested and verified predictably, and later harnessed the theory to make inventions like GPS. What I object against is people arguing that our consciousness forms reality, rather than reality existing and us just having a limited ability to experience it through our perception. Such arguments usually end up in us "inventing" our scientific discoveries and theories, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works.
Quoting Christoffer
I've no idea what that might mean. "the internal logic of our human perception"?
Quoting Christoffer
Where? What could an "internal, human perception of something" be?
Quoting Christoffer
Seems to me that we can make up whatever pure maths we like, then choose some of that to make use of in describing how things are. So we do make maths up.
For example, how we perceive time makes us bad at conceptualizing a hypothesis that handles time fundamentally different from our experience. If we do chemistry, as an easy comparison, we can both conceptualize and experience the science between two components mixing, like if something gets hot when mixed together, not only does the science end up logically, we can also experience it, i.e it has a human internal logic to it. From our perceptual perspective, it's extremely different to grasp time as something other than how we experience it, even if the quantum equations or measurable results point in directions that feel alien to our perception.
Quoting Banno
Your perception of time is extremely subjective, even though, by basic calculations, you and I would actually exist through time with slight differences due to general relativity. So on one hand we experience and perceive time in a way that feels "normal", while at the same time it makes it hard for us to conceptualize the idea that we might be temporally out of sync when measured. We perceive something and then there's how reality actually is.
Quoting Banno
Just because complex physics equations seem more fluid compared to 2 + 2 = 4, doesn't mean it's less logical than it. We can make up whatever we like for the language of math, but when applied to predicting events in reality, in physics, then the logic of the calculation cannot be broken. Not sure what kind of "made-up" math you are talking about? There's a difference between the invented language and how that language functions. Mathematical language differs from normal communication language in that there's no interpretational relativity for something like, for instance, "2". It is what it is, regardless of what we believe or want to attribute to it. It will always be our language of saying "2" of something, but there's nothing changing the meaning of "2", it is what it is. If we say "cat" that has almost infinite interpretational values based on the situation, but "2 cats" simply means "there are 2 of that something we can infinitely interpret from the word "cat". Of course, we can continue into 20th-century philosophy with things like "there are 0 cats on the drawer", and find all kinds of absurdities through language interpretations, but none of that really applies to the scientific application of the mathematical language.
And the accurate predictability of the mathematical language pretty much confirms the underlying logic of it and how it transcends any other language in terms of how little it can be subjectively interpreted.
I think we both would agree that Pragmatism is consider a philosophical approach that was expressed in the 19th and 20th century by philosophers such as C. Peirce, W. James, and J. Dewey. These philosophers dealt with these very issues that are being discussed in this post. For example, Peirce asked his readers to consider the following: what is wrong with the following theory, a diamond is actually soft, and only becomes hard when it is touched. Peirce thought there is no way of disproving it; however, he claimed that the meaning of a concept (such as "Diamond" or "Hard") is derived from the object or quality that the concept relates to and the effects it has on our senses. Whether we think of the diamond as "soft until touched" or "always hard" before our experience, therefore, is irrelevant. Under both theories the diamond feels the same, and can be used in the same way. However, the first theory is far more difficult to work with, so of less value.
Pragmatism. Ordinary Language philosophers, and Logical Positivist are philosophical traditions that have attempted to delineate what is meaningful vs what is non-sense. So, what is discussed in epistemology and ontology is fair game. We all learn words like "independent", "appears", "exist" in the ordinary course of life. However, if one takes the ordinary concepts and starts putting a metaphysical spin to them; followers of aforementioned traditions start to smell something fishy. Now I am sympathetic to the idea that one can treat ordinary language a bit sacrosanct and not appreciate its disposition to keep evolving (as Quine so nicely put). But like evolution, ideas will survive or perish, and one of driving forces that picks a winner would be the practical value it has upon the human beings that use them.
They said the same thing about the universal gravitation theory of Isaac Newton. Until it was superseded by a better theory: Einstein's. What makes you certain that GR won't be discarded as incomplete or imperfect in the future?
That's not how science works. Theories don't get thrown out of the window because something else explains things better, they get added, and mixed together, one theory helps explain something else further or helps explain problems with the first theory.
This is the problem with people today using science in their arguments, against or for something. The deep misunderstanding of how the process actually works. Before understanding the basics of how science is conducted, people use scientific findings as major parts of their arguments. For example, the entire global debate around vaccines has been infected by the low-quality understanding of the science surrounding vaccines. For a layman to understand science and physics or at least the ramifications of those things, it requires daily studies on the subject. Far too many read some summary in "Science" and think they understand the world, they don't. Understanding science requires understanding the process, the practice, the history, and the terminology long before even touching upon the actual theories and hypotheses presented.
Newton's laws haven't been discarded, they have been explained better. Just like Higgs explained mass better than before.
Do you think GPS devices will stop working because a new theory explains the behavior of general relativity better? No, they work because the theory is valid and any new theory will only add to it and explain it better or more broadly. If a theory didn't work, we couldn't utilize it for inventions that function on top of these universal physics. All the inventions using Newton's laws of physics didn't magically stop working when Einstein presented his findings.
There are revolutions in science though, such as the Copernican revolution.
And the history of science has gone from religious hogwash to modern science that focuses primarily on detaching itself from our cognitive biases. And my argument regarding human perception in relation to our scientific findings and how reality is not derived from our consciousness is not dependent on the history of science. Also, back in those days, there wasn't anything called science, it was metaphysics, philosophy, and it didn't have any of the scrutinies applied even close to how things are conducted today. Only the old theories that didn't apply biases are the ones that have survived into better forms today, like in the case of Newton. Most of the modern ways of conducting science have been developed from the 19th century up until today. This is what I meant with:
Quoting Christoffer
That is kind of the equivalent of saying you know better because you say you know better. But your argument doesn't show that understanding. Come to think of it, I'm not really grasping what it is you really argue for, you just make comments on what I write rather than present a case. So far it seems you argue for reality deriving from our consciousness? That's how I interpret the way you comment on what I write, objecting to the conclusions I made. What's the point you're arguing for?
I still don't see how. We "grasp" periods of billions of years and billionths of seconds, and calculate accurate relativistic times.
Quoting Christoffer
Not if I use a clock. In any case, there is more to a conception of time than mere perception. A child knows that an hour can go in a flash or take an age.
You seemed to indicate a relation between phenomenology and physics, but what that might be remains obscure.
We conceptualize through proving behaviors of such things through physics equations and verified tests. If our tests can predict behaviors of matter and time that we can't really sense, we can conceptualize by knowing facts about the universe. A case point is how we didn't know how a black hole would look, but that our physics equations pointed towards a visualization that we could simulate and therefore, in the movie Interstellar, Kip Thorne collaborated with the visualization in order to create a physics accurate representation of how a black hole would look like. Later, when we generated the first ever image of a black hole (my profile picture here), it showed the accretion disk and formation basically exactly like how we predicted, except for the redshift difference.
Quoting Banno
No, it is still very subjective. Not only in the way you describe it, which would be the phenomenological way of describing it but also in how general relativity means that if you are closer or further from a gravitational hot spot it would mean that our actual temporal relation is off. If I'm closer to a massive object I will grow older slower than you, even if on earth we can only calculate it by maybe a few seconds over the course of a lifetime.
This is the reason why I bring up GPS, because the clocks need to be synced with the devices on earth in order to track correctly, and because of relativity, the clocks have been adapted to tick differently to compensate for each other's temporal difference due to gravitational differences.
Quoting Banno
There's no material relation, that's exactly what I object against. I'm saying that phenomenology is a great tool for us to use in order to include human perception as part of how to explain our existence and the universe. For example, the basic point in relativity; that two people going at different speeds will in relation to each other experience a temporal shift; the larger the difference, the larger the shift; but the subjective experience of the two persons will not change, they will experience their own time as if nothing has changed. So including phenomenology into how we conduct physics makes it easier to conceptualize concepts that are very alien to us. We need to relate an experience to the raw data of the universe in order to understand what that data means.
The "basic point" of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same for all observers.
Your two people will objectively agree that time is slower for one than the other. It's not an example of a subjective, phenomenological difference.
The notion that phenomenalism is central to physics is flawed.
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So it seems that sense organs (material objects among others, after all) are theoretical constructs, ideas we experience based on sensory input....wait a minute !
All well said.
I think there's a POV trick to be sussed out here. We see others from the outside and ourselves from the inside. So it's plausible that individuals depend on their sense organs and brain as mediators for them of their environment. But if we try to build only from the inside, we talk nonsense. We call everything sense-data while ( pretending to be ) no longer taking the sense organs and objects affecting them in the 'outside' or 'public' world for granted. The stereoscopic key may be remembering that the entities populating the 'inner' and 'outer' worlds are part of the same causal/explanatory nexus. It's problematic to make a wish more or less real than an electron. Kant rather madly jettisoned all the stuff he depended on, radicalizing Locke or Hobbes perhaps to the point of absurdity, respected only because he also wrote lots of non-insanity.
No, just saying you tend to assume a bit too much about what I know, based on too little. A mere philosophical disagreement is insufficient ground to conclude that someone doesn't know the history of science.
Quoting Christoffer
That science is a human activity, and hence inherently subjective. A scientist is and can only be a subject, i.e. a spectator and actor in/at the world.
I think you basically misunderstand everything I say. I didn't say phenomenalism is central to physics, I said it helps conceptualize the theories presented in physics. How we experience the world and universe in relation to how it actually functions. But you twist that into it being central to tha actual theories, which isn't what I'm talking about.
I also don't know what it is you are objecting against? My argument was about the notion that our consciousness is responsible for creating reality and how it is false, and that the only practical idea in phenomenology that is useful is how our experience, internal and subjective point of view, our senses, can relate to the raw reality as it is outside of our experience. I used the examples with science to point out how logic and mathematics, things that aren't "born out of our consciousness" but that work as a language to communicate about things that otherwise would have no way to be sensed by us and our consciousness alone, is a way to prove that our consciousness isn't creating anything. Using this language we can discover things that can later be tested and when verified it also verifies a reality past our subjective experience, i.e our consciousness does not create reality, we merely experience it in a limited way compared to how reality really is.
So are you objecting against that? I just think the argument has been going around irrelevant circles to the original point I made.
It's not the disagreement, it's how you talk about science that informs me. Especially in relation to our consciousness.
Quoting Olivier5
The scientist is a human, science is not. The whole point of science is to detach human biases and subjectivity in order to prove truths. That's the goal. Basically, every other activity we do is subjective, science's whole point is to not be that. It's what the entire history of science has been working towards, to reach better and better methods to reach truths about our reality.
And it's this that informs me that you don't seem to grasp the difference between a human being subjective and the theories presented and proved. Higgs calculated a logic that isn't something subjective, it's logic. You can twist the subjective experience however you want, but something logic will remain logic regardless. And that logic predicts behavior and the existence of objects we've never even experienced, seen or known about. But since it's based on logic in a mathematical equation, it has a merit past our experience and consciousness, it can be tested and once we did, the Higgs particle was discovered, as predicted, now verified.
Your argument is that Higgs somehow invented the Higgs particle through his physics equations and when we built the Atlas detector, it "created" that particle when it was detected. - An argument that is wildly bonkers and needs much more elaboration.
I agree, but it's tempting to those who think from the sense-data model. "All the scientist ever 'really sees' is some immaterial stuff he calls 'red.' " This is why Popper's move is good. Avoid ghost talk. Especially at the (apparent?) foundation(s).
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Peirce is great.
That's a logical contradiction. Truth is generally defined as an accurate representation of some state of affairs. How can one get a representation -- accurate or not -- of some state of affairs without some guy doing the representing to some other guys?
Another way to say the same thing is: truth requires a language, and a language requires several human subjects speaking it.
FWIW, I think you are both right. Take 'objective' in its pure sense as unbiased, and science's goal is to objectively settle what a community ought to believe about the world. I say 'ought' because a warranted belief may not be true. I take this to be a point about grammar and/or the concept of truth.
Quoting Olivier5
This is an issue that I like to wrestle with. How can words be understood to represent nonwords ? That's like paint trying to be music. I think this is why Wittgenstein wrote that the world is all that is the case, a system of true statements. This seems less wrong than many alternatives.
Nope. That would be like paint trying to represent nonpaint, which is evidently possible and in fact done all the time. It's called figurative painting.
Could you provide an example of words representing nonwords ?
In that sense of the word 'objective', yes, but note that this type of objectivity is arrived at through an intersubjective process of shared observations ('facts') and debate over their correct (or best fit) interpretation. And the product of this process is still a representation, i.e. something different from the actual world. The map is not the territory.
I was thinking of this on my bikeride this morning. 'The map is not the territory.' But what do we make of this ? At the moment, I think it's just the (grammatical) gap between a warranted belief and true belief. In other words, it expresses our caution, our finitude, our willingness to edit our governing beliefs.
When you write some text, do you generally mean what you write? Since you are writing to me, isn't the word 'you' in the sentence above, supposed to mean something, such as me myself and I? Isn't the word 'example' intended to call up or evoke some sort of thing, such as the examples I am writing about right now?
Of course I know what you are getting at, but then here we are in language trying to gesture beyond it.
My point was coming from a perspective influenced by Popper and Sellars. When we reason, it's all just discussing claims. Even 'experience' only enters in as premises which aren't the conclusions of inferences, such as Popper's basic statements...those we tentatively take without justification.
It goes deeper than that. A painting of a pipe will never be a pipe. There is an epistemic jump, a radical alterity between a thing and its representation.
The word 'horse' is not a real horse and will never be a real horse.
In this analogy, you have two objects, but what is the territory corresponding to scientific maps like ? If all we ever have of it is maps ? To me, electrons are part of the map, for example. At least within the map/territory as you seem to understand it ?
It's simply the world, or the part of the world that science deals with. It's subject matter.
Presumably, but that's ambiguous. Are electrons part of the map of tuna fish sandwiches and promises and itches ? Are electrons real and promises not ? Or the reverse ? Or ?
That doesn't exclude much. I count the social sciences, etc.
A map, in this way of talking, is a view, a representation, done by someone for someone. It is a product of and tool for human activity.
So if there is someone out there who thinks that mapping a tuna sandwich down to electronic-level precision can be of some utility, I see no logical impossibility for him to draw it. (it might be practically impossible to do of course)
So in theory, electrons can be part of a tuna sandwich map. If someone draws it.
(or just speaks of it, as we are doing)
Promises are of a non-electronic nature though. They are not material. You can eat a tuna sandwich and all its electrons will be yours, but you can't eat a promise of a tuna sandwich.
So what is the territory made of ? Is there a deepest layer ?
I'm not trying to be difficult. I genuinely don't think we can cash the check of 'territory' very easily here. What do electrons and fields represent ? Keep in mind that I'm skeptical about the representation metaphor, so I'm just challenging it, seeing if it can be defended.
I currently prefer to say that there are electrons and promises and itches and noses...all of them caught up in the same causal nexus. I willing to revise beliefs about these things and their relationships.
Scientific knowledge, in this view, would be sets of beliefs about such entities that were established as warranted through objective, critical discussions and experiments. The hope of course is that they are true, but it seems the most we can manage is to make sure they are warranted.
Why would there be a bottom layer? It could be that
Quoting Olivier5
Personally I don't think there needs to be one, nor must we even think of stacked layers. But where then is the territory ? Is it maps all the way down ? If so, does not the metaphor fail or become misleading ?
I like this idea, by the way. We could keep finding tinier, more and more quasifundamental things.
Are you talking of the thing in itself?
Yes, I had that in mind as a possible answer, except I think Kant was wrong to go there.
In my mind, the idea implies that smaller is just a different scale than larger, not a more 'fundamental' level. Atoms are not the foundations of reality (as they are conceptualized in atomism) but simply how reality may look like at this level of detail.
Noumena. Of course people still debate the best interpretation, and I understand why the concept was tempting (as the territory), but I suspect the the true/warranted distinction does the same work with less confusion.
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I'm not. I'm trying to put your ideas together coherently.
I agree that physical reality is in an important way and that the physical world is not purely a mental construction; that idealism is muddled. We agree that logic sets out the structure of language. But I do think language, and hence logic, is constructed by us.
But I baulk at saying that "we merely experience (reality) in a limited way compared to how reality really is". The phenomenological notion of a divide between what we perceive and how things are is fraught with problems. Physics gives us a detailed story about how things are. To suppose that somehow behind physics is a world beyond our understanding, "as it really is", strikes me as a mere word game. If it is beyond out understanding then it can have no place in our stories, and so is irrelevant. If it has a place in our philosophy, then it is not beyond our understanding.
The objective/subjective picture is unhelpful, as is the notion of private/public concepts. Science takes what we see (not "What I see") and develops generalisations that are true for everyone. Talk of subjective personal experiences clouds this picture of science.
This phrase comes from Count Alfred Korzybski, and the null-A movement, "General Semantics", a pseudo-science from early in the last century. I had a strong interest in it at about the age of fourteen.
But of course in order to understand that the map is not the territory, one must have access to both the map and the territory.
It remains an error to suppose that one has no access to the world as it is.
I don;t think you will disagree with this. But @Olivier5 might.
So then, why do you keep asking "where is the territory ?"
The territory is where the map says it is, if it's a good map.
In map / territory parlance, Kant is simply saying that there must be a medium between us and the territory, which maps provide.
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Or (to save the metaphor) we can let the territory be all that is the case and the map be what we are warrant to claim is the case (our set of rationally settled beliefs.)
Because you haven't explicitly adopted my suggested understanding of it, I was trying to figure out yours. How do you cash out 'representation' ?
Quoting Pie
As I said, the territory is where the map says it is, if the map is any good.
It's like Hotel California: you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave representation.
So all we ever have is map map map ?
But why the representation metaphor then ?
Maps have to represent something... What's the use of a map about nothing?
Exactly. That's the point I've been making. What does the map represent ?
Let me repeat my theory. The world is something like the set of true claims. If we try to jam the map metaphor into this new context, we might say that the 'map' is our set of warranted but defeasible claims. But we can also just drop the representation metaphor (maps, lenses, mirrors).
It usually represents a certain part of the world, at a certain scale / level of detail, and focusing on certain particular features.
As an aside, a map cannot represent everything that might potentially be representable. The map maker must make choices about what features are the most important to depict, based on the map's intended use.
Eg a geologic map of New Hampshire will differ quite a lot from a road map of New Hampshire. Of course both maps are about the same territory and thus they could be superposed / combined into one, if only in the mind of a person looking at both maps, and thus one may argue that we could arrive progressively at a richer and richer map of New Hampshire by adding more and more layers (topography, land cover, etc.) But the point is that no map can exhaust reality. This is another aspect of the map / territory metaphor: any territory will always be vastly richer in information than any map of it. (including New Hampshire)
Our human maps are gross simplifications of their territory, always. That's why they are useful to us, feeble humans. There is such a thing as "too much information".
Quoting Pie
A claim is a representation. It's akin to a map or some stuff drawn on a map. So I think you are right to see maps as sets of warranted claims. But it also follows that "the set of all true claims" is also a representation, a "map". It would be the map of an omniscient, supernatural entity.
But the world is still not a map; not even the map of an omniscient entity. The world is not a representation of something else. It is not a show, nor a claim. The world is the real thing, the ground of being. It is.
At most, when you pay attention, it is present.
'Present' <> 'represented'.
OK, but He wouldn't need the map ? For Him, I believe P would also just be P.
Quoting Olivier5
I totally agree that actual maps strip away confusing complexity.
I can imagine a least squares regression line serving metaphorically as a map. I don't want to study 20,000 data points. Give me the gist.
Quoting Olivier5
In my opinion, 'it is' is...on to something. That's what I like about 'the world is all that is case.' It's tempting to say more, but it seems to me that one always says too much. It's also hard to define truth. Its grammar is so brutally simple and absolute, that we always say too much. Because a warranted statement can be false, and an unwarranted statement can be true. It's as if all we can productively talk about is warrant.
I'm fine with that, because it does not imply an observer. Presumably, there was once a world -- like soon after the big bang -- without any claim being made about it by any claimant. Without any representation of itself.
I like Sellars and Popper for trying to figure out how to talk about the world without having to talk about anything mystical or hidden like sensation or experience. These concepts are fine for everyday use, but they've led philosophers to strange, questionable positions.
I like Popper a lot. He speaks freely of ideas, sensations or freedom as real things. He even developed the three worlds ontology to affirm the objective reality of human culture and knowledge. I know less about Sellars but he too seems to consider the world of the mind as non-spooky. When you think about it, ideas and sensations are the most familiar thing to us.
To put it jokingly, it's when we don't think about it...that they seem closest to us. What I mean by this joke is that we take the Cartesian 'veil-of-ideas' for granted, thanks to an unquestioned kneejerk inheritance.
That's only fair, given the title of the thread.
We see others (from the outside) as creatures with eyes and ears and noses and brains. If we check in their skulls, we don't expect to find a soul, not with the naked eye. We trust that a man without eyes is blind and that a man without a living brain is not present at all but only a corpse. This third-person POV lends an initial plausibility to what I'll call the enclosure theory.
It starts plausibly enough, though not without cracks . Atoms or waves banging against sense organs and their nerve cells cause brain to put on a magic show for (or as) the ghost in the machine. This ghost knows what it means to say, even if the words are hard to find, because meaning, like sensation, is pure , immaterial, ghost stuff. The 'ghost' or 'soul' is 'behind' or hidden in the body in some strange way, perhaps in the pineal gland...just as meaningstuff is 'behind' or hidden in the words that carry it.
At this point in the theory, 'we' still believe in the everyday world, but we've set something up by taking the ghost too seriously. Note that sensations and meanings are immaterial, so that the ghost is theorized to get only immaterial manifestations or appearances of the (once real) world.
It becomes plausible (?) that only the ghost is real ! Despite its birth in a third-person point of view. We assumed that atoms/waves 'really' exist for all of us in one shared world, banging away at our individual nervous systems, so that a colorblind or nearsighted person will talk and act a little differently...see the 'same' things differently. But if the sense organs and the atoms and waves are all just entities in a dream (immaterial sensations organized by immaterial concepts), the whole theory of the 'dream' (of the veil-of-ideas) loses its plausibility. [Note that the sense-organs are presented as being created by the sense-organs, with the brain being the fantasy of the brain being the fantasy of the brain...if one doubts the real world that is.]
Quoting Pie
I must make a semantic objection here: it seems to me that the use of words like "ghost", "magic" or "hidden" are unhelpful, due to their bagage. They carry a sense of bizarrerie. Even the word "machine" is IMO inaccurate to describe a living organism. To call our body a machine is evidently an ideological imposition, an idea forced onto a thing.
The default, natural state of thinking about the world, adopted by countless primitive societies across the globe and in history, is some kind of animism where the universe and various elements in it have souls. That would be, for us human beings, the 'normal state of affairs', the regular, non-spooky, banal idea that there are souls everywhere.
If you have kids, you may know that when they hurt themselves against some furniture, eg a bed, a good way to assuage their sorrow and stop them crying is to 'punish' the furniture: you hit the bed with your hand saying "take that, baaad bed who hit poor Charlie". And then little Charlie stops crying because some justice was served to the mean bed.
It is the ripping off of this natural view that is truly alien to us and thus strange: an unanimated, dead world, without any meaning, where beds don't have any intention whatsoever, is not our natural way of thinking of it.
I think it's also that, but philosophers were also, more respectably, trying to figure out the 'lens' and its distortions. Granting the metaphor that the 'real' world is mediated, it's natural to worry about the reliability of this mediation. It's a small step to an 'optics' of mediation (epistemology).
For instance:
[quote=Bacon]
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
[/quote]
Excellent point. Sellars' project is somehow bringing the 'living' world of parents and children into coherence with the scientific image (the dead world, sketched by equations.) How can we put norms and electrons in the same causal nexus, convincingly ? Heal the rift? Just as the German Romantics like Hegel wanted to do...
Maybe we can start by agreeing that the ideas of material object and sense data are theoretical constructs. But how did we come about to learn such ideas? Let us start with material object. We learn to point to objects like trees and apples and teach others that we call such objects tree and apple. If we see others react to such objects and use the words tree and apple, well we have the building blocks of language. Later we can generalize a bit and call these trees and apples under the concept of material object.
Next, let us look at sense data. I think we can agree we dont learn such a concept by pointing externally to sense data to teach others what we mean. Additionally, we dont internally point to sense data to teach what we mean because other are not privy to this internal private act. We come up with this theoretical construct of sense data when we want to explain odd reporting of objects that are called hallucinations and illusions.
So looking at it this way, I would say the idea of sense data is more theory laden than I would say the idea of material object.
Good question.
My take is that there is an obvious middle ground between electrons and norms (or ideas), which is life. Only certain types of life forms have ideas, I think... So the answer may lie in the study of biology and in a philosophy of biological life, its origin and evolution.
Biology is very much underrated among philosophers. Yet they could learn so much from it. Even the great Popper, for instance, ignored biology to a rather odd degree. His three-worlds ontology makes no mention of life, lumped in the same 'world' as unanimated matter. But these are literally worlds apart. Life is already a form of language; it uses codes such as the genetic code and hormones. Life stands halfway between electrons and ideas.
Great post. Genealogy of concepts. Make folks aware that these weird entities were invented to play a role in arguments and explanations.
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Biosemiotics is fascinating, though I haven't got around to studying it seriously.
Indeed, although I see biosemiotics as only one fashionable province in a vast country. I find embryology amazing, for instance. It's about life emergence.
Quoting Olivier5
Jesus! It's awesome but a little terrifying.
I don't know much about biology. But I did spend a few weeks reading about evolution (Dawkins, Dennett, and Darwin), and that was mind-stretching...and also a little terrifying.
I studied biology in some depth at university. It's very rich, and one of the fastest developing sciences, which may explain the limited interest of 20th century philosophers. Their intellectual formation was dominated by general relativity and QM, huge breakthroughs in physics dating from the early 20th century. The rise of biochemistry starts sometimes around Watson and Crick discovery of the DNA structure, ie mid century, and picks up steam in the 60's. Too late for Popper to notice.
For a layman, I recommend François Jacob and Stephen Jay Gould. Both were top notch scientists with an interest in the big picture, humility vis-à-vis the complexity at hand, open-mindedness or absence of heavy ideological bias, and luminous prose.
Personally, I don't have much time for the kind of reductionist thinking, the forcing of square pegs into round holes that I see as characteristic of the 'new atheists'. Things are far more complex than the Selfish Gene.