Is indirect realism self undermining?
Indirect realism is probably the most prevalent ontological view in the world today. It goes a little like this:
The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place?
The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place?
Comments (1153)
Why does the indirect guy have that cloudy thing in front of his face?
That's the representation cloud isn't it? Wait. Do we need a different picture?
Yes. Otherwise, youd be forced to admit the two guys eyes dont work the same way, and by association, it is indeterminable whos eyes will see the cloud and whose will not, or, the world itself is different depending on who is looking at it, any one of which gets you into all kindsa trouble.
How's this? All the images of indirect realism have a little cloud like that.
Is this wrong?
The guy on the left. Take away the figure in his head, put in the cloud with the figure in it. The cloud indicates the figure is a representation of the object, the real object perceived directly but represented indirectly.
Notice theres nothing indicating the operation of the senses, in the second illustration. And notice the figure is in the head, beyond sensory apparatus. This indicates the brain works with that which is not given from the senses, but rather, works with the representations for which the senses merely provide the occassion.
The guy on the left is an image of direct realism. He doesn't get a cloud. He just directly sees the tree. But your comment does say something about this topic. You can quickly get lost with the representations that people see, except the tree is in their head, but it can't be, so what's that in the guy's head? Is it a representation or is it a tree? How do you get a tree in your head? You can't get a tree in your head, so you have to have a cloud with a tree in it.
Quoting Mww
I don't think there are any representations in direct realism. Maybe you get a little tree? A head-sized tree?
I don't know which 'ism' fits this approach best, but I suggest that the perspective metaphor is useful here. We don't see a picture of the tree. We see the tree 'with' or 'through' our nervous systems 'from' this or that bodily-linguistic perspective. Personality is mediation, but mediation need not and seemingly ought not be understood to cast up a second image of the tree.
Brains and trees need to be kept in the same world of inferential-causal 'plane,' else (seems to me) nonsense ensues, though it's not obvious nonsense.
Ok, but just consider indirect realism for a moment. The idea is that the world around you is a product of your bodily apparatus. The world you take to be real is a collage of representations.
Is this view self undermining?
Everyone directly sees the tree.
Quoting frank
Maybe not, but there are representations necessarily. It is impossible that there are not. Or if not representations, than something that supports the fact that the real object directly sensed, is not what is present in the brain.
The confusion is in what the terms themselves are meant to indicate. What we perceive is real directly; what our cognitive system works with, is real indirectly.
I think so. The brain which is supposed to generate the picture is part of the picture. All arguments for the brain throwing up a picture depend on features of the very picture which is 'derealized' and not be trusted. Brains become the creations of brains. Sense organs become the creation of the very same sense organs, themselves. Note that the dreamer is part of the dream. It doesn't make sense. It eats itself.
There is and can be only one 'inferential-causal nexus.'
When the indirect realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the brown thing.
When the direct realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the Earth.
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure you're getting the distinction between direct and indirect realism. Or maybe I'm not.
With direct realism, there are no representations. In some way unknown to cognitive science, the spectator is somehow seeing the earth with no intermediary constructions involved. As you mention, it's a problematic view, which is why indirect realism is the view of the "man on the street" as Searle the serial sexual harasser put it.
Quoting Mww
How do you know that?
Yes. Even boy scouts are indirect realists. Sad, isn't it?
:up:
Quoting green flag
What does this mean?
I think you're mistaken, frank. "Indirect realism" is an epistemological view (i.e. representationalism).
I don't see how.
Ok. That's fine. Although it has an ontological dimension wrt the nature of what you take to be the world. Ontology and epistemology are usually joined at the hip I think.
Only in idealism.
I do prefer the other names.
Quoting frank
Because I can tell you what a real basketball is, but I promise you theres never been a real basketball in my head.
I'm suggesting (exploring the thesis) that our lifeworld and our semantics is inferentially articulated, and that our language ("an organ of perception") is unified, which is to say a system of differences ("without positive terms") with inferential relationships. It's like a game of chess with arbitrary but established names for roles rather than Platonic forms. A bishop by any other names, moves diagonally all the same.
"If I discover that all the boxes in the attic I am charged with cleaning out have been labeled with red, yellow, or green stickers, all I learn is that those labeled with the same color share some property. To learn what they mean is to learn, for instance, that the owner put a red label on boxes to be discarded, green on those to be retained, and yellow on those that needed further sorting and decision. Once I know what follows from affixing one rather than another label, I can understand them not as mere labels, but as descriptions of the boxes to which they are applied.
Description is classification with consequences, either immediately practical (to be discarded / examined / kept) or for further classifications. Michael Dummett argues generally that to be understood as conceptually contentful, expressions must have not only circumstances of appropriate application, but also appropriate consequences of application.
That is, one must look not only upstream, to the circumstances (inferential and non-inferential) in which it is appropriate to apply the expression, but also downstream to the consequences (inferential and non-inferential) of doing so, in order to grasp the content it expresses."
This is wrong. It's the indirect realist that actually gets it. Their view is not "faulty", rather they acknowledge that their view is a representation of the world-as-it-is.
Also, it is incorrect to contrast the indirect realism with direct realism. The latter is also called the naive realism because the adherents take their perception of the world as the world-as-it-is.
Just for good measure, Banno's thread External world's poll has the non-skeptical realism as one of the choices. That's a fitting description of any realist.
The fact our eyes point outwards is something the indirect realist is unable to overcome. But the matter is simple. The contact with the rest of the world is direct. So how can one perceive indirectly a world that he is in direct contact with?
Quoting L'éléphant
One sees sign posts to particularly fine views, and sometimes there is a plaque with sight-lines indicating various features. A view is not a representation; a photo or a painting is a representation of a view. It is quite easy to tell the difference between a real view and a representation of a view, by trying to walk around to the back of it or better still through it.
If the view is of a valley with a fine village with an old pub in it, and you can walk down the hill to the pub and enter and order a beer and drink the beer, then the view was not a representation, whereas if you just get a squashed nose and the taste of paint, it was a representation. I hope this helps.
You say the Direct Realist is not seeing an image of the tree, which is what the Indirect Realist would say, but is directly seeing the tree.
An Indirect Realist would say that they are looking at an image of the tree, and therefore don't know, just from the image, whether the tree is 5m tall 10m away or is 10m tall 20m away.
If the Direct Realist is directly seeing the tree and not an image of the tree, how does the Direct Realist know, just from the image, whether they are looking at a 5m tall tree 10m away or a 10m tall tree 20m away ?
How can the Direct Realist justify that they are not looking an an image of the tree ?
The representation in the op is incorrect. it is inherently biased, direct realist, by showing the external as the same as the image which the direct realist has in mind.
What the diagram needs to show is that the direct realist, and the indirect realist both have the same, or similar image in the mind. But the direct realist thinks that this image is as the external world is, and the indirect realist thinks that it is not.
Indirect realism is a prevalent ontological view because it is supported by ideas derived from modern science. Principally, there is the idea that the world really consists of a bunch of tiny particles moving at a high speed, or perhaps even in some sort of superposition, and objects don't really exist in the way that that they are imaged through sense representation.
Yeah .something said is the superficial silliness of it all on the one hand, re: the implicit absurdity involved in denying there are real basketballs in my head (like you know well, DUH!!!), and the fascinating complexity of an organ that can present itself as, or make it seem like there is, a subject present, that the subject has images of things when (gasp) there never really is either subject or image to be found anywhere in that organ.
Does direct mean that the perceived becomes part of the perceiver? Maybe that the perception and the perceived are the same? Not really. (I think.) Maybe that there's no strange otherworldly theater at work?
The perception is an (interruptible) occurrence, like a process, where perceiver perception perceived are parts of the same larger environment.
Refraction is part of what the swimmer-in-the-water looks like, regardless that the swimmer's head isn't separate from the rest of their body.
Does this work then?
Looks indirect (I think), but at least interruptibility, same environment, and whatever, are clearer/intuitive. The perception is (ontologically) part of the perceiver when occurring. In the image, hallucination is mistaking "?" for "=", and solipsism is mistaking "=" for non-identity "?". Different wording, not the in/direct dichotomy.
Quoting NOS4A2
The ocean contacts the shore, but it's not perceiving the shore. We don't fully understand how perception works, but it's apparent that a multitude of afferent nerves present electrical stimulus to the central nervous system, which is doing something with those impulses that coincides with awareness.
Lets be clear that indirect realism is the dominant view among scientists, because as @Mww noted, direct realism doesn't make any sense on its face. If we directly perceive objects without any nervous interface, how exactly do with do that? Your eyes don't see things. Your ears don't hear things, and your fingers don't feel things. Your central nervous system sees, hears and feels. There clearly is an interface between the CNS and the world. Thus, indirectness appears to be the way it works.
The onus is on direct realists to explain, if only broadly and superficially, how direct realism is supposed to work. Thoughts?
When I enter a room and turn the light switch off, I do not see, my eyes do not see, and my nervous system does not see. Clearly, there is an interface between the light switch and the world.
Long live indirect realism.
Pierre Le Morvan wrote an article Arguments against Direct Realism and how to counter them
A major problem with Direct Realism is the belief that because one knows an effect, such as the image of a tree, the cause of that effect can be directly and unambiguously known.
As I cannot know from the position of the snooker balls in the image the preceding state of affairs, I cannot know from seeing an image of a tree the preceding cause of that image.
A Direct Realist would need to explain how the cause of an effect may be unambiguously known just from knowing the effect.
But you already know how it works, I see with my eyes and touch with my skin and hear with my ears. The onus is on the indirect realist to explain what this interface could possibly be that is neither me nor the world. The only candidate so far is 'image', and that is obviously nonsense. when I touch a tree, what is between me and the tree? Nothing, I say, what do you say?
In my view, there's a confusing tendency around this issue to put objects beneath and not within the space of reasons, which is almost tautologically implausible, for claims must have meaning and philosophical claims must be justified.
I'm glad you folks have the same thought process, because now I could lay down the argument on the idea that what we see is indirect reality. It's reality, no doubt, but a representation. And it's a representation not because of the reasons you say.
Quoting frank
Quoting unenlightened
Our five senses work just fine. It's not in the touching, or seeing, or hearing that we miss out on the thing-in-itself. It's our concept formation, our language, our comprehension, and all other things human that get in the way of looking at an object and not be able to undo the idea of a "tree", "moon", "triangle", "people". You can't look at a tree and see a "thing". You can only see a tree. A wood table, for example, cannot be unseen as a table. You can't look at it and see a "thing".
Our mind is enveloped in this cloud of a lifetime learning. No, I take that back. Our mind naturally forms concepts/ideas from day one. This (!) is what we can't undo. We can't get outside of our mind and see the world stripped off of names, reference, and qualities.
I think the usual answer is nerves.
Quoting unenlightened
Ha! As if anyone cares what I think. :grin:
I'm not going to read the rest of your post. Thanks.
That's fine. No harm done.
Our senses (body and mind) filter, organize and present information (data) from the external enviroment in a way that is advantageous (usually) for our survival. Do our senses give us an entirely complete picture of the external environment, it would seem quite clearly not; we don't see UV or Infrared, we do not hear frequencies above or below certain limits. So our picture of the world including the way we color it is a representation of reality, not a complete picture of all or nature.
So for me, it is the direct realism argument which is undermined by the science of perception.
We have devices that can show us those. So, it's not the issue.
Quite the contrary IMV, direct and indirect realism are questions about perception not about scientific instrumentation. Furthermore what makes you think scientific instrumentation reveals all?
True, but the idea of such a naked world is itself a object within our system of references. It's within our space of reasons, even as it helplessly and hopelessly tries to gesture beyond that space. This is not to say that the world is in the mind. The brain and the tree and the dream are all in the same world, in the same space of reasons. Else we could not make sense of their relationships to one another.
Your conclusion doesnt follow. Another possibility which is consistent with the premises is this: we see things in certain human ways, but its the things we are seeing, not representations thereof. Thats direct perception.
What indirect realism gets right is that an individual human's beliefs are a function not only of the world apart from that individual but also of that individual's spatial and cultural position within that world. But all of our beliefs must refer to the same (life-)world in order to be intelligible and subject to epistemological and semantic norms. The naked world ( imagined paradoxically as a substrate 'beneath' language) is like an impossible point at infinity, an idea in the Kantian sense.
:up:
There's no reason to imagine seeing as radically simple.
Is this your argument? I can't see everything, so I can't see anything. If you have a picture of the world, how do you see it? Indirectly?
I think the question reduces to one of identity. Those who Identify as mind will be indirect realists, whereas those who identify as body will be direct realists. Direct realists are joined to the world by their skin and all their senses, and indirect realists are separated from the world by their skull and all their senses. Neuroscience will never find the person in the neurones or the 'correct' identification.
What would be the justification for that view?
If that's your definition of direct realism then the distinction between direct and indirect disappears but I do not think that definition is the one universally applied in the argument.
I do not think that was the argument; It was more we don't see everything not we do not see anything. Yes sense perception has a direct causal link to the external world but the senses are selective and perception is a process that occurs in the brain not in the external world. Again how are you defining direct realism vs indirect realism ?
The phrase "external world" implies a separate "internal world" in which presumably "perception" happens, as distinct from "seeing" which happens in the external world when for example, the dog sees the rabbit. Indirect realists are happiest talking about seeing and most unhappy talking about touching, for reasons that are probably fairly obvious.
But the problem with this dual world that indirect realism seems to require is that bodies, sense-organs and' most of all, brains, are part of the external world that they have no direct contact with.
Doesnt make any sense with respect to the central nervous + peripherals system from a physical point of view, nor with respect to some theoretical cognitive system from a metaphysical point of view.
Direct realism is a necessary condition for the proper functionality of sensory apparatus as such, nonetheless, and should be taken as granted from either point of view.
To finesse the noted ..
I think the distinction between self and other is pretty fundamental to human cognition and psychology.
Although I would agree we are embedded in and part of the larger world and that our perception of the tree is as "real" as the tree itself, it would seem a semantic distinction between the tree as it is separate from us and our perception of the tree as formed in the mind and through the senses is warranted.
Yes there is a direct path of causal efficacy from the eternal world to the perception and so in that sense it is "direct" but that slanders my understanding of the direct realism or Naive realism argument.
Maybe human intellect is getting in the way of self-observation (is that tree in my head?).
Would it help to examine a different animal that is not busy philosophizing about how it gets a tree into its head (or not)? Our sensory / perceptual facilities evolved similarly to other animals, but they can not get tangled up in reflection about perception,
A scout honey bee flies away from the hive. On its flight it passes over a patch of black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta). It turns back to the hive and once there communicates to gatherer bees a few facts -- what direction, how far, how good. The scout 'speaks' through movement--in the dark, pretty much. Gatherer bees take the facts and go directly to the rudbeckia patch and collect lots of pollen.
Bees have been doing this for a long time, and have not been philosophizing about it (as far as we know).
Are bees perceiving the world directly or indirectly?
If a male dog smells a female dog in heat, is it perceiving the pheromones directly or indirectly?
Well, yes, what is important is understanding the process of perception not engaging in a semantic argument about the meaning of "direct" or "indirect". Perception is a process with its limitations and bees have their own perceptual process which in some respects is superior to our own.
So you have a contradiction on your hands. What do you do about that?
Yikes!! Cant have that. Point it out for me?
A direct link of causal efficacy is necessary, but that is a different proposition than direct naive realism.
Direct realism doesn't makes sense, but it's necessary. How do you deal with that?
Quoting prothero
How can you speak of causal efficacy, a mysterious connective substance for sure, when you cannot see or touch a tree?
When the dog sees the rabbit, and gives chase, there is not a great deal of consideration of self, nor of causality going on. One does not say the dog's brain sees an image of a rabbit or that the dogs legs run after it particularly, the dog or its legs cannot be running after a perception in its brain. No, the dog is running after the rabbit, that it has seen, not in its mind or its brain, but in the field, because that's where the rabbit is.
To me some of the confusion here is related to an unclarified concept of the self which is supposed to see. One approach to this self is as a locus of responsibly for its claims and the relationships between them. The unity of the self is the expected and even demanded coherence of its claims. (We can make some kind of sense of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde as sharing the same body by keeping track of who is responsible for what (including who should remember what.) I suggest that we don't think of the self as either a brain or a body or a screen. It's its own kind of entity in the lifeworld which is the true cradle or foundation of all talk about it (being-in-the-world-with-others-in-norms-and-language.)
If I can go meta for a second, we are presumably debating the proper way to describe our seeing of the world. I hope and trust we are actually talking about the world and not our individual 'images' of the world. The grammar of 'image' (or 'appearance') is (roughly) that about which I 'cannot' be wrong.
We could talk forever about this, so I'll close by suggesting 'perspective' as a less confusing metaphor than 'image' or 'screen' or 'representation' of the world. We don't see a representation of the world. We see the world from the perspective of this or that software-loaded body within that same world.
Easy. Accept the intrinsic duality of human intelligence, regardless of the various suppositions for its methods.
Direct realism ..merely from analysis of the conceptions .is just unmediated objectivity, despite the mess post-Enlightenment philosophy has made of it. So, yes, its necessary for one part of the duality, the purely empirical, but has no business being involved in the other part, the purely rational.
The only way out is to prove the very nature of human intelligence is not intrinsically dualistic, which is fine, as long as whatever replaces the logic that proves it is, is sufficient to entirely falsify it.
How I deal with it ..the senses are directly affected by real things. I need nothing else from the notion of direct realism.
Of course we can both "see" and "touch" a tree using our sense and perception. It is the type of connection between the tree and our perceptual process that is up for discussion.
Dogs, I grant, are not given to discussions or considerations of direct versus indirect realism and perhaps we are likewise wasting our time engaging in them. The blind dog does not "see" the rabbit and even the "seeing dog" sees only certain aspects of the rabbit.
So is anything necessary regarding direct naive realism? If were already given that which is necessary, with respect to an answer to a question concerning some particular dilemma, what else do we need?
There is no "naked world" if it's within our system of references. We can't get outside it.
As long as one understands the process of perception and its inherent limitations, I do not care if you call it direct or indirect, and the distinction seems more semantic than fundamental given that understanding.
Perhaps we agree ? I'd add that no outside means no inside. I suggest we think of all of this in social terms. We can meaningfully talk about personal bias, but it's not clear that we can talk wisely about (as if we could be outside of ) human bias. I'm not saying that psychology can't generalize about personal bias or even group bias. But philosophers tend to talk as if their humanity was a fancy lens they might take off of the camera they are looking through.
Im cool with that.
I rather think the whole shebang is a false dichotomy anyway, so .
We can talk wisely about the world, if you'd like. Indirect realism does not deny the reliability of our perception -- how else could we have come up with hypotheses that we relied on for thousand of years? We don't go walk off a cliff just to prove we're mistaken. We don't walk off a cliff because we know about gravity. And gravity does not disappoint.
I'm trying to not pick "direct" or "indirect" from the menu. Too much baggage. Both focus on something important. But we tend to get trapped in our metaphors. One of my big points is that there's just one concept system, one inferentially articulated 'system' of entities, one lifeworld. Promises are as real as electrons. There are not two worlds, a humanized and value-laden world and some other world made of math. It's just the one world, because all of the concepts in our talk/grasp of it are radically interdependent. It's common to see attempts to break a unity that I think can't sensibly be broken.
Okay.
That's not direct realism tho.
I think the answer is that the question is language on holiday. We can't stand outside ourselves in order to answer it.
Most likely not. But, as I said, from analysis of the concepts themselves, the notion is reducible to mere unmediated objectivity.
Quoting frank
Right, but the answers arent outside ourselves anyway, so alls well. For better or worse, the answers are what reason says they are.
Bard has, of course, heard of The Philosophy Forum and finds the discussions interesting. The statements of an AI (at this point) and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.
Bard was impressive in some ways and quite boring in other ways.
From Wikipedia Direct and indirect realism
"In contemporary philosophy, indirect realism has been defended by Edmund Husserl[17] and Bertrand Russell.[9] Direct realism has been defended by Hilary Putnam,[18] John McDowell,[19][20] Galen Strawson,[21] and John R. Searle.[22]"
From John R. Searle The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument
"I realize that the great geniuses of our tradition were vastly better philosophers than any of us alive and that they created the framework within which we work. But it seems to me they made horrendous mistakes."
"The second mistake almost as bad is the view that we do not directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world."
Your picture promotes the very misleading premise that the indirect realist argues against. The thing between the two men shouldn't look like anything. The thing in the middle should, at best, be a mass of wave-particles, which both men then see as whatever they see it to be, e.g. a sphere with blue and green patterns.
The sphere with blue and green patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in left man's eyes. The sphere with orange and brown patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in the right man's eyes. That is indirect realism.
Once again, arguing over the semantics of whether we should say "I see the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" or "I see a mental 'representation' of the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" is a red herring.
How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers?
I would say that if I talk to someone on the phone then it is both indirect and the case that I am talking to them, not to the phone or whatever. And this shows the very flaw with the direct realist's "semantic" argument against indirect realism. Simply arguing that we "see a tree, not a mental representation of a tree" doesn't actually address indirect realism at all.
The sound you hear on a phone is the output of a digital-to-audio converter, so you're definitely hearing a representation. It's indirect.
In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism. This painting by Magritte is about this very issue.
I like it!!!!
Shades of Platos Republic: at the point/moment of perception, we know THAT it is, but we dont know WHAT it is.
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After the edit, I dont like it. In fact, its ruined. Or I missed the point. (Sigh)
That's not a problem with indirect realism. That's the very point that indirect realism is making. The argument between direct and indirect realism is regarding the epistemological problem of perception; how can we know that the external world "really is" as we see and hear and feel it to be? The indirect realist argues that we can't know this, because the quality of our experiences is determined not just by the external stimulus but also by our eyes and brain.
Seeing an apple is, in principle, just like talking to you on the phone. It's indirect. There's a lot of stuff going on in between that manipulates what is seen and heard. I can't know that it's really you I'm talking to, or that what you sound like on the phone is what you would sound like were we to meet in real life, and I can't know that the thing outside my head really is an apple, or that the colour I see it to be (red) is the colour it has even when I'm not looking. And in fact on this latter point, I think the very idea of external things "having" colours even when not being looked at (i.e. colour realism) is nonsense, and so indirect realism is certainly correct on that account.
That's a fair assessment, yes.
I'd say, that's much better.
When you understand that indirect realism undermines itself, as proposed in the op, and the problems of direct realism persist, the door to idealism will open within you. I'll be waiting for you at that door, which opens inward rather than outward.
If instead, one says the indirectness only applies to perception, and one also says that thoughts, logic, etc. are not perceptions, then one is fine. If thoughts essentially based on nothing but other thoughts (even if inspired or superfluously supported by perception), brought one to question perception, there is no self-undermining. Instead, it is thoughts undermining the direct realism of perception.
How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" works the way you claim it works? How does an indirect realist escape from global epistemological scepticism? A direct realist is naive to think that shit smells, but somehow, an indirect realist knows everything about everything.
If we assume that we do have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception is as we currently understand it to be, then the explanation above shows indirect realism to be the case. If we assume that we dont have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception isnt as we currently understand it to be, then weve assumed indirect realism to be the case.
Either way, it just isnt possible to maintain direct realism.
Its not naive to think that shit smells. Its naive to think that shit having a smell (especially a bad smell) is a mind-independent fact that we directly perceive.
Things have a smell only for organisms that have an olfactory sense, and only if their olfactory sense responds in a certain way to the chemicals exuded by those things. And the quality of that smell depends on the organism itself; things that smell bad to us can smell good to something else, e.g a dung beetle.
Then why not assume we have trees?
There is a way. Observation for empirical constructs, the assessment from which is experience; logic for rational constructs, the assessment from which is contradiction.
Theres only one way that painting makes sense, right? Actually, theres two, but one is a whole lot easier to accomplish.
We can, and do. But that doesnt refute indirect realism. It is still the case that the look and smell and taste and feel of a tree is a mental representation and not a mind-independent property that is directly perceived.
Again with the internal/external division, and "the senses" mediating. Once you are a mind separate from a body, you will never know that you are not a brain in a vat, or a spirit deceived by a demon.
What is the source of your sophisticated indirect realism? Is it not the naive assumption that there are brains and eyes and noses and internal and external worlds?
The fact that a colour blind person and I can both look at the same thing and yet see different colours. It therefore follows that at least one of us isnt seeing the colours that the object really has.
And compared to something like a mantis shrimp, every human is colour blind.
And more than that, the very notion of objects having a mind-independent colour is refuted by modern science. Objects have a surface of electrons that interact with electromagnetic radiation in such a way that it reflects and/or emits photons at a particular wavelength, which then happens to stimulate in most humans the experience of the colour red. But to then argue that therefore redness is a property of that object is as nonsensical as arguing that because most humans get hurt when theyre punched in the face then pain must be a property of other peoples fists.
I addressed this here. Either we assume that there are brains and eyes, and then the science of perception shows indirect realism to be the case, or we assume that there arent brains and eyes, and so that indirect realism is the case.
It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. Its either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both. I side with scientific realism, and so therefore indirect realism.
Look again. Still much better?
I think I am criticising what Searle is suggesting.
I don't agree with Searle in his support of naive realism (direct realism), as it seems to me that only Indirect Realism can satisfactorily explain how we interact with the world.
As Searle said "I think the rejection of naive realism was the single greatest disaster that happened in philosophy after Descartes...................but the idea that you can't ever perceive the real world but only a picture in your mind that creates a disaster, because the question that arises is what is the relationship between the idea you do perceive or the sense datum of the impression that you do perceive and the real world, and there is no answer to that which is satisfactory once you make once you make the decisive move of rejecting Naive Realism"
I don't agree with Searle's solution to the epistemological problem of how we can gain knowledge of objects in the real world from private sense data, how we can know the public objective from the private subjective and how we avoid scepticism, subjectivism and solipsism.
Searle proposes the "intentionality of perception". Whereas I agree that we are shaped by evolution, and the object causes the visual experience, I don't agree that the intentional content of our minds (intentional state) is causally self-referential. IE, I may perceive a car, but it is the car that has caused me to have that very perception. Such self-referential causality is inadequate to ensure a condition of satisfaction between the intentional content and object in the world, whether a veridical perception or an hallucination.
Searle tries to avoid Kant's transcendental link between intentional content and actual world by attempting to naturalize intentionality, ie, treating intentionality as just another biological function using a self-referential intentional causation.
Searle attempts to show that a self-referential causation between intentional content and world will ensure that any link between intentional content and world will be logical rather than empirical, and therefore directly observable, avoiding Hume's problem of inference using regularity of observation.
Searle's approach fails because he ignores the asymmetry of cause and effect, and incorrectly assumes a symmetry in the direction of fit from world to mind and from mind to world.
Such asymmetry between cause and effect and effect and cause means that the link between intentional content and actual world cannot be self-referential, as is required by Searle in his support for naive realism.
I do see that they're both flawed. Do you mean that this leads to idealism?
Correct.
Oh, that's news to me. I thought colour blind people couldn't see colours. But how did you make the comparison? and how do you access these facts that are mind independent? I tend to use observation, myself, but you say that is unreliable.
This is the exact red herring that is almost always brought up in the debate between direct and indirect realism. There's a paper by Howard Robinson, Semantic Direct Realism, that addresses this:
My previous example of talking on the phone is a good example of this. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone, but it still counts as an example of indirect communication. The same is true of face-to-face communication. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to (and seeing) my parents, but given the physics and mechanics of external objects and light and sound and the central nervous system, the phenomenology of experience is indirect.
This is an example that shows the difference between how most people see things and how someone with red-green colour blindness sees things.
And I suspect a mantis shrimp with their far more advanced eyes would see something very different to both. It can't be the case that we all see things as they directly are and that how we see things is different. But, again, more than that our current scientific understanding of the world and perception shows that it's naive to think of colours as being mind-independent properties at all, such that one of the mantis shrimp, the typical human, or the man with red-green colour blindness is seeing the apples' "real" colours "correctly".
The one-eyed man perceives the oncoming knife with no depth-perception until a sensation of loss for he can no longer perceive the thing as a knife, only sense it as the last visual memory before the total blackness.
Modern science does not view body and mind as separate. Identity in perception is an illusion by a mind that tries to view itself from the inside. But remove the body and the mind dies, remove the mind and the body dies. Even the person who was born without senses will have a mind affected by the chemistry changes to that body, even though his perception of his own screams have no equivalent description by people able to perceive the world.
The eye experience reality directly, our brain experiences the eye directly. Are our eyes and their function not part of reality? If I hold a color filter up against my eyes and view the world in only blue, is that not a direct reality even through I put a limit on the perception of the world as I would normally see it? What then, are the filters that our sensory organs and brain have put on our perception, but simply just a filter against our reality?
Does indirect mean incomplete? What is then complete perception? Full visual spectrum? Spacetime compensated photon registration through gravitational waves?
Direct realism seems true as everything is direct down to the neurons computing sensory information against sensory memory, we only have filters to access reality in a way that is optimal for our species.
A bit like the planet not able to single out an individual snowflake, but only act as the whole ecosystem.
I am sure that we both agree with Indirect Realism.
Searle definitely supports Direct Realism, and within Direct Realism, as also discussed by Pierre Le Morvan in his article Arguments against Direct Realism and how to counter them, there is causal indirectness (PDR) and cognitive indirectness (SDR).
I would assume Searle agrees with the cognitive indirectness version of Direct Realism, as he must well know the bent stick problem.
What do you mean by red herring ?
That's a pretty picture; it looks to my dependent mind like a picture of some apples, with some kind of filter applied to one half. We direct realists may be naive, but we can tell the difference between a picture and an apple, and likewise between a filter and a red-green colourblind person.
Again, how do you know so much about other people's inner worlds when you don't even have access to the common outer world?
Do you not notice the folly? Blind people cannot see, therefore I what see is in my head. Dead people have no experience, therefore experience is unreliable. As it happens, I am short-sighted; it doesn't make me think the world is blurry until it gets with 30 cm of my face, it makes me think I cannot see as well as I'd like.Nevertheless I can see, and what I see is the world, and the proof of that is that I read what you write and respond to your picture. And that is only possible because we both have limited access and connection to the same world, which is not therefore "internal".
The epistemological problem of perception asks whether or not we can trust that our experiences show us the nature of the external world. It's a question regarding the relationship between phenomenology and mind-independent properties. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust our experiences to show us this because phenomenology is at best representative of mind-independent properties (although I would go further and say that it isn't even representative of them, it's only causally covariant with them). Direct realists argued that we can trust our experiences to show us this because there is no distinction between phenomenology and mind-independent properties (i.e. there is no "sense data").
The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. It's a red herring response.
I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. With a deflationary account of truth, this acknowledgement is just a social convention. It says nothing about whether you actually talked to your parents or not, which the SDR advocate thinks is a meaningless question?
I don't understand what you are asking. Do you or do you not accept that some people are colour-blind; that the colours they see things to be are not the colours that you see things to be? If so then you must accept that direct realism fails as it cannot be the case that both you and the colour blind person directly see the apple's "real" colour and that you see different colours.
Quoting unenlightened
That's exactly the point. The structure of your experience is one thing, the mind-independent nature of the world is another thing, and it's the structure of your experience that informs you, not the mind-independent nature of the world. You see a blurry world, but the external world isn't blurry. The blurriness is all in your head. And so too is the colour, the smell, the taste, the feel, etc.
Yes, which has nothing to do with perception.
Right. The point I was making earlier was that since indirect realism is the view of science, an advocate of direct realism needs to address in some way how direct realism is supposed to work.
Given that I can see a world, that's so much the worse for our scientific understandings ;)
But, even more, surely we can be realists who are not scientific realists? That is, we may not infer that our scientific understandings are reality.
Perhaps. Maybe direct realists have to be scientific instrumentalists, and reject the idea that the external world is exhaustively explained by something like quantum mechanics. You'd have to argue for something like that to be a colour realist, for example.
Do you or do you not accept that some people are blind; they see nothing that you see? If so then you accept that [s]direct realism[/s] your argument fails.
I don't think I see the apple's colour, or the apple's shape, or the apple's surface; I think I see the apple, and I think the colourblind person sees exactly the same apple, and if you give the apple to Tommy the deaf dumb and blind kid, he will be able to feel and smell and taste the very same apple.
This is the intentionality argument for semantic direct realism, and has nothing to do with the phenomenological issue that is at the heart of the disagreement between direct and indirect realists. See here and here.
I read that bit too. You have no response to any of the questions put to you. You claim the high ground of objectivity but cannot explain how you overcome the subjectivity you project onto everyone else. I think I'll leave it there 'til next time. It's been fun.
I don't understand your questions.
My argument is simple; if scientific realism is true then indirect realism is true, and scientific realism is true.
You seem to think that if I'm an indirect realist then I can't also be a scientific realist? I don't understand why. Given that much of science involves things that cannot be directly seen, e.g. gravity, dark matter, electrons, etc. it then follows that any scientific realist doesn't have to directly see something to believe it to be there, and so therefore there is no contradiction in being both a scientific realist and an indirect realist.
There is, however, a contradiction in being both a scientific realist and a direct realist, given that scientific realism (and our current understanding of how perception works) entails indirect realism. Colours and smells are not mind-independent properties of objects but are products of brain activity that result from (usually) external stimulation. A direct realist has to reject modern science to maintain his position. And if I have to choose between accepting direct realism and accepting modern science, then I will accept modern science, and the indirect realism that follows.
Indirect realism is where I end, not where I start. I start from scientific realism, and I believe it for likely the same reasons as many other scientific realists. And those reasons have nothing to do with being able to directly perceive many of the things that science says are there. I believe in things despite not being able to directly perceive them. I'm sure many direct realists are the same.
It could be that I am indirectly seeing a tree, because there is a mirror outside my window blocking a direct perception of the tree, but I can see the object in the reflection of the mirror.
Or alternatively one can say that I directly see a person's love for me, given the way I am treated by said person. But what we strictly speaking see, are patterns of behavior which we interpret as love.
But if we have mediation in mind, we get to the gist of the issue: either we experience things, as images "in a theatre", as Hume says, or we filter said images based in part on "innate ideas", to borrow Leibniz' phrase, or alternatively, one can use a Kantian formulation.
I don't see a coherent alternative.
Its easy to maintain direct realism with your scenario because the relationship between person and the apple is direct. X perceives Y. Working with this scenario, we can assume the difference in the experience lies either in X or Y or both. We know that the color-blind person sees it differently because his biology is different. We neednt assume that something about the apple is different. Simple. Direct realism is maintained.
Unfortunately, the indirect realist likes to insert other variables. X no longer perceives Y. He perceives something else, in this case colors or experiences. Its not just that X is different, but that these other variables are different as well. So they are inserted into the relationship as if they had their own existence apart from X and Y. Its all too confusing and the indirect realist is guilty of confusing things. He alters the relationship where it ought not to be altered and it leads him to strange conclusions, like sense-data and representationalism. Indirect realism has failed, and adding qualifiers such as mind-independent does little to disguise this failure.
I don't think we need to saddle the average person with having to phrase everything the way a cognitive scientist or physicist would. I don't need for you to tell me that a reflex arc actually kicked the chair. It's ok if you tell me you did it.
Once we start doing a little more analysis on how stuff actually happens, we should be past the point of causing confusion to anyone about who did what. Right?
So there's quite a bit more to cognitive function than just a piece of glass. We don't know all the details, but we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier.
I like mediated/unmediated over direct/indirect, but should they relate to perception?
Youd know better than I, but it seems to me like the same false dichotomy dressed in finer robes.
Yes, intentionality is closely associated with phenomenology.
Taken from the article What Is Intentionality, and Why Is It Important? by Robert Sokolowski:
"The term most closely associated with phenomenology is intentionality. The core doctrine in phenomenology is the teaching that every act of consciousness we perform, every experience that we have, is intentional: it is essentially consciousness of or an experience of something or other. All our awareness is directed toward objects. If I see, I see some visual object, such as a tree or a lake; if I imagine, my imagining presents an imaginary object, such as a car that I visualize coming down a road; if I am involved in remembering, I remember a past object; if I am engaged in judging, I intend a state of affairs or a fact. Every act of consciousness, every experience, is correlated with an object. Every intending has its intended object."
Intentionality is common to both Indirect and Direct Realists.
As an Indirect Realist, when I see a tree, there are two aspects. First, intellectually, I know that my mind is directed onto a representation of a tree. Second, viscerally, I know that my mind is directed onto a tree, not a representation of a tree.
After all, even as an Indirect Realist, if I was standing in the middle of the road and saw a truck approaching me, I wouldn't think "just a representation of a truck" and remain where I was.
If they see it differently then the character of their experience is different. If the character of their experience is different then the character of their experience isnt the mind-independent nature of the external world. If the character of their experience isnt the mind-independent nature of the external world then it isnt direct realism. Youre just describing indirect realism but calling it direct realism.
I refer you to this. Youre arguing for semantic direct realism which is consistent with phenomenological indirect realism.
True, but we aren't dealing with the "average person" here, who usually does not care too much about the science stuff, much less philosophy.
It's not mere "philosophy of language" or nitpicking - it's trying to get a better understanding of what people have in mind when they speak about "direct" or "indirect", particularly in this context.
Sure, it's good to see a brain on display, can help remind us that it's intimately related to all these things we encounter in the world. The issue now is, what does that organ do? Is it only meat and empty, or does it play a role in our conceptions and perceptions of things?
It it's empty - only meat - then the blood and bone holding it in, is a minor inconvenience: by being attached to sense organs it gets "unmediated" (pure) sense data.
But if there something more than meat, and sense organs, then there's a lot more to say, in my opinion.
Hah. Don't play coy Mww - if the topic is brought under your territory, I am a mere spectator, despite recent efforts to improve. :cool:
I think it depends on how one takes the initial question. Simple-mindedly speaking, if someone interested in this topic asks "Do I directly see this tree?", they have in mind this object they see and (usually) point to.
And then I ask, what else are you seeing?
Now, if the question is asked, "How do I see this tree?", it may elicit a chuckle to say "with your eyes", but taken more seriously, we'd have to include an extremely complicated mental apparatus without which we couldn't even ask anything.
So the substance, as I see it, is either there is something going in my brain/mind that plays a massive role in my experience of the object, or there is minimal activity going on inside.
This way we avoid dealing with the semantics of "direct" or "indirect", which can cause a lot of confusion.
Oh. I see what you're saying.
Just to be precise, no, their biology is different. This conforms to the relationship and the facts of biology. The character of their experience is not different because no such property exists, biologically or otherwise.
Yes it does. Its what differs between the experience of the colour blind man and the typical man. Its the seeing differently. Were not just behavioural machines that respond to stimulus. Theres an inner quality to experience, a what it is like to be aspect that distinguishes us from p-zombies.
:up:
But it does 'touch' the world. That's what retinas and eardrums are for. Photons from distance stars are even part of it.
Also, how and why did it ever occur to folks to link brains and (postulated) qualia ? In my view, the whole debate is tainted with something like a soul superstition already successfully destroyed, for those with ears to hear, by Ryle and Wittgenstein, to name just two of many.
Again, we know what is different about the color-blind man and the man who is not. These causes are biological. The inner quality is the biology. What it is like to be color-blind is what it is like to have the biology conducive to color blindness. We dont need to insert sense-data, experience, qualia, and other figments between perceiver and perceived to account for these differences.
We need to insert sense-data/experience/qualia to account for the first-person experience that should be evident to all of us. Were not p-zombies. Biology doesnt account for the hard problem of consciousness.
Or at least, Im not a p-zombie. I assume others arent. Although maybe I should take your responses as evidence that you are.
This seems problematic to say. Let take a simple scientific definition of color. Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color. Notice in this definition there is no appeal to mind or brain. Light is not being produces by the brain/mind, but is independently being produce outside the brain/mind.
What occurs inside the brain, when stimulated by a particular color of light can as well be studied. But scientists dont study the brain by opening it up to find colored objects dancing around.
As for what occurs in the mind when stimulated by a particular color of light, not sure where to begin to make sense of this claim, like how does the physical interact with non-physical. I think we are probably in the realm of grammatical fictions where the word color mistakenly is thought to name a object within the mind.
It would be fallacious to equate colour in this sense with colour experience, and isnt what is meant by colour realism.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#PrimSimpObjeViewColo
It does, Im afraid, much to the chagrin subjectivists. Their hard problems and other efforts are little more than an attempt to muddy the waters, perhaps in an attempt to rescue the spirit from the ever-encroaching domain of the physical.
The idea that biological activity is accompanied by experienceby anythingis question begging. The only problem is that we havent come up with an ethical means to prove to the subjectivist that he is wrong, for any such procedure would invariably be dangerously invasive. So rather than breaking our oath not to harm another its better to just dismiss the hard problem as hot air.
Even addressing this specifically, if colour is the portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface then it is light that is coloured, not apples.
HA!!! Ill see your massive, and raise you a complete!!
Pretty silly of ol Mother to endow us with a most seriously complex intellectual machinery, then limit its function to putting one foot linearly in front of the other, or not stabbing ourselves in the face when eating with a fork.
Absolutely, with the only caveat that we incorporate sub and unconsciousness processes in addition to those that are accessible in experience, through introspection.
Having taken care of that, or at least taking it into consideration, we are left with the original phrases: direct and indirect.
We have direct, but mediated access to objects through representations. What then are we to do with "indirect"? It's not at all clear to me how this word could be used intelligibly, outside of ordinary usage.
Even if someone called themselves an indirect realist, I don't know what that means, and can only suppose they mean mediation. But if lack mediation, we have nothing.
When someone asks, while pointing at a tree, if they are seeing "directly", one takes it that they are asking about the phenomenon in question and not as a "thing in itself", that's a different question.
For that question to arise, a different question should be asked, for instance: "Do we see the inner nature of objects?" or "Is my experience of this object everything there could possibly be about the object?"
I'm thinking that a dog or a bee have a different perception of the object under consideration, surely.
But that's not an issue of directness or lack of directness. It's an issue of our cognitive configuration.
1. brains in bodies are observed :up: (born so, too)
2. if brain in vat, then brain in vat is still imagined
3. if brain in skull, then brain in vat is imaginary
4. thus, brain in vat is imagined or imaginary
5. yet, 1
;)
It's that what we see causes us to realize that what we're seeing is a construction.
There's no escape hatch on that situation, try as we might to find one.
Hence my favored position, calling a false dichotomy, insofar as it concerns realism. Direct mediated access (to real things, as sensation), yet indirect knowledge (of real things, as experience).
Quoting Manuel
Nor I.
And I actually have you to thank for that, it was a discussion with you that made me got my thinking and vocabulary correct on the topic. :up:
Guess you get to blame me if I got it all wrong, then, huh?
Thats fine; Id be blaming me too.
Quoting Michael
Indeed.
But for indirect realism, what everyone sees is some private mental image, and hence what you see and what the other person sees are quite different.
If indirect realism were taken at face value, two people cannot both look at the same thing.
And here's the reason this topic is recalcitrant. Both sides describe the situation in almost the same terms, but mean slightly different things in each case, talking past each other using much the same language.
The indirect view is that what one sees is a construction of what is "out there" built by one's nervous system.
While the direct view is that the process of seeing is the construction of a model of what is out there.
The indirect realist says what one sees is the model of the tree. See for a clear example. The "self" doing the seeing is distinct from the model of the tree. The direct realist criticises this as the "homunculus" view.
The direct realist says that seeing is constructing a model of the tree. The process of construction is part of the "self" doing the seeing.
When we talk about trees and cups and such, we are not talking about our mental image of trees and cups and such. If we were, you and I could never talk about the same things.
We are not little homunculi driving robots and looking at screens. We are members of a community who live embedded in a shared world within and with which we collectively interact.
The Kantian thing-in-itself misdescribes what is going on, misleading us as to our place in the world.
The so-called directness of perception is useful only to contrast with the indirectness of perception, as it is put forward by indirect realists. It has no other use and is rather redundant otherwise. We usually dont need to mention that, yes, we can perceive other things.
Indirect realism implies that we cannot see past our ourselves. It implies we hinder and hamstring ourselves from accessing the rest of the world, when it is the other way about. The rest of the world is wholly accessible to us. Its true; we cannot apprehend all of something all at once, as if we ought to know about the backside of something by looking at it from the front, but with a little time and effort we can come to understand things a little better by perceiving them instead of doubting ourselves.
I take it that this quote from Hume could be labeled "indirect realism":
"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass."
Despite this quote, Hume never denied we directly see tables, river and trees, even if "we never advance a step beyond ourselves." To have a perspective is to see things from a certain way, anchored to the relevant creature.
The only alternative I could imagine, would be to somehow step outside our bodies and look at objects from no particular perspective and then compare that, to what we see when we are inside our bodies.
As you say, when we see an object, we imagine it has a backside, we can go around and "verify" this.
An important problem remains: what do you say about animals whose sense perception is more acute than ours in certain cases? Such as Eagles in relation to vision, or dogs in relation to smell. Do they experience the world more directly than us?
Also explain how you think the science of color perception is compatible with "direct naive realism" as traditionally defined.
The physiology of perception of of perceptual disorders from brain injury stroke of even drug induced alterations pretty much supports the traditional concept of "indirect realism" as the term is defined in philosophy although many users here seem to have their own definitions which impairs meaningful discussion.
Well said.
Our periphery is quite limited, so one can at least understand the indirect realists skepticism. The body is no doubt a mystery for any organism that cannot see its own ears, let alone what occurs beneath the epidermis. Introspection and wondering could never penetrate its own depths. But I think weve taken enough looks inside to realize there are no spirits pulling on strings in there.
As for animals, their bodies are different. What else is there to say? We can say a dog has different perceptions, experiences, phenomena, fine, but thats multiplying zeroes. Their bodies are the only thing that differs from us. Their relationship to everything else can be described in the exact same manner as ours: direct, without any specious intervening factors.
I make much the same point every time this discussion happens. My earlier comments here and here get to the heart of the issue.
Arguing over whether we see external objects or see some mental image of external objects doesn't address the epistemological problem of perception. The concern is the relationship between the phenomenology of experience and the mind-independent properties of external objects.
According to (phenomenological) direct realism, I see the apple to be red because colour primitivism is the case, and when I see the apple its mind-independent properties are actually present in my experience.
According to indirect realism, I see the apple to be red because its mind-independent properties are such that it reflects light with a wavelength of ~700 nm, and light at that wavelength, when stimulating my eyes and central nervous system, triggers the experience of the colour red -- and this redness is a property of my experience, not a property of the apple (much like pain is a property of my experience, not a property of the fist that hits me). Redness is a "mental representation" of a surface that reflects light at a particular wavelength.
In fact I think this is a prime example of the problem. The indirect realist will agree with this, and say that this model is a representation of the tree, and that it is this model that (directly) informs our understanding. You appear to be describing indirect realism, but calling it direct realism.
Arguing over the semantics of whether this should be called "seeing a tree" or "seeing a model of a tree" is a red herring. It's like arguing over whether I'm talking to my parents (over the phone) or talking to my phone, or arguing over whether I feel the fire or feel the burning pain in my hand. They're just different ways of talking that make no real difference to the underlying philosophical consideration.
If a 'person' is taken as referring to a brain, and only to a brain, then a person is by definition a homunculus , hence a forteriori, a subject of indirect realism. Community interaction among brains cannot change this conclusion.
Irrealism tries to sidestep the dispute by claiming in a relativistic and solipsistic fashion, that direct-realism only applies in the first-person, i.e that only the first-person isn't a "brain person".
Where else are you going to turn to get principles for understanding the reasons for these flaws?
Direct realism: Reality includes sensitive beings, and sensible objects, amongst, and consisting of a load of insensible stuff like radio waves, molecules, and the core of the earth. Sensitive beings include dogs, rabbits, and blind, colour-blind, and shortsighted humans. Sensitive beings can sense sensible objects in various ways. A blind man can tell a golden delicious from a mackintosh red by the feel, the smell and the taste. I can tell the difference by the colour.
One does not see "the look of the apple", but the apple.
"The look of the apple" is an abstraction, a memory, an image one might recall with more or less detail according to artistic talent and training, peculiarities of vision, or whatever. One represents an apple in "the mind's eye", or on paper with a pencil, and associates it with the shape of the written word. This is easier said than done.
The apples posted to this thread are mere visual likenesses, which the sighted among us can recognise, (cognise again), because we are already, directly familiar with real apples. Just as we read what is said because we are already familiar with the language in written form. An infant does not have a visual image of an apple, but will happily eat stewed apple. A little later we will look together at My First Alphabet, at the picture of an apple, and pretend to eat it. Because a child of one already knows the difference between the likeness of an apple and an apple. It's a fine joke to pretend not to.
I'll take a rather simple definition from the problem of perception:
The direct realist view is the view that things are as they appear. Directness is their explanation of how this is the case. It is how they resolve the epistemological problem of perception. Things appear as they are because perception is direct.
The indirect realist view is the view that things might not be as they appear. Indirectness is their explanation of why this is the case. It is why there is an epistemological problem of perception. Things might not appear as they are because perception is indirect.
Semantic direct realism, as Howard Robinson calls it, seems to accept the indirect realist's view that things might not be as they appear, but wants to call this direct perception anyway, even though directness was used to explain how things appear as they are.
I really don't care if you want to describe perception as "seeing a tree" or "seeing the appearance of a tree". It makes no real difference. The relevant fact is that an object's appearance is not its mind-independent nature, and that it is an object's appearance rather than its mind-independent nature that is the direct object of rational thought, and so there is an epistemological problem of perception. Seeing something might not show us what its like when we dont see it. And I think modern science has proven that things aren't as they appear.
:up:
Can you tell me the reasons for the flaws?
Almost, in that my private perception of a tree may or may not be the same as anyone else's, but it is impossible to know, as it is a private mental image.
Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations may be used to give insights into Indirect Realism, including his strong case against the possibility of a private language and his arguing that nobody knows another person's private sensations.
The Indirect realist accepts Wittgenstein's conclusion that one's private perception of an object, such as a tree, is forever unknown to anyone else.
The Direct Realist doesn't accept Wittgenstein's conclusion. The Direct Realist argues that we perceive objects in the world as they really are, immediately and directly. Therefore, if two people are looking at the same object in the world, such as a tree, as both will be perceiving the same object in the world immediately and directly, their private mental images will be the same, meaning that each will know the others private sensations.
Therefore, whether one is an Indirect or Direct Realist depends in part of whether one accepts Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
Quoting Banno
Wittgenstein's para 293 in Philosophical Investigations about a beetle in a box provides a solution to the problem raised about Indirect Realism, ie, how is communication possible between people using a public language when nobody can know another person's private sensations.
For example, as an Indirect Realist, my private mental image of a tree may be different to everyone else's, yet I can use use the word "tree" in a social language game with others. Within the language game, the word "tree" isn't describing my mental image, as each particular mental image has dropped out of consideration within a language game as irrelevant.
Wittgenstein's beetle in the box explains the connection within Indirect Realism between private mental images and a public language.
Quoting Banno
As an Indirect Realist, I am not saying that I see a model of a tree, I am saying that I directly see a tree, though the tree I see is an indirect representation, image or model of something that exists in the actual world.
A key concept is intentionality, in that my mind is directed at the tree that I perceive, not in virtue of the tree representing another object, another tree, as this would lead into an infinite regression and the homunculus problem.
So, for you, the eyes are not involved in seeing. A blind man can see?
Surely things must appear to the scientists to be the way they now report them to be; otherwise why are they reporting them to be that way?
Things are not as they once appeared.
What about the tree that you climb? Is that a representation?
I see what you mean. I see the reason for your post. I see the relation between the eyes and what is seen. I see trees in my dreams. A fool cannot see beyond the end of their nose. I see trees in my hallucinations. I see myself on holiday. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. A blind man can see the truth. A blind man can see where they went wrong. A blind man can see the error of their ways.
Yes, a blind man can see.
I meant specifically that things aren't as they appear to ordinary human perception, e.g. that objects aren't coloured, in the colour primitivist sense that was believed by direct realists. Objects only appear coloured because of the way the human body responds to stimulation by electromagnetic radiation.
But can they see trees?
Quoting RussellA
Do you?
Leaves fall from trees in autumn. Do leaves fall from what you see in your dreams and hallucinations?
I can build furniture out of fallen trees. Can I build furniture out of what you see in your dreams and hallucinations?
And what could "I thought I saw a tree, but I was wrong" possibly mean in your world?
How could one ever be mistaken about what one sees?
You're assuming that things can only rightly be one way. Is that an assumption you can justify? Can an apple not be both red and 'reflective of 400nm wavelengths'?
I'm not saying anything about what they can or can't have. I'm saying something about what they do and don't have. And there's no indication that an apple has anything like a sui generis property of "redness", equivalent to a red appearance. The evidence is just that objects reflect light at certain wavelengths, and that when light with a wavelength of 700nm stimulates the eyes of the typical human then the object appears red to that person (and when it stimulates the eyes of the atypical human then the object appears orange, or green, or whatever to that person).
It's a mistake to then project this coloured appearance onto the external world. It's the naive view that modern science has refuted.
I know that I perceive something and I know that this something has the name "tree".
As I innately believe in the law of causation, in that every effect has a cause, I therefore believe that there is something that has caused me to perceive a "tree". I don't know what this something is, but I do believe it exists.
As language doesn't exist in the absence of sentient beings, the something in the world that we call a "tree" cannot be a "tree", as "trees" only exist within human language. "Tree" as a word in human language represents something else.
Therefore the "tree" that I climb as a word is a representation of something else but the something else that has caused me to perceive a "tree" isn't a representation.
That's what I'm enquiring about. Why is it a mistake? If an object can have the property 'reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm' why can't we call that property "red"?
You can call it anything you like. But it would be fallacious to conflate redness in this sense with redness as the appearance. We'll just be using the word "red" to mean two different, albeit causally connected, things.
It would indeed since a 'red appearance' is utter nonsense.
You don't think that apples appear to be red?
According to Do blind people dream in visual images?, yes.
Instead, scientists have performed brain scans of people blind since birth while they are sleeping. What scientists have found is that these people have the same type of vision-related electrical activity in the brain during sleep as people with normal eyesight. Furthermore, people blind since birth move their eyes while asleep in a way that is coordinated with the vision-related electrical activity in the brain, just like people with normal eyesight. Therefore, it is highly likely that people blind since birth do indeed experience visual sensations while sleeping. They just don't know how to describe the sensations or even conceptually connect in any way these sensations with what sighted people describe as vision.
:up:
I don't think there's such a thing as a 'red appearance'. Apples appearing red, just means that I think apples are red. My estimate is that they're red. I'll reach for the word "red" to describe them...etc. There's no separate thing 'the appearance of red' with which we might mistake the property of the apple.
So I can make furniture out of what blind people are seeing?
Not in the context of the standard narrative. I guess people will divide off according to what they think of the stories we tell: are they metaphors as Nietzsche suggested? Or would you agree with Sartre that you are the situation? Or perhaps a non-philosophical, folkways rendition is better?
I don't think any of these questions are directly related to how we perceive the world and ourselves. Maybe indirectly?
There's more to experience than just rational thought. Seeing and feeling and tasting aren't just cases of thinking.
But what does it mean to think that apples are red? You suggested before that to be red is to have a surface that reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm, so to think that apples are red is to think that apples have a surface that reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm? How does that make sense given that people saw, and thought, that apples were red long before they even had the concept of electromagnetic radiation?
Quoting Isaac
You think that they're red because they appear red. You "reaching" for the word "red" to describe apples isn't just something that happens in a vacuum. And presumably you're not a p-zombie that just mindlessly responds to stimulation by spouting out words.
You can build furniture out of the something in the world that has caused me to perceive a tree providing this had been a veridical experience, but not if a dream or an hallucination.
Quoting Isaac
One can never be mistaken about what one sees. If you see a tree, it is absolutely certain that you have seen a tree. If you see a unicorn running through Central Park, it is absolutely certain you have seen a unicorn running through Central Park.
However, one can be mistaken in one's belief whether it was a veridical experience, a dream, an illusion, a film or an hallucination.
If a person is a homunculus then they are a homunculus. If you think you are just and no more than your brain, all I can offer is pity.
To reiterate, in one version of the argument the indirect realist claims what we see is a model of the tree, while the direct realist says what we do in seeing the tree is to construct a set of neural paths that model the tree. The direct realist would not say that what we see is the model of the tree, but that what we see is the tree, and we see it in modelling it.
Quoting Michael
Yep.
The Robinson article looks interesting but is paywalled, never to be read.
This is a misreading of the private language argument. He is not arguing that no one knows antoehr's private sensations, so much as that if there are any private sensations then by that very fact they cannot be discussed.
And yet we do talk about the stuff around us.
Therefore it is not private.
The the private language argument does the opposite of what you suppose.
This is the slightly mad bit.
That 'something that has caused me to perceive a "tree'?
It's a tree.
That's what a tree is.
Try talking instead about the apple "appearing" smooth.
Good point. It's just that we wanted to know what it looks like when... you know.. nobody's looking at it. We'll have to let it be that we don't have any way to describe that.
Its just another way of talking. Its like saying that I feel pain rather than saying I feel a knife stabbing me. That sensation of pain is feeling the knife stabbing me. But pain is a property of the experience, a mental phenomena, not a property of the knife, and we do in fact feel pain. Theres no suggestion of a homunculus here. Why it would be any different for sight is lost on me.
Quoting Banno
Yes, Ive mentioned this before. Theres something peculiar about sight that I think is more susceptible to direct realist thinking than other senses might be. Does the fact that you would feel cold were you to be placed in the Arctic but that a polar bear doesnt show either that you can sense the cold thats there better than the bear, or that you mistakingly sense some cold that isnt there? Or is it just the case that your body is such that, in such temperatures, you feel cold? I think the latter. And I think that things like colour are no different in principle. Its just a different mode of experience caused by a different type of stimulus.
Not for pragmatic reasons, but because there is no reason to talk otherwise.
(I'm not reaching for pragmatism here, so much as for parsimony).
Yes. But we can stop and gape at the fact that the unobserved tree is unknowable. We'll all agree to never speak of it again after that.
Well, I wouldn't count that as a fact...
Or as anything, much.
Why not?
"The world" is nothing more than the idea of what our individual images and ideas of a world seem to have in common; it is a collective representation.
Why?
I think we can make true statements about the unobserved tree, based on our other observations.
So we look at the tree, and see it has three branches, and then turn our backs and decide to prune the middle branch. Even when our backs are turned, I'm quite happy to say that the tree has a middle branch.
This is what we do.
We do not turn our backs and then find ourselves unable to decide which branch to prune.
Of course, instead of pruning the tree one might decide to play at philosophy...
Sure, but that's not the same as being able to make true statements about the unobservable aspects of what gives rise to the appearance of the tree.
You are presupposing in what you say that we all already exist in some (the same) actual world. Where are we supposed to be alive and looking at these screens (our individual images) ? In the intersection of the images on those screens ? That makes no sense.
It's as if you imagine a framework of dreamers who each live in their own secret dimension and yet somehow communicate and negotiate an official shared world, as if we are writing a novel together remotely. But the concept of world, the one that matters, is most basically something like our shared situation. We can be wrong about living on a planet. But we can't be wrong about the possibility of being wrong about something.
The minimal rational assumption is a (shared ) languageworld. Else there is no way to argue and no something to be wrong or right about.
:up:
If this is true, it's not a discovery about seeing but only about the grammar of 'see.'
But I don't think it's even simply true, though I understand that philosophers want some word or another for the given about which one cannot be wrong.
This buys certainty at the cost of all significance ?
So, if you read carefully you would see that I am not arguing against a "shared languageworld".
Why not?
Quoting Michael
It means that I'll reach for the word "red" if asked to describe the colour.
Quoting Michael
Yes, that's right.
Quoting Michael
The meanings of words change. Before there was a scientific test for what we should call "red" it would have been more a community decision - to be 'red' was simply to be a member of that group of things decreed to be 'red', but nowadays, I suspect people will defer to the scientific measurement.
Quoting Michael
I didn't say it happened in a vacuum. there are all sorts of other cognitive activities resultant from seeing an apple, but none of them have anything to do with 'red'. 'Red' is a word, so it is resultant of activity in my language centres.
Quoting Michael
The concept of p-zombies makes no sense, so I can't answer this question. You might as well say "presumably you're not a robot with no Elan Vitale?". I don't consider it part of serious conversation to invoke made-up forces which are completely undetectable.
What could we call that thing...? If only there was a word for the thing in the world which I can make furniture out of, climb, get fruit from, paint the image of, sit under the shade of....
.... We really need a word for thing.
I suggest "tree(a)", what with the word "tree" already having been taken and all.
People can see red even if they don't have a language to describe colour. They can feel pain even if they don't have a language to describe pain. They can smell roses even if they don't have a language to describe smells.
In fact smells are a good example this. I can smell so many different things and yet I don't have words to describe each kind of smell. There's no thinking involved in this. I don't think, "it's smell X" or "it's smell Y". I just smell.
Quoting Isaac
What a young child means when they say that an apple is red is exactly what I mean when I say that an apple is red, but I know about electromagnetic radiation and the young child doesn't. It just isn't the case that when I say "(I see that) the apple is red" that I am saying anything about quantum mechanics, and it's certainly not the case that when I see that the apple is red (but say nothing) that I am thinking anything about quantum mechanics. I'm just seeing.
Yes, which shows the importance of Wittgenstein's discussion of the language game in Philosophical Investigations.
Yes, that's where much of this discussion gets lost; in irrelevant arguments about grammar.
We use the word "see" in (at least) two slightly different ways, with direct and indirect realists having a preference for one or the other, and it distracts from the more pertinent epistemological problem of perception (the relationship between phenomenology and the mind-independent nature of things).
We can talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices (that aren't there), or we can talk about the schizophrenic not "actually" hearing voices (because there aren't any). The idea that one or the other is in some sense the "correct" way of talking, or says something about the philosophy or science of perception, is mistaken. They're just different ways of talking that have nothing to do with the actual disagreement between direct and indirect realists.
Quoting Banno
Yes, "tree" is a good word. Within our language game we have the word "tree".
However, in the absence of any English speaker, the word "tree" would not exist, and "trees" would not exist in the world. In the absence of any English speakers, no one could discover in the world "trees". "Trees" only exist in the minds of speakers of the English language.
I perceive something that has been named "tree". As "trees" only exist in the mind, I am perceiving something in my mind that only exists in my mind, leading to a self-referential circularity.
This is the flaw in Searle's solution of the "intentionality of perception" to the epistemological problem of how we can gain knowledge of objects in the real world from private sense data, in that his solution leads to a similar self-referential circularity.
As an Indirect Realist I directly see a tree, I don't see a model of a tree. Searle wrote "The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain". Similarly, the experience of seeing a tree does not have a tree as an object because the experience of seeing a tree is identical with the tree.
I have an innate belief in the law of causation, in that for every effect there is a cause, as well as the belief that the cause of an effect cannot be known just from knowing the effect. Combining these, my perceiving a "tree" must have been caused by something, yet I cannot know just from my perception what caused it.
Yet I need a name for the cause of my perception of a tree. My solution is to give the cause the same name as the effect. Therefore, if I see the colour green, I name its cause green. If I hear a grating noise, I name its cause a grating noise. If I smell an acrid smell, I name its cause an acrid smell. If I feel something silky, I name its cause silky. If I taste something bitter, I name its cause bitter. If I perceive a tree, I name its cause a tree.
"Trees" only exist within the language game. "Trees" exist within the mind as not only the name for what is perceived by the mind but also as the name of the unknown cause of that perception, ie "a tree" is the cause of perceiving "a tree".
Use-mention error.
In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the object currently referred to by the word "tree" would exist.
Or, more simply, that thing over there is a tree, and that thing over there would continue to exist even if we stopped using the word "tree". It might no longer be called a tree, but it would still exist. And newly discovered animals don't come into existence only when we name them. They exist, and are what they are, even before we call them something.
There's a very peculiar obsession with language in this discussion. It's not clear to me what English grammar and vocabulary has to do with perception. Are people asserting a very extreme version of the SapirWhorf hypothesis?
Exactly, that is what an Indirect Realist would say. The Direct Realist would have said "In the absence of any English speaker, the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the tree would still exist in the world"
Quoting Michael
As I believe in the ontology of Neutral Monism, where reality consists of elementary particles and elementary forces in space-time, the meaning of the word tree is fundamental to my philosophical understanding.
There's no meaningful difference between these two phrases:
1. In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the object currently referred to by the word "tree" would exist.
2. In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the tree would exist.
The second, however, is a more natural way of talking, and so should be preferred.
You need to read up on the use-mention distinction.
Quoting RussellA
The meaning of the word "tree" has nothing to do with perception. Seeing and hearing and feeling has nothing to do with language. Blind people aren't blind because they lack the right vocabulary; they're blind because their eyes don't work.
I don't know the name of this animal. I can still see it. It still exists. Whether or not I see it directly or indirectly is the topic of this discussion, and the answer to that depends on the nature of experience and its relation to external world objects, and that has nothing to do with how we talk. We can consider ourselves to be illiterate mutes just for the sake of argument. Presumably we'd still see things (and if we're considering sight specifically, throw in the assumption that we're deaf, too).
My proposal is that Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations does not support Direct Realism.
Direct Realism argues that we perceive objects in the world as they really are, immediately and directly.
If Direct Realism is true, one person's private experience of something in the world, such as a tree, will be the same as another person's private experience of the same tree, meaning that each person will know the other person's private experiences.
Wittgenstein argues that nobody can know another person's private experiences
In para 272 of PI, Wittgenstein writes that nobody can know another person's private experiences:
"The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possiblethough unverifiablethat one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another."
The Private language argument prevents talking about or discussing the pros and cons of Indirect and Direct Realism
There is an excellent and informative article in Wikipedia, the Private language argument that I always refer to.
The Wikipedia article Private language argument notes that the private language argument argues that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent, from which it follows that there is no language that can talk about or describe inner and private experiences.
[i]1) The private language argument argues that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent,
2) If the idea of a private language is inconsistent, then a logical conclusion would be that all language serves a social function.
3) For example, if one cannot have a private language, it might not make any sense to talk of private experiences or of private mental states.
4) In order to count as a private language in Wittgenstein's sense, it must be in principle incapable of translation into an ordinary language if for example it were to describe those inner experiences supposed to be inaccessible to others[/i]
Direct Realism is the position that our inner experience of an object in the world is direct and immediate. Indirect Realism is the position that we cannot know whether or not our inner experience of an object in the world is direct and immediate.
As Wittgenstein's private language argument argues that no language can talk about or describe inner and private experiences, it follows that the pros and cons of Indirect and Direct Realism is not something that can be talked about or described.
Summary
On the one hand, Wittgenstein's private language argument prevents discussion of Indirect and Direct Realism, but on the other hand, Wittgenstein writes that nobody can know another person's private experiences. That nobody can know another person's private experiences is at odds with the consequences of Direct Realism.
You claim that we "represent" an X that is otherwise completely unknowable. But somehow you believe there is a we in the first place, that we all represent this weird X. This, sir, is itself a claim about the world. Or is it just a claim about your private representation of the X ? Is our representation relationship to the X not part of the real world ? Not what is the case ?
This kind of Kantianism is arrogant in a cloak of humility. I don't mean this as a comment about you but about the strangeness of the claim. We can't know anything about reality, yet we are damned sure about the basic metaphysical structure of any possible human being. "I know nothing about true reality, but I know that any possible human being is locked in a representational relationship to some hidden kernel." Because somehow you are outside of the situation, seeing each of us in a box ? And I suppose you can't refute solipsism, right ? Because you are trapped behind a wall of intuitions and concepts? But isn't your trapped self one of those intuitions and concepts ?
I agree. I will concede that arguing for one usage or another might be worthwhile in certain contexts. But I think it's very much case that one should have a grip on whether making grammar explicit is being mistaken for an empirical discovery.
Your account leaves out how we have contact with one another in the first place. Do we have Kantian bodies in the thing-in-itself ? If so, we shouldn't be able to know that. If not, how do we 'meet' to create the intersection of our private representations of the one X that we seem to call the world in your account ?
If memory serves, Kant believe in a noumena self and hid our freedom there, but I haven't studied such madness closely.
It's a claim about the ordinary everyday world of experience. I'm not claiming that we represent any particular X, or anything weird; we don't know such things. I'm saying that the empirical world is a collective representation constructed upon inter-subjective communication about the commonalities of individual human experiences, which consist in sensations, images and impressions, and which seem to reveal an ordered, differentiated world of more or less invariant phenomena.
We don't know what gives rise to this phenomenal world based on human experience and judgement: we cannot get outside our experience of it to see what whatever is causing it is in itself. That seems to me to simply be the primary fact about the human situation. Why else would there be such a long history of argumentation about metaphysics and ontology?
Of course we can just be naive realists and take the world to be just as it appears, and that is arguably the default. This is fair enough, since the in itself reality is unknowable, but consciously taking that stance is also showing a kind of willful blindness to our actual fundamental ignorance.
Quoting green flag
We know how we make contact in the phenomenal world; it's no mystery because it is all going on within our basic human communication of experience and understanding. That is to say that we of course know how things seem to us, but intellectual honesty dictates that we should not extend that seeming beyond its limited ambit.
Well, I mean, it's not that we "can just be naive realists" - it's that we are naive realists the vast majority of the time, despite how incoherent it may be to us.
We don't have a choice.
Maybe if someone is mystical or something, maybe they can avoid being naive realists most of the time, we can't.
The funny thing is that really simple arguments begin to show how weak such belief actually is.
I don't think you are seeing the issue.
Do you think we are all trapped in individual control rooms ? Locked forever in or behind sensations and concepts ?
Where do other people exist for you ? Only on your screen ? Is the idea that other people are trapped behind thier screens something you see on your screen ? Or the truth about screens that transcends your screen ?
Can we tell me how the phones are wired ? How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ?
Or we can pretend that philosophy didn't die in 1777. 'Naive realism' is like the word a particular cult has for outsiders. 'If you doubt the genius of Kant, you are a silly monkey' ?
Yes we are naive realists in a sense because we naturally and pre-reflectively just accept the phenomenal world as a given. We are truly naive realists if we believe that the way we experience and understand the world to be is exactly the way it really is independently of us.
And I think you're right: really simple arguments do show how weak such belief actually is.
Quoting green flag
You seem really confused; I haven't claimed any of the things you are saying here. And the confusion seems all the more deep since you also seem to claim that language cannot refer to things in the phenomenal world; that meaning is endlessly deferred and hence indeterminate, a la Derrida, and these are claims which seem to be at odds with your naive realism.
I don't claim 'naive realism.' I reject that baggage as more harm than good. The point is to get out of the metaphor that structures the pseudoproblem.
I also don't claim that language can't refer. I just admit that it's a difficult problem. I do think that yes indeed there's something like a limit on the determinateness of meaning ('semantic finitude'). I think we'll have reason to work at or as our tower of babble forever, but not without progress. Indeed, my criticism of your 'Kantianism' is mostly a paraphrase of 20th century philosophers.
As I see it, you yourself offered a theory of our shared situation in the world. I pointed out difficulties in it as I perceived them and presented a challenge.
Quoting green flag
Thank you, although I disagree. I wrote a large part of the article, most of which still stands, back in 2006. But it now has multiple issues and really needs a re-write; especially if it leads to the sort of mistaken understanding you express here.
That no one can know another's private language is not the argument, but just the setting out of what a private language consists in, for the purposes of presenting the argument. A private language is a language understandable by only oneself.
The private language argument is that such a thing cannot be understood in a coherent fashion. That there can be no private languages. That such a thing could not count as a language.
Wittgenstein does not argue that "nobody can know another person's private experiences" so much as to point out how talk of private experiences is problematic. If you read beyond §272 you will see an argument that such colour inversion cannot be made to work. So
Take a look at the diagram in the OP. In so far as the indirect realist sees, and is the only person to see, the brown blob, it is private to them. If this is so, then the indirect realist sees and talks about only the brown blob, and not the shared world. That is, the indirect realist is using a private language, one that refers only to the brown blob that they construct.
What the private language argument shows is that if this were so, the indirect realist would not be able to talk about the world at all.
Summarising, what the private language argument shows is that one cannot construct a private language that is about one's private sensations. If indirect realism holds that what we see is not the world but a private model of the world, then one could not construct a language about that private model.
Treating this as a reductio, we do have language about the world, and therefore we talk about the world, and not about our private world-models. At least that form of indirect realism is wrong.
This is the argument I paraphrased as Quoting Banno
You say that you don't deny that language can refer; if it can then why would it be a "difficult problem"?
Are you saying that language is inherently somewhat fuzzy? If so I agree with you, but it's all we have to attempt to communicate, and it seems determinate enough. Is there some arcane method we might discover that can we employ to make it more determinate? If not, then why bother and why not instead just focus on our actual communication and try to make it as clear as possible,
So, it seems you believe in philosophical progress; I don't; I tend to think philosophy by and large has gone backwards roughly since Kant.
What "theory of our shared situation" do you think I've offered? And what are the difficulties you've point out and the challenge you've presented? It's not clear to me. Surely you don't mean this:
Quoting green flag
I haven't said anything about control rooms. I hear or read your words, and I believe I understand what you are saying, a situation which itself would be understandable if we experience the phenomenal world in similar enough fashion, which it seems obvious to me that we do.
I do not understand why some do not see or feel the emptiness of this description. The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to Reality by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a view from no where or if we only can get outside ourselves. This move seems so innocent to use words that we are so familiar with yet are used in such unfamiliar ways.
But the indirect realist will say, Wink, wink you get what we are saying.
Yep, pure nonsense!
But how did you get outside your mind to see others' situations ? How can you make all these claims about what we can and can't know ? You won't even say where we are. Where are our bodies ?
I will of course politely drop it if you think further discussion is useless.
:up:
This thoughtvirus had an innocent birth. The world is complex and it's easy for an individual to say something stupid and wrong. So we learn to be more careful about the claims we make. We hold them more tentatively. This is smart. We self-consciously let our hypotheses die so that we may live.
But then a wacky blend of primitive psychology caught on which turned life into a videogame out of which we could never climb poor souls, down from which however our noses were ever pointy at those who childishly dreamed that they were not dreaming.
Good questions ! If sincere, we have dialogue.
Yes, inherently fuzzy. But progress is possible. Enough ? Then close up the bar and let's go home. Because the point of philosophy is (I claim) more clarity, more light, more music.
No arcane method, just philosophy (and dialogue in general and science and ...)
I am trying to make my actual communication as clear as possible in the brief time given to/as me.
Insane in the membrane ! But it's a free country till they sick the A.I. on our facecrime.
Quoting Richard B
No, it's not nonsense. There is something else that needs to be added to the explanation. I've said this before already, and no one seems to care to include it as a corollary to whatever it is we claim about reality so that we don't run into that kind of issue. And that something else is the hypotheses we keep making about the world that stand the test of time and save us from perishing. If the world population now in the 8 billion does not work as evidence for you, then I don't know what would.
So, to support this explanation, please read John Locke and his argument for critical realism.
We can certainly invite each other to that reality, and not sound lame.
Edit: we don't have to use JTB in our explanation of reality outside our mind.
This is just an assertion. People respond to colour. That's not the same as them seeing 'red' unless you concede that 'red' is indeed a wavelength of light and so a person without language would still see red. You want to have your cake and eat it. If 'red' ids a private sensation, then you can't use third party observation to judge other people must be seeing it.
Quoting Michael
Again, you respond to the olfactory sensations, that doesn't mean you smell this smell or that smell (like rigid components but without a name yet). You just respond. You might even post hoc think one smell was like another you smelt yesterday (but still with no name) but there's no way of knowing if that's even correct.
Quoting Michael
Again, this is just assertion. It's almost certainly untrue. The full 'meaning' of red for you is very unlikely to be the same as the child's partly because of your increased knowledge. You have a lot more connection to those sensory inputs than a child does.
Quoting Michael
This one I can literally disprove in an instant (well you'd have to get into an fMRI). Under no circumstances are you 'just seeing'. It's not been recorded, ever. The closest we've ever got is showing blank swatches of colour (no objects, no context) and even then dozens of other areas are consistently associated with different colours (including, of course, language centres).
Who told you what the name of the effect was?
Learning that the tongue contains gustatory cells that respond to the chemicals in food, and that sugar tastes sweet because of its hydrogen bonds, doesn't change the taste of sugar. And learning the name of this animal doesn't change how it looks. And in fact with this animal, being able to see it doesn't involve "reaching" for whatever word names it (given that I can see it but don't know its name), and so too seeing the colour red doesn't involve "reaching" for the word "red".
You really are making such bizarre claims.
Well, for a start both those claims are demonstrably false. learning new things about an object changes the priors our lower hierarchy cortices use to process sensory inputs which changes the resultant responses, including post hoc construction of the 'experience'. This has been demonstrated over an over again in the literature.
But notwithstanding that, the claim isn't that you'll see it differently, the claim is about seeing 'red'. 'Red' is a cultural division of a continuous colour spectrum. No one can see 'red' who doesn't know that category. they just see. Light stimulates the retina and the brain responds. That response can be of almost any type depending on priors (and to a small extent 'hard-wiring'). None of that response answers to 'seeing red'. there is literally nothing in the brain (and people have looked really hard) that corresponds to 'seeing red'.
All we have neurologically is photons hitting retinas and behavioural responses in a constant cycle. they differ between people and there's no grounds at all for identifying any of those responses as being 'seeing red'.
In a sense, no one needs to tell me the name of the image that I perceive. I would assume that just from five pictures you could hazard at a guess at the meaning of "ngoe". I discover the name from a constant conjunction of events.
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway
What is it you think that experiment is demonstrating which contradicts what I've said?
That seeing the colour red isn't just "reaching" for the word "red", and that colour is "in the head", not a property of external world objects (whether light or the apple).
That "there is literally [something] in the brain ... that corresponds to 'seeing red'".
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist directly perceive a tree in their minds. For both the Indirect and Direct Realist, the tree they perceive exists in the world. Note that Wittgenstein in Tractatus didn't specify where this world existed.
Example of "the tree is green" is true IFF the tree is green
"The tree is green" being in quotation marks is within language. The tree is green not being in quotation marks is in the world.
For the Indirect Realist, the world in which the tree exists is in their mind. For the Direct Realist, the world in which the tree exists is in a mind-independent world.
Quoting Michael
If that were true, you would know the meaning of the word "mlima" even if you had never perceived one.
You could argue that even if you have never perceived a "mlima", it could be described to you, such that a "mlima" consists of "mwamba" and "theluji". But this doesn't solve the problem, in that you you cannot know the meaning of either "mwamba" or "theluji" until having perceived them. Sooner or later, meaning depends on perception. In Bertrand Russell's terms, knowledge by acquaintance.
And that has nothing to do with the use of the word "tree". An illiterate deaf mute with no language can see a tree "in their mind". They just won't call it "tree".
Quoting RussellA
No, it would mean that I could see something without having a word for it, which is true. I've seen many animals that I don't have a name for. I've smelt many different smells that I don't have different words for.
Quoting RussellA
But perception doesn't depend on meaning. It might be that we can't have language without perception, but we can have perception without language.
I agree, perception doesn't depend on meaning. There is an asymmetry between meaning and perception.
In what way do you think the experiment supports that conclusion?
The very first two sentences of the summary:
The very first sentence of the abstract:
Further into the paper, under the heading "Representations of Subjective Color Experience":
The two claims of your I dispute are...
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
In what way does the experiment support those claims?
Seeing red isn't "reaching" for the word "red".
Seeing red corresponds to particular brain activity.
Good first attempt. We are on the path to successful communication, definitely an iterative process. It's a bit like the Twenty Questions parlour game using deductive reasoning and creative thinking.
I will have to come up with five more pictures that excludes at least a third of the picture of the "ngoe" being green and excludes "ngoe" being an odd number.
As Wittgenstein said in para 32 of PI:
"Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to guess the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong."
The experiment tested the differential stimulation of the V4 and V01 regions. It found their activity was correlated with switches in sensory feedback suppression (classic switch rivalry), not changes in retinal chromatic stimulus.
It doesn't even mention seeing 'red'.
The section you quote is eliminating the possibility of yhr differentiation taking place in higher cortices (ie of V4 and V01 being faithful to retinal chromatic stimuli, but distinctions invoked later.
What the experiment shows is that V4 and V01 regions have differential responses unrelated to chromatic stimuli, but related to post V1 processing, further in the ventral stream.
It doesn't show that those differentiations are hard wired, or disconnected from cultural, environmental and linguistic influence. It doesn't even go into the construction of the priors which cause the differentiation, it simply locates them.
It mentions "colour percepts" and "colour perception" and "colour experience" and "colour we see".
Trying to argue that the paper doesn't support my position against yours because it doesn't mention the specific word "red" is a really poor attempt at gaslighting.
Again, the paper says "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus" and "color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing". This explicitly favours my claims.
It 'mentioning' those things is not sufficient to carry your argument. You need to understand what the paper is showing, its a technical subject. You can't just scan through it, find a few choice phrases and claim it proves your point.
It proves the location, within the ventral stream, of differential stimulation in neural clusters correlated with post V1 (non-retinal) signals.
It doesn't prove we 'experience red', or that 'red' is correlated with some neural state.
The experimenters seem to think so, given that they explicitly say "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus" and "color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing" and "the present study ... examine[d] how subjective color experience is represented at each stage of the human ventral visual pathway".
Again, none of those comments say that 'red' is in the brain. They're talking about colour (in this case, the neural responses associated with subjective states). 'Red' is a specific category, it is not synonymous with the mere activity of differentiation of colour.
What the experimenters are saying is that differentiation in colour is constructed from neural processes, not a faithful rendering of chromatic variation at the retina.
They are not saying that this neural construction is divided such as to represent 'red', or any other specific colour.
They are not saying that this neural construction is unaffected by culture, learning, and language, they don't even mention the factors associated with the construction of priors in these regions.
Red is a colour, the word "red" refers to that colour. You seem to be making a use-mention error.
I can see five different reds here. I don't "reach" for five different words to describe what I see. That I see five different reds has nothing to do with language and everything to do with the raw subjective quality of my experience.
I agree.
===============================================================================
Quoting Banno
This is misleading wording. To say that the Direct Realist is referring to the Earth is pre-judging that the Direct Realist is in fact correct in their belief that they are referring to the Earth.
Better wording would be: When the indirect realist says "I see the Earth" they believe they are directly seeing a representation of the Earth. When the direct realist says "I see the Earth", they believe they are directly seeing the Earth.
The question is, who is right.
===============================================================================
Quoting Banno
Indirect Realism doesn't need to construct a private language about one's private sensations. I can have the private sensation of a colour without the necessity of having to describe it in words, or of having a private language.
For example, the colour blue has been named "Blue" in a public performative act in the English language, and both Bill and Bob know this.
Note that the public word "blue" and the public colour blue are both objects in the world. For clarity, using the use-mention distinction, the blue in the object "blue" is a "mention", whilst the blue in the object with the colour blue is a "use".
It may be that when looking at the public colour blue, Bill has the private experience of yellow and Bob has the private experience of red, but both Bill and Bob have linked their private experience with the public word "blue", thereby allowing them to talk about objects in their shared world.
For example, if Bill asks Bob to pass over the "blue" object, even though Bill has the private experience of yellow and Bob has the private experience of red, Bob will successfully pass over the object Bill intends.
Indirect Realists can engage in a public social language without needing to be able to describe their private sensations.
Wittgenstein in para 293 in PI describes how everyone's private sensations may be different:
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" meansmust I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly? Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case!Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's 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.
Wittgenstein continues that the private sensation has no place in a public language, and even if we do use the word "pain" in a public language it doesn't explain the sensation, only indicate that there is some kind of sensation
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 in 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.
Wittgenstein continues that the private sensation drops out of consideration within a public social language.
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.
===============================================================================
Quoting Banno
Indirect Realism accepts they have private sensations, but as argued by Wittgenstein in his beetle in the box analogy, such private sensations drop out of consideration within a public social language as irrelevant.
Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy justifies Indirect Realism.
What does the word "grue" refer to? Wittgenstein would say some public thing, but I disagree. I'd say it refers to each person's subjective colour experience. It just so happens that due to subjective colour experiences being causally covariant with external stimulation (the same kind of light will trigger the same kind of experience), when Bill says "this is grue", Bob will agree, and they will both agree that things appear grue if the light they reflect has a wavelength of 500nm (because they're physicists and have measured the light reflected from that circle in between them).
Agreed.
Quoting RussellA
Don't you mean to say that Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy justifies talk of indirect realism in relation to the third-personal public concept of perception, but that this doesn't justify talk of indirect-realism in the case of one's own perception?
" 275. Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How blue
the sky is!"When you do it spontaneouslywithout philosophical
intentionsthe idea never crosses your mind that this impression of
colour belongs only to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming
that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the
words you point at the sky. I am saying: you have not the feeling of
pointing-into-yourself, which often accompanies 'naming the sensa-
tion' when one is thinking about 'private language'. Nor do you think
that really you ought not to point to the colour with your hand, but
with your attention. "
In relation to your diagram above of the two people perceiving the same circle, consider the irrealist understanding of the beetle on the box:
Given that each individual only has access to his or her private colour, and uses his or her mother-tongue in a bespoke private fashion when referring to the "shared" circle, then what is the purpose of colouring in the shared circle?
According to Nelson Goodman (and quite possibly Wittgenstein), there doesn't exist a transcendental underlying fact with regards to the real colour of the shared circle. Following this line of thought further, one could even deny the very existence of a shared circle, as part of a strategy for defending direct-realism for all perceivers, without condemning any ensuing disagreements as amounting to contradiction.
Quoting RussellA
Better yet, to be consistent with Wittgenstein's view of private language one should remove the colors inside the heads of the figures. There is no private language to articulate this. And maybe there is nothing there like the beetle. All we have is the public object in which we call blue. There is agreement in judgement and use, thus, a form of life.
I agree that not colouring the circle would be more consistent with Direct Realism.
Quoting Michael
Yes, in practice this must be the case, as Bill and Bob are the product of the same 3.5 billion years of evolution, they share 99.9 % of their genetic makeup and they share the same common ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve.
Knowing these facts, Bill and Bob will agree they most likely have had the same private experience and therefore can sensibly name it "grue".
But we have private experiences, so removing the colours inside the heads is to deny a fact.
Colouring the circle would be consistent with direct realism, specifically any direct realism that subscribes to colour primitivism. I believe most indirect realists would reject colour primitivism, and so not colouring the circle is consistent with indirect realism.
Quoting RussellA
That's not what I was getting at. Due to the fact that colour experiences are causally covariant with external stimulation, when Bill sees an object that reflects light with a wavelength of 500nm, he will always see it to be the colour shown inside his head in the picture, and when Bob sees an object that reflects light with a wavelength of 500nm, he will always see it to be the colour shown inside his head in the picture. And both Bill and Bob learn to use the word "grue" to describe the colour of objects which, they later learn, reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm.
So even though their private experiences of objects that reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm are different, they use the word "grue" in the same way. However, I would argue that the word "grue" refers to their private experiences, which are different, despite the shared public use. And I would argue that on the premise that, were I to be Bill and to learn of this picture, and that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm appear differently to Bob, I wouldn't say that grue appears differently to Bob, I would say that these objects don't appear grue to Bob; they appear a different colour.
Or to make it clearer, if we switch back to our ordinary colour terms, Bill wouldn't say that Bob sees blue differently, he'd say that Bob sees green instead of blue.
Wittgenstein p 293 PI
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's 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.
Wittgenstein writes that everyone says there is something in their head, even if no one else knows what it is, so I cannot leave Bills' head blank. It may be the colour yellow, but it may not.
More like a grammatical fiction.
So it is OK to remove it.
We will all do just fine with our communication and understanding.
It has nothing to do with grammar. Experience isn't language. I can be an illiterate, deafblind mute, and yet still feel pain.
Animals get around the world without language, and they certainly are experiencing the world.
But humans use language to understand and communicate what is going on in their experience. So, sometimes what we say makes senses and sometimes it does not.
This discussion is trying to get agreement on this distinction.
We may not succeed, but we can try.
And so trying to say that language entails that we don't have private experiences is saying something that doesn't make sense. Any theory of language that entails this is demonstrably false.
Another approach to color and the like is to think how color terms play a role in the larger context of conversation. How is a claimmaking human different from a thermostat ? To murmur about consciousness or awareness is not so illuminating. What else can be done ?
[quote=link]
The concepts for which inferential notions of content are least obviously appropriate are those associated with observable properties, such as colors. For the characteristic use of such concepts is precisely in making noninferential reports, such as "This ball is red." One of the most important lessons we can learn from Sellars' masterwork, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (as from the Sense Certainty section of Hegels Phenomenology) is the inferentialist one that even such noninferential reports must be inferentially articulated. Without that requirement, we can't tell the difference between noninferential reporters and automatic machinery such as thermostats and photocells, which also have reliable dispositions to respond differentially to stimuli. What is the important difference between a thermostat that turns the furnace on when the temperature drops to 60 degrees, or a parrot trained to say "That's red," in the presence of red things, on the one hand, and a genuine noninferential reporter of those circumstances, on the other? Each classifies particular stimuli as being of a general kind, the kind, namely, that elicits a repeatable response of a certain sort. In the same sense, of course, a chunk of iron classifies its environment as being of one of two kinds, depending on whether it responds by rusting or not. It is easy, but uninformative, to say that what distinguishes reporters from reliable responders is awareness. In this use, the term is tied to the notion of understanding--the thermostat and the parrot don't understand their responses, those responses mean nothing to them, though they can mean something to us. We can add that the distinction wanted is that between merely responsive classification and specifically conceptual classification. The reporter must, as the parrot and thermostat do not, have the concept of temperature or cold. It is classifying under such a concept, something the reporter understands or grasps the meaning of, that makes the relevant difference.
It is at this point that Sellars introduces his central thought: that for a response to have conceptual content is just for it to play a role in the inferential game of making claims and giving and asking for reasons. To grasp or understand such a concept is to have practical mastery over the inferences it is involved in--to know, in the practical sense of being able to distinguish (a kind of know-how), what follows from the applicability of a concept, and what it follows from. The parrot doesn't treat "That's red" as incompatible with "That's green", nor as following from "That's scarlet" and entailing "That's colored." Insofar as the repeatable response is not, for the parrot, caught up in practical proprieties of inference and justification, and so of the making of further judgements, it is not a conceptual or a cognitive matter at all.
[/quote]
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts%20Mark%201%20p.html
"Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism"
From the third-person, Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy shows that Bill and Bob can carry on a conversation even if they don't know what is in each other's mind. From the first-person, I could be Bill, and still be able to carry on a conversation with Bob.
Quoting sime
Other than a general estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality, I don't know Goodman's theory.
Quoting sime
I agree, henceforth I will remove the colour from the circle.
Quoting sime
I agree, as my belief is in neutral monism, where in a mind-independent world there are only elementary particles, elementary forces and space-time. In a mind-independent world there are only parts and no wholes such as circles, trees, colours, etc.
Why? What is this obsession with language? Is it impossible for me to see that the sky and the grass are different colours without some language which includes a vocabulary to name such colours? I don't think so. The fact that we need language to talk about the colours we see is irrelevant to this discussion.
Does anyone really want to argue that without a language with colour words such as "red", "green", and "blue", then we would just see a single (non-coloured?) circle, and not a coloured circle surrounded by a differently coloured ring surrounded by yet another differently coloured ring?
I think your point is reasonable, but you are ignoring that 'see' is part of a system of concepts. What does it mean to claim to see ? What do I commit myself to ?
Seeing is a type of experience. Babies can see, non-linguistic animals can see, the illiterate deaf mute raised by wolves in the jungle can see.
I agree, Indirect Realism is a workable theory.
I'll drop it if you want, but the 'obsession with language' looks to me like a natural development in the dialogue. The presupposition that Reality is 'under' or 'apart' from language might be the problem. Is language in the object or subject ? Or is itself split ? Is the subject/object split fundamental ? And so on. Lots of trouble.
Objects may only make sense enough even to think about only a 'space of reasons.' This is not to deny (or affirm) some 'ineffable' something (raw feels, Consciousness, Being) but only to point out how tangled things becomes when people try to theorize about precisely that which eludes language. It's easy to end up with mystic tautologies. I myself have written quasilogicomystical manifestoes about the thereness of redness and the thereness of the there. There is color. There is space. Existence exists.
Sure. But what does it mean to say so ? We who pretend to philosophy (who adopt a certain heroic role and hold ourselves to standards of rationality) are not thermostats switching on in response to stimuli. Claiming to that something sees something only makes sense in a context of time, in the context of what such a statement commits us to in the future (such as revision if we turn out to be wrong or the defense of the implications of our initial assertion.) Whiling seeing itself may be simple, the talk about seeing is extremely complex.
The philosopher is right to remove themselves in the sense of avoiding personal bias. But maybe the attempted (false, impossible) complete removal of the discursive context leads to trouble.
It is not that we don't have private experience but the language to articulate, like we do in the public sphere.
Yet we can quite coherently talk about the well-observed fact that to some people the infamous photo of the dress appears white and gold, and to others black and blue. We can quite coherently talk about the colour blind. We can quite coherently talk about a situation such as that shown in this picture.
There is really no difficulty (for me at least) in understanding and talking about other people having a different private experience to the same external stimulus.
Now imagine that that photo represents the reality of two people living on Twin Earth. They speak a language much like English except with a different colour vocabulary. The apple reflects light with a wavelength of 450nm. They have learnt to refer to the colour of such objects as "foo".
I wouldn't say that "foo" refers to some public thing (such as light with a wavelength of 450nm, or a surface that reflects such light). I would say that "foo" refers to the quality of their private experience. If I were the man in this picture and able to learn of this picture, and of the fact that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 450nm appear differently to the woman, I wouldn't think that the colour foo appears differently to the woman; I would think that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 450nm don't appear to be the colour foo to this woman; they appear to be a different colour. The colour she calls "foo" isn't the colour that I call "foo".
But, again, this discussion on the meaning of colour terms is irrelevant to the actual disagreement between the direct and indirect realist. What matters is the relationship between the man and the woman's private experiences (which are different) and the mind-independent nature of the apple they are looking at. Would it be an accurate representation of reality to colour the apple in that picture, and if so should it be red or green (or other)? A direct realist (at least of the colour primitivist kind) would argue that it should be coloured, and that if it is coloured green then the woman is seeing it correctly and the man incorrectly, or if it is coloured red then the man is seeing it correctly and the woman incorrectly. This is a position that I believe is refuted by our scientific understanding of the world and perception. Colour is "in the head", not in apples (or light).
It may be that seeing some colour is causally covariant with certain wavelengths of light, but so too is the feeling of being cold or hot causally covariant with certain temperatures, and pain causally covariant with having one's nerves cut with a knife. But that there there is some regularity between cause and effect isn't that they are the same thing, and even if you want to adopt the same vocabulary to refer to both the cause and the effect it would be a fallacy of equivocation to then deny the distinction, and I think that this fallacy is all-too-common in discussions on colour.
No. You can see five different colours there. That they are all shades of 'red' is something you were taught by the culture you grew up in. different cultures have different groupings and distinctions.
Quoting Michael
Of course you do. You'd say "a slightly darker shade of red than the one to it's left" or something like that. Those are words. But it needn't be words, it might be some other response. You might think of post boxes (if you're English), or buses. You might feel slightly on edge (red does that sometimes - again, cultural). There's no unifying thing that's 'the experience of red', it just is all these responses, nothing else on top of them.
At least, that's the way it is until we discover some 'red' neural cluster which can fire on it's own in response to red light.
Quoting Michael
Of course it does. 'Red' is what categorises them as all being in the same group and not five different colours entirely.
Quoting Michael
This is just completely unsupported conjecture. There's nothing to suggest we have an 'experience of red'.
We have sensory inputs, we have behavioural responses, we have post hoc self reports. That's it. Anything else is stuff you (or others) have just made up. A story.
We have consciousness. We're not just input-output machines. I have a first person experience when I'm sitting still, in silence, watching and hearing and feeling the things going on around me. I don't need to say, or think, "I'm in pain" to be in pain. I just feel it.
This is nonsense. You might as well say "you don't see five different colours; you see five different things. That they are all 'colours' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".
Or maybe "you don't see; you [something]. That it is 'seeing' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".
Or maybe "you don't get taught in a culture you grew up in; that it is 'being taught in the culture you grew up in' is ... [unintelligible rubbish]".
Again, you seem to fail to understand the use-mention distinction.
But this isn't the main point. The main point is that seeing colours has nothing to do with "reaching" for some word or other. Sight (and hearing and feeling and tasting) has nothing to do with language. And also that the colours you see when looking at a photo of a dress might not be the colours that I see when looking at that same photo of a dress.
Yes, that's right. Of course nothing would get said that way, but just like we can use language to talk about language, we can also use it to talk about its limits.
Quoting Michael
It's not failure to understand, it's a disagreement over its applicability. For something to exist it need not have a name, but it does need boundaries, it needs to be distinguished from it's surroundings. The edges need to be relevant. Our language (and our culture) define those edges. It's not the assignation of the token 'red', it's the definition of there being something there to warrant a token. That is (largely) a cultural decision, not a biological one.
Quoting Michael
I'm quite aware of your point, what I'm waiting for is any grounds for asserting it.
Quoting Michael
On what grounds?
That you feel like you have? Have you never been wrong about what you 'feel like' is going on?
Oh this is interesting I like this question.
This is a bit similar to "Can a faulty coding machine accurately locate its faulty coding using the programmes run on it?"
Can a delusional person accurately define the distinction between delusion and reality whilst maintaining the status of deluded or can one ever sanely declare their insanity?
Can someone who makes mistakes identify their mistakes while still being considered a mistake-maker?
In my opinion, the reality we all exist in is observed differently for every subject. And that itself is our inherent subjectivity - the impossibility to perceive the same external environment from the same space and time as any other observer without being them. I can't occupy the space you're in right now and still be two separate individuals.
Thus the space-time dimension dictates the fundamental limits to standardising the perceptions and measurements of different observers.
In that case, there is no objective reality that can be perceived unanimously by all observers and the fault in such is not with the observers mind or paradigm for reality but rather the relationship between observed and observer itself.
Reality can only be appreciated indirectly. The bias is being an object.
On the grounds that babies and non-human animals and illiterate deaf mutes raised by wolves in the jungle can see colours.
Quoting Isaac
First-person empirical evidence.
I refer you to this. Are you really trying to argue that without a language then we would just see a single non-coloured circle (or maybe nothing, because that there is a circle at all depends on it being coloured in contrast to the white background?), and not a coloured circle surrounded by a differently coloured ring surrounded by yet another differently coloured ring?
I think that that's an extraordinary claim, inconsistent with common sense, and that the burden is on you to prove it, not on me to disprove it.
Not having a language doesn't make the world appear black and white (or me outright blind).
Depends, are these people without the colour words in their language because they're colour blind? In which case they truly may only see one circle, or a circle with varying grades of grey.
Language is built on definitions - nouns or actions, and those are based on what we can perceive/detect - objects and motion.
If you cannot detected something, there are no words we have to meaningfully describe or simulate the undetected/unperceived object - for example one with a completely unique colour, texture, shape or substance unlike anything we have experienced previously. As the experience of the object is what ties any arbitrary word to its reference point.
If John and I went to see this object together, we could say how we enjoyed it's brilliant shades of Dumzinkgen (colour) and the rather flentbursh texture. It being made of jaffle-oxide ofc. And you woukd have no idea what it looked or felt like. But john and I can use the words like Dumzinkgen meaningfully in conversation because we both saw the colour.
The second point I want to make is, even if two differences are detectable between colours, for example 2 different shades of green, at what point do we determine when green is no longer a shade of green but a shade of blue.
Some argue turquoise is a tone of blue. Some argue it is a tone of green. Others say its its own unique colour.
There is a tribe in Africa, swahili I believe, where blue and green are but shades of the same colour. Are they any less correct in believing so verses our distinction?
In a spectrum of colour where changes are seamless, fluid and graduating, placing borders to define categories is more or less arbitrary to a point and you could place 100 borders or 20 or 8.
Tetrachromatic people see more shades of colour than trichromats can. A loving Tetrachromat couple may paint each wall of their house slightly different shades of yellow. We would come in and they would say don't you love the different tones, and we would say it's the same yellow what are you talking about. They would insist that it's not. And for them it truly isn't.
Summary: language reflects perception/what can be experienced.
I agree with this, but it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I don't care what words one uses to refer to the colours one sees. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we do see colours, and that seeing colours and talking about colours are two completely different things. I do the former even without the latter.
It's not the case that if John has a single word "grue" that refers to the colours that the rest of us call "blue" and "green" that if shown something green and something blue then they will appear to be identical, just as I don't need individual words for each shade of red to see that one shade of red isn't identical to a different shade of red. I might use the same word "red" to describe both colours, but I can see that they're different.
Of course they are. I agree with you fully. Seeing and talking are two separate verbs. So they can't be referring to the same thing.
When we talk about yellow generally we aren't seeing yellow externally but referring to our memory of seeing yellow externally.
Unless of course we are seeing something yellow and pointing at it saying look its yellow. In that case we are referring to immediate experience.
You know this how?
Quoting Michael
Why would your personal conclusions about the function of your brain (or mind, even) be treated with any more authority that your first person feelings about gravity, or electromagnetism, or evolution?
Quoting Michael
That's not the claim I'm making. That we can distinguish is not in question. What the distinction consists in is.
You want to say that distinction consists in different 'experiences'.
I'm claiming there's no evidence for that. All there's evidence for is that the distinction consists in a different response, of which 'reaching for the word 'red'' is an example specific to 'red'.
Evolution of colour vision in mammals
Quoting Isaac
Experience is evidence of itself. My different experiences are self-evident.
When Hume suggested a human with otherwise correct vision can install a missing shade of blue, he has already granted that the name of the color doesnt reflect the capacity. Could have been any gap in the spectrum, which makes the name of it irrelevant.
I agree. If some future scientist were able to modify my eye and give me tetrachromacy, I would see more colours than I see now, even though I wouldn't have words to refer to these new colours.
Exactly. By their responses. Not their private experiences.
You haven't answered...
Quoting Isaac
Yes, it's entirely possible that only adult humans have private experiences. Or it's entirely possible that only I have private experiences, and that the rest of you are p-zombies. But I think it more likely that I'm nothing particularly special and that the rest of you have private experiences, and that non-human animals have private experiences too.
First person conclusions are what science is built on. As in every theory and hypothesis was someone's original individual first person conclusion or suspicion about reality that then was proven consistent for others too.
So I wouldnt discredit someone solely on their belief or intuition being personal. Einsteins belief in special relativity was at one stage personal/ known/ though about only by him.
Quoting Isaac
They're both correct. Distinction can be at any stage from input, through processing or perception, to output or response.
The input (wavelengths) can be the same and the output can be different (reaching for colours words like green, red, brown or grey)
Or the input can be different and the response can be the same. Two people looking at two separate shades of yellow and saying yellow.
My experiences aren't self-evidence of gravity, but they are self-evidence of my experiences. That's common sense.
Perhaps yes it is, and no we don't fail. We, the people disputing the reality of private experience, understand that seeing colours is using (hence reaching for) words and pictures in order to mention (refer to, and thereby identify, classify, compare and order) visual stimuli.
This symbolic skill does tend to thrive on casual confusion of symbol and object, such as the kind usefully diagnosed as use-mention, but also (by the way, just saying...) the kind that confuses either symbol or object with brain shiver.
Without language, your target image might illicit responses that deserved classifying as a nascent form of recognition or comparison or classification of colours. Perhaps an animal would be reminded (as it were) of a face, in response to the whole set of local contrasts. But to imagine that all of the concentric rings would be identified as instances of separate classes of stimuli... That implies language, proper.
And as Wittgenstein pointed out in the first few pages of PI, you would thereby, already be participating in a language game, and so trying to explain meaning by making use of meaning.
Then he cut to the chase: Stop looking for meaning, and instead look at use.
I thought he meant you find meaning by looking at use.
Oh, by "meaning" you mean an all purpose definition.
Okey dokey.
Lets try a little thought experiment showing the relationship between language, experience, and science.
Individual A and B live in a world where there are two colors, red and blue. In their communities, when they were children, they learned the words blue, and red from the elders. The elder would point to a blue object and utter blue, and the same for a red object. After showing multiple different objects, some blue and some red, Individual A and B demonstrated to the community they were able to judge colors the same as their elders by using the words red and blue at the correct times.
On day a scientist comes along and wonders what is going on inside the brain when one sees red and blue. So, he decided to examine the brain by hooking up a test subject with electrodes to determine which neurons are firing when exposed to a blue object and a red object. Individual A decides to go first. The scientist finds an object that the community agrees is a blue object. Next, the scientist connects Individual A to the electrodes to measure Individual As neural response. Upon exposure of the blue object, neuron cluster 99 lights up in the brain. Individual A confirms to the scientist that they see a blue object by saying blue. Additionally, the scientist confirms the light reaching the subject is of the scientifically correct wavelength. The same routine is repeated with a red object, and this time neuron cluster 11 lights up in the brain. Individual A confirms to the scientist that they see a red object by saying red. Next, Individual B is connected to the electrodes. However, when Individual B is exposed to a blue object, neuron cluster 11 lights up in his brain. But Individual B still confirms that they see a blue object, by saying blue. Conversely, when exposed to a red object, neuron cluster 99 lights up. But Individual B still confirms that they see a red object by saying red.
Upon the completion of the experiment, an indirect realist walks in to see the results. They are not sure what to think. Surely, they thought that even though they are reporting the community accepted color word for each object correctly, they must be having different a experience of color since different neuron cluster are lighting up for each individual. Specifically, for A cluster 99 lights up when exposed to blue, but for B cluster 99 lights up for red. And, for B cluster 11 lights up for blue, but for A cluster 11 lights up for red. The indirect realist has no way of knowing which color individual A or B is having in any of these private experiences of color based on these results. But how could they ever make sense of these results since there is no private language we could use to understand anyway of what is going on inside their heads.
As Wittgenstein says in PI 293, 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.
This thesis is implausible; how could culture determine whether I or anyone else would class something as red or as purple or orange when it comes to edge cases?
It is rather the individual who determines whether someting counts as red or any other colour on the imprecise experiential basis of whether it looks red or looks orange or purple.
Of course I am not disputing the fact that the word 'red' is culturally acquired.
True. The underlined bit being what's now happening.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, but nowhere in there is this mysterious 'experience of red' that keeps being mentioned.
Quoting Michael
Ah!, well. If it's 'common sense' that settles it. To think... the amount of money my university has spent on research only to have wasted it all since you can just tell what's going on in your brain by having a bit of think about it...
I know! Crazy isn't it!
That anyone might think a thing you can't personally understand could actually be the case! Implausible....
But, again, we dont even need to consider anything so complicated. What colours do you see this dress to be? I recall a survey being done that showed that 2/3rds see it to be white and gold and 1/3 black and blue. How could I make sense of this and describe this if colour terms cant refer to private experiences?
But as Ive mentioned before, all this talk of language is a red herring. The fact remains that the dress appears differently to different people. The same stimulus triggers different, even conflicting, private experiences, and it is these private experiences that directly inform our understanding (hence why people use different words to describe that they see). That is clear evidence of indirect realism.
Your post lays out my position as an Indirect Realist.
1) The Indirect Realist doesn't need a private language to have the private experience of a colour.
There are many things I see that I don't have a word for. This doesn't stop me from seeing them.
2) Wittgenstein's PI 293 is a good explanation why Indirect Realism is a workable theory.
PI 293 explains how there can be a public language even though each person's private experiences may be unknown to anyone else.
This is not a fact, it's completely unsupported conjecture. Where is your evidence?
The same experiment triggers conflicting conclusions. It is clear evidence of direct realism. The dress is a duck-rabbit. Everyone can see the same duck-rabbit dress, and that is indeed the assumption on which the experiment stands. If they didn't see the same thing, there would be nothing to explain. Because it is only an image, it can be ambiguous; if it were even a short movie, let alone a live encounter, the illusion could probably not be maintained, any more than anyone is deceived for long about ducks and rabbits, (or frogs and horses). One can mistake what one sees for something it is not, but this is no reason to deny that one sees it.
...
There are two aspects: i) does a potential word have a use, ii) given a word has a use, what does the word mean.
From my position of Neutral Monism, within a mind-independent world are elementary particles, elementary forces and space-time, and relations don't ontologically exist.
Does a potential word have a use
For the mind, some possible relations of the parts are useful within the language game and the broader life, and some aren't. For example the shapes "mraba" and "msalaba" are useful, but the shape with the parts ADI isn't. Only those shapes which are useful are named, and shapes which aren't useful are not named.
For example, the word "peffel", being part my pen and part the Eiffel Tower, has little use in either the language game or broader life, and cannot therefore be found in the dictionary.
Given a word has a use, what does the word mean
It is an undisputable fact that naming using Hume's constant conjunction of events works. It may not completely work first time as it is an iterative process, but it clearly works.
Given that the word "ngoe" has a use within the language game and broader life, what does "ngoe" mean. More broadly, what does "mean" mean.
Meaning is neither in the word "ngoe" or the picture of a ngoe, meaning is in the link between the word "ngoe" and the picture of a ngoe.
We cannot say that the word "ngoe" has a meaning, we cannot say that the picture of an ngoe has a meaning, but we can say that the link between the word "ngoe" and the picture of a ngoe has a meaning.
The link between the word and the picture is where the meaning resides.
Interestingly, I've just discovered that Bertrand Russell made much the same argument in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
Exactly!
The fact that two people, fluent in English, describe the colours of the dress differently is evidence that the colours the dress appears to have to one are not the colours the dress appears to have to the other.
I think you need to read this.
Indirect realism is a response to naive realism (what the author of the above paper calls "phenomenological direct realism"), not to what he calls semantic direct realism, which is in fact consistent with indirect realism, but for whatever reason uses direct realist language.
Indirect realists argue that the cold I feel isn't a mind-independent property of the Arctic air but a private experience caused by a particular temperature range. It's not the case that the polar bear who lives in the Arctic, but isn't cold, lacks the means to detect the cold in the air; it's just the case that he doesn't feel cold in such temperatures. Things like colour are no different in principle; they're just a different mode of experience (visual) caused by a different kind of stimulus (electromagnetic radiation).
Again, all you're showing evidence of is responses.
Why is it, do you think, that when shown the actual dress in normal lighting conditions the overwhelming majority of people will see that it's blue and black. What explains that extraordinary convergence?
Direct realism has it like this...
Dress << Response
Indirect realism wants to introduce...
Dress << {representation} << Response
All you keep providing is evidence that people's responses are different. That has no bearing at all on the differences outlined above. People might respond differently to the same representation of a dress too. Different responses doesn't tell us anything about what it is people are responding to.
Yes, and different private experiences are the best explanation for the different responses. I know that the reason I describe the colours of the dress to be white and gold is because it appears to me to be white and gold. My description comes after the fact, if I choose to describe what I see at all. It's not unreasonable to assume that this is the case for everyone else.
The fact that we can lie about what we see, or refuse to talk, is proof enough that there is a very real distinction between how the dress appears to us and our public description of how the dress appears to us. Of course, it's entirely possible that either everyone who describes the dress as black and blue is lying, or that everyone who describes the dress as white and gold is lying, but I don't think that a reasonable assumption at all. It is reasonable to assume that most people are being honest and that, like me, first the dress appears to have certain colours and then (if they choose) they describe the colours.
Quoting Isaac
Because in normal lighting conditions objects which reflect a certain wavelength of light always appear to have a certain colour to me, and always appear to have a certain colour to you, and as children when shown such objects we are told that it is blue, and so we come to associate the word "blue" with the colour we see. Given the normal regularity between the wavelength of light and the apparent colour, there is normally a regularity in when we use the word "blue".
But then, in abnormal conditions, when an object which reflects a different wavelength of light nonetheless appears to be blue to me, but a different colour to you, I use the word "blue" to describe the colour I see and you use a different word.
This explains how it is the case that a) colour terms refer to a thing's private appearance, that b) in normal conditions we usually use the same colour terms to describe what we see, and that c) we sometimes dont use the same colour terms to describe what we see. Its a parsimonious explanation thats consistent with the empirical evidence.
I can see that it's your preferred explanation. I don't see any argument as to why it's the best. You seem to have introduced an element into the hypothesis which is not required. That's traditionally seen as a worse theory, not a better one.
Quoting Michael
It's not 'reasonable' at all. It don't understand from where you're getting this assumption that assuming the world to be the way you think it is is reasonable, but for others to disagree isn't.
I doesn't seem to me to be that way. I don't recognise this 'appearance' you claim is so obvious to you. So either;
a) I'm lying - in which case people do lie about their world views, in which case you may be too.
b) There's something wrong with my brain - in which case it's perfectly possible for brain to interact directly with the world, and so no reason to think indirect realism is necessary.
c) 'Private experiences' are built post hoc. You're convinced by your story, I'm more doubtful of mine.
You're talking to someone who disagrees with you about these 'private experiences' and yet are wanting to use their apparently self-evident nature as evidence. It's directly contradicted by the fact that I don't feel that way.
Quoting Michael
But you were arguing earlier that even language-less creatures see colours. Now you're saying the only reason we're the same is that we were taught the language. You're using our response again (saying 'blue') and then just inserting this other element (a colour experience) in between the actual light and our response to is without any need for it to be there.
You asked me "Why is it .. that .. the overwhelming majority of people will see that it's blue and black."
What you mean by this is "why is it that the overwhelming majority use the words 'blue' and 'black'" to describe what they see".
And I explained that. We have learnt to use the words "blue" and "black" to describe objects that, upon closer examination, are found to reflect a certain wavelength of light.
My theory has the additional benefit of actually explaining why it is that we sometimes use different words to describe what we see, despite the shared external stimulus, i.e. light of a particular wavelength. Clearly something is going on in my head that isn't going on in your head that explains why you reach for one word and I reach for another. We can argue over whether this thing is some non-physical mental phenomena like "qualia" or simply physical brain activity, but we need to at least agree that something different is going on in our heads to explain the different descriptions.
It is certainly insufficient to argue that it is just the case that we use different words, and that there's no further explanation as to why this is.
Quoting Isaac
And I dont understand how you think you can gaslight me into rejecting the reality of my first person experience. It is the foundational truth upon which all my other empirical knowledge rests.
If you were just trying to have me question the existence of other minds, and consider solipsism, then your arguments arent unfounded, but that seems to be for a different discussion. I think it fine to assume that solipsism isnt the case when discussing direct and indirect realism.
At the very least, the indisputable (to me) reality of my first person experience is proof enough (to me) that me seeing red and me saying I see red are completely different things. I can see red things without saying so. I can lie about seeing red things. There are no rational (or empirical) grounds for me to deny this about myself.
Quoting Isaac
I dont understand this conclusion. Given that your brain is inside your head and the apple is on the table in front of you, in what sense does the brain interact directly with the apple? Theres a whole lot of intermediate stuff in between, such as the air, light, your eyes, the nerves leading from your eyes to your brain, etc. Unless you want to stretch the meaning of "direct" into meaninglessness, in a very factual, physical sense, the brain does not interact directly with the outside world.
Quoting Isaac
Then perhaps you are, in fact, a p-zombie, which would also explain your inability to make sense of p-zombies. Someone who doesn't have anything like first-person experience/qualia isn't going to understand the proposed distinction between something that has them and something that doesn't.
So at best you can argue that it's unreasonable of me to assume that other people are like me rather than like you. Maybe everyone else is like you, and I'm the only person in the world with first-person experience. But I think it unreasonable to assume that I'm unique. I think it more reasonable to assume that everyone else is much like me; that I'm an example of the typical human. Of the course the paradox is that you have to think the same, and assume that, like you, nobody has first-person experience.
Perhaps the more reasonable assumption is that everyone who denies the existence of first-person experience/qualia and the sensibility of p-zombies is a p-zombie, and the rest of us aren't.
Some Direct Realists argue for Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR), aka casual directness, a direct perception and a direct cognition of the object as it really is, and some argue for Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), aka cognitive directness, an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object as it really is.
The argument from illusion makes a strong case against PDR.
Supporters of SDR would argue that "Direct realism is where what we talk about is the tree, not the image of the tree or some other philosophical supposition."
However, it is equally true that "Indirect realism is where what we talk about is the tree, not the image of the tree or some other philosophical supposition."
As an Indirect Realist I directly see a tree, I don't see a model of a tree. Searle wrote "The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain". Similarly, the experience of seeing a tree does not have a tree as an object because the experience of seeing a tree is identical with the tree.
Something else is needed to distinguish Semantic Direct Realism from Indirect Realism.
One could write:
Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) is a direct perception of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world
Semantic Direct Realism (SDR) is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world
Indirect Realism is a direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in the world existing in the mind, with the belief that although there is no "tree" in a mind-independent world, there is something in a mind-independent world that has caused such perception and cognition.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Michael
I set up the following experiment: I put a car in a garage. And ask a group of people, one at a time, please go into this garage, look at the car and let me know what color you think the car is when you come back out. After this experiment, I collect the results and find that different people are reporting the car has different colors.
The indirect realist may want to posit "sense data" as the explanation for the difference between people reporting different colors, and claim it the best explanation. Unfortunately, I would have to break the news to the indirect realist that this is an unnecessary explanation. The car was painted with a pigment called ChromaFlair. When the paint is applied, it changes color depending on the light source and viewing angle. In this example, this was intentionally done, and I am sure this can happen un-intentionally too.
Quoting Michael
However, I think you would agree that you can't say to me that "I actually see a blue object when I say "I see red object." This make no sense.
But it does make sense to say "what you mean by 'red' might not be what I mean by 'red'".
Referring back to this picture, if the man were able to see through the woman's eyes, he wouldn't say that the colour red looks different to this woman; he would say that the apple doesn't look red to the woman, it looks green.
Or at least that's what I'd say were I that man and able to see through the woman's eyes.
Quoting Richard B
But there are occasions where people see different colours despite nothing like this happening. Arguing that sometimes the differences can be explained with reference to the light source and viewing angle doesn't disprove that sometimes the differences must be explained with reference to something other than the light source and viewing angle.
The example of the dress is one such example that cannot be explained away the way you do here, as is the experiment I referred to before.
Yes, same with colour.
We're sometimes wrong.
What exactly is missing in that theory such that a new theory is required which posits phenomena for which there is no other evidence?
Quoting Michael
Yes, we can agree on that. In one case the path goes object>x>x>x>"blue" and in the other case object>x>x>x>"black". There is evidence for those Xs being different neural states and their outputs (different between people and between the same person at different times). There's no evidence that those Xs are some consistent 'experience of blue' that's unique to each person, it's just not there, and people have looked.
Quoting Michael
Indeed. There's all sorts of reasons why we might be mistaken.
Quoting Michael
I'm not "gaslighting" you. You're arguing for the elf-evident existence of something I don't feel on the basis that you feel it. That's absurd... unless you do go down the solipsist route...
Quoting Michael
It's not about limiting your range of responses, it's about which response clarifies 'red'. You thinking of post-boxes might be a response to seeing red, but it doesn't clarify you colour response (you might have been reminded of the shape). You saying the word "red" is the one things which clarifies your response is to the object's light reflecting properties.
Quoting Michael
I just meant that there's no intermediate object, no 'representation' of an apple.
Quoting Michael
Yes. And accepting that possibility entails accepting that direct realism is possible. Which them means you'd have to explain why it is that you don't have it. Why has your brain evolved this convoluted system of intermediary representations when it's clearly not necessary to do so?
Quoting Michael
The light source in the image is exactly the definition given for the dress discrepancy. The leading theory is that some people assume it is in daylight and so make a mental adjustment, others assume it is in orange, artificial light and so adjust that way. We don't go around assuming objects actually get darker whenever they pass into the shade, we adjust.
The Direct Realist argues that they have direct cognition of the colours red and blue as they really are in a mind-independent world. meaning that the colours red and blue exist in a mind-independent world.
Red covers the range 625 to 750nm and blue the range 450 to 485nm.
In a mind-independent world, what determines that a wavelength of 650nm has something in common with a wavelength of 700nm, yet nothing in common with a wavelength of 475nm ?
Im not saying that either. Im saying that the reality of colour perception is like this:
Or maybe even that both the man and the woman have the same kind of experience. The essential point is that the apple in between them isnt coloured. It reflects a certain wavelength of light, but thats all. Colour primitivism, which naive realists believe, is false.
And further, that when the man uses the term grue to describe the colour of the apple, hes referring to whats present in his experience and not present in the womans (in the particular example of that image), not to the fact that the apple reflects light with a wavelength of 450nm.
But there is a difference between these two explanations, one metaphysical and one scientific. The scientific explanation has physical theory behind it. Verified countless times by a community of scientist. It has power to predict future occurrences and the power to construct our environment. All verifiable in the public realm.
The other, a metaphysical theory positing sense data which is in principle private, unaccessible, and with un-unverifiable claims. Lastly, as I have been arguing irrelevant to the meaning of the language used.
But you could triangulate the height of the walkers with some distance data. I think that would qualify as direct.
The greatest argument for indirect realism is anatomy and physiology. Plain and simple. Whatever flaws it may have, that hurdle is insurmountable.
That said, I am puzzled by how you are characterizing the direct realists position with regard to your example of the persons height as they walk away.
Are you claiming that for the direct realist to be consistent with their position that when the person walks away, their height must appear the same the further they move away from the observer?
The Indirect Realist agrees that private experiences are private, but as Wittgenstein explains in para 293 of PI, language games work because private experiences drop out of consideration as irrelevant: "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."
Perhaps best answered by someone who believes in Direct Realism.
Yes, and the science shows that objects dont have colour properties, a la colour primitivism. It is just the case that objects reflect light of a certain wavelength stimulating the sense receptors in the eye which in term stimulate brain activity, creating the experience of coloured objects. I referenced an experiment earlier that explicitly determined that colour is a perceptual construct of this kind, not to be found in light or apples.
Its no different to a low temperature causing me to feel cold or a punch to the face causing me to feel pain. A temperature of 0 degrees doesnt have a property of coldness and fists dont have properties of pain. I dont know why anyone would think colour is any different given our modern science of the world and perception.
If you want to argue that the feeling of being cold isnt some essentially private mental phenomena but is reducible to brain activity then fine, but the same must also be said of seeing colours. Sight isnt a uniquely special sense. They key point is that colour, like coldness and pain, arent properties of the external stimulus that trigger such experiences.
I gave my definition of Direct and Indirect Realism here.
Best answered by a Direct Realist, as I don't know of anything that a Direct Realist has direct cognition of that isn't a representation of something in a mind-independent world.
Additionally, if we want to call the "scientific description" of what we call "perception of color" as indirect because it depends on light, how light reflects off an object, atmospheric conditions present, the quality of air, the biological condition of the eye, the functioning of the brain, etc...OK. But, I don't think this is saying much more the what was iterated. There is no other "scientific description" to contrast the aforementioned "scientific description" in order to call it an indirect or direct "scientific description". I just rather called it a "scientific description". Lastly, I do not believe that this "scientific description" supports the indirect realist's metaphysical position, as I have argued in the last several posts. It can't in principle.
I hope you are not falling into the dogmatic delusion that anyone who doesn't agree with you must not understand. Nothing difficult to understand there, just difficult to believe. But then you seem to have no difficulty believing it..it looks like we have different opinions about what seems plausible...go figure...
And if you are already in a language game, you are already meaning things by what you do.
So if what you are doing - and I'm not sure what it is you are doing - is giving an account of meaning, havn't you missed the boat? You are already using meaning in giving the account...
As Wittgenstein pointed out, somewhere in PI, pointing at something only works if the other folk around you understand that they have to follow the direction of your finger - and that is already to be participants in a sign language.
All this by way of pointing out that at some stage any account of meaning will come down to: it's just what we do.
That's a representation. Those objects in the thought bubbles are representations of apples.
Quoting Michael
I think this simply misunderstands what the words mean. What it means for a thing (in the external world) to have a colour. When we say "the post box is red" we don't mean that there's some thing 'redness' which the post box possesses, we're instead declaring and reconfirming our joint commitment to treating the post box a certain way. But it's the external post box that is the subject of that commitment, not some internal representation.
Quoting Michael
Then why have representations at all? Why have the word?
In my preferred model of perception, we attempt to predict the external causes of our sensory inputs so that we might combat the entropy otherwise induced by external forces and maintain our integrity. You could put that in evolutionary terms as being a need to predict the environment so that we can survive what it's going to throw at us.
But this requires that what we're predicting is the external world, the actual thing outside of us which might impact our integrity. And when we live in groups, we do this socially. We co-operate to better predict external causes and make ourselves more predictable to others (in the hope they will return the favour). So the important thing about labelling something 'red' is the co-operation, the surprise reduction, entailed by doing so. It's important that we agree and it's important that what we agree about is an external cause.
If all we're labelling is our own private 'representations', then I really can't see the point. Why would you care? Why would I? What difference does it make to anyone what your private representation is called?
I don't think so. "The post box is red" is the answer to some question. Understand the question, and you'll understand the answer.
Ultimately all theories of meaning come down to: what was the question?
The question is... "in what way are we treating the post box?"
It could have been: "what's that red thing over there?"
Yes, but why?
I've given an account of the need to reduce external surprise from both an evolutionary perspective and from a purely systems theory perspective. any self identifying system has to combat entropy gradients (in terms of information) and those gradients are Gaussian. so we minimise surprise, we treat things consistently, and (to the best of our ability) in ways which give predictable results based on their actual external-world states.
I can't think of a single reason why would just go about asking each other what our private thoughts are called?
None of which rules out the experience of redness. In fact, your view is more consistent with first person data than opposed to it.
Quoting Isaac
I can't either. We ask things like: what's that red thing over there?
They are no more representations of apples than pain is a representation of fire or cold a representation of a temperature of 0°C. They are just an effect of stimulation.
Quoting Isaac
We do according to the (phenomenological) direct realist. They commit themselves to something like colour primitivism. Indirect realism is a response to such claims.
Quoting Isaac
I try not to use the word. I think it's a distraction. I have repeatedly said that the epistemological problem of perception the very thing that gave rise to the distinction between the direct (naive) realist and the indirect realist concerns the relationship between the phenomenology of experience and the mind-independent properties of external world objects.
The pain I feel isn't a mind-independent property of fire. The cold I feel isn't a mind-independent property of the air. The sweetness I taste isn't a mind-independent property of sugar. The colour I see isn't a mind-independent property of the apple.
It makes no real difference if we describe this as feeling or tasting or seeing "mental representations" or if we describe this as feeling or tasting or seeing fire and air and sugar and apples. That semantic argument is, really, a non-issue.
When I talk to my parents on the phone, it is perfectly acceptable to say that I talk to my parents on the phone, not to some representation of my parents; but it is also correct to say that our conversation is indirect; that their voice isn't actually "present" in my experience (given that sound can't travel that fast, and at the volume they speak also can't travel that far).
When I talk about my parents, it is perfectly acceptable to say that I talk about my parents, not about some representation of my parents; but it is also correct to say that there is no "direct" connection between my words and my parents; that they are not actually "present" in my conversation.
This is the problem I have with so-called semantic direct realism. It doesn't actually address the epistemological problem of perception, or the substance of the indirect realist's arguments. As was argued in the paper I referenced before, semantic direct realism is just an attempt to maintain direct realist terminology in the face of the insurmountable problems of illusion and hallucination, and to our current scientific understanding of the world and perception. It abandons the direct (naive) realist's claim that we see things as they (mind-independently) are, and retreats simply to the claim that we see things, which doesn't really say anything significant.
Quoting Isaac
It's not an either-or. When you tell me that something is cold, I understand it both in the sense that the temperature is low and in the sense of how such things feel. I can make sense of someone being out in such temperatures and yet not feeling cold. I am able to recognize the distinction between cause and effect. The same with pain, and smells, and tastes, and colours. The mistake direct (naive) realists make is to project the effect onto the cause, e.g. in the case of colour primitivism.
It follows that Wittgenstein's language game is incompatible with Semantic Direct Realism.
Definitions of Direct Realism
I defined Direct Realism as either:
1) Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) is a direct perception of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world
2) Semantic Direct Realism (SDR) is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world
Wikipedia on Naive Realism writes: "According to the naïve realist, the objects of perception are not representations of external objects, but are in fact those external objects themselves."
You wrote that: "Direct realism is where what we talk about is the tree, not the image of the tree or some other philosophical supposition."
In summary, some definitions of Direct Realism are limited to perception, free of language, and some definitions require cognition, involving language.
However, as the argument from illusion makes too strong case against Phenomenological Direct Realism, Semantic Direct Realism remains the only likely possibility.
The difference between perception and cognition
In perception, the brain receives sensory input through the five senses which it processes as simple and complex concepts, simple concepts such as the colour green, and complex concepts such as a tree. In cognition, the brain combines these concepts using memory, reasoning and language to understand what has been perceived, enabling propositions such as "the tree is green".
As language is part of cognition, I can perceive things without needing a language. There are many things in the world that I perceive that I have no words for.
The act of pointing
I agree that I have been assuming that the word "tree" in language is pointing at a picture of a tree existing in a mind-independent world.
However, you note that the act of pointing is already part of the language game, meaning that what is being pointed at exists in a world, but the world of the language game, not a mind-independent world.
Wittgenstein in para 31 of PI writes that the act of pointing only works if the observer has previous knowledge of what is being pointed out:
"Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: "This is the king; it can move like this, . . . . and so on."In this case we shall say: the words "This is the king" (or "This is called the 'king' ") are a definition only if the learner already 'knows what a piece in a game is'".
Therefore, words being used in the language game are not pointing out objects in a mind-independent world, but are pointing out objects existing within the language game itself
However, Semantic Direct Realism is the position that we have a direct cognition of "trees" as they really are in a mind-independent world, allowing us to make the statement that "trees are green" is true IFF trees are green in a mind-independent world.
As Wittgenstein's language game says that the statement "trees are green" does not point to something in a mind-independent world but rather points to something already existing in language, Wittgenstein's language game is incompatible with Semantic Direct Realism, which says that "trees are green" does point to something existing in a mind-independent world.
Summary
IE, Wittgenstein's language game is incompatible with Semantic Direct Realism.
Semantic Direct Realism (SDR) says that we have direct cognition of the object "apple" as it really is in a mind-independent world. Therefore, for SDR, apples exist in a mind-independent world, whether they are perceived or not.
However, as the apple rots, at what exact moment in time in a mind-independent world does the apple disappear from existence. A human observer may judge when the apple disappears from existence, but what is there in a mind-independent world that determines when the apple disappears from existence ?
I once heard John Searle say something which I believe prevents one moving down the road to confusion.
Words do not refer, but human being use words to refer.
I think sometimes folk forget this which causes folk to think a word is magically "connected" to some object.
No. The experience of 'redness' is ruled out by there being no evidence, nor need, for any such thing.
Quoting frank
Then you've misunderstood my view. First person data is useless. It needs to climb an entropy gradient and it can't do that by being self-referential.
Quoting Michael
An 'effect' of the stimulation would be something like reaching for the word "apple". You're still inventing 'representations' but now just want to call them something else.
Quoting Michael
Well then we'd jointly disagree with such a position, but I very much doubt it's that simple. I'd first want to know what kind of thing the colour primitivist thinks colour is before dismissing their position hastily.
Quoting Michael
As above, you're still invoking representations. There's no such thing as 'the pain you feel' You don't feel pain, you feel the fist. It's the fist which your systems are trying to predict, it is the external state that is the subject of your speculations, otherwise those speculations are pointless, they have no purpose to the organism. It doesn't need to know how it's feeling, it needs to know what's going on outside (and this means 'outside' of the system - meaning areas of your own body that are not part of the CNS).
The whole model of how and why the CNS does what it does doesn't work if all it's doing is predicting the state of other parts within it's own Markov blanket. Seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling... these are all descriptions of hierarchical prediction processes for which the only plausible model of their evolution is the reduction of entropy from forces external to the system. there's just no need for a CNS to be organised the way it is otherwise. So the idea that is sees, feels, hears, and smells itself is either nonsense, or an idea which stand in need of a complete rebuild of cognitive science from the ground up.
I need it. My house has become a den of red, black, and white. I don't want curtains that cause me to reach for the word "red." I need red curtains.
Furthermore, I don't need red curtains that represent something I do. I just need the red curtains.
Let's dispense with the unnecessary abuse of language going on in this thread. :razz:
Then we're at an impasse. Nothing you say can convince me that I don't feel pain. Headaches are real.
Unless we give you an anesthetic, right?
White Stripes fan?
Quoting Michael
Where is this 'pain' and what sensory nodes to you use to 'feel' it?
pdf, anyone?
The question is mistaken. Ironically Searle explains it well:
So it is not the case that "feeling" is one thing, that "pain" is another thing, and that the former is "done" to the latter; it is just the case that "feeling pain" is a single (possibly private) thing. The same with feeling cold and seeing red.
:lol: I used to listen to "Ball and a Biscuit" on the way to work.
Now you seem to be going back to semantics. Sure, 'feel' can be used to describe more than directly sensing something. But we 'feel' the grass beneath our feet. We 'feel' the rough bark of the tree. You wanted to restrict the conversation to the epistemological problems of perception. The process of perception is one of estimating a surprise-reducing model of external states. So insofar as the epistemological question is concerned, you either 'feel' pain with pain being some external state, or that particular use of 'feel' is not the use we're concerned with.
So when I say you don't 'feel' pain, I'm using the term 'feel' in the same sense as it's used in perception - I 'feel' the grass, the trees, the wind etc.
And that's all semantic direct realism is: semantics.
The epistemological problem of perception that gave rise to the distinction between the direct and indirect realist concerns the relationship between the phenomenology of experience and the mind-independent properties of external world objects. That has nothing to do with the choice to describe our experience as "feeling pain" or as "feeling the fire", which is irrelevant to the substance of the disagreement, because it's not the case that either one or the other is "correct". They're just different ways of talking that emphasise different aspects of perception.
When I talk about seeing red I mean it in the same sort of sense as when I talk about feeling pain, and the red I see, like the pain I feel, isn't a property of external world objects. This is the indirect realists claim contra the (phenomenological) direct (naive) realists.
Apparent reality is just such an indirect view of what is real. Spinoza taught us how we come to know an outside physical world; it was by the world of objects making alterations to the state of our biology, our bodies, this, processed through the understanding is our everyday reality or apparent reality. For us, it is our only subjective reality and for us, there is no direct knowledge of reality. I propose that apparent reality is a biological readout, a self-simulation for the world of objects that is indirect in that it is the world's or the cosmos' energies altering our bodies that give us the impression of there being objects. Those energies are objects only to biological consciousness, a melody played that only the conscious subject hears or rather sees. So, the apparent reality is how we experience the energies around us, but the fact remains, all there is, is energy. If we saw this energy as simply energy, that would be direct realism, a place/state/field of no things.
Right. so if it's not a property of external world objects, then what's your theory as to why we sense it? And how do you justify undermining the current paradigm that the brain senses external states in order to predict the results of interaction with them? what's the evolutionary advantage of a system where the brain spends time detecting the state of other parts of itself?
I don't understand the issue. Pain isn't a property of external world objects. I feel pain. There's no problem here. Colours aren't a property of external world objects. I see colours. Suddenly there's a problem?
When our nerves are stimulated in certain ways, we feel pain. That pain, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly.
When our temperature is lowered sufficiently, we feel cold. That cold, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly.
When our eyes are stimulated in certain ways, we see red. That red, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly.
I'm not saying that the brain "detects" the state of other parts of itself. I'm saying that external stimulation triggers brain activity, and that this brain activity is either identical to or causes "the feeling of pain", and that this pain isn't a property of the external stimulation but is a property of that brain activity (or some supervenient mental phenomena, if there is such a thing). The same with feeling cold and seeing red.
In order to judge whether "apple" is the right term at a time we have to have access to the apple. And at any time, even if there is a substrate which holds the properties of the apples beneath perception and cognition and language, then all my use of "apple" will only be embedded in the shared world where the apples change, where we have perspectives, and we have no substratum to settle how it is we should use words. We remain at the surface, which we have direct access to. (surely we have direct access to the indirect reality? In which case, couldn't we just call this the real, and the other the unknown?)
Most of the time I think the indirect realist inserts more than is needed into an ontology. We might as well be anti-realists at that point -- the real is outside of perception, and all we have is perception. But the indirect realist wants to assert, all we have is perception, and there's something real out there underneath it all as an inference, as I understand it in this thread, starting from naive realism -- that what we see is what's the case, modified to our perception.
But if so I think it has to be established by some other means than by looking at change, difference in opinion, or difference in perception because these are realist things -- the realist would just note that things do, in fact, change, or do, in fact, look different at different times, which is why we select different words at different times. What's needed isn't change, but the substratum. Given all the changes we perceive, all the perspectives we have, and that we know true sentences -- how is it we know that the sentence "Reality is experienced indirectly" is true? The direct realist won't deny change or anything we experience or the mechanisms of perception, because these are all part of the world as we experience it.
Only the little story about the Real being beneath the real-- that's what's being doubted.
I guess the question then, is: how do you know this?
Frank,
Perhaps you could tell me what is certain. Philosophy is wonder, mine is just reasonable conjecture. If you find the reasoning faulty, by all means, enlighten me.
I'm just asking what the justification would be for "for us, there is no direct knowledge of reality." What prompts you to say that? What's the grounding for it? If you were arguing for it, what would your argument be?
Hmm...
If stated as knowledge, then the statement can't be reality, since otherwise it would be contradictory, yes?
(Not referring to Spinoza, just the no-knowledge part.)
In my reading (which could easily be wrong), the statement partitions everything into ehh my/our subjective experiences and reality (mutually exclusive), but maybe the verbiage covers more...
We need not become something else to attain knowledge thereof, right?
But, in principle, this claim cannot be verified as either true or false, so we are not talking about facts here.
I don't think facts depend on verifiability. It just either is or isn't the case that private experiences exist.
I suppose some anti-realists might disagree, but then I don't think anti-realists are going to be direct realists anyway.
I believe you are saying the following, Conversely, most realists (specifically, indirect realists) hold that perceptions or sense data are caused by mind-independent objects. But this introduces the possibility of another kind of skepticism: since our understanding of causality is that the same effect can be produced by multiple causes, there is a lack of determinacy about what one is really perceiving
But this is a tough pill to swallow given the suppose cause and effect being discussed here:
Effect: private sense data that cannot be publicly verified as either true or false.
Cause: an unknowable something that is out of reach because all we know for certain is our private sense data.
Wow, I would not want to use that example to teach a kid what cause and effect means.
If you do not like verifiability, how does this fact establish its truth or falsity? One can make claims, but we do need to know how to establish whether it is a fact or not.
I don't understand the question.
It is either a fact that intelligent, extra-terrestrial life exists or it isn't.
It is either a fact that private experiences exist or they don't.
Whether or not intelligent, extra-terrestrial life or private experiences exist has nothing to do with what we can or can't verify. The world just either is that way or it isn't.
You said this is a fact. Is that because you have testified to this, and thus, it is a fact because you say so?
No, I'm saying so because I believe it to be a fact. And because it is a fact, what I say is true.
Why do you say it is a fact and it is true?
Because I believe it to be so.
As an Indirect Realist, my belief is that as apples exist in the mind, exist in perception, cognition and language and not in a mind-independent world. As you say, they can therefore be brought into existence and removed from existence just by the power of thought.
Quoting Moliere
I agree that there is the surface of perception, cognition and language which is real and we have direct access to, and there is a substratum which is also real. The Indirect Realist believes that they can only make inferences about what exists in this substratum, whilst the Direct Realist believes they can directly perceive what exists in this substratum.
Quoting Moliere
There are different approaches to Direct Realism. Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) is an direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. Semantic Direct Realism (SDR) is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world.
As language is one aspect of cognition, the change in object from apple to non-apple is more relevant to SDR than PDR. As you say " They are no longer apples the moment we stop calling them apples".
However, I agree that change is not as relevant to PDR as it is to SDR. The following is more relevant to PDR.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that the substratum is real and exists. They both perceive, cognize and talk about "apples". The Direct Realist believes that apples exist in a mind-independent world, the Indirect Realist doesn't.
I can perceive things that I don't have words for. For example, exotic fruits of Asia. Therefore, it's possible to be able to perceive an apple without knowing that it has been named "apple".
As both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree they perceive change, we cannot use change to determine who is correct. Therefore, just consider the picture at 230 days. As both the Indirect and Direct Realist are able to perceive things they have no name for, remove any reference to the name" apple". The Direct Realist would argue that the object at day 230 exists as it is seen in a mind-independent world, whilst the Indirect Realist would argue that it doesn't.
The thing perceived at 230 days is part ochre at the top and part umber at the bottom, contained within a circle and supporting a short vertical line above. Reducing, we have a straight line, a circle, some colour and relationships between them.
The Indirect Realist would propose that these features exist only the mind. The Direct Realist would propose that these exist not only in the mind but also in a mind-independent world. Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that these features exist in the mind, however the Direct Realist also proposes in addition that these features also exist in a mind-independent world.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist would agree that we gain all our information about a mind-independent world through our senses. The Direct Realist argues that just from a knowledge of our sensations, we are able to have a veridical knowledge of the cause of these sensations. I would argue that from knowing just an effect, it is impossible to directly know its cause.
We know we perceive the colour red, yet the Direct Realist argues that the cause of our perceiving red is a colour red existing in a mind-independent world. We know we perceive a circle and line, which are particular spatial relationships between individual points, and we know we perceive particular spatial relationships between these shapes, yet the Direct Realist argues that the cause of our perceiving spatial relations is the ontological existence of spatial relationships in a mind-independent world.
For PDR to be a valid theory, it must justify at the least that colours and spatial relations ontologically exist in a mind-independent world.
In the set up I think I understand the distinction between direct and indirect realist. However, I think I'd call myself a realist, rightly, yet deny there even is a sub-stratum. The surface is all there is which we have direct access to, and there's no reason to believe there's a substratum. That's because without access to the substrate there's no way to check our inferences, or a way to check if there is a relationship between the substrate and the surface. We could only check it against the surface. It may match the substrate, but we'd never know due to its indirectness.
Quoting RussellA
I feel like this notion of mind-independent world gets too much emphasis for a direct realist's way of putting things. It feels like how the indirect realist interprets the direct realist, rather than how the direct realist defends their view.
I wouldn't reduce reality to either phenomenology or semantics (or science). "Surface" is a metaphor without a counter-part in my way of understanding. I might go so far as to say -- it's all surface! No matter how deeply you dig into the earth, or bite into the apple, or build the transcendental conditions of experience it's just another surface. It's because the surface changes that we reach for these stories about in/direct reality: we like stability. We like being able to predict things. But the world is only partially predictable, and even when it is we frequently change our minds later about how we should predict change.
Rather than adding something in-between myself and reality, I'd just say reality is wider than some system of thought. Systems of thought are build to cohere, and reality is far from coherent. That's why it makes sense to say it's independent of ourselves, at least. We like coherency, and the world resists.
What if we cut out the middle man ? 'Seeing red' is acting accordingly, etc. We wise others decide that you saw red because you stopped at the light. (Stopping at the light is part of seeing red.)
This is the kind of Wittgensteinian nonsense that I just don't get.
You put a red ball and a blue ball in front of me. I can see that one is red and one is blue. I don't need to do or say anything that you can interpret as me "seeing red" or "seeing blue". Me seeing red and seeing blue has nothing to do with you or your judgement. It only has something to do with me and what's going on in my head.
If you stopped at the light because you saw that it was red, seeing was the cause and stopping was the effect. How can the effect be part of the cause? That appears to be an abuse of language.
Exactly that. I take aspirin because I'm in pain. It's not that me being in pain just is me taking aspirin.
:up:
But if you said, I can see that one is green, and one is yellow, can you be said to being seeing at all.
Yes, I'm just not seeing what you're seeing. Much like with the case of some people seeing the dress to be white and gold and others seeing it to be black and blue.
But perhaps you need to have brain activity that succeeds in associating the red ball with red surfaces generally, and the blue ball with blue surfaces generally?
Having red or blue mental images in the brain, to meet that purpose, is kind of having a ghost in the machine.
Having the brain reach for suitable words or pictures, isn't. And, even better, it suggests a likely origin of our tendency to imagine that we accommodate the ghostly entities.
And I appreciate this. You don't have to think of experience as a collection of ghosts, though. You can just note that you do see red, and leave it unexplained exactly how.
Semantic direct realism is afflicted with multiple realizability issues on steroids.
That seems tantamount to accepting the ghost as ghost? Which could turn out to be appropriate, of course. I'm just pointing out an alternative.
Newton was accused of introducing mysticism into physics with the idea of gravity. He protested that he didn't know what it was, but was just pointing out that it is. If someone accepted Newton's answer to the charge of mysticism, would that be tantamount to accepting that gravity is mystical?
Semantic direct realism doesn't work on a number of fronts. One is because of multiple realizability, which, as the SEP article explains, is the reason non-reductionism is the prevailing view in philosophy of mind. Pain doesn't reduce to particular actions for the same reason it can't be reduced to mental states.
There's mystical and there's mystical. There's an invisible pull between two bodies proportional to their masses, and there's a picture show in the head.
As for SDR, I'm not at all sure I'm on side with any brand of realism, inasmuch as they mostly seem to discuss the possibility of some kind of inner ghost making contact with the outer world.
:up:
Yes. Primarily 'feeling' is a term we use for multiple meanings, one of which is a summary of your mental state "how are you feeling today?". So "I feel pain" and "I feel the grass" have two different meanings. The former being used in the sense of describing a state of mind, the latter in the sense of touch-sensation.
You specifically wanted to talk about the problem of epistemology with regard to perception and not want to get caught up in semantics. Given the, it is only this latter sense of 'feel' we're interested in here, the one which is about you sensing the external world with your nervous system.
There are models which make sense of internal 'feelings' (summaries of mental states) in a biological framework, but they'd be of no use to us here since you want to discuss perception, and summarising one's mental state is not an act of perception.
Quoting Michael
So this is muddled. When our nerves are stimulated in certain ways we 'feel' the cause of that stimulation (using feel in the sense of sensory perception). If I hit you you would say that you felt my fist contact your arm. You might also make a self report about your mental state "I feel in pain", but that's irrelevant to perception and so outside of the scope of this conversation.
Quoting Michael
Again, note none of your leading examples are yet straying from the use of the ambiguous word 'feel'...
Quoting Michael
... and now substitute 'see' as if it were a given that it had the same dual meaning as 'feel'. No one asks "How are you seeing today", no one says "when you girlfriend left you, how did that make you see?"
'See' does not have this dual meaning where it's also describing a self-report about mental states.
Hence when you say "I see a tree" we're only describing your sensory perception, your estimation of the causes of external stimulation of your sensory perception nodes of your nervous system.
So to say "I see 'red'" but have 'red' as being some internal state, you'd have to posit that those sensory nodes somehow also terminate internally, that they sense other parts of the same system.
I think everyone would agree with this, apart from perhaps a psychic empath.
Quoting Richard B
Very true.
I'm not totally averse to saying that mental phenomena just is brain activity. What I'm averse to is the claim that being in pain has something to do with saying or thinking "I am in pain" or taking aspirin or performing some other activity that other people use to judge me to be in pain, or the claim that pain is a property of the external world object that causes me to feel pain.
The epistemological problem of perception concerns the relationship between the phenomenology of experience and the mind-independent properties of external world objects. The indirect realist argues that what we feel in the former sense is a mental representation of what we feel in the latter sense; that what we feel in the former sense is not a property of what we feel in the latter sense.
In the case of the dress, some people see in the former sense white and gold and others see in the former sense black and blue. The white and gold that I see in the former sense are not properties of the dress that I see in the latter sense, but are mental phenomena that result from brain activity in response to stimulation by the light reflected by the photo.
Given that it is what I see in the former sense that determines how I understand and describe what I see in the latter sense, and as what I see in the former sense is not a property of what I see in the latter sense, there is an epistemological problem of perception. That I can see in the former sense that the dress is white and gold tells me nothing about the dress I see in the latter sense (except the trivial fact that it causes me to see in the former sense white and gold).
Right. So what's the point of it?
If what we're sensing is not a property of anything external to the system doing the sensing, then why is that system sensing anything at all? Why is it only detecting properties it itself has made up?
What's your evolutionary model for how this situation came about in all biological creatures (or how it evolved out of one in humans), what mechanisms were behind such an evolution, how could it possibly have sustained the enormous amounts of calories such activities involve without causing sufficient biological cost to have evolved out?
I'm not getting anything of the meta-biological framework your theory sits within.
I don't understand your question. I don't know much about why putting my hand in the fire cases me to feel (in the former) sense pain. I just know that it does.
This isn't my theory. It's what science has shown to be the case. You stimulate my nerves (or my brain) a certain way and I feel pain. That pain is in my head, not out in the world to discover.
I start from a principle that features of human physiology evolved within a system where their cost did not exceed their survival benefit. In such a system, it would be practically impossible for the huge amount of calories mental processes consumes to be justified if all it did was detect internal states of the same system, I can't see the survival advantage.
So I'm asking you what the survival advantage is, or what your alternative meta-biological theory is. Without either I can't see how you can sustain the model with such glaring holes in it.
Quoting Michael
Here's a model of pain...
1. an external state stimulates a nociceptive nerve ending
2. that signal (among hundreds of others) travels through an hierarchical system of prediction engines which attempt to output a response appropriate to reducing the uncertainty of that external state (either by manipulating the external state by acting on it, or by refining the model by further focussed investigation)
3. one of those outputs is to alter the release rate of certain hormones which in turn influence the output of other prediction engines (shifting their priors slightly in favour of certain types of output)
4. This state of affairs, this hormone affected setup, if you were to report it (either to yourself, or to others) you would use the expression "feeling pain" to describe.
If the above were the case then how would it clash with what you claim here to "know" about your feeling pain. If the last thing your brain does, after going through the process of predicting the state of external nodes, is to render a self-report which you respond to as a 'feeling of pain', then how would you distinguish that from the actual functioning of your brain in response to external stimuli?
Theories need to fit the facts, not the other way around, and it is a fact that the pain I feel isn't a property of the fire that causes me to feel pain.
So either there is a survival advantage to feeling pain, or feeling pain just happens to be a deterministic effect of something else that gives us a survival advantage (e.g. a complex brain that is able to effectively respond to stimulation).
Quoting Isaac
I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. It appears that this accepts that pain isn't a property of the external state that stimulates a nociceptive nerve ending, but is an "inner" state. I agree with the principle of that, but would extend it to other things, such as "seeing red", e.g.:
1. an external state stimulates the rods and cones in one's eyes
2. that signal (among hundreds of others) travels through an hierarchical system of prediction engines which attempt to output a response appropriate to reducing the uncertainty of that external state (either by manipulating the external state by acting on it, or by refining the model by further focussed investigation)
3. one of those outputs is to alter the release rate of certain hormones which in turn influence the output of other prediction engines (shifting their priors slightly in favour of certain types of output)
4. This state of affairs, this hormone affected setup, if you were to report it (either to yourself, or to others) you would use the expression "seeing red" to describe.
The key point is that red, like pain, isn't a property of the external stimulus.
I might go further and say that feeling pain and seeing red isn't just a "hormone affected setup" but is some supervenient mental phenomena, but as a first step we need to at least agree that red and pain aren't properties of external world objects before we can progress further.
Very divergent, e.g. in the case of synesthesia. Whereas most of us only see colours in response to light, some also see colours in response to sound (chromesthesia).
But then, applying that to the snooker balls, you're averse to saying that seeing the ball as red has something to do with associating it with red surfaces generally? For example by reaching for the word "red". I thought you might be. Slightly surprised that you reply with "sure".
If you're not totally averse to that, though, how about that being in pain is associating the bodily trauma in question with bodily trauma in general? For example by reaching for the word "pain".
I dont need a language to be in pain. Pre-linguistic humans had headaches.
What I thought you were saying is that feeling pain can be reducible to brain states, and doesnt require some non-physical supervenient phenomena. Im not totally averse to that claim, although Im not especially convinced by it either.
Realism is defined as the assertion of the existence of a reality independently of our thoughts or beliefs about it, so a Realist wouldn't deny that there is a sub-stratum.
Quoting Moliere
The Phenomenological Direct Realist believes they directly perceive something existing in a mind-independent world even if they don't know its name. The Semantic Direct Realist believes they directly perceive an apple existing in a mind-independent world.
For the Direct Realist, the terms phenomenology and semantics distinguish important features of their view of reality.
Quoting Moliere
That's true, but I have an innate belief in the law of causation, in that I know that the things I perceive in my mind through my senses have been caused by things existing outside my mind in a mind-independent world.
My belief in the law of causation is not based on reason, but has been been built into the structure of my brain through 3.5 billion years of life's evolution within the world.
I have no choice in not believing in the law of causation as I have in not believing I feel pain or see the colour red.
They suffered the trauma. My car suffers trauma. And pain, but only metaphorically. They, though, probably also had enough symbolic ability to associate it with trauma in general. Which is how we suffer pain literally. Perhaps. Plausibly.
We (usually) feel pain in response to trauma. They are two separate things.
The person with congenital insensitivity to pain can recognise the trauma of a broken leg without feeling any pain.
The rest of us can feel pain without recognising any trauma, e.g in the case of headaches or some internal injury (and there can be internal injuries that dont cause pain too).
Pain and trauma just arent the same.
I'm suggesting the pain is the recognition of the trauma as an instance of a kind of thing, e.g. of trauma. It is the association. Sure it's separate from the trauma. It might be caused by the trauma. But not from or by the pain. It is the pain.
And yet as I said we can recognise trauma without feeling pain (e.g. congenital insensitivity to pain) and we can feel pain without recognising trauma (e.g. headaches).
Yes. The broken leg is the trauma. The brain activity (or the mental phenomena it causes) is the pain.
Exactly. so what is the equivalent situation with 'seeing red' to which you want to extend this physiological response?
Your argument so far seems to be that because pain is a physiological state, then so can 'red' be. But that's woefully inadequate as a theory. By that same token, so can the number 7, or Donald Duck, or the solar system around alpha centuri. You have to have something more than just "because one thing is X other things can be X too, therefore P=X".
I'm asking what meta-framework (or evolutionary benefit, if you're working within the same framework as me) justifies your belief that 'seeing red' is the same type of thing as 'feeling pain' - it's not sufficient that it merely can be on the grounds that some things are.
The feeling of 'pain' serves a purpose related to the cause of the pain. You 'feel' the fist (in the first sense) so that you know where it is, how fast it's moving etc. You 'feel' pain (in the second sense) so that you avoid such situations in future.
What I'm asking is the equivalent in your model.
I'd say you 'see' red in the only sense I understand of the word 'see', that is you make some prediction of the state of some external data node (that it is 'red'). You do this so that you can respond to it appropriately (say, eat it because it's ripe). for this to work, 'red' has to be a property of that data node, if if's not then it can carry no information from it, and so your response is disconnected.
You want to say that 'red' is a feeling in this second sense, as description of the state of you mind, not the external node. So why? The 'feeling' of pain (second sense) sets us up to avoid the cause. What does the 'feeling' of red do?
Organisms may have features that have no evolutionary benefit.
Its not woefully inadequate. It explains colour blindness and synesthesia and why some people see the dress to be white and gold and others black and blue and why science doesn't describe the world as having particles of redness and is exactly what the experiment I referenced days ago concluded.
There is a physiological sense of seeing red, and it is that which immediately informs our cognition and drives our responses (e.g. how we describe things). This physiological sense is (usually) triggered by electromagnetic radiation stimulating the sense receptors in our eyes, and the nature of that radiation is determined by the arrangement of the electrons that make up the surface of some external object.
This is what the empirical evidence shows. Your armchair theory and word games don't trump empirical evidence.
If Realism is the thesis that there is a sub-stratum then I'd fit anti-realist.
Just not sure what to make of the belief that the tree exists whether it's in a mind or not, given the previous notion of mind-independence. The moon spins. People feel. Perspectives fit within the surface, just as minds do, just as moons do.
I think people would be tempted to call the surface something like "experience", but I would do no such thing. "Experience" used like this is a reification. This notion of reality is that it is irreducible, and absurd -- to call it a substrate is to give it too much meaning, because there's no base.
Quoting RussellA
It still feels like a set-up to me. Wouldn't the direct realist have to be committed to the notion that our phenomenology is part of the world, just as semantics are? "Mind-independent" is doing a lot of work in distinguishing the direct from the indirect realist.
Let's just say the surface is mind-independent. Minds, whatever that happens to be, are within the surface, but do not define the surface. And, there's no substrate.
So by the set-up I'd be an anti-realist Direct realist :D -- maybe not so bad.
Quoting RussellA
I don't know.
I think "causation" is one of those habits which we learn from those around us who teach us how to use it. It's different from what we feel, i.e. red or pain. We infer causation, and there are many ways of inferring causation. I'd say I am more on the side of Hume in saying that it's a habit of thought, but I wouldn't go so far as to specify it as a necessary connection between events. I think it's a much looser concept than that, as we can see the various notions of cause put forward by philosophers: Aristotle's four-causes, Hume's necessary connection, and Kant's tri-partite division into three distinct categories where the third is a synthesis of the previous two -- these conceptions of cause are not the same. Philosophers, at least in specifying this habit, are able to make distinctions between ways of thinking about causation, which gives me a reason to doubt that it's some innate idea: some of us have been able to pick it apart and then found different things. So it's more likely that we're inventing causation than it's innate, given the evidence of the intelligent and creative.
But even if causation isn't real, the trees deep in the Amazon live on without my mental blessing. Is that mind-independent?
I explained that. Thinking is one of the most calorie intensive actions we do. The brain is a very expensive organ. There are no examples in the natural world of traits evolved which are calorie intensive (or otherwise costly) which nonetheless survive in the face of competition.
If you are arguing that features can be costly and still evolve, and that evolved features have no correlation to survival (or sexual selection), then you are literally arguing against the theory of evolution by natural selection. Which is why I asked @Michael for the alternative frame he might be using.
Quoting Michael
So does the standard model, but without these holes. I'm asking why you choose the model with the holes (or why they are not, for you, holes at all). Why choose a model which creates this difficult to explain phenomena contrary to what we already have regarding evolved characteristics, when there appears to be no call for it?
You just admitted to an internal, physiological sense of feeling pain. Why is it so difficult for you to extend this to other things, e.g. seeing colour?
You just seem so bewitched by the complexities of vision that you think it fundamentally different to other senses, like nociception. It isn't. It's just a different mode of experience caused by a different type of stimulus. When nociceptors are stimulated in certain ways, it triggers brain activity that causes the internal, physiological sense of feeling pain. When thermoreceptors are stimulated in certain ways, it triggers brain activity that causes the internal, physiological sense of feeling cold. When chemoreceptors are stimulated in certain ways, it triggers brain activity that causes the internal, physiological sense of tasting sweetness. When photoreceptors are stimulated in certain ways, it triggers brain activity that causes the internal, physiological sense of seeing red.
This is consistent with all the empirical evidence and explains why different people experience different things in response to the same external stimulus (slight differences with the central nervous system mean slight differences with the subsequent internal, physiological experience).
Purpose.
Are you deliberately ignoring this entire line of argument for a reason? All traits which carry significant cost (calorie or otherwise) demonstrate fairly well understood survival purposes (or other forms of selection).
You've not given any account of why you dismiss this meta-theory, or why you think 'feeling red' falls within it.
Outside of such an explanation, you theory explains empirical evidence no better than the standard one, but with this additional gap.
It's inconsistent with the empirical evidence, and as I said, theories need to fit the facts, not the other way around. The empirical evidence is that external stimulation triggers brain activity that causes an internal, physiological experience. So either it does have a survival purpose or it's a deterministic effect of something else that does, such as a complex central nervous system.
What empirical evidence?
I've already given one example:
That's not evidence of an internal 'experience'. It tells us what happens in different regions of the brain in response to stimuli.
Your claim is that this internal state is a) consistent and whole - 'red' and b) the object of an internal sense, the subject of the sentence "I see red", and c) that it is not a property of external objects.
The experiment you've provided shows none of these three claims.
It shows, as it says, that "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus" and "color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing".
You're not going to convince me that it isn't saying what it's literally saying.
The brain is an obligate glucose consumer, yes. The brain does more than think, though. It directs the neuro-endocrine system, which controls blood pressure, metabolism, digestion, pretty much the whole enchilada.
I thought your argument was that there's no clear survival advantage to having experiences. My point was that if that is so, it doesn't rule out experiences. Evolution doesn't dictate that every feature of an organism provides survival advantage.
For a start, what it 'shows' is the empirical data, what the authors 'say' is the conclusion they draw from it, which is not that same as the empirical data underlying that conclusion.
The empirical data from that experiment is neural potentials in response to stimuli.
The conclusions bring in a whole.modeling assumption which, whilst perfectly valid, is not universally shared, and certainly not what constitutes 'empirical evidence'.
Notwithstanding that conceptual confusion, I'm not disagreeing that colour is a construction of the brain's processing systems, I'm denying that it is thereby not a property of external nodes.
The switch rivalry paradigm your experiment uses, for example relies entirely on the fact that the colour slide presented is really a consistent magenta. How do the experimenters know what colour the slide 'really' is such as to contrast it with the reported colour?
That is my argument, yes.
If 'experiences' are some kind of mental activity, and evolution has not yet produced features which are energy intensive but also useless, then we can, quite rightly conclude that it is unlikely to do so here.
Do you know of research that picks mental activity out from the rest of the CNS's activity an evaluates it for calorie usage? I don't even know how someone would do that.
Ok. The broken leg is trauma. The brain activity (the recognising the broken leg as an instance of trauma) is the feeling pain.
Quoting Michael
Sure. The associations effected by merely intellectual recognition of the trauma hardly overlap at all with the associations we are inclined to call "feeling pain", which are informed directly by stimulation of nerves in the site of the trauma.
Quoting Michael
Sure. We can recognise wrongly.
I'm not quite sure what you're after, but this was a classic
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15041139/
But what we're talking about here is an activity which goes on all our waking day, it's way bigger than a stroop test.
Your argument was as follows:
1. The brain is a high energy organ.
2. High energy organs are likely to have survival advantage.
3. The brain produces thinking.
4. Thinking must have a survival advantage. (from 2 and 3)
Conclusion: Since thinking must have a survival advantage, experience, if it exists, must have a survival advantage.
1 and 2 are true. And the brain most definitely provides a survival advantage since it regulates every life preserving function in the body.
3. Is probably true. We don't know all the details to how mental activity works.
4 doesn't follow, though. Thinking is only one of the things the CNS contributes to, but you're pinning all of the energy used by the brain on thinking.
The research you offered shows that some kinds of thinking are associated with glucose consumption. I don't doubt that.
It wasn't.
Quoting frank
Good. So we can conclude that mental activity requires additional glucose.
Now where is your example of additional glucose requiring features of physiology which provide no survival advantage yet persist over available alternatives?
So now your argument is that anything that uses glucose must have a survival advantage? Why do you think that?
If causation was not innate and was something learned, as with all things, some people would learn it and some wouldn't.
Imagine someone who hadn't leaned about causation, who were oblivious to the concept of cause and effect. Would they be able to survive in a world where things happen, where future situations are determined by past events. Suppose there was someone who treated the law of causation as optional, who turned a blind eye to the fact that present acts have future consequences. Why would they eat, why would they drink, why would they move out of the path of a speeding truck, why would they study, why would they do anything, why wouldn't they just curl up in a corner of the room.
I would suggest that such people would quickly die out, to be inevitably replaced by those well aware that present acts do have future consequences.
After life's 3.5 billion years of evolution in synergy with the unforgiving harshness of the world it has been born into, something as important to survival as knowing that present acts do lead to future consequences will become built into the genetic structure of the brain, meaning that within the aeons of time life has survived on a harsh planet, knowledge that present acts do lead to future consequences will become an instinctive part of human nature.
As with other features of the human animal, an instinctive feel for causation will be no different to other things we feel, such as pain and the colour red.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18490395/
This is basic stuff, I'm not wasting any more time on this.
Well, to start with I guess some basics must be accepted as fact, there are two concepts of reality, apparent reality which is our everyday reality, and that of ultimate reality; which is a place/ a field of unmanifested energies, a place of no things. If you understand and agree with Spinoza's explanation of how we come to know the physical world through the alteration the physical world makes to our biology or bodies, then we are on the same page. Spinoza was a seventeenth-century philosopher and believed that appearance was reality. Modern science, however, tells us that matter is not made of matter and that all is energy. So, it is just a matter of updating Spinoza's conclusions.
The basic substance/god according to Spinoza is that which generates everything, today we have to assume it to be energy itself. So, it is energy processed through biological processes that give us objects/apparent reality. The conclusion I have come to is that objects are biologically dependent, in the sense that energies around us play us like their instrument. The melody it plays upon us is apparent reality, but only the subject consciousness can hear this melody. The subject consciousness is itself an energy form. With such speculation it would not be impossible to think, that there may be other energy forms out there of a different nature; having their own apparent reality utterly unaware of a multitude of other differing energy forms surrounding them.
I don't know about that. Energy isn't actually a thing, per se. Awesome video on that:
Quoting boagie
I do agree with this. I wonder if it's a built in concept, stemming from understanding what it means to be wrong or mistaken.
Actually, that is the essential point, energy is not an object/thing, and indeed without energy being processed through biological processes there would be no thing/object. I shall watch your video; will this show me the error of my ways?
I'm not attacking you. Just discussing stuff. I'm open to your point of view, truly. I think the video just explains that energy is not an object, so you probably already know that. :smile:
Sorry Frank, it is easy to misinterpret in this medium. My apology, if I offended.
Not at all. It's very easy to get defensive around these parts. Some of the participants are not here to discuss. They just want to dominate and be done with it. :yikes:
The story from evolution to concept isn't understood. But, even more, I agree with your first sentence, and note that people unable to figure out how things work do in fact die -- that's why we have to take care of our children for so long. It takes forever for them to develop, relative to many other species. It's a massive undertaking to watch over our kind as they adjust and learn the world.
My scenario pointed out that the philosophers have come up with at least three distinct theories of cause, rather than a total absence of the notion of cause -- giving me reason to doubt that cause is innate (else wouldn't they have come up with the same theories?).
I'd say the reason people learn this notion so often has more to do with our environment than it does with ourselves. That is, it's real.
But that substrate thing? Naw.
Though we do know that after 3.5 billion years of life's evolution, the concepts in the human mind are more complex that the concepts in the mind of the earliest bacteria.
Quoting Moliere
Ten philosophers expert in the same field will have ten different theories. As Searle said:
"I realize that the great geniuses of our tradition were vastly better philosophers than any of us alive and that they created the framework within which we work. But it seems to me they made horrendous mistakes."
Quoting Moliere
Then what has been the point of 3.5 billion years of evolution if an instinctive feel for causality is not part of the structure of the human brain.
But the stuff that's constructed by the brain's processing isn't stuff that's in or on the apple. And I mean that in a very real, physical sense. My brain isn't the apple. They are located at separate points in space, composed of separate pieces of matter (and energy). So at the very least you should accept that the word "colour" when referring to the stuff constructed by the brain's processing means something different to the word "colour" when referring to some property of the apple.
Perhaps you might argue that even if the stuff constructed by the brain is a different token to the stuff in or on the apple, they are of the same type? But then we should be able to measure the apple and measure my brain and find the same type of physical stuff going on. But that's certainly not the case. When we measure the apple we find that it reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm, but when we measure my brain we don't find that it reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm.
And that's why I've said before that there's an element of equivocation in the direct realist's argument. That we might use the same word to refer to both cause and effect isn't that they are the same thing. Colour experience is one thing, and apples reflecting light is a different thing entirely.
This is the illusion of experience (and in particular sight), and is I believe the driving force behind direct realism. It seems as if external world objects are present in my conscious experience, but our scientific understanding of the world and consciousness (as much as we do understand it) shows that this isnt the case.
We might nonetheless want to say that the experience is of external world objects, but then what do we even mean by this? What is the word of doing here? What does it mean to say that the painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, or that Im talking about my parents? Its certainly an interesting question to consider, but I wonder if it actually has anything to do with the epistemological problem of perception. It seems to be an unrelated issue of semantics that isnt prima facie incompatible with indirect realist theories. The painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, and yet the painting is made of paint and canvas, which are not features of Lisa del Giocondo herself. And so it could be that the experience is of an apple, and yet the experience is made of something like brain activity or sense data or rational inferences, none of which are features of the apple itself.
"Like public, social cases of representation such as writing or mapmaking, intentional states such as beliefs have truth-value; they entail or imply other beliefs; they are (it seems) composed of concepts and depend for their truth on a match between their internal structures and the way the world is; and so it is natural to regard their aboutness as a matter of mental referring or designation. Sellars (1956, 1967) and Fodor (1975) argue that intentional states are states of a subject that have semantical properties, and the existent-or-nonexistent states of affairs that are their objects are just representational contents." SEP
So some philosophers will say that intentionality is essentially a kind of representation, semantic in character like the hard copy of a novel represents a story. If we focus on the "mention" part of use-mention, we're focusing on the form of our representing activity. If we focus on the "use" part, we mean the thing being represented.
The article goes on to discuss whether qualitative states (like redness) are representations in this sense or not. If you're interested, we could do a reading of this article.
True.
But then we can point to the different notions of causality in the sciences. And we can contrast those notions of cause with notions of causality which historians use.
It's not just the philosophers who generate a multitude of theories of causation. I mention them first because they have my highest respect with regards to causality -- if they can't figure it out then I feel justified in saying causality is multifarious, only partially known, and so not innate.
Quoting RussellA
That's interesting.
I wouldn't say I know that, but it's interesting to attribute minds to bacteria. Would they have the concept of causality?
Also it's interesting to think about concepts in terms of complexity. How would the complexity of a concept be established?
Still -- we just don't know enough about the relationship between human biology and human psychology to be able to say our belief in causality is an evolutionary phenomenon. Cultural selection doesn't behave along the same lines as natural selection, and I'd say that it's our culture which gives us our mental background, that teaches us about the world, that shapes our psychology in a specific instance (a specific, rather than general psychology).
A very easy way to see how these are different is to note how our species is still alive, but cultures have died.
Quoting RussellA
I'm not sure how to answer this -- evolution doesn't have a point, does it?
Evolution works at the level of a species. While we are members of that species, we are not the species. Species don't have concepts, but individual humans do. And depending on how we use "causality" then various species also have a notion of causality or don't as the case may be. But it'd still only apply to individuals of a species, rather than the species as a whole. It's a mereological thing -- the whole doesn't have concepts, and evolution is a theory about the whole, not its parts.
(EDIT: Regarding wholes/parts -- of course biologists study individual animal psychologies, and such, too -- that's not what I mean. Just that we can't make the inference from the general theory of speciation to concepts which a species must have to survive)
Direct Realism holds that perception is a direct awareness of objects and events existing in the mind, and a direct awareness of objects and events existing in a mind-independent world.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist would agree that it is only through our senses that we know the mind-independent world.
The Direct Realist would need to explain the circular problem as to how on the one hand we can have direct knowledge of things as they exist independently of our sensations about them in a mind-independent world yet on the other hand we cannot have knowledge of these things independently of our senses.
Is it any more complicated that for every effect there is a cause.
Quoting Moliere
They might well have. The New Scientist article Why microbes are smarter than you thought discusses communication, decision-making, city living, accelerated mutation, navigation, learning and memory.
Quoting Moliere
Not in a teleological sense. Sean Carroll in his lecture The Big Picture: From the Big Bang to the Meaning of Life touches on evolution and causality.
Well, yes.
One thing that cause and effect naturally invokes is time -- and the way scientists, philosophers, and historians treat time varies greatly.
Then you have to have a theory of cause and effect which is usually to say they are events, and effects are those which come after causes. But what is an event? Well, that depends on the area of study -- an event in history won't be the same as an event in an ELISA experiment won't be the same thing as an event in phenomenology.
Then you have to have some kind of theory of the relationship between events. It can't just be any old event that happens to follow another one -- otherwise the rooster crowing in the morning would cause the sun to rise, to use a more Humean example of causation.
Given the complexity of cause I think the summation that every event must have a cause, or for every effect there is a cause is something of a simplification of a very difficult concept or feature of reality to untangle. In fact, I don't think it can be untangled -- I think it's more correct to view it as a multifarious entity.
But, let's put this to the side. It's a bit off the beaten path, though it looked at first like it might be promising with respect to in/direct realism since causation is a little different from color and shape and what have you. In TPF discussions I'll stick with anti-realist Direct Realist -- it seems to fit, given what's been said.
This seems a completely unreasonable strawman of the direct realist position. It is that we are detecting a property of the external object, not that we actually possess a copy of that same property in our own brain.
Direct realism is simply saying that we observe properties of the external world. That 'red' is a label given to a property in the external world and when we correctly see red, it is that we are detecting that property.
What does it mean to correctly see that property? I don't think it correct that 500nm light looks the way it does to us. I don't think it correct that 500.5nm light looks exactly the same. I don't think it correct that 400nm light looks different. I don't think it correct that 1nm light doesn't look like anything. It just happens to be that, given our physiology, things look the way they do (or don't look like anything).
And its not incorrect that things look different to something with a different physiology, e.g. the colour blind or the human tetrachromat or animals.
Quoting Isaac
What does detect mean? If it just means responds to then it isnt inconsistent with indirect realism.
And phenomenological direct (naive) realism says something exactly like this. They dont just say that we respond to external world objects. They say that external world objects are as they are seen, e.g. that the colour property in the experience is the colour property of the apple. And they dont just say that a copy of the property is in the experience, but that the exact token instance of the property is in the experience. Thats what they mean by experience being direct. If it were a copy then it would be representative realism, i.e. indirect realism.
That's like saying you are an Atheist Christian, or a vegan carnivore.
Quoting Moliere
The Indirect and Direct Realist would agree that perception is a direct awareness of properties existing in the mind, such as the direct perception of the colour red.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist would agree that it is only through our senses that we know the external world.
Science tells us that the object in the external world causing our perception of the colour red has a wavelength of 700nm.
The Indirect Realist argues that the properties existing in our mind, the colour red, are different to the properties of the object in the external world that caused them, a wavelength of 700nm
The Direct Realist argues that the properties existing in our mind, the colour red, are the same as the properties of the object in the external world that caused them, the colour red.
In effect, the Direct Realist is arguing that the properties of an effect at a later time are the same as the properties of its cause at an earlier time.
The Direct Realist is arguing that the properties of an effect are the same as the properties of its cause
But we know this is not the case, When getting a headache from looking at a bright light, we know that bright lights are not in themselves headaches. When glass breaks from being hit by a stone, we know that stones in themselves are not breaking glass. When enjoying reading a book, we know that books in themselves are not enjoyment.
The Direct Realist's position that the properties of an effect are the same as the properties of its cause cannot be justified.
Well -- maybe we need new terms then. Perhaps the way these have been distinguished isn't true of what people believe. What I've been calling a set-up. Not that set-ups are bad -- they help us to make distinctions and try to understand ourselves and others in relation to one another. Just that they can be made so clear that they no longer represent anything that people believe.
When it comes to direct vs indirect realism, sometimes discussions focus on direct/indirect (I tend to be more interested in that), and other times on realism/anti-realism (@Banno seems to focus on that). This is why I tend to talk about direct perception rather than, or more often than, direct realism. It means I can talk about embodiment, affordances, and so on, without worrying too much about ultimate reality or mind-independence, which are bothersome topics.
Perhaps the term "Direct Realism" should be thought of as a name rather than a description, in the same way that "Transcendental Idealism" is neither transcendental nor idealism.
Other names that incorrectly appear to be descriptions are: Red Panda, white chocolate, titmouse, gravy train, buffalo wing, cat burglar, butterfly, coat of arms, lady bug, Asian flu, Chinese checkers, Arabic numerals, the Fibonacci sequence, the Pythagorean theorem , koala bears, king crabs, glow-worms, fireflies, horned toad, slow worms, starfish, jellyfish, velvet ants, strawberries, peanuts, Panama hats, English horns, Jerusalem artichokes, Bombay duck, The Isle of Dogs, catgut and funny bone.
I could then say that yesterday I was thinking about the meaning of Direct Realism whilst eating several spicy buffalo wings.
Mind-independence and indirectness, as concepts, have so far been my target as bothersome notions -- the former because we don't know enough about minds to know either way, and the latter because it seems to posit some kind of ultimate reality that we are approximating towards which is similar to the problem of mind-independence in that since it cannot be known we cannot know we are approximating towards that reality, and therefore we have no reason to claim our knowledge has any relation at all to that notion. It functions like a thing-in-itself.
Quoting Jamal
That makes sense. I'm thinking in terms of "What is real?" throughout, and trying to see if I could pick up a position in this endless debate. It's not one I commonly jump into anymore, because my notions of metaphysics and reality, as I've demonstrated so far, aren't really congruent to the discussion most of the time but I thought I'd give it a try anyways.
Hrm, it's not the name though it's what you set out for the name -- in relation to causation no direct realist would say "we can see causal chains all the way back" because we are situated in time. Like I said before, cause-and-effect relies upon a notion of time. Even more, cause-and-effect cannot be determined in the abstract -- the billiard balls can have two or more possible prior states within the game of billiards. We already know the objects and how they behave: that is, events have entities in them, and entities behave in different ways. I'm not so sure about properties and all the rest. Why would there be properties? Aren't these just predicates?
Rather than saying a direct realist would hold that we see reality as it is, that the substrate is real and we directly perceive it, I'd say that the direct realist states that there's nothing indirect. That doesn't mean that upon looking at billiard balls a direct realist believes they'll see the causal chain all the way back. We are still situated in time, after all -- which is why cause-and-effect necessarily requires a notion of time, and events require entities -- there's a lot already assumed in the discussion that's not really demonstrable as much as needed to even talk
I don't think that we can talk about a "faulty" representation. To do that we must know what the "correct" representation --in fact, absolute reality-- is, which we can't. Moreover, that would consist a self-contradition, since if we could see the world "as it is" then we wouldn't talk about a "faulty" representation. :smile:
Therfore, if the person on the left in the image believes that he sees the world directly "as it is", he deludes himself. If we could do that, then we would all have the same perceptions, cognitions and reality. Which evidently is not the case.
So, "faulty" or not, an indirect perception of the world is all the reality we can have. A subjective one. But this does not mean that the external world is mind-dependent. Only idealists believe that.
From the 3 main systems/theories of perception --direct realism, indirect realism and idealism-- I believe indirect realism is the one that has more advantages, or, if you prefer, the less disadvantages or "problems". In fact, it is said that it has a single problem: skepticism, i.e. denying that knowledge (through perception) and even rational belief is possible. But this is much better than the problem of illusion that is involved in the other two theories. Because claiming that we perceive the world directly as it is (in the first case) or that the worls is mind-dependendent (in the second case) are nothing else than illusions.
Is it a problem that we only know about black holes by observing the effect they have on light and matter?
I admire the way youve combined topics that I primitively tend to compartmentalize.
:up:
To eat the red berry and not get sick because it's ripe.
Quoting Michael
It is. That's why those two conditions are...conditions. We try to help colour-blind people see properly, we don't try to help the rest of the world lose that ability.
In tetrachromat animals, they have a form of life in which errors will accrue from failures to see what they see. We don't.
Quoting Michael
Yes it is, because indirect realism posits this 'representation' of the object (which we have no cause to consider even exists) to which we respond. Direct realism is about eliminating that representation. Both involve responding to the object. Indirect realism seems to want to build this 'representation' out of it first and yet doesn't seem to have cause to.
Quoting Michael
You'll have to quote a direct realist saying such a ludicrous thing for me to believe this isn't just a straw man.
:up: :100:
So someone who doesn't eat the red berry can't see the red berry (correctly)?
I disagree with this. I don't need to eat something to see it. I'm asking you to explain what it means to see something's colour correctly. That has nothing to do with any subsequent activity.
All you seem to be saying is that if someone sees something correctly then they will do this. I'm asking you to make sense of the antecedent.
Quoting Isaac
You appeared to accept this in the case of pain. Putting my hand in the fire causes pain. That pain is not a property of the fire, but an inner, physiological state. It is because of that pain that I am made aware of the fire and respond accordingly, pulling my hand away. The person with something like congenital insensitivity to pain doesn't feel pain when putting their hand in the fire and so is less likely to, or at least slower to, react.
Why are you unwilling to extend this principle to other sense modalities such as smell, taste, or sight? Do you think that there's some fundamental difference between nociception and photoreception (beyond the trivial case of it being a different sense receptor responding to a different stimulus)?
Quoting Isaac
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#NaiRea
This is the position that indirect realists argue against. Instances of external world properties do not "manifest" in experience. It is just the case that external world properties are causally responsible for experience, and the qualities and properties of this experience are qualities and properties of the experience, not of the external world stimulus.
Our modern scientific understanding of the world, along with the arguments from hallucination and illusion, have shown that the naive realist conception of colour (and other) experience as described above is untenable.
The subsequent argument over whether or not we should describe perception as "seeing representations" or "seeing the external world stimulus" is an irrelevant issue of semantics. It's like arguing over whether we feel pain or feel the fire. These are just different, equally valid, ways of speaking that mean slightly different things with an emphasis on one aspect of perception or another.
Predicates are distinct from properties. Predicates are linguistic whilst properties are extralinguistic. Predicates are tied to particular languages, in that schwarz is tied to German as black is tied to English, but the property black is tied to neither. There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties whether or not there are any languages or language-users.
To my understanding, there are two types of Direct Realism, Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) and Semantic Direct Realism (SDR). PDR is an direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. SDR is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. As PDR is extralinguistic and SDR is linguistic, properties exist in PDR whilst predicates exist in SDR.
I can perceive that an apple has the property of greenness even if I don't know the name of that particular shade of green, but I need the predicates within language in order to say that "the apple is green".
Quoting Moliere
But that is exactly what the Direct Realists is saying. The Direct Realist is saying that they directly know the apple, not just how the apple seems, even though there is a causal chain through time from the apple to our perception of the apple.
The Direct Realist holds a contradictory position. First, that they cannot see through causal chains backwards through time and second that they can directly see the prior cause of a perception.
Quoting Moliere
In the absence of a Direct Realist arguing their case, I would have thought that your representation is the opposite of what a Direct Realist believes, in that it is surely the case that the Direct Realist believes that "we see reality as it is, that the substrate is real and we directly perceive it".
No.
Quoting Michael
Simply declaring it doesn't have anything to do with subsequent activity is begging the question. I'm claiming it does. I'm saying that, since we don't have any locus for a 'representation' of red (and yet 'red is meaningful, as in the ripe berry), our best theory is that it is our response that constitutes 'red' (our reaching for the word, our eating the ripe berry, our categorising according to our culture's rules...), and that absent of any of these responses, there's no 'seeing red' going on at all.
You counter that you think you see red without any response at all, and that because you think it, it must be true.
I counter that we don't have an apparent mechanism, nor locus for such a thing and looking at the way the brain works doesn't seem to allow that (it seems to go straight from modelling aspects (likes shade and edge) to responses (like speech and endocrine system reactions).
... and so we go round in circles.
Quoting Michael
Yes. Pain, is a property of a body. Our bodies are in a state of pain (or not, if we have incorrectly identified it). It's not a property of a fire under any system.
Red is a property of a berry. Berries are red. Fires aren't in pain so there's no issue there to contend with, you're not comparing like with like.
In each case we're predicting the state of some external node and responding either to refine that prediction or alter the state of that node.
Quoting Michael
None of which says that our brains are literally coloured - that the property in the object must be manifest in the brain.
Quoting Michael
They really haven't, but my attempts to show that have come to naught if you're just back here again.
The brain does not always predict the stet of external nodes correctly. That doesn't mean it does not attempt to do so, nor does it mean we can't ascribe the properties we predict to those external nodes. We are just sometimes wrong.
So it's a crucial issue of semantics. Should the psychology admit internal representations, as well as external representations and internal brain shivers?
I think its a non-issue. I feel pain. I feel the fire. Both are correct ways of talking. The painting is made of paint. The painting is of a woman. Both are correct ways of talking. I speak into my phones microphone. I talk to my parents over the phone. Both are correct ways of talking.
And I've mentioned before that I don't really like the word "representation". Pain isn't a representation of fire, it's just a consequence of that kind of stimulation. The same with smells and tastes and images.
How does the Direct Realist explain, given that all their knowledge of the world external to their senses comes through their senses, how the perceiver knows that one perception is not direct, eg, pain, but another perception is direct, eg, the colour red ?
I can see without any overt response recognisable by other people who might be around. I am quite capable of sitting still, saying nothing, and seeing the objects in front of me. It just isnt the case that Im blind, or that nothing I see is coloured, unless I do or say something.
If you can't accept this then our fundamental viewpoints are so diametrically opposed that we're never going to agree.
Then whats this and this?
I didn't limit the description to overt responses.
Quoting Michael
They are both parts of the brain typically responding to external stimuli and outputting responses related to colour. I can absolutely assure you 100% that none of those regions merely sit in some 'state' that equates to an 'experience of red'. Every single region, every neuron, is just firing or not, each passing a signal on or not. No where is there a state of affairs which some other part of the brain can detect as being 'an experience of red'.
:up:
Then what covert response counts as seeing red? Perhaps the firing of certain neurons?
Quoting Isaac
Im not suggesting that. Im suggesting that seeing red just is the firing of certain neurons as a response to external stimulation, comparable to feeling pain just being the firing of certain neurons as a response to external stimulation.
I might be more in the direct realist camp, so I'll try to answer this. We need not assume in the first place that we are trapped behind a wall of sensations. This methodological solipsism is unjustified, in my view. Concepts are public. They exists within a system of norms for their application. This is why bots can talk sensibly about pain and color. How long, if not already, will it be impossible to sort flesh from silicon in a text conversation ? They have internalized the norms of concept application by reading more than any human has ever been able too. There is structure in the record of what we've said.
Just because we need our eyes to see doesn't mean that we are trapped behind them, looking at a screen. We are also not down in a submarine, peeking through a periscope. The 'I' that makes claims is not some tiny man in the pineal gland but rather a 'virtual', normative entity in a social space.
[quote = Brandom]
Here is perhaps Kants deepest and most original idea, the axis around which I see all of his thought as revolving. What distinguishes judging and intentional doing from the activities of non-sapient creatures is not that they involve some special sort of mental processes, but that they are things knowers and agents are in a distinctive way responsible for. Judging and acting involve commitments. They are endorsements, exercises of authority. Responsibility, commitment, endorsement, authoritythese are all normative notions. Judgments and actions make knowers and agents liable to characteristic kinds of normative assessment. Kants most basic idea is that minded creatures are to be distinguished from un-minded ones not by a matter-of-fact ontological distinction (the presence of mind-stuff), but by a normative deontological one. This is his normative characterization of the mental.
...
This master idea has some of Kants most characteristic innovations as relatively immediate consequences. The logical tradition that understood judging as predicating did so as part of an order of semantic explanation that starts with concepts or terms, particular and general, advances on that basis to an understanding of judgements (judgeables) as applications of general to particular terms, and builds on that basis an account of inferences or consequences, construed syllogistically in terms of the sort of predication or classification exhibited by the judgments that appear as premises and conclusions. In a radical break with this tradition, Kant takes the whole judgment to be the conceptually and explanatorily basic unit at once of meaning, cognition, awareness, and experience. Concepts and their contents are to be understood only in terms of the contribution they make to judgments: concepts are functions of judgment. Kant adopts this semantic order of explanation because judgments are the minimal units of responsibilitythe smallest semantic items that can express commitments. The semantic primacy of the propositional is a consequence of the central role he accords to the normative significance of our conceptually articulated doings. In Frege this thought shows up as the claim that judgeable contents are the smallest units to which pragmatic force can attach: paradigmatically, assertional force. In the later Wittgenstein, it shows up as the claim that sentences are the smallest linguistic units with which one can make a move in the language game.
[/quote]
So we should think of 'red' and 'pain' as not meaningful in themselves but only as part of claims made by selves conceived as responsible agents with a community that keeps score.
Respectfully, if you are trapped in a subjective perception of the world, how can you so boldly assert that others are in the same position ? How can you see their means of perception ? Is it safe to assume that your logic is valid for others ? Is there just one logic ? Is there even just one world ? How could one check ? Am I possibly just a figment of your imagination ?
My point is that subjectivist assumptions, laudably cautious in their intentions, still end up assuming the world without realizing it. Moreover there is the assumption of similar nervous systems, a universally authoritative logic, a shared space that one can still somehow comment on: "All the reality we can have is a subjective one." How can you use we here ? Why not the more careful and modest "I can only have a subjective perception of the world." But that's just grammar ?
As I said, it's not one single response. It is one of a number which accurately respond to the state of the external node. Anything which doesn't is either wrong or irrelevant.
Quoting Michael
Great. That's a really good, clear point to have as a point of agreement.
Now. When neurons within the nociceptive system fire and produce responses we call 'pain' those responses have effects on, for example, the endocrine system which prepare the body for a response to the trauma that nociceptive system has estimated exists. If it makes a mistake, then the pain response was an error, it will attempt to correct that error. This model fits with the general evolutionary model of how the features of the brain evolved - response to environmental stimuli to reduce surprise, to better ensure self-sustainment of the information system.
'Pain' is a term we use for the interocepted detection of one of four main types of response to stimuli, it's detected post hoc (things like heart rate, cytokine release, even external visual and auditory stimuli). It's purpose is obvious to avoid the noxious element at the nociceptor dendrite.
To suggest that colour is like this would require;
a) the V4 and V01 regions release endocrine responses which prime other cells to propagate state changes (they don't)
b) there to be a separate system of interoceptive neurons which detect the state of the V4 and V01 regions other than the ventral and dorsal streams of neural network connections which constitute the response to colour (there isn't)
c) there to be some 'preparatory state' response to a ripe berry (as opposed to an unripe one) other than the stimulation of the regions involved in the response to the estimated ripeness of the berry (again, there isn't)
d) there to be some evolutionary advantage to having such a state other than the actual ventral stream response to identifying the ripe berry (feel free to suggest one - evolutionary theory is just storytelling)
Colour detection is not like pain. The output of the V4 and V01 regions goes directly into systems which model the environment and determine a response to it. The response of those regions to their respective stimuli is absolutely no different in character to the response of earlier regions detecting edge, or light intensity. Nor later regions assigning object definitions and associations. They are all trying to estimate the state of some external node. To exactly the same extent that we can say that external node is 'square' we can say it is 'green'. Both are just ways of describing our estimating its state in ways which dictate appropriate responses.
Whats the actual physics of this? What mechanical process counts as estimating external states? Obviously you dont believe in anything like an immaterial mind, so I assume that you believe that everything is a physical event?
I would say that estimating external states is itself just the firing of certain neurons.
So what all perception reduces to is an external stimulus influencing sense receptors which in turn trigger the firing of certain neurons and then sometimes a bodily response. That is perception at its most fundamental.
But given the mostly deterministic nature of such physical processes (I say mostly because at the quantum scale it is stochastic) it doesnt make much sense to describe the firing of certain neurons or its response as being correct or incorrect. One can only say that its adaptive or maladaptive. But with this it really makes no sense to talk about seeing the world as it is. Theres just neurons firing in a useful way, and its not a given that theres just one useful way for neurons to fire in any given situation.
Cute. New one on me.
I felt the thread needed more visual illusions.
It's a way of speaking. I'm sure you have met it many times in discussions.
I could never claim or believe that everyone else is "in the same position". That would be just absurd.
Whatever one states in a philosophic discussion is an opinion.
It is very obvious that no one can speak for everyone.
As for what you describe as "boldly", it's just certaintly. And certainty is also subjective.
The shadows wrong.
Wait a sec ! I wasn't calling a foul. I was asking epistemologically. I was pointing out what I thought was an incoherence in your position. We are just 'playing poker' here. It's all in the pursuit of being less wrong. No personal bad feels intended.
It's more of a reflection than a shadow. Did you notice that it reverses direction depending on how you look at it? Sometimes looking at the feet or below the picture will make it change direction. If you're on a cell phone try turning the cell phone a few degrees to the left or right. That'll do it.
Cool. I was hoping someone would mention looking at the shadow to switch the rotation. Doesnt happen all the time, but often enough. Could just blink, too, like that hollow cube that switches orientation.
Might be me, but reflection or shadow, I cant get it to mesh with the movement.
Fun anyway, so, thanks for that.
I think you are maybe loading your own presuppositions on to the position. Here is a minimal versino : We can directly perceive ordinary objects. To me the point here is that we are not behind a screen. We don't see an image of the apple. We just see the apple. Note that direct realism does not forbid being mistaken. 'I thought that shadow was a possum for a moment !' The point is that one is talking about the world, always our world, in our language. And our language is 'made of' our norms for applying concepts. The 'We' is tacit in the use of that old tribal sign 'I.'
What tempts people to talk as if they see only images ? I suspect the scientific image is being taken as a deeper truer reality than the lifeworld it depends on in order to make sense in the first place. Once this mistake is made, people say things like 'color isn't real.' The internal image (the hidden states of the ghost) becomes not only the given but all that is given in an orgy of methodological solipsism which takes the norms of rational concept use for granted, as if planted in this solipsist by a friendly god.
For the direct realist, the self is not a submarine captain peering through a periscope. It is a member of a community with norms for evaluating and making claims. 'Red' gets its meaning from the inferential relationships between assertions, just as a bishop gets its meaning in the context of trying to checkmate the opposing king. I say zoom out and do not ignore that norms of rationality that every philosopher depends on as philosopher. Don't think of individual concepts as magic labels. Put them in sentences. Put sentences into sets of sentences that a person uses to tell a coherent story. This is after all what we are already doing.
And vice versa.
Not so sure. 'I' seems to be the sign for a 'virtual' bearer of social responsibility, a 'player' on the 'stage,' which is associated with a particular living body. It exists within the tradition at the root perhaps (any exceptions?) all traditions, that of the unified voice, the ego, the individual.A body learns to be an 'I' [singular]. One ghost per machine.
I sense some hatred of the ego here. What's that related to?
I'm sorry, doctor, but that's not it. I think our softwhere is as adversarial as it is cooperative, possibly because we evolved at the level of the tribe (which had other tribes to worry about.) I don't stress the we for sentimental reasons. I started like most with the default 'screen' metaphor of Hume, Locke, Kant, ... but I kept thinking and reading and slowly grasped the deep confusion in such positions, which was made especially explicit in the early 20th century. For the most part I paraphrase well known results, though I reach for fresh metaphors, trying to pass on unexploited representatives from the same blurry equivalence class.
I do understand of course that claims about the we are attributed to the I that makes them. This is as common as any discussion about the rules of a situation.
Do you doubt that what appears real to us, what can appear real to us, is not (or at least not necessarily or not the whole of) what is real per se? Of course the latter is not something we could ever discover, but is just a logical distinction between what appears to us and what is independently of us. I'd say it is of importance, because it reminds us that life is, fundamentally, a mystery. So I don't count it as a "little story" but as a realization that is central to human life.
Yes it does: introspection is understood to be 'seeing into' the body/mind in order to notice what bodily feelings or thoughts seem to be present. It's commonplace and most everyone knows how to do it.
It's the modelling assumption of the aggregated function of our nervous system, so I suppose the 'physics' would be action potentials, ion channels and the electromagnetic forces of neurotransmitters at synapse vesicles?
Quoting Michael
Plus neurotransmitters, but yes.
Quoting Michael
Seems so. When we talk about the biology of it. I don't believe that much of what we speak about correctly reduces to biology. Much of what we say is functional rather than representative, so many things we talk about have no proper reference in empirical science. If you want to bring science into something like perception, however, it's a mistake to do so piecemeal. If we're talking about the science of perception, then this description is, I believe, the most persuasive model and is certainly the leading one right now.
Quoting Michael
I don't agree. The terms we use are obviously all loaded with the meanings from where we've borrowed them (we don't have terminology specifically designed to describe this kind of predictive network). Adaptive and maladaptive are loaded too, they suggest a teleology to evolution which is certainly not present in the nervous system. When we make a choice and it turns out well for us, we call it 'correct', I'm just seconding that term for the actions of the nervous system in predicting appropriate responses. I'm not wedded to the terminology though. Technically, I tend to refer to is as reducing surprise (since 'surprise' here has a technical meaning in the Bayes optimisation equations used to describe the function of these systems), but any term would do.
Quoting Michael
Absolutely. Again, it's a modelling assumption, but an important one and one which is supported by the theoretical framework...
Simply put, for an system to have some self identity requires it oppose entropic forces (Newton's third law). Since opposing entropic forces requires information about the direction and momentum of such a force a system needs to be able to detect those properties in order to sustain itself against entropy. Since we do sustain ourselves against entropy, it follows that we must actually be detecting the direction and momentum of otherwise entropic forces (or, Newton's laws are wrong).
As such it's a good working assumption (based on what we know of physics and systems dynamics) that any system such as ours will need to be at least moderately successful at actually identifying the state of external nodes since it is their actual state against which gradient our internal probability distributions must climb to maintain their highly improbable state of being self-consistent.
No problem. No offence taken.
But ... what exactly is the inchoherence in my position?
Quoting plaque flag
Well, if you feel like betting on your positions and beliefs ...
But keep in mind that there are no winners here. You can only bet with yourself. :smile:
No, it's that "we" means a group of individuals. Yes, the ego is an idea. It's a kind of construction. Monotheistic divinity reinforces the primacy of the ego. The burning bush told Moses that its name was "I am.". Genesis 3:13.
However you come to realize that the ego is a kind of fixture of the mind, it's startling, yes. Where does it leave you though? For me, the landing place is Schopenhauer.
As an Indirect Realist, I agree with everything you wrote in your post. It is interesting that you used Kant, in today's terms an Indirect Realist, to support your case.
Kant discussed "Existence", in that there are things-in-themselves, "Humility", in that we know nothing of things-in-themselves and "Affectation", in that things -in-themselves causally affect us. Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself is not that of a Direct Realist.
Quoting plaque flag
Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy in para 293 of Philosophical Investigations may be used as an argument against Direct Realism. The Direct Realist would argue that if two people are looking at the same object in the world, as both will be perceiving the same object in the world immediately and directly, their private mental images must be the same, meaning that each will know the others private sensations. However, this wouldn't agree with Wittgenstein's para 272 that each of us has private experiences not known by others.
Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy also explains how a public language is possible, even though our private experiences are unknown to others. In a public language, our private experiences, as with the beetle, drop out of consideration.
I assume that both the Indirect and Direct Realist would agree:
1) All our information about things external to our senses comes through our senses.
2) We directly perceive things this side of our senses, such as apples, trees, mountains, etc.
3) Science tells us that the properties of things the other side of our senses, such as wavelength, are different to the properties this side of our senses, such as the electrical signal that travels up the optic nerve to the brain.
4) Even though we each have private experiences, we can talk about these private experiences using a public language, allowing us to live in social communities.
The Indirect Realist would argue that the world outside our senses is different to the world we perceive this side of our senses. The Direct Realist would argue that not only is the world outside our senses the same as the world we perceive this side of our senses but also that we directly know the world outside our senses.
The question for the Direct Realist is how is it possible to know that the world outside our senses is the same as the world we perceive this side of our senses, when science tells us that what is on the other side of our senses is different to what is this side of our senses.
Is it really so strange ? Philosophy can even be framed as a series of creative misreadings or violent appropriations of influences.
That sounds right enough, and I think that description of our situation doesn't work. So Hegel fixed Kant and offered a sophisticated kind of direct realism. I suggest Brandom's appropriation of Hegel as a version of the software for today's busy consumer.
No, sir, no. That's how someone trapped in exactly the metaphorics being criticized is almost forced to misunderstand direct realism.
Abandon all hope ye who [s]enter here[/s] take private mental images seriously ! That way [s]madness[/s] endless confusion lies.
My direct realism rejects as step one this idea of the private mental image. The self exists in a social space of reasons. It is a discursive convention. It is not a screen or an imp behind a screen in the pineal gland.
Here's where, in my opinion, the confusion lies. The scientific image only makes sense within an encompassing lifeworld including a space of reasons. Atoms are no more real than tables. Entities in the scientific image are only intelligible in terms of medium size dry goods and epistemological norms. Clearly atoms don't work as the postulated infinitely hidden Really Real. There is no need to decide that color is unreal because it is correlated with wavelengths, etc. Science is amazing, but scientistic metaphysics is not so great. And one can make this point as an atheist who just likes coherent and careful descriptions of our situation. It's not religious sentimentality, as others (if not you) might think.
:up:
Yes. So the fun is the making explicit of what this ego is. I agree that monotheism is relevant here. I'd say that we should also think in terms of goteam tribal identification. Think of the brutal joy and terror of war where men lose their individuality, jumping on a grenades for their boys. Schopenhauer is, as you say, relevant just here. He saw virtue in terms of piercing the illusion of individuality. I tend to naturalize my Schopenhauer and think of Darwin. We've evolved to readily die for our children. We can also die for flags as symbols of the chosen or elevated people (incarnations of Freedom or Rationality, etc.)
Presumably more intelligent and creative (and aggressive?) groups dominate other groups in the long run, which would seem to require a relatively more intense but still controlled expression of individuality. We might think of this as a deep bench when it comes to deciders. Adversarial discussions are like war simulations, safer than finding out the hard way that an idea sucks. This is seemingly analogous in evolutionary terms to a species 'investing' in the feeding of a larger brain. Because the tribe as a whole needs a coherent policy, individual candidate deciders need coherent policies. This is one possible explanation for coherence norms. I can disagree with you, but I can't (as a self) disagree with myself. In fact we end up doing so, so the self is like an infinite task of becoming more coherent.
:up:
I agree. It's an exciting idea. I do think the shock wears off and one becomes interested in researching the consequences of this dropped assumption. If the self is a function of language, then we look into this curious 'house of being.' We can see around Cartesian assumptions of the self as that which is most inexorably given, along with its menagerie of Private Images and Ineffable Pains, etc.
Sure. You can't really dispense with the self though. Unless you want to become a homeless lunatic living under a bridge babbling and being hit in the head by rocks thrown by kids.
:up:
Of course. And I'm an ambitious fucker. I'm trying to drop some fresh memes. I'm not preaching against the softwhere but making it a theme within which to show off and gather prestige coins.
The Jews have the oldest known living culture. Opinions vary about what their secret might be.
Why?
To me it makes sense that we'd evolve to seek status to win mates, secure our offspring's future, etc. Darwin is my boy. Note that I use my social capital in the real world, not just here. This is a joyful scratching post.
To me a deeper question (which may be a pseudoquestion) is why there was a stage set in the first place on which evolution could happen. I do not begin to count 'god' as an answer, for then I'd have a more complicated beginning to explain.
I love the old testament. I'd guess it's the great memes. Nietzsche praised some of those war stories as superior to those of the Greeks. I remember finding stuff in Kings as a teen boy and getting completely absorbed. Reading the bible wasn't supposed to be so fun.
Less reductively, I see writing as part of reading, as making one strong enough to read properly. To not write is to live without a mirror and trust that one is handsome.
I'll just smile if you are cute enough to ask me why it's nice to be handsome in this metaphor.
True, I used the writings of Searle, a Direct Realist, against Direct Realism.
Quoting plaque flag
Hegel's Absolute Idealism is not at odds with Indirect Realism.
Quoting plaque flag
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist believe in the private mental image, in that in the mind we have private experiences, such as pain, that are impossible to explain to others. The Indirect Realist is not someone who needs to believe in Wittgenstein's private language or solipsism, but does believe that they are part of a social world within which they are able to communicate using a public language.
What distinguishes the Indirect and Direct Realist is the location of this "world". Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that at the least this "world" exists in the mind. The disagreement is whether an identical "world" exists outside the mind.
Quoting plaque flag
The colour red is real in our mind and the wavelength is real outside our mind.
We agree that the colour red this side of our senses is correlated with a wavelength the other side of our senses.
The Indirect Realist believes that the colour red and the wavelength are different. How does the Direct Realist justify that two things which are commonly accepted as being different are in fact the same.
There is debate among modern interpreters over whether Kant is an indirect realist, but it is not concerned with the distinction of objects and things in themselves. The latter is a limit concept concerning artifacts of reason (noumena) that purport to refer to objects about which, in actual fact, nothing can be said. For Kant, the noumenal realm is not reality, since it is merely a product of reason. Rather, reality is that which we know about through experience and science. The clue to this is that reality for Kant is one of the categories of the understanding, thus it can only apply to phenomena.
So the question about Kant's direct or indirect realism is about how he regards spatiotemporal objects as being perceived and how he thinks we can gain knowledge about them, and in this realm--the only one in which direct and indirect realism have any meaning--I'd say he is a direct realist. He explicitly states that we perceive the external world "immediately," and what he calls representations constitute the perception and determination of objects, rather than standing in for them as images or constructions. We have awareness of objects not through anything like an inference from or construction of an internal image, but through an act of synthesis that puts the objects directly before us.
Now, what I'm saying might be seen as tendentiously pedantic (as if I'm desperate to get Kant on my side). And yes, the fact is that Kant does still split the world in two, or at least divide the world into two aspects (phenomena and noumena, appearance and thing-in-itself). And yes, he does use "realism" to refer to claims that we can know things in themselves (transcendental realism, as opposed to empirical realism). But the reason I think it's significant and the reason I tend to jump in and pounce on people about it is that, as in many other areas, I think he had correct intuitions (no pun intended) about perception. Also just because Kant is so much deeper and richer than the thing-in-itself stuff suggests (although I still think he's fundamentally wrong).
Kant is not really concerned about the question of appearance vs reality, because reality, as far as it could logically be open to us, is knowable through direct perception, experience, mathematics, and science.
That one's easy -- pain is tied to the world. :D
Quoting RussellA
So far I've said there are events, relations, time, the surface, entities -- and certainly relied upon the existence of language to say it. Going for a kind of minimalism I try to limit the number of entities and kinds introduced, and this is already a healthy selection of possibles. "Properties" seems to emphasize the visuality of causation and reality, which is a reification and so worth diminishing.
So where you say: "There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties" I would say "There is a real world" -- "out there" in particular is troublesome. Out where? What are we inside of, if not the real world? The imaginary world?
Quoting RussellA
That's interesting.
What if what we directly perceive is not causal chains? It's not like all of reality is composed of causal chains. It's also composed of entities, right? And there are other sorts of relations which exist.
Let's call it "weak Direct Realism" -- for the weak direct realist as long as there is some kind of total world which we have direct access to then Direct Realism holds. Without committing to a particular kind of weak Direct Realism, but just as a for instance: If we directly perceive entities, but we do not directly perceive causal chains, then this is still a form of direct realism. So we might say, in the case of the apple, we have direct access to language, time, entities, and relations -- but not causal chains. We infer causal chains, and because causal chains are real several cultures have inferred causal chains as well -- but upon comparison of the concepts of causal chains we can see that they don't all mean the same thing. So we deny the notion that causal chains are necessary to thinking: rather, while our perception does not have direct access to causal chains, our knowledge does -- and that knowledge is a social product, thereby explaining the differences. (knowledge as being-able)
Quoting RussellA
That's where I was going with my notion of the surface: so there is a case rather than the positions in abstract.
Yes!
Or, at least, this line of thinking is going in that direction.
I don't have it all worked out, of course. I don't have much problem with illusions or total hallucinations being direct perceptions -- they are very clearly direct perceptions, because the perceptive apparatus is perceiving within its bounds as a body within the world in both cases: Like the blind spot in the middle of our vision, just because I don't see the end of my nose doesn't mean I don't see the computer screen, and total hallucinations are almost always explicable, by total number of them, by dreams or drugs.
The really weird case is other minds: direct realism turns the problem of other minds from "How do we know other minds exist?" in the sense that we don't know to the sense that we do know, and that's a bit odd in comparison to our usual intuitions about other minds.
Obviously it takes time to get to know someone, but we do get to know people too.
Well now you had to go add more to it than a distinction between Direct and Indirect Realism. ;) -- in the context of the thread it felt like a small story of no consequence.
I'm not sure I agree that life is fundamentally a mystery. . . . mostly I'd prefer to say "absurd", but that's pretty close in functional terms, too.
But I think I could render life as mysterious whether I were a direct realist or an indirect realist, hence why I thought it was a little story.
The same question. If both pain and the colour red are tied to the world, how does the Direct Realist know that the object of one perception, eg pain, doesn't exist outside the mind, but the object of another perception, eg red, does exist outside the mind.
Quoting Moliere
According to Realism, there is a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. According to Idealism, there isn't a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it.
Quoting Moliere
Neither the Indirect nor Direct Realist when perceiving a red post-box, just from the perception itself, are able to perceive the causal chain going backwards in time. The Indirect Realist accepts this, the Direct Realist doesn't.
Quoting Moliere
In a sense, we can only see the surface, we can only see the red post-box, We cannot directly see the substratum beneath the surface, the thing outside our mind, the other side of our senses, the thing that caused us to see a red post-box.
Pain clearly indicates something about the world -- a small part of the entirity, but the small part that I happen to care about most. It's the "outside of" and "the mind" locutions I'm questioning. I'm not my mind. I don't even know if minds exist. But I am a body, at least, and that includes all the senses -- not just sight. It includes pain. I'm within a world, and sometimes the world causes pain.
Quoting RussellA
Is it the mind's perception? Or a bodies perception?
Quoting RussellA
Right! And the reason, so I'm suggesting, that we cannot see the substratum is that it doesn't exist at all.
But post boxes do.
Rationalists like Leibniz and Descartes would have agreed whole heartedly. The Empiricists would caution that a fair portion of our logic is grounded in absolutely nothing, so let's not depend heavily on that to let us know what the world is. Let's take the fragments of appearance which are available to us and make do without the divinities the Rationalists require in order to assure that we're not all lost in dreams.
It would be difficult to have thoughts without a mind.
You can still have thoughts while your body is paralyzed, though.
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Perhaps you can find those that call themselves 'direct realists' that do this, but to me this is the wrong way to go and misses what's good in 'my' take on direct realism.
Here's Hegel.
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It is natural to suppose that...it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The apprehension seems legitimate...
This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists per se, is in its very nature absurd; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts off the one from the other.
For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it.
Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium.
...
If the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error.
As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge ...it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm
:up:
As I see, the whole shebang about subtratums (the 'Real' beneath 'Appearance' and 'Mentality') is an awkward response to the fact that we be mistaken, say something about the world that we later withdraw. Add in a little scientism that takes the scientific image as an analogy of version of the The Substract (Occulted Real), and you get a stew of something like scientistic mysticism.
I think that's partially true, but also there's the whole Cartesian history up to Russell's neutral monism -- looking for the substance of everything is a question that's part of the tradition so it's sort of a question that keeps coming around due to it being part of the traditional readings.
Yes. But that's part of my amusement / frustration. One inherits a methodical pretense of isolation behind a screen as the given. The self, its language, its logical norms...all of these are taken for granted. Those who seemingly pride themselves on epistemological humility are accidentally up to their shoulders in yesterday's debunked confusions. But I started in no better a place, and I don't pretend to be able to become unthrown, so (for me) it's a matter of more thoroughly appropriating the hermeneutical situation, getting clear on what I'm projecting unwittingly, on what metaphors might be controlling me without me seeing them. In general, it's a question of the contingent being mistaken for the necessary, like a painted wall we don't think to push against and check.
:up:
Quoting plaque flag
I think that's a worthy pursuit. One might even go so far as to say that it's in the vein of knowing yourself. :)
Quoting plaque flag
Spot on. It's easier to fool oneself into thinking something which is contingent is necessary than it should be!
:up:
Exactly!
Quoting Moliere
I'd even say that our enculturation is largely a being stuffed with contingencies as necessities. So it's as if most of the damage is unconscious. We were never fooled but rather are such foolishness. I think this is what Derrida took from Heidegger. That which deconstructs is precisely that which is deconstructed, our Neurathian raft of the very concepts we use to question that use.
As I see it, this is why Heidegger had to transform Husserl's phenomenology and make it interpretive. Language is the organ of perception. We can never just start from nothing and gaze at the original thing. Instead we can try to dig around the inherited interpretations that we mistake for the naked thing itself. It's as if layers of sediment obscure a more original phenomenon --- but presumably even here we have a lifeworld articulated metaphorically, so we never get under language but only under a few layers of it, going back in time to a place where a decision can be made differently, back to the fork on a path which is a new freedom for our future now.
I don't think a thought is like a blob that dwells somewhere. Thoughts come and go, like little moments of reflection. Parcels of awareness or recognition. I think this is the conventional view.
Whatever they are, they exist even though the body of the thinker is paralyzed. We know this because we regularly give neuromuscular blockade drugs that stop everything except autonomic activities. If we don't also give sedatives to put the mind asleep, the patient will hear everything that's said, and worse, feel everything that might be happening, like surgery.
So the notion that thinking is something the body does is just wrong. Brain, maybe. Body, no.
That's a great phrase which highlights why I didn't feel comfortable with the original distinction between Semantic/Phenomenological direct realism.
Sounds about right to me. So no need for a mind at all to hold them, right?
Quoting frank
I think that "giving sedatives" would count as the body still. It's a molecule, right? Not a mental-thing?
The blood moves, the oxygen burns, the sugar gets converted -- there's a body there with molecules. DIfferent drugs have incredibly different effects on the body. Is that any wonder that what we like to call the mind would respond to the molecules of the world? It's part of it after all.
Yea. I don't think they're the type of thing that can be held.
Quoting Moliere
I think we've known this for millennia, wine, and all that. My only point was that those who are claiming that thoughts reduce to bodily activities that can be read by others is wrong. Thoughts and feelings are there even while there are no voluntary muscle movements.
Sounds good to me.
Quoting frank
I actually was wondering so I'm glad to have clarified.
I'm not so sure -- but it'd be nitpicky and off the beaten path, since I've already pointed out that this is basically the weirdest part of what I've said. I'm not sure how direct perception of other minds works -- it's a bit odd. There are prima facie reasons to believe it, but it's definitely against usual way of thinking of things and a hard case.
I don't think we can have direct perception of other minds. We need representations. The people from SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) spend time wondering about it.
So just to be clear you think that what appears real to us is (necessarily the whole of) what is real per se?
Quoting Moliere
Yes, the idea that life is absurd, at least as Camus framed it, is that it cannot answer the questions most important to us, and I think in that sense it follows that life is a mystery.
Hrm this is sounding similar to my discussion with @RussellA now...
I'm getting stuck on the parenthetical comment since you're wanting clarity -- can you put the question without parentheses?
Quoting Janus
Sounds about right to me. "Mystery" invokes more than I like, so I like to say "absurd", but I admit functional equivalence.
Gotcha. :smile:
Do you think what is real to us is the whole of what is real?
Quoting Moliere
Invokes or evokes? I'm guessing you think counting life as a mystery, as opposed to merely thinking it absurd, opens the door to mysticism and/or religion, and for that reason you don't favour the framing?
Put like that -- I believe it to be the case, but I do not know it to be the case. And I suspect the whole is not knowable, so knowledge cannot settle whether there is more to the real than what is real to us.
So what does? That's something I still ask and wonder about.
Quoting Janus
Yes.
Though I want to highlight that it's very much a for me thing. For me, since philosophy is at least fairly personal, it's just what it looks like to me if asked. I'm definitely skeptical of mysticism and religion, but in a way that's not meant to posit myself as somehow above it. I couldn't make a distinction between invokes/evokes logically, though my word choice indicates what I feel.
Saying the whole is not knowable seems to imply that there is that which is unknowable. If there were that which is unknowable, would it follow that it is real, or would you say the word "real" here would be misapplied?
I take it that when you you say "knowable" you mean 'discursively knowable' and then you go on to wonder if there could be another way to "settle it". Would settling it, for you, imply some kind of non-discursive knowing or just arriving at a feeling of its being settled?
I agree with your deductions.
I think I'd have to remain agnostic there. I can't know if it's misapplied because it's not known. And I'm not sure how I get to that, now that I think on it -- I was clarifying and answering, not arguing.
Quoting Janus
In a way it would have to be a feeling that it's settled, but I'm not sure if that would be discursive or non-discursive. Gets back to the first question -- "the whole" is what I'm thinking, but I'm not sure how to get there since it wasn't in the categories posited so far.
Not sure exactly what you mean. In case it helps, for me the lifeworld has birds and blunders that we can talk about. Such articulated entities are just there for us. A (mistaken or less advisable) deworlding approach plucks all the leaves away to find the real artichoke. We acted as though we had tried to find the real artichoke by stripping it of its leaves.
Yes, it's an odd situation. If we want to say there is something unknowable we seem to be commit to saying it is real, and yet the term 'real' finds its genesis in the empirical context, where it is (at least in part) inter-subjective agreement that establishes what falls into the category 'real' and what into the category 'imaginary'. Numbers seem to be an edge case insofar as they cannot (cannot all at least) be classed as imaginary, and even the ones that are so classed have real applications.
Additionally there would seem to be no way to decide if the term real is misapplied if understood to be extended beyond the ambit of human experience. Of course there are those who, in a positivistic spirit, will dogmatically claim that the term is certainly misapplied in that extra-empirical scenario, asserting without substantive argument that we don't know what we are talking about when we apply it this way.
Quoting Moliere
We have an idea of the whole, but it cannot be an item of perceptual experience (and this goes for all wholes including whole objects) which begs the question as to whether the idea is a kind of mirage or whether the human intelligence is capable of intuitions which are not founded on the senses. But then how could we ever decide about that?
Philosophers have made good livings from arguing as to what Kant meant. Early twentieth-century philosophers of perception presented their direct realist views of perceptual experience in anti-Kantian terms. Today, some philosophers attempt to place Direct Realism within a Kantian framework by arguing that Kant can be read as a conceptualist rather than non-conceptualist.
Perhaps the debate comes down to the two varieties of Direct Realism, the early 20th C Phenomenological Direct Realism and the contemporary Semantic Direct Realism. Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) may be described as a direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. Semantic Direct Realism (SDR) may be described as an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world.
Quoting Jamal
Both the Indirect Realist and Direct Realist would agree that we perceive the world "immediately".
As Searle wrote: The relation of perception to the experience is one of identity. It is like the pain and the experience of pain. The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing.
As an Indirect Realist, I feel pain, I don't feel the representation of pain. Similarly, when I see a tree, I directly see the tree, I don't see the representation of a tree.
The Indirect Realist differs to the Direct Realist. The Indirect Realist argues that the tree I see exists only this side of the senses, whereas the Direct Realist would argue that there is also an identical tree the other side of my senses.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist perceive the world "immediately", though they differ as to where exactly this world is.
Quoting Jamal
I assume we both agree that Kant was not an Berkelean Idealist, where physical objects are constructions of the mind. Kant's transcendental idealism may be described as, on the one hand as a rejection of Berkelean idealism, and on the other hand that the things we perceive exist independently of us and about which we cannot directly cognize, yet grounds the way they appear to us.
In other words, for Kant, "Existence", in that there are things-in-themselves, "Humility", in that we know nothing of things-in-themselves and "Affectation", in that things -in-themselves causally affect us.
Quoting Jamal
You are making the case for Indirect Realism.
For the Direct Realist, perceptual reality is the noumenal world, the other side of our senses, where there are things in a world outside our mind that are perceived immediately or directly rather than inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence.
For the Indirect Realist, perceptual reality is the phenomenal world, this side of our senses, where things outside our mind are perceived indirectly and inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence.
In summary, for both Kant and the Indirect Realist, perceptual reality is the phenomenal world this side of the senses whereas for the Direct Realist perceptual reality is the noumenal world , the other side of our senses.
What's your take on Direct Realism ?
I was thinking about this while making coffee this morning. The OP touches on something that comes down to who you are rather than empirical or logical foundations.
This is why a scientific approach, or even adhering to standard viewpoints from philosophy of mind (like multiple realizability issues) are ignored in favor of presenting hypotheses.
As if the question in the OP was really: Could Direct Realism be Conceived in Such a Way that it Works? It's speculative philosophy driven by identity. I am this, so that needs to work.
Hegel sets out the Indirect Realist's problem with bridging the gap between our conscious mind on the one side and a mind-independent world on the other, between knowledge and the Absolute.
Whether knowledge is an instrument or passive medium to bridge the gap, it alters what passes from a mind-independent world to our conscious mind, meaning that our perceptions are indirect..
Language-as-organ puts it in a similar category to eyes-as-organ -- both organs of perception which compose a body. So rather than semantics as something which is distinct from our perceptions it puts them together in a phrase.
For the most part language is a collection of abstract objects. The bodily part is utterances (sounds and marks, reading and listening). But words and sentences are something else. The fact that the same sentence can be expressed by multiple utterances (a text engraved in stone vs a professor's quotation,) shows this.
I'm just saying that if your goal was to stick to a materialist base, using language as an organ won't work. You'll have to adopt a behaviorist, inscrutable reference, sort of outlook.
Bold of you to assume that they're the same sentence. ;)
I'm just a super bold guy, you know. :strong:
This assumption of the instrument/medium is what's being mocked as a fear of truth that confuses itself for a fear of error.
With suchlike useless ideas and expressions about knowledge, as an instrument to take hold of the Absolute, or as a medium through which we have a glimpse of truth, and so on ..., we need not concern ourselves. Nor need we trouble about the evasive pretexts which create the incapacity of science out of the presupposition of such relations, in order at once to be rid of the toil of science, and to assume the air of serious and zealous effort about it.
He articulates quite well a default assumption. He makes a certain (questionable) conceptual norms explicit. But what he presents is no discovery. He did not check and see, dipping a ladle into the. bucket of his 'Private Experience.' Ladies and gentlemen, I give you an 'impossible' blend of scientism and mysticism...
We talk about the world (directly) in our language according to our rational and semantic norms. How dare I make such a claim ? Simple. A philosopher (in that role) can't deny it. He'd be talking about our world or just babbling. He'd be talking in our language
We are not ghosts trapped behind Images that may or may not mediate a Hidden world beyond them (gremlins in the pineal gland). We are not those Images themselves (metaphysical subjects, more plausible at first than the pineal gremlin.) I capitalize to stress how adjacent philosopher's Entities are to Mysticism. Our anemic mythos* is one step away from Inner Light. I'm not even against mysticism, but let's not mix oil and water and confuse ourselves.
Selves and a meaningful language and others all in one and the same world [s]are[/s] is an unbreakable unity which 'must' and always in fact is 'assumed' when one tries to do philosophy. [
*See Derrida and Anatole France on 'white mythology' for more detail on the unshakeable metaphorical origins (can't wipe all that mud of their feet) of our technical abstractions. Or check Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff).
Considering that we only get our knowledge about the external world through our senses, it seems very cavalier for Hegel to write that we need not concern ourselves about the role our senses play in understanding the external world.
Quoting plaque flag
I agree. As an Indirect Realist I agree with Searle that the experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain.
Unfortunately, many who argue against Indirect Realism don't accept this. They believe that Indirect Realism requires that there must be something in the brain that is interpreting incoming data, something they often call a homunculus.
Quoting plaque flag
I agree that we rationally and directly talk about the world.
The question is, where is this "world". Wittgenstein, for example, in Tractatus avoided this question.
The Indirect Realist would agree that this "world" exists in language. But this doesn't distinguish the Indirect Realist from the Direct Realist.
What else distinguishes the Direct Realist from the Indirect Realist ?
Hegel is not denying the use of our sense organs. As I see it, you are locked in a particular metaphor so that you can't yet make sense of alternative conceptualizations without this metaphor.
We need sense organs, yes, but we aren't gremlins trapped in pineal glands. We aren't even our brains. We who do philosophy and science together are enmeshed and even products of semantic-rational norms. I claim that it's this normative linguistic center of rationality that makes indirect realism absurd.
Quoting RussellA
Recently I've criticized both versions. In one version, there's a pineal gremlin looking at the screen. In the other version the gremlin is the screen. The self 'is' sensations and ideas. But, while this is better, it entirely misses the normative function of the self. It fails to explain the unity of the reasoning voice, that these sensations and ideas cohere, have structure and direction, are stretched between the past and the future with memory and anticipation.
Quoting RussellA
:up:
Quoting RussellA
It's all around us. It's the world. It's the one philosophers talk about and make claims about. Even people who want to talk about their private images of world are still talking as if those images were also 'in' the world, even if invisible to all others.
Even if just as an experiment, start with what philosophy thinks it is doing and work backwards. What must be true (what must we assume) for the 'game' of philosophy to make sense ? We have to be talking rationally in a shared language about a shared world. To talk rationally is to tell a story that does not contradict itself. Look for what a self is there, as a storyteller who is not allowed to disagree with itself. Look at what we are doing now, keeping track of what we and the other has said, both of us appealing to reason, careful to make only legitimate inferences. As Hegel might put, there is a we at the foundation of the I, even if it's 'just' cultural software. And what do I do but argue for the adoption of new inferential norms --- try to convince you that Q legitimately follows from P, or that conceiving the self in way X leads to contradiction. In other worlds, selves are coherent inferential social avatars ---or something like that....
The indirect realist (as I understand it) posits a internal image which simply is what it is, glowingly present, and may or may not represent accurately what's going on the external world.
The direct realist tries to do without this internal image, but not without sense organs. The direct realist is not so much focused on how the eyes see the tree and not the image of the tree, even if they will put the event this way. What really matters are linguistic norms. The 'I' that sees the tree exists within the space of reasons. The 'I' is like a character on a stage among others egos. Direct realists aren't worried about the internal structure of this 'I.' That's not the point. Language is fundamentally social, world-directed, and self-transcending. To see the tree is more usefully understand as to claim 'I see a tree.' We now think of this claim as a move in a social game. Think of a witness at a trial who had better keep his story straight. In social space, this witness 'is' his story or a kind of organizing avatar held responsible for it. Maybe this isn't all that a self is, but it's the way selves are 'used' in philosophy, so it's weird that it's mostly ignored. Why didn't Descartes ask about where logic itself came from ? As the proper (normative) way to think ? How did he know he was a self ? Why not random words attributed to no one rattling away in his skull? But instead we find something curious and reasonable already in place and knowing a language or two ....He 'was' that language (he was right in an important way), but language is anti-private, anti-isolated...it's bundled with a we.
Apparently, so is the tree. The epiphany comes from looking at the tree the way an artist would. Just see the shapes and shades. When you realize that "tree" is an idea that organizes the data in the visual field in certain way, you begin to see that it's all ideas out there, this contrasted with that, foreground against background.
This isn't opposed to realism, it's just a particular way of understanding what it is that we call reality. It's a kind of projection, although that isn't right either. That's just a way of putting it phenomenologically.
BTW, I like talking to you because you're so poetic, it invites the same. Somethings come out better as poetry than as a recipe. See? More poetry.
Your posts are about the relationship between the individual and a social world of which they are a part, of which language is critical.
Both the Indirect and Direct Realist would agree about the importance of language.
The problem is, however, the relationship between the social group and the world external to the social group, and whether the social group have indirect or direct knowledge of this external world.
The Direct Realist would say that the tree exists in a mind-independent world exactly as we perceive the tree to be in our minds. The Indirect Realist would disagree.
That doesn't seem accurate. The epistemological problem of perception concerns the extent to which perception informs us about what the world is like. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with language at all.
Direct realists argued that we can trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because the world and its nature presents itself in experience. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because experience is, at best, representative of the world and its nature.
Have you considered equivalence classes ? You seem to be using the container metaphor. Different wrappers can contain the same candy. We can also think of different expressions having the roughly the same use. For this reason they have the same [enough] meaning / use.
Quoting plaque flag
Quoting Michael
Why should I be accurate, seriously ? (I'm not being rude or irrationalist here but trying to make explicit what we are doing at this very moment.)
You don't have to be, but if you're not then you're wrong in your characterisation of direct and indirect realism.
Have you looked into Sellars' 'space of reasons'? What is applying a concept ? Where do concepts come from ?
I'm sorry, but you've lost the thread. I claim that we [s]see[/s] talk about the tree and not some image of it in our minds. This is not a claim about the internals of our immaterial angelic machinery. In fact we should stop saying see and start saying say to work against this confusion.
This is instead about how language works. We talk about the world, the tree.
Presumably an indirect realist is not just mumbling about their internal illusion but trying to share news about the 'real' world (or whatever an indirect realist wants to call the one we live in together).
Or am I wrong about my 'image' of my characterisation of direct and indirect realism ?
Of course I'd be wrong about direct and indirect realism 'directly,' because language is how we refer to our world.
What we are doing is negotiating which inferences involving such concepts are legitimate.
If x is representative of y then x by definition informs us about what y is like, no?
I think there's value in that approach. We can talk about the tree as a unity of shapes, as atoms, as a piece of the ecosystem. The key though is that we are still talking about the tree, 'our' tree, the tree we can be wrong or right about.
I agree that 'it's all ideas out there' in the sense that 'language is the house of being,' that the lifeworld's structure is largely linguistic. I don't think it's something we can peel off, though we sometimes ignore a few layers of sediment for this or that purpose.
Quoting frank
Our views may be close, and I adore phenomenology. I understand the temptation to call it projection. I think we tend to take the scientific image, itself a piece of this projection, as the screen receiving projection. We tend to say that wavelengths are 'real' but color isn't. But I take the entire lifeworld that we usually talk about as real, so color is real. But colortalk is part of our langnorms. (The deep qualia issue is on the edge, seems to me, right near the problem of being and the ineffable. It may be holy nonsense.)
Quoting frank
Thank you ! I love inspiring fresh metaphors.
I think we are finding common ground and learning to interpret one another.
This does not seem entirely accurate. Problems have to be articulated and understood. Solutions need to be articulated and understood. With what? Language.
The social group is part of the world not external to it. This artificial distinction seems to be the cause of many philosophical problems. And the use of external seem somewhat ambiguous in this case. Is all that is meant by this is that there is a group of people and there is a group of trees? If so, you simple are distinguishing between two groups of objects.
Only if the representation is one of resemblance. This is why I dont like the term representation. I dont think experience resembles the external world at all. I think it is a casually covariant consequence, nothing more.
Given my body, being in a particular temperature will cause me to feel cold. That cold feeling doesnt resemble a low temperature. I dont even know what that could even mean. And Im not entirely sure what it would mean to say that the cold feeling represents a low temperature. Its just a consequence, and one that wouldnt follow were my body or brain sufficiently different.
These are two different claims:
1. I talk about external world objects
2. The nature of external world objects is given in my experience
Yes, both these claims require language to state, but they dont mean the same thing.
You dont appear to be using the terms image and directly in a manner that concerns the epistemological problem of perception.
Now you may say: Exactly! And thats why the direct realists are wrong, and Ill say no, thats why the indirect realists are wrong, because they misinterpret direct realism. And as always, I wonder which direct realists youre thinking of. So it goes.
I dont think anyone would disagree.
Thats the direct realism that indirect realism was arguing against. Howard Robinson calls it phenomenological direct realism. Its the direct realism that Locke addressed in his distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Its the direct realism talked about here:
As Robinson noted, faced with arguments and evidence that showed the failure of this kind of direct realism, direct realists retreated to semantic direct realism, which although keeping with the naive realists way of talking, lost the substance of that traditional view, and this modern view isnt actually inconsistent with indirect realist theories like that which posits sense data.
But many appear to disagree when it comes to the quality of visual experience. They claim that the shapes and colours that constitute images are more than just a causal consequence of electromagnetic stimulation; they resemble the mind-independent nature of things.
There is always an intermediary inserted into the logic. In this case its experience. It cannot be that a perceiver is experiencing the cold weather. That is too direct of a relationship. Rather, the perceiver is experiencing himself experiencing the cold weather. He feels the feeling of cold before he feels the weather. Its entirely redundant.
The claim is that we directly feel cold and by virtue of that indirectly feel the Arctic air, or directly feel pain and by virtue of that indirectly feel the fire, or directly see a red sphere-like shape and by virtue of that indirectly see the apple.
Even if we grant that sensations are directly of external world objects, our cognition is directly of sensations, and by virtue of that indirectly of external world objects.
The problem concerns the relationship between the nature of sensations and the nature of external world objects.
I get it. You directly feel a cold feeling. You directly feel yourself indirectly feeling the arctic air. But I think youre really describing how you feel the arctic air, the ways and means with which you feel the arctic air, not your own feelings.
Sure, its perfectly correct to describe it this way. As I have said many times, this semantic argument makes no real difference.
You can say that the schizophrenic hears voices that arent there or you can say that the schizophrenic doesnt hear voices because there arent any. Both are correct ways of talking that simply utilise slightly different meanings of hear.
The indirect realist just argues that the sense of hear that is used when we say that the schizophrenic hears voices is the sense that is correct when we consider the directness that concerns the epistemological problem of perception.
Im familiar with Robinson. I think youre right that hes identified something significant with his distinction between phenomenological and semantic direct realism. It doesnt defeat direct realism but it does defeat the weak arguments for it. But the thing is, there is more to direct realism than the story that you and Robinson are telling about the retreat from how the tree looks is how it is to I see the tree, not an image of the tree, whether or not what Im seeing is how it really is.
I could also say he doesnt hear at all, that everything is caused by activity outside the auditory systems, and that hearing is in fact a process of the auditory system as it functions in direct relationship with the rest of the world, as the biology demands. So if hes not hearing and there are no voices, it would be incorrect to say he is hearing voices.
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Sounds like another thread. I think it would end up being a collision of analytical philosophy and continental. For AP, a sentence is an abstract object. You and I can be thinking of the same sentence. We aren't here worried about what the sentence means. The sentence itself is just an entity that adheres to certain rules. What you do with the entity is another issue. In other words, analytical philosophy will analyze (pull apart) the pieces of living language use and lay them out on a table. If that burns your brain to accept that we can do that, well, we wouldn't bother starting that thread. Also if you're just not interested in AP, that would be another reason. I got into AP specifically wanting to know how they look at things as opposed to kicking over their house of cards.
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So our perspectives are pretty close. What do you do about the fact that you can't really exit this "house of being" in order to photograph it and talk about it? It's an uroboros type situation, isn't it? And that was the trajectory of the OP.
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I think so, yep.
This is where I think direct and indirect realists talk past each other.
Do you understand what is meant when we say that the schizophrenic hears voices, and that these voices are in his head?
The indirect realist argues that this exact same thing happens in the case of veridical experience. The only relevant difference is that in the case of veridical experience the voices-in-my-head are triggered by external world voices rather than by spontaneous brain activity.
Youre welcome to describe veridical experience as hearing external world voices. It makes no real difference to the epistemological problem of perception.
How you could possibly know though ? If 'external' impossibly gestures toward whatever we don't 'experience' ?
I dont know, but Im inclined to believe that scientific theories such as the Standard Model give us the best approximation of the nature of the external world, and the world it describes is very unlike the world as it appears to me.
Quoting Michael
Yes, I understand that this is what indirect realists argue.
To me Brandom is the beautiful collision of AP clarity and continental insight. FWIW, an equivalence class is still abstract in some sense, what exactly do we mean by 'abstract' ?
Quoting frank
I think this is where Hegel and Heidegger pour into Brandom who puts their ideas in a more AP and less freaky vocabulary. A person is like something like a dance rather than a pair of legs. A person is, among other things, a locus of responsibility which is stretched between the past and the future. 'I' am held accountable for what I've said and done. An 'I' is the kind of the thing that ought not disagree with itself. This also applies to claims. I can't (I should not) say I love animals as I kick dogs for pissing in my yard.
But you take issue with it? You seemed to accept it in the case of feeling cold. I feel cold. I feel pain. I taste a sour taste. Why cant the same kind of thing be said in the case of hearing and seeing?
Its not the case that if we see images then we dont see the tree, just as its not the case that if I feel pain then I dont feel the fire. These things arent mutually exclusive.
Speaking as a direct realist, I truly get this point, but I think you are missing the point that the self is not 'in there' to begin with but more like an avatar within a conversation. As I see it, indirect realism gets sidetracked by practicing a kind of folk psychology, not realizing that the very case it makes is always already within a public space of reasons and inferential norms. Rational thought enacts and discusses tribal semantic norms. This is usually implicit.
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People forget that philosophy always projects itself outward, imposing on what the universal rational person ought to think. 'One ought not just assume an external world.' 'One ought to realize that one has only images not the real world directly.' But this 'one' is essentially external and public, just as language is.
This is where we will never agree. There is more to life and the world than language. Things happen that arent talked about. I dont need a language or a community of people to interact with to have experiences.
The typical abstract object are things like numbers and sets. They aren't mental objects because one can be wrong about them, but they aren't physical like golf balls. They're a sort of third category.
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I've long thought of a person as a kind of music with a range of frequencies and recurring themes which harmonize or jangle. :starstruck:
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All true. There are two egos. One appears in reflection only. As far as it has responsibility, this means it's being identified as a causal agent. It can also be helpless, so it's not just a matter of having power.
The other is that thing Kierkegaard talked about: quality of being. The here and now. The view out the windows of your eyeballs. The two egos are inextricable. They constantly play off of each other. That's a scenario one could ponder anyway.
What Im saying is that in both the case of the veridical and the non-veridical experience, there is a sensation. This sensation can be described as feeling cold or tasting a sweet taste or hearing voices or seeing a red sphere. In the case of the veridical experience we can describe this further as hearing my friends talking or tasting an apple or seeing my neighbours ball.
Sure, that's the grammar of 'experience.' Who can deny your beetle if they can't even signify it ?But to do philosophy is to push on tribal norms. As philosophy, it's not the random emission of words. It appeals to norms as it critiques them, like Neurath's boat.
It's not I see the tree directly but (much better!) I talk about the tree ( our tree) and not my image of the tree.
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Heads too are hallucinations in this mad but popular interpretation of our existence.
Then this has nothing to do with direct and indirect realism, which concerns the nature of perception, not the nature of conversation.
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OK. I'm a math guy by training, so I can relate. As I grok it, certain norms are set up and then other norms fall out pretty naturally from them. Once one learns to start with 1 and also learns to add 1 more, one has a kind of 'potentially infinite' staircase. Then one can define prime numbers and prove you never run out of them, etc. I'm pretty much with this guy:
In "What Numbers Could Not Be" (1965), Benacerraf argues against a Platonist view of mathematics, and for structuralism, on the ground that what is important about numbers is the abstract structures they represent rather than the objects that number words ostensibly refer to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Benacerraf
This fits in nicely with Saussure on nonmath language. It's about roles rather than 'positive elements.' And that gets us back to equivalence classes of tools that pretty much do the same thing.
To what are you appealing to say so ? How could you possibly establish truths about the nature of perception without relying on inferential and semantic norms ? How could any theory avoid absurdity if it neglected to address or even acknowledge the condition of its possibility ? To do philosophy is to take up a duty to conform to certain norms and speak about a world beyond the self. Or is logic a private matter ? But that would be a self-cancelling statement.
To me it's as if there's a temptation to do folk psychology with almost mystically reclusive entities.
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Exactly ! The idea that I'm inside (my skull or wall of intuitions and concepts) to begin with only makes sense by a secret taking of common sense for granted, that I have a body in nature with other bodies, that I have sense organs on which I depend to see what's going on.
I really dont understand you at all. Whether or not Im blind has everything to do with whether or not I can see and nothing to do with whether or not I can talk.
Start with what you can't do without, then ponder the ontology. Otherwise the tail is wagging the dog.
By and large phil-of-math people have recognized that we can't do without abstract objects due to some basic logic. Now if you want to dispense with logic, that's another matter.
Ok, let me know if my examples are appropriate for each:
1. I see the tree.
2. I experience sense data of a tree.
If it got this right, there are puzzling consequences of this view.
1. We learn the word tree to show a community of language users that we can pick out a correct object in this world. We find agreement in judgment. But the indirect realist says, We cantt quite know what is causing us to say such things.
2. But I do know with great certainty about my sense data. Even if I dont know what is causing my sense data, I know for certain what my sense data is. And what is that? In this case, sense data of a tree. But did you not say that you did not know what is causing your sense data, so you cant say it is of a tree.
I think all that could be said by such a philosophical perspective is: I experience sense data of some unknown cause every time I experience something.
No specificity can be brought to the words used because of an unknown cause in the external world and an inaccessible experience the subject has.
Given such a consequence of such a view demonstrates the implausibility of such view. The view being indirect realism.
We can maybe call this the empirical-normative ego.
Quoting frank
In its radical purity, I think it's best called just being and not consciousness. We realize upon reflection, dragging in the heavy machinery of public concepts, that it's a 'view' through eyeholes. But deeper than that is just its thereness, if such a thing can be really communicated. Here's Witt:
[i]It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.
To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.[/i]
There is something ! I swear !
All we need is structure. Check out group theory to see this vividly. This I can talk about with a fair amount of confidence. No one in grad school every asked me for metaphysics but only to write proofs according to certain largely tacit norms.
In principle, informal proofs can be translated into extremely pedantic formal proofs and checked by computers. So it's possible to think of all as a generalization of chess. I'm a big fan of Chaitin's Metamath. A FAS (formal axiomatic system) is an idealized program (one could create concrete examples in many ways) that cranks out all theorems implied by a set of axioms but enumerating all finite strings of symbols and seeing if they are proofs. It's all 'dead' symbol crunching.
OK. But clearly the normativity is partly a priori (as per the Transcendental Aesthetic).
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Yep.
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Ok. Math as we know it originated in tandem with the concept of money. Everywhere the idea of money as value in the abstract went, the development of math soon followed. Zero was originally part of the technology of Babylonian accounting.
Nothing dead about trade. (I'm all into Forex trading at the moment, so I'm seeing everything through that lens).
I didnt say that I dont know what is causing it.
Should we confuse the two? While it could be said that from a limited 1st person perspective the experience of hearing voices resembles the experience of hallucination, it ought to consider from any other of the unfathomable amount of perspectives that there is no hearing, let alone the hearing of voices. Were we able to record the movements of the biology in great detail, down to the tiniest of acts, an accounting of all biological activity involved in one would necessarily be different than those involved in the other, and therefor there really is no similarity between hearing actual voices and hearing voices in the head.
I wonder if indirect realism and phenomenalism has served to obfuscate the biology of hallucination rather than helped to explain it.
The field of a sound wave is air. Specifically, what's waving is air pressure. Those waves stimulate membranes and bones in the ear which convey the vibration to hairs in the ear which change the mechanical vibration into electrical signals that travel into the brain.
This kind of conversion of energy is well known to us. It's very clear that a transformation has taken place. Since it's all pretty predictable, it would appear that the electrical signals "represent" the audio waves.
What we don't know is what the brain is doing with those electrical signals to produce the experience of hearing sound. We are at the very beginning stages of even imagining how to theorize about it.
So the moral of the story is there for all sides of the issue: we don't know how it works, so leave off spouting off as if you know. And I will comment, that just about everybody contributing to this thread has done that at one time or another.
But you only can say some empty generalization like it is cause by some mind-independent object. And that is not saying much of anything. Sort of like say, What is causing your headache? Response, Everything This is not so much an answer but more like an expression of exasperation.
At first, yes. But then after a detailed scientific analysis (and assuming scientific realism is correct) we can extend it further to the cause being a collection of quarks, neutrons, and electrons, with the latter reflecting photons.
But now the metaphysical distinction breaks down between claim 1 and 2 for the indirect realist. Both reduced to talk of particles and waves. And to aid in this talk we use language to understand what we are taking about, particles and waves of the brain, and particles and waves of the tree. Interestingly, we by-pass the talk of sense data, and use everyday ordinary language of objects to set up some sort of correlation.
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Quoting Michael
Yes, of course.
I'm throwing a rope down a well and trying to pull you out of this metaphor of internality. Forget everything else for a moment and consider this.
A philosopher, as such, makes claims about semantic norms with the authority of such norms. We can frame this as talk about electrons, for instance, but it's (equivalently?) talk about the talk about electrons, about how the concept is legitimately used. A philosopher is a semantic policeman. We all have a badge and no one is chief. We create a constitution in terms of what is already tentatively written there (Neurath's boat.). Sementic norms (the ones already largely tacitly shared ) are used to justify the enlargement and modification of semantic norms (criticizing those which have lost their value and introducing new concepts / metaphors).
The key here is that the individual philosopher comments on the norms, the way we (the royal we of universal rationality) ought to talk. If you disagree, you only prove my point, for you imply that I break the rules.
'We ought to [s]think about[/s] talk about things this way rather than that way. '
'That does not follow.'
'You are assuming the conclusion.'
'That's not how the concept is used.'
'But you can't share my private experience.'
I would say we don't (always). When we talk about pain we're not talking about objects but about sense data. When we talk about colour we're not talking about objects but about sense data.
Not always. Sometimes we make claims about trees and colours and experience.
That's obviously not what is meant when we say that the schizophrenic hears voices, and so obviously there is a second meaning of the word.
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Sure. But I think we should ignore the internals altogether. Forget pineal gremlins and immaterial private showings. Let's look at how in fact we treat claims for which selves are responsible. Let's look directly at what philosophy itself is doing and what that doing requires or implies.
Exposing a brain to a particular wavelength of light to see how the brain or particles/waves of a brain reacts to the light does not necessitate the need to posit sense data to understand the science behind the phenomenon.
Perhaps it's apriori like riding a bike is apriori for those who can. It's easy for us to talk everyday talk now. It's easy to not pee the bed. I find it plausible that rational norms are patterns or memes that evolved in human doings over thousands of years. They aren't more 'in here' than 'out there' between us. We have the brains / hardware to learn the norms / language / software. Logic need not be eternal. We can't see around it. We 'are' it. Here's how Dreyfus approaches it:
[i]For both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, then, the source of the intelligibility of the world is the average public practices through which alone there can be any understanding at all. What is shared is not a conceptual scheme, i.e., not a belief system that can be made explicit and justified. Not that we share a belief system that is always implicit and arbitrary. That is just the Sartrean version of the same mistake. What we share is simply our average comportment. Once a practice has been explained by appealing to what one does, no more basic explanation is possible. As Wittgenstein puts it in On Certainty: "Giving grounds [must] come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.
...
This view is entirely antithetical to the philosophical ideal of total clarity and ultimate intelligibility. Philosophers seek an ultimate ground. When they discover there is none, even modern philosophers ... seem to think that they have fallen into an abyss -- that the lack of an ultimate ground has catastrophic consequences for human activity.
...
There is, however, something that average everyday intelligibility obscures, viz., that it is merely average everyday intelligibility. It takes for granted that the everyday for-the-sake-of-whichs and the equipment that serves them are based upon God's goodness, human nature, or at least solid good sense. This is what Heidegger called "the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation." One cannot help thinking that the right (healthy, civilized, rational, natural, etc.) way to sit, for example, is on chairs, at tables, etc., not on the floor. Our way seems to make intrinsic sense -- a sense not captured in saying, "This is what we in the West happen to do." What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate "ground" of intelligibility is simply shared practices. There is no right interpretation. Average intelligibility is not inferior intelligibility; it simply obscures its own groundlessness. This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation.[/i]
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Oldschool metaphysics is folk psychology.
I'm happy to talk about brain activity rather than sense data if you prefer. Pain is a type of brain activity, not a property of whatever external world object stimulates that kind of brain activity. Colour is a type of brain activity, not a property of whatever external world object stimulates that kind of brain activity.
I think the word seems has messed with folks. I talk about the world. I may indicate uncertainty by saying It seems to me that that's a tree. This is not equivalent to I see a tree on a private internal screen, so perhaps there is really a tree analogously place.
There's no seeing "on a private internal screen". There's just seeing. Some see a white and gold dress, some see a black and blue dress. Given that different people see different things despite the shared stimulus there's obviously a (second) meaning of the word "see" that concerns something about the individual rather than something about the external world object. Much like the case of the schizophrenic who hears voices. You don't have to accept the existence of some private, immaterial mind to at least accept this much.
Ignore the question of the nature of experience if it doesn't interest you.
Oh it does interest me. Didn't mean to offend or be rude or evasive somehow. The question of the meaning of being is great. We can dig into that if you want. My feeling is that not much can be said. So Heidegger ends up being more interesting to me in terms of what can be talked about, the historicity of beingthere in language.
I think it's better to talk about people being able to be wrong. The point is they are trying to talk about the world. 'Sorry, I thought I paid that bill.' (I thought it was the case that I paid that bill [in our/real world])
Not at all! I didn't take it that way. :grin:
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We do know that no sound called a voice is moving the membrane, moving the bones, converting mechanical vibration into electrical signals as you just tried to illustrate, so dont go spouting off like you dont know. Yet all of these are involved in the activity of hearing.
We do know that since there are no such waves, there are no such bodily movements as you described. No signals representing sound waves, no such signals reaching the brain. Therefor the bodily states involved in hearing a voice are different than the bodily states involved in hallucinating a voice.
If the bodily states were not different, hearing a voice and hallucinating a voice would be the same. The conflation comes from the one who confuses his one bodily state with the other, which is entirely fitting from the subjective perspective of a man who cannot even see his own ears.
This has nothing do with talking about the world and everything to do with sight. I can see things without saying anything. I can see a white and gold dress without saying "I see a white and gold dress".
It depends which "world" you are referring to. Sometimes philosophers talk about the "world" without specifying exactly where they think it is. For example, Wittgenstein in Tractatus writes in para 1 "The world is everything that is the case.", yet never explains where he thinks this world is.
There are different "worlds". There is the world within my mind, there is the world in the collective minds of a social group sharing a common language, there is the world external to any mind and there is the world that is the sum of all of these.
It is curious that language, a representational system, where words are symbols, is being used as an explanation of Direct Realism, an explicitly non-representational system.
Language is needed to talk about Direct Realism, but language should not be confused with Direct Realism. Language is antithetical to Direct Realism. Although language may be used to understand the planet Venus, this does not mean that the planet Venus is a feature of language. Similarly, as language may be used to understand Direct Realism, this does not mean that Direct Realism is a feature of language.
I can directly feel pain and I can directly see a tree independently of any private or public language . There are many things I see that I don't know the word for. Private experiences don't depend for their existence on language.
What is Direct Realism. It isn't about language. From the SEP article on The Problem of Perception para 3.4.1 Naive Realism in Outline one reads:
1) Consider the veridical experiences involved in cases where you genuinely perceive objects as they actually are. At Level 1, naive realists hold that such experiences are, at least in part, direct presentations of ordinary objects. At Level 2, the naive realist holds that things appear a certain way to you because you are directly presented with aspects of the world, and in the case we are focusing on things appear white to you, because you are directly presented with some white snow. The character of your experience is explained by an actual instance of whiteness manifesting itself in experience.
2) For the naive realist, insofar as experience and experiential character is constituted by a direct perceptual relation to aspects of the world, it is not constituted by the representation of such aspects of the world. This is why many naive realists describe the relation at the heart of their view as a non-representational relation.
Direct Realism is the position that private experiences are direct presentations of objects existing in a mind-independent world, not that within social communities there are language games.
I specified that we don't know how the brain produces the experience of sound (assuming that it does). We're at the bootstrapping stage of theorizing about it. Some reach out to quantum theory, others reveal the magnitude of the problem by just trying to lay out the basic requirements for a theory.
So yes, we know what the ear is doing. A microphone is doing pretty much the same thing as an ear. Of course we know what our recording equipment is doing with those electrical signals. We don't know what the brain is doing with those produced by the ear though.
The point is for both sides: back down from assuming we have knowledge about how experience is produced. But I supposed I'm particularly annoyed by the arrogance of those who lay out the word "bodily" like that's supposed to be describing something.
Oh dear. Youre annoyed at the arrogance. Excuse me while I cringe. Im annoyed at the fence-sitting and tone-policing. At any rate, yours or mine feelings on the matter help nothing.
Bodily pertains to the body, you know, the structure and being of a human organism? Is that not something? Can any of this be described in any other way? Its not like the term describes nothing, and its actually quite important. In fact any disruption or damage in bodily activity related to hearing, and occurring at any point in the auditory system, can lead to deafness.
Were not brains, Frank. If you dont want to include the ear in the act of hearing then the fence-sitting charade can no longer be maintained.
I didn't mean to police your tone. I feel I benefit from discussing things with you. Your challenges are almost always worthwhile to me.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. I had to study that sucker when I was in school. Totally apropos of nothing, I was driving along a highway during a time when I was studying the function of the heart. All at once, an image (of sorts) appeared out of my thoughts: I was seeing the whole operation of the heart at once. It blew my mind and I think it must have been a result of pondering the various aspects separately, knowing that they all fit together. It's called integration, one of those amazing features of consciousness that we would love to understand. We're just not quite there yet.
Quoting NOS4A2
I definitely include the ear in the act of hearing. As I said, I just don't know what the brain is doing to create the experience of hearing. Nobody does right now. It's not a fence-sitting charade. It's just recognizing our present limitations.
By the way, you should think about getting into Forex trading. Spend about three months studying it, about three months on a demo account, then start with a real account trading small amounts until you get better at it. If you want some youtube videos that explain more, I'll pm them to you.
We know it has something to do with the cerebral cortex. Those with cortical deafness have functioning ears but damage to their primary auditory cortex and so can't hear but can exhibit reflex responses to sound. Cortical blindness is a comparable condition for sight, where there is damage to the occipital cortex.
When we talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices we're talking about the activation of the primary auditory cortex despite no signals sent from the cochlea. I think it's a perfectly acceptable use of the verb "to hear". Hearing happens when the primary auditory cortex is activated. Seeing happens when the occipital cortex is activated.
The Direct Realist says that our private perception of a tree is a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world.
Wouldn't it follow, if Direct Realism is true, that our private perception of pain is also a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world.
Yes. It is. Some trauma in the body.
Of course. That's the grammar of 'see.' A direct realist might say that you see the dress itself and not an image of the dress, and I'd agree.
But I'm trying to shift our talk away from 'folk psychology' and toward the application of concepts.
What does it mean for you to be convinced that you saw a gold dress ? What might you infer from that, even within the relative silence of a relatively internal monologue ? [ AI can read minds now.]
What's wrong with indirect realism ? How do I 'prove' that we don't see images of dresses rather than dresses ? I don't, because it's something like proving there is no God. Instead I try to make explicit how our claims about dresses are about dresses in the public world, the world, our world. I [s]see[/s] talk about the tree not my image of the tree.
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We can also make claims about interior images of dresses, but even here we it's as if every person has a tiny little room that only they can see into ---with that room being part of the world at large despite being behind a locked door. Our language is an all-of-a-piece inferential nexus. "No [s]finite[/s]
Respectfully, the direct realist doesn't believe in pineal gremlins or private perceptions. The direct realist claims that talk about the tree is actually about that tree and not some obscure metaphysical entity that philosophers like to torture themselves with metalogically.
This is how an indirect realism can't help misunderstanding what the direct realist is trying to say. Please don't take my playful bluntness for rudeness. These 'private experiences' are tooth fairies. The 'mindindependent world' is Candyland.
Direct realists understand that the world is not just language. Of course, my friend ! The point is to drag us out of a confused folk psychology from 1777 (or thereabouts) into an awareness of how this issue could even matter, which is to say socially, within the making and criticism of claims and inferences.
Look what we are doing now. When I talk about direct realism, I'm making claims about the position of direct realism. My claims are aimed beyond me to how we ought to talk about our world.
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That's effing hilarious. I don't laugh out loud much, but that's just the twisted kind of thing that I enjoy. It's the kind of joke Nietzsche would make (which I hope you understand as a compliment.)
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Getting something wrong about the tree need not be understood as nevertheless getting something right about my tree.
We can talk about the world and just be wrong sometimes.
Nice.
There's not really any convincing involved. The character of my experience is just that of a white and gold dress, just as the character of someone else's experience is that of a black and blue dress.
I just see colours. That's it. It has nothing to do with being convinced and nothing to do with language.
Direct realism is a position regarding the nature of perception, not conversation. I really don't understand why you keep talking about language. It just has nothing to do with it at all.
Try starting with the problem of perception and epistemological problems of perception.
Then I'd question what "direct" even means here.
Which means what? What does it mean for a perception to be "directly connected" to the real? All experience, whether veridical or hallucinatory or illusory or imaginary is a causal consequence of some real thing, so it can't just mean this.
Exactly! That's what it means!
Almost nobody says that experience happens ex nihilo. Indirect realists accept that experience is a causal consequence of real things and often things that are external to the body.
There's simply more to the meaning of experience being direct than this.
"directly connected" I'd say means there is no more than one relationship between a perceiver and a percipient. The relation itself may exist, in the sense that consciousness is sometimes considered real, but there are no more relationships between the perceiver and the percipient than one. A relationship exists, but it's not a chain of relationships. The chains come later, and depend upon us being able to access reality to be able to check them. Then, upon putting ourselves into the scientific engine, we pick it apart -- but we must retain a direct relationship to reality to be able to assert that our experiences are indirect.
Again, which means what? What is a "relationship"? In the context of visual perception, we know that there is an apple, that the apple reflects light, that the light stimulates the rods and cones in our eyes, that the rods and cones in our eyes send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the thalamus, and that the thalamus sends electrical signals to the occipital cortex, generating a conscious visual experience.
How many "relationships" is that?
Quoting Michael
I'm sorry but I don't really see how that's an answer. Does it make a difference if I amend my explanation above to end with "the thalamus sends electrical signals to the occipital cortex, generating sense data"?
PerceiverRPercipient was my thought. A relationship holds between sets. So there's the set of perceivers and the set of percipients, and the relationship between them is no more than 1.
Of course one can talk about apples and light and rods and signals and nerves and thalamus' and occiptial cortexes -- I'm not sure about the "sense data" bit, I'm usually suspicious of that. Also I'd push against conscious visual experience -- experience is bound together with all the senses, all the cognitive machinery, and so forth. Our focus can change, but experience is much wider than an organ by necessity -- they aren't possible to separate for us because we aren't cameras.
We know about the world we inhabit because we are able to access it. Mostly I was attempting a formal definition to see if that made things click. But I can see it doesn't.
So, the indirect realist asserts a reality (what the world is like in itself) beyond appearances. In any case doesn't perception inform us about about what the world is like for us? Is there really any other world that matters? I'd say there isn't; what the world is like in itself is thinkable as a possibility, but it is unknowable in principle, because anything we know will be what the world is like for us. So the idea that the world is different in itself is the dark side of the moon, the face of being which is forever turned away from us, and it's importance consists in the fact that it stands there as the mystical, the undecidable, and that very darkness allows a tremendous fecundity to the human imagination.
We can drop it if you want, but to me this is like quoting the bible to disprove atheism. Consider this quote:
I'm challenging this framework itself.
Quoting Michael
I'm trying to get us out of the realm of what's almost a paradoxical theology of should-be-ineffable-but-somehow-isn't 'Private Experience.'
Quoting Michael
The shift to semantic norms gives us leverage finally. What is perception ? I think Kant gets something right.
To apply a concept in a human way and not as a parrot might is to enter the inferential nexus. To perceive a dog as such is already linguistic.
I just noticed you have a transformer symbol as your avatar. Electronic engineer?
Cool that you noticed ! It's actually a nod to artificial intelligence (transformers are the key piece at the moment.). For me it's a nice metaphor for us as transformers of our inheritance. We are thrown like bots into a stream of symbols and have to make sense of them and create ourselves from the stuff, hopefully a little bit new so we are noticed and loved, etc.
That's exactly it (though I've floated this exact idea with @Michael in a previous thread and it didn't have any impact then either).
On what grounds can we possibly say that the dress must either be Blue/Black or White/Gold as an external data point. Why cannot it be both? What fact do we know about the data points of the external world which we can use to say with certainty that they cannot be two colours at once?
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I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean.
Recognition would not seem to require language since animals can do it. So perceiving a dog as a dog is ambiguous. A dog recognizes other dogs as her own kind, although obviously without language she does not form the English sentence (or any other linguistic equivalent) "that is a dog".
:up:
Quoting Jamal's example objection 1
This objection I understand more, given the ambiguity of 'perception.'
But it seems to assume also the possibility of a folk psychology where only one scientist gets to look at the data (yikes!) , except there's a background assumption going back at least to Aristotle that saves the day.
[quote = Ari]
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all...
[/quote]
Cooperation-enabling signtrading is here explained 'by' elusive immaterial private Experiences. (In other words, by magic!) Aristotle doesn't even see the issue. Note also the naked phonocentrism. So much of spoken language appeals to the eye (think of spoken metaphors as liquified hieroglyphs poured in the ear).
Quoting Jamal's example objection 2
This objection does seem to miss the point. The sociality of meaning is already [s]in[/s] with our castaway. Our castaway (mostly) 'is' this social meaning, like downloaded software on a computer contingently offline (the self is not the legs but the dance). As the DNA of the castaway stores or 'is' the 'experience' of ancestors, so the training of the castaway's embodied mind 'is' primarily tribal software, inherited habitus, though not without a uniqueness within the limits of sanity.
Quoting Jamal
Let's take colour as an example. Take someone who doesn't have a colour vocabulary. Show them two balls; one that we would say is red and one that we would say is blue. Do you believe that this person can see these balls? Do you believe that these balls appear coloured to this person? Do you believe that these balls appear differently coloured to this person? I would answer "yes" to each question. This person isn't blind; they can see the balls. The balls won't appear transparent (or white or black). These balls won't have an identical appearance.
Even if they don't have words to describe the colours, they nonetheless see them, just as I can distinguish between a variety of different smells despite not having words for each individual kind of smell.
Then I think it's disingenuous of you to characterise your position as being direct realism.
Sellars or Brandom would distinguish between (for instance) smoke detectors and parrots and human beings. All can react differentially to smoke. The detector beeps. The parrot 'says' smoke. The human applies the concept smoke. The crucial move from parrot to human is the inferential relationship of the concept smoke with other concepts. 'There's smoke, so we should make sure the house is not on fire.' Or 'I had this crazy fear on my walk that our house was burning down, but I got to our block and didn't see smoke. What a relief!'
I have no objection to uses of the word 'see' that don't involve the application of concepts. I don't see why humans can't operate (for various reasons) at the level of a parrot. A baby might be trained to reach for a blue and not a red block.
What's a concept? All you appear to have done is replaced the notion of phenomenal character with that of cognition. I'm not sure how that helps you avoid the "private" aspect that you take so much issue with.
I don't know. I said I was a postHegelian direct realist. I claim that we talk about the tree and not an image of the tree.
I agree we are always already linguistic once having been inducted into a language; I just don't think it follows that we are therefore linguistic through and through, and I also don't take you to be arguing that we are; I'm just clarifying what I tend to think about it.
Which has nothing to do with perception. I can see footprints in the snow and talk about the animal that left them. I can see mental imagery and talk about the tree that is causally responsible for it.
Seeing something and talking about something are two different things. One involves the eyes and the occipital lobe, the other the mouth and the frontal lobe.
Deep question ! [s]My[/s] (cobbled together) oversimplified tentative view is that concepts are norms.
Concepts are norms we perform, norms we embody. They are not semantic atoms. Instead it's claims that claim this role, for a claim is the minimum 'piece of meaning' that I can be held responsible for. Claims are inferentially related, and concepts get their meaning from the role they play in this inferential structure. Forget anything immaterial or private. Instead watch discursive primates trade symbols and gestures and deeds (all 'material') with a maddening complexity that allows for dazzling self-reference --what we as philosophers are doing now, talking about talking about talking.
To be a discursive primate (have a self) is to be held to a coherence norm. The totality of claims which I am held responsible for ought not contain contradictions. I can disagree with you. I cannot (or rather ought not) disagree with myself.
As a simple example, I can think of a number and not tell you (or anyone). I don't have to perform any kind of overt action to do this. I just think.
Do you accept this?
I claim that 'just thinking' a number not truly but only relatively immaterial and private. Artificial intelligence is learning to read 'internal' monologues (tiny throat movements, etc.) and record dreams.
Thinking is a minimal kind of talking, basically. [This was phonocentric, sorry. A person using signlanguage might minimally wiggle their hands, etc. ]
That's fine. You can say that thinking of a number is reducible to brain activity if you want. The point is that it involves no overt action that ordinary humans going about their ordinary lives can recognize as happening.
Sure. As a practical matter, for now, you can mutter to yourself so quietly that nobody hears what you say.
I'm not claiming that. The concept of thinking gets its meaning from norms governing inferences. That's my thesis.
I don't "mutter" to myself when I think. I just think. The mute can think.
Let me also say that these norms are very much liquid and self-referential. Philosophy is something like the questioning of these norms within these norms (Neurath's boat.)
Exact synchronic snapshots look to be impossible. Writing dictionaries is hard uncertain work.
I'm not phonocentric. So we can just talk about sign language if you want. We can think of claims as equivalence classes (they can be spoken or signed or written, etc.)
But what's the point ? How is this related to my claim that concepts are norms ?
The point is that, whether you want to talk about perception as involving phenomenal character or as involving concepts, I can see things without saying anything, and without performing any covert action that others can recognize. Even if it's not private in principle, it's private in practice. When going about your ordinary life you can't open up my head and check to see what my brain is doing.
Of course. But who ever denied it ? I already said that humans don't always have to apply concepts when they see. Babies can just grab the red block and not the blue. Differential responsiveness can even be attributed to thermostats and smoke detectors.
Good. Then can you finally stop talking about language and start talking about seeing?
To talk about seeing is just as much to talk about talk about seeing. Concepts are norms. To talk about seeing is to link the concept of seeing with other concepts inferentially.
No it's not. These are two different claims:
1. John can see the apple
2. John can talk about seeing the apple
The problem of perception concerns making sense of 1), not 2).
I see the difference between 1 and 2. We can talk about other things than talking, but we are still talking about those other things, making claims, asking questions.
Can you give me an example of sensemaking which isn't linguistic ? Doesn't involve claims ?
That we have to use language to talk about perception isn't that when talking about perception we talk about language.
Which world are you referring to, the world as we perceive it, or the world as it is independent of our perception of it.
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Are you saying you have no private experiences, you stub your toe and feel no pain ?
Are you saying the Universe didn't exist for the 13.8 billion years before humans appeared on Earth, 315,000 years ago ?
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I agree with the Kant passage about cognition, in that the mind needs information from the other side of our senses, but this doesn't address the question as to whether this information is indirect or direct.
I'm saying that as philosophers we are negotiating conceptual norms (by appealing to them), arguing for the rational and proper way to apply concepts (for instance, the concept of perception).
I agree with you that, explicitly, the talk is about perception. I suggest that implicitly, it's just as much (or also, or equivalently ) about how to use the concept perception properly, such as deciding when its application is warranted.
Neither ? Either answer will feed into exactly the presupposition I'm challenging. There's just the world, our world, the one we talk about. Inasmuch as we are philosophers, we impose on shared semantic norms. To deny our world as a philosopher is to engage in a performative contradiction.
No, it's not that. The point is that concepts are public norms. The concept pain doesn't get its meaning from private experience. Bots have already learned how to use the concept pain from reading examples. It's all there in the linear structure of the dead traces we humans left on the web for it. Deaf people can understand the concept of color. Blind people can understand the concept of sound.
I trust the latest models well enough. Now we can endlessly clarify what it might mean to say so --- and what 'the world as it in itself' is supposed to mean.
Let me stop you there at the heart of our disagreement. The self is not 'behind' the senses or its data. The self is (I claim) a discursive performance of the body, a creative appropriation of community norms. The self is a way that a body acts in a society of other such selves. The self is a body that is trained to track itself for decency and the coherence of its claims and (in some cultures) for the amplification of its autonomy. This self is mostly inherited and reconstituted community 'software', including especially a language in which selves make sense, in both senses of the phrase. I mean we understand selves (make sense of them) as origins of claims (and other less symbolic deeds) for which they are then held responsible. Part of our training involves learning to apply concepts properly (within claims).
It seems you are redefining Direct Realism to include linguistics in a way not generally used in the literature, for example, SEP The Problem of Perception.
Quoting Jamal
Quoting Jamal
You say that on the one hand you're not committed to perception as essentially linguistic but on the other hand you say that perception is linguistic.
Regardless, Direct Realism is the position that private experiences are direct presentations of objects existing in a mind-independent world, not about the nature of language.
No, I was switching between provisionally explaining the argument that perception is linguistic as if it were true, and expressing doubts about it. This should be obvious.
Respectfully, I claim that you don't yet understand the position. 'Mind-independent world' is potentially nonsensical, almost definitely misleading. 'Private experiences' too.
This resource offers what I am talking about (or close enough).
https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Direct_realism
There's just the world, friend. And we talk about things in the world. It's that simple. No need for folk psychology. Just look at how we do philosophy, how we make our cases.
It's a lifeworld, not a green vertically scrolling source code that we paint colors and smells and values on. Instead we shatter the 'original' unity of this symbolically articulated lifeworld for various practical purposes ---- and because some wacky philosophers talked us into it.
What needs to be explained is the meaning of "direct".
One such explanation is given here:
Another is given here:
That experience is direct is that the object itself is present "in" the experience. That experience is indirect is that the object itself isn't present "in" the experience; that experience is (at best) representative of the object.
And to repeat something I said earlier: consciousness, whatever it is, doesn't extend beyond the brain, and so it's physically impossible for an apple and its properties to be constituents of my conscious experience. It might be causally responsible for conscious experience, but that's all it can physically be.
'Direct' should be read as inindirect, a negation or cancelling of the original mistake. Cut out the middle man. Sweep away the metaphysical cobwebs.
I'm curious whether that description of naive realism was written by a naive realist. It's possible. But I prefer my approach in its simplicity. 'Experience' might be a misleading word here. It's fine for ordinary use.
I see snow through my window. I talk about the snow, say that it is white. This snow is in our world.
Quoting Michael
Consciousness (the semantically slippery eel) seems to extend to distant stars in some sense, or astronomy is bunk.
I say forget about internal theaters and secret screens. The apple is in the world. Yes, we know that light bounces off the apple and hits the retina. This is why it's so important to go back to conceptual norms. Which apples are we talking and therefore thinking about ? The one we may eat, the one that may be poisoned. We make claims about our shared world. Concepts play a social role. Worrying about images is a distraction. Anything totally private can play no role in science or philosophy.
Yes, this relates back to the Kant passage, but it doesn't address the question as to whether we have indirect or direct knowledge of this world.
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If the concept pain doesn't get its meaning from private experience, I stub my toe and feel pain, where does it get its meaning from ?
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I don't think that "the self" is normally defined as part an individual and part the community in which they live.
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You quote: Direct realism, also known as naïve realism or common sense realism, is a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world.
Isn't an external world a mind-independent world ?
Which is no answer at all.
The direct realist says we directly experience external world objects.
The indirect realist says we directly experience mental imagery.
What does "directly" mean?
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To repeat again what I said earlier, this is the illusion of experience (and in particular sight), and is I believe the driving force behind direct realism. It seems as if external world objects are constituents of my conscious experience, but our scientific understanding of the world and consciousness (as much as we do understand it) shows that this isnt the case.
For someone who rejects the existence of any kind of private, immaterial thing, I don't know how you can think that consciousness extends beyond the brain, let alone towards distant stars.
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There is no "internal theatre" or "secret screen". We feel pain and the schizophrenic hears voices, and the pain we feel and the voices the schizophrenic hears aren't external world objects. This is a perfectly acceptable description of the facts and doesn't suggest anything like a "homunculus".
Isnt intentionality a fundamental part of consciousness? Isnt that pretty much what consciousness is for?
Less is more. But direct.
Quoting RussellA
Tentative partial answer : community norms governing the inferential relationships between claims in which the concept appears. Meaning is what we do, what one does. Meaning is public. But individuals can shift meanings, be creative, etc. A new meme can take off. Before long we'll be calling bots 'conscious.' Maybe.
Quoting RussellA
To do philosophy is to impose on (negotiate / update / criticize) conceptual norms. I'm suggesting one way to understand the self. Kant seemed to start this idea. Brandom made it more explicit.
Quoting RussellA
I suggest dropping that terminology. External to what ? The ghost we have abandoned as a piece of confused theology ? And the world we talk about, for just that reason, is not mind independent. It's an articulated lifeworld, including people pineapples pensions parabolas and perfumes.
Some folks like to think there's some unspeakable mindindependent Really Real World named X. Then they call our world, the only real world we get to peel at, something like an f(X), a function of X. A mere illusion or appearance. Poor us. But all this talk of X is just that.
But all of this machinery looks like an weirdly complicated way to admit that we can be wrong as individuals and wrong as communities. That we can come to know more and more facts, etc.
Yes, and given that consciousness doesn't extend beyond the brain, neither does intentionality. Unless you want to argue that consciousness is some immaterial substance that does extend beyond the brain, the physics should be clear on this (unless there's some hidden physical aspect to consciousness which has so far evaded detection).
To me this is a strange and very questionable statement. This really does sound like a ghost story from over here.
To repeat something else I said earlier: we might nonetheless want to say that the experience is of external world objects, but then what do we even mean by this? What is the word of doing here? What does it mean to say that the painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, or that Im talking about my parents? Its certainly an interesting question to consider, but I wonder if it actually has anything to do with the epistemological problem of perception. It seems to be an unrelated issue of semantics that isnt prima facie incompatible with indirect realist theories. The painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, and yet the painting is made of paint and canvas, which are not features of Lisa del Giocondo herself. And so it could be that the experience is of an apple, and yet the experience is made of something like brain activity or sense data or rational inferences, none of which are features of the apple itself.
:up:
Directedness of human activities, like what an arrow is flying toward ?
Not at all. Consciousness might just be reducible to brain activity, and brain activity obviously doesn't extend beyond the brain.
If there's a "ghost story" at all it's with your theory that consciousness extends beyond the stars.
Well yeah, theres an irreducible subject-object dualism for sure. I am not the apple.
Though you cannot doubt that perception is linguistic, as previously you wrote "It's a deeper point than that, to do with the fact that in situations of perceiving we are always already linguistic, because of what we are."
I claim that the concept of consciousness is something we perform. I personally think the term is more trouble than it's worth in this context.
Quoting Michael
Astronomers, while conscious, make claims about far away stars. Their claims are about those star and not their photographs of those stars. They may use photographs of those stars in inferences whose conclusions are claims about the stars themselves.
I suggest that language and its concepts are something we do with our bodies, like an extremely complicated version of wiggling a finger or vibrating a larynx. The [ lonely , singular ] ghost in the machine is a good metaphor for a trained loci of responsibility up to a point, because conventionally bodies are 'given' (treated as containing, while alive ) one 'soul.'
But this normative/discursive entity is still a task or a process that happens materially (in the everyday sense of stuff in the world). It, the mind, does have extension. Mind is something a body does , a patterned way of moving. Even that minimal monologue is moving parts.
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The term "external" comes from the resource you recommended.
Direct realism, also known as naïve realism or common sense realism, is a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world.
I've accepted as much when I said that consciousness is reducible to brain activity. The "moving parts" of my inner monologue is the firing of certain neurons.
What I reject is the claim that thinking or perception must be some overt act recognisable by ordinary humans in ordinary situations, e.g. that being in pain is just taking aspirin or that seeing red is just stopping at a red light, to refer back to some things you've said before.
Just pretend it's not there. Like I said, close enough.
If you have to advise people not to use certain words, that's a bad sign. There's something you don't want to face.
:up:
Cool. So we can agree on embodied cognition.
But perhaps we do not agree that selves are discursive normative entities performed in a social world ?
That language is directed at that shared world ? Toward objects and other selves in it ?
I talk about the tree in the / our world by conforming to various semantic norms.
Please review the context. I think you'll see in this case that Russell is just being difficult.
You might be right.
Except here we have a problem. We accept that me thinking of a number is just the firing of certain neurons. But the firing of these neurons, although not private in principle, is private in practice. You don't open up my head and examine my brain, and even if you did, you wouldn't know what to look for (unless, perhaps, you're an expert neuroscientist).
And yet we can talk about and understand other people thinking of a number. Even young children who know nothing about the brain's neural activity and its relationship to consciousness can talk about and understand other people thinking of a number. They are talking about and understanding something that, even though not private in principle, is private in practice.
Now consider a variation of Wittgenstein's beetle-in-a-box where we can see inside each others' boxes but that we never do. It's private in practice but not private in principle. Does that make any difference at all? I don't think it does. And so if we can talk about something that's private in practice then we can talk about something that's private in principle.
It's really just not that hard to believe that other people have the same kind of inner life that we recognize ourselves as having and so talk about it. We're clever, empathetic creatures.
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When we talk about the tree it's directed at the shared world. When we talk about our feelings it isn't.
I'm not so sure. It's not the sort of thing we can check, right? What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to not have language while we imagine that scenario with language?
Quoting Isaac
Yup.
The dress is black, white, gold, and blue. And we don't know what perception is like without language, due to our indoctrination into a linguistic culture.
In the categories I posited earlier, we're just looking at different parts of the surface of reality. And reality ends up being surprising.
*****
I feel like I'm approaching, in my stumbling way, Derrida's criticism of Husserl, as far as I understand it. (there's always this strange interplay between continental-analytic that I see. One of the reasons I doubt it's anything more than a historical category)
I know from my own experience that I can smell the difference between two different flowers despite not having a word to describe each smell.
I know from my own experience that I can see the difference between two different hues of red despite not having a word to describe each hue.
I know from my own experience that I can see the colour of my wall despite not knowing whether to call it pale blue or grey.
The sensory quality of an experience and English vocabulary are two very different things and I just don't understand why so many here seem to disagree with this. It's like they've been so bewitched by Wittgenstein that they deny the patently obvious.
But the notion of language is wider than English. It's sense-making. Perceptions of the world without words is thought to be a part of our overall meaningful experience -- so meaning, Big-L Language, is still a part of our cognitive apparatus just by the fact that we're able to discriminate at all. There are, after all, parts of the world we had to develop instruments to be able to discriminate. And those instruments get folded into Big-L Language and sense-making.
At least, that's where I'm thinking from.
Not necessary.
If I have a color detecting machine where when I place a colored object in front of it, it will report the color in its display. However, one day it stops reporting the color on the display. We checking the display and is functioning fine. What sense is there in saying Nevertheless the machine is still detecting the color even when we place it in front of the machine
The same goes for a person looking at the colored balls.
I can tell you for a fact that I can see the colour of my carpet even though I'm not describing the colour of my carpet.
And I would say, I agree with you as long as I can ask you what color your carpet is, and you get it right.
But if you are incapable of routinely getting this right, I not to sure what sense can be made of saying "I still see the color of the carpet even though I am not describing it."
This is clearly ridiculous. Me seeing something has nothing to do with you and nothing to do with speech.
I really don't think you're being honest with me at all. You can't actually believe these things you're saying.
:up:
If saying "what ever I believe is a fact is a fact" is not ridiculous, I think we should study what "ridiculous" means.
I haven't said that, so not sure the relevance of this.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Richard B
Quoting Michael
It seems that you have this position.
We both agree with your resource laying out Direct and Indirect Realism. But you must admit it makes no reference to language, linguistics or language games in distinguishing Indirect from Direct Realism.
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So why keep introducing references to language, linguistics and language games.
Why say that what really matters are linguistic norms, when linguistic norms are not part of what distinguishes Indirect from Direct Realism, according to your resource.
My only real gripe is that most theories of mind and consciousness are dualistic, or fractured, whereas a human being is not. For some reason we try to reduce it to some organic or spiritual locus within the body, maybe in the brain and nervous system, or maybe just floating around jn there somewhere. But blood, oxygen, hormones, brain, bones, energy, flesh, and so on, are all so integrated into it that any large absence of one leads to the absence of consciousness, mind, and indeed the death of the entire. By the time they find their locus, consciousness is gone because they've thrown it out with the bath water.
It's the sort of thinking that leads us to utter absurdities such as brains in vats and p-zombies, and in my opinion indirect realism. There is really no reason to fracture the body in any abstract way, or include some sort of intermediary, in order to better understand the body's mysteries, especially when all conscious humans are by-and-large whole.
Theres a difference between me asserting X is a fact because I believe it to be so and me asserting X is a fact because I believe it to be so.
I think most parties in philosophy of mind would agree with you. They really are respectable philosophers, not shaman shaking rattles the way we on this forum depict them.
The standard approach right now is non-reductive physicalism. And that's basically because reduction just doesn't work.
The p-zombie argument is an answer to functionalism, which is a rare, now defunct approach. The point of that argument is a subtle, logical wedge into functionalism. If you weren't an advocate of functionalism to begin with, you don't need to worry over p-zombies.
Indirect realism is part of our philosophical heritage. It comes from the days that originally defined the word "physical" for us. That word was originally a medical term that distinguished physical ailments from mental ones. Don't be offended by the way they categorized things. They were doing the best they could.
Not if you refused, but that you never used any colored words correctly to demonstrate to anyone that you can see the colors, discriminate between colors, etc. It is our routine use of these words, our common agreement in judgment, that bring this language game alive and meaningful. If humans never agree on this use, this judgment, what sense is there to say that they "see colors". None!
Ok, you "believe the fact is true " is different that "the fact is true." But to say...
Quoting Michael
Does not sound like a belief in this quote.
When someone believes that something is true its normal for them to assert what they believe rather than that they believe it.
I dont usually say I believe its raining. I just say its raining. I dont usually say I believe Im in pain. I just say Im in pain.
So I wouldnt normally say I believe that I can see colours without describing them to someone else. I just say I can see colours without describing them to someone else.
See how you are holding me to linguistic norms, asking me to justify/defend my moves in social space ?
Yes, I accept that provided definition of direct realism as good enough for now.
My defense of this direct realism (of the claim that we have and talk about the world directly) is in terms of semantic norms, what our talk is aimed at, the 'public' tree or chair in our world, the world.
So the linguistic defense is something that I am bringing to the table, in order to defend direct realism, which was already there when I arrived to defend it.
It adds nothing, methodically. It's like 'unmediated.' It denies the middle man. Scraps postulated metaphysical phlogiston.
It's like atheism. Doesn't need or believe in god. It negates god. Let's look at the dead metaphor that's hidden in the word.
[i]direct (adj.)
c. 1400, "straight, undeviating, not crooked," from Old French direct (13c.) and directly from Latin directus "straight," adjectival use of past participle of dirigere "to set straight," from dis- "apart" (see dis-) + regere "to direct, to guide, keep straight" (from PIE root *reg- "move in a straight line"). Meaning "plain, expressive, not ambiguous" is from 1580s.[/i]
Respectfully, you seem to just not yet understand what I'm getting at. It's possible that some direct realist fit that picture, but it should be obvious by now that I do not. No one thinks that the stars we talk about are in our skulls. We know that light travelled vast distances to be interpreted so that scientific judgments are made about entities known as stars. We talk about those distant stars, not about their effects on our nervous system --- even though we depend on our nervous system to do so.
You say: the illusion of experience...is the driving force behind direct realism.
Are you not talking about our world, here ? The actual, public concept of direct realism ? Driving forces in others' souls ? External to your own ? Philosophy is normative imposition. It says we ought to think of thinks this way [ if we a rational ]. You appeal to norms to persuade me that your approach is better, more rational.
'Outward'/'externally' directed language.
I suggest that consciousness isn't doing much work here. Wouldn't awareness be better ? We are aware of distant stars, apples just out of reach.
The light from an apple reaches my nervous system, making it possible for me to talk about it. The apple is not in my nervous system. But the apple I intend (think about, talk about) is indeed the one just out of reach. I lean over to grab it. I don't reach through my ears to take a bite of an image.
Maybe (?) we could also add that this is not an empirical discovery. 'Dasein' (a person) is not an occurrent object like an apple. We treat 'em different.
But again, direct and indirect realism are positions about the nature of perception, not about what we talk about.
Im aware of the cat hiding under the covers. Doesnt mean I directly see it.
Why would it ? No one promised a clear line of sight to every intentional object.
This is why I consider 'we talk about the cat and not about our image of the cat' as a less confusing approach to direct realism.
I'm defending direct realism by focusing on implicit semantic norms. Other direct realists may hate my defense. I do not identity direct realism with my defense of it.
Clearly what is meant by 'perceive' is relevant here. I don't see how to avoid the involvement of semantic norms. I claim that we are negotiating how public concepts ought to be applied.
This is too often ignored in place of thinking about actual words or the formation of speech.
The notion of identifiable concepts, objects with properties - this is an inherently social thing (not necessarily only human, but only social). There's an advantage to my reacting to the world in a similar way to you, it makes you more predictable to me, you're less of a surprise, and we can cooperate on joint enterprises, opening up niches which would be unavailable otherwise.
So it's important we have these public entities which we collectively agree on the properties of. the 'tree' cannot be 'my tree' and 'your tree' because we can't then cooperate in gathering it's fruit. It's instead 'the tree', the one we both share and considerable effort goes into the process of constant checking to make sure we're talking about the same tree (indeed most of that effort constitutes talking). Without this need, there's just no need for these firm bounded concepts. The chick doesn't need to have 'mummy bird' or even 'beak' It will peck at any blob of red in any format expecting food, it just needs to respond, not form a 'representation' of anything.
But social creatures have shared objectives, so they must respond to a shared world full of cups, and trees, and red-things, and blue/white/red/gold dresses...
I agree with you that linguistic norms are part of the language game in social space. However, as your own resource sensibly laid out - here - linguistic norms are not part of what Direct Realism is about.
As we can talk about "The Big Bang" without suggesting that linguistic norms were part of what "The Big Bang" was about, we can talk about Direct Realism without suggesting that linguistic norms are part of what Direct Realism is about.
People should be held to linguistic norms when talking about something, but because we use linguistic norms when talking about something, this doesn't mean that what is being talked about has linguistic norms.
The problem I have is with your use of "direct realism" to describe your position. You accept that I don't directly see the cat but that it is nonetheless the intentional object that we talk about. So you should accept that there is a meaningful difference between saying that we directly see some object and saying that some object is the intentional object that we talk about. Direct realism, as ordinarily understood, and as the position that indirect realists argue against, makes a claim about what we directly see, not about what is the intentional object that we talk about. Why repurpose an existing label to argue for something different? It just causes confusion as evidenced by this discussion.
And it's not inconsistent to argue that experience is constituted of some private (even if only in practice) mental phenomena (even if reducible to physical phenomena) and that external world objects are the intentional objects that we talk about. I feel cold and talk about the Arctic air. I feel pain and talk about the fire. I see shapes and colours and talk about the tree. So one can be an indirect realist and still accept your claim that we talk about cats rather than our image of cats.
What would it mean to say I believe it is raining when looking outside while it is raining. This is nonsense.
There may be circumstances where it might make sense, due to some hallucinogenic substance impairing judgment, but this is the exception.
No, I don't accept that. For me subjects are normative and discursive entities. They aren't in the brain waiting for sense-data. The subject is something performed within/by human communities. While a healthy brain and its sense organs are necessary for the performance of a subject, they are not this subject, no more than a dance is simply a pair of legs. Concepts are norms. They are 'material.' Bots have learned them, just from reading examples.
It seems to me that you leave your subject undefined. What is this 'I' that sees the cat ? What is a self to which seeing can be attributed ?
Quoting Michael
I defend a minimal version of direct realism by analyzing the discursive self to which perception is attributed.
Quoting Michael
Sure. I just don't think it's the best way to go about things.
It still very much is.
Feelings / motives play a central role within the manifest image. Because he was enraged, he through the coffee pot into the wall. He wrote them a check for half of his savings, so he does care about the environment.
The metaphor is that each of us have tiny magical rooms in the world into which only we can enter. This is where toothaches and good intentions live.
Concepts only have grip or meaning in the first place if they figure in (potentially) binding inferences. No isolated thing has genuine or veritable being/meaning. (There are no isolated things, for things 'mean' there relationships to other things, to put it poetically.)
Let me reiterate.
DIRECT REALISM
I see the apple and not an image of the apple.
Now we can get clever and think about what this 'I' is supposed to be and what seeing is supposed to be.
I [s]see[/s] talk about the apple and not an image of the apple.
Why this shift toward talk ? Why not babble on about seeing ? Because it's too vague, too close to pretending we are psychologists. Because the entity that sees is oh-how-conveniently undefined.
One needs a larger picture in which this issue can begin to make sense. One needs to appropriate what a philosopher is in the first place.
Because your position throughout this thread has been that "what really matters are linguistic norms", where these linguistic norms are "within/by human communities", yet linguistic norms have nothing to do with the nature of Direct Realism.
A surgeon uses his hands, wields a scalpel.
A metaphysician 'introspects' and talks about 'Experience' and 'Representation,' which are understood to be private and immaterial and impossible to see from the outside.
How did this seems-like-mysticism catch on ? There are reasons. But how does it remain so popular ? It's not like no one is calling attention to its problems around here.
Wittgenstein's para 293 of Philosophical Investigations and the beetle in the box analogy may be able to answer your question better than me.
I said "Im aware of the cat hiding under the covers. Doesnt mean I directly see it."
You responded with "Why would it ? No one promised a clear line of sight to every intentional object."
Was this not you agreeing with me that I don't directly see the cat (because it's hiding under the covers)?
There are two parts to this statement
1. He was enranged
2. He threw the coffee pot into the wall
These mean different things. Both are true. The latter is a consequence of the former. And it is perfectly possible to be enraged and not throw the coffee pot into the wall. I'm concerned about 1). I don't know why you keep talking about 2). It's a separate matter entirely.
You don't see the cat at all.
Yes you can refer to it, thought you cannot see it. We are referring to it now, though it is only a fictional entity.
And yet it is still the intentional object that we talk about. Which is why your argument that we talk about trees has nothing to do with the epistemological problem of perception. The epistemological problem of perception concerns what we see, not what we talk about.
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That's the point. Anger is caught up in the inferential nexus.
The point is that him feeling enraged is a real thing that happens, independent of any overt action he may perform as a consequence.
He can be enraged and act out. He can be enraged and do nothing. Either way there is an "inner" feeling (which may be reducible to brain activity) that we can, and do, talk about.
That doesn't sound right.
I claim that it's better to talk of seeing cats than to talk of seeing internal images of cats.
I see the cat and not an image of the cat.
I talk about the cat (in the world, our cat) and not my cat (an internal image.)
Just to be clear, this isn't mathematics. We are appealing to current semantic norms in order to apply leverage to those same norms, both arguing for different strategies.
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Yes. It's in his body. It's 'material.' It is a disposition. It's all connected to the rest of the world, not hidden away in some box which is causally and logically isolated.
I don't know if we even could talk anything but nonsense about something isolated in such a way.
These aren't mutually exclusive. I feel pain and I feel the fire. I feel cold and I feel the Arctic air. I see shapes and colours and I see the cat.
But it is hidden away in practice, given that you don't look inside people's heads and examine their brains and endocrine system.
I get that we are tempted to talk about qualia, the raw feels, the utterly subconceptual thereness of sensation.... It's not how but that [s]the world[/s] colors exist that it the mystical.
I don't see atoms with the naked eye either, but I reason about them. For context, I lean toward inferentialism. I think concepts get their meanings from the inferences in which they are involved. Norms govern in their blurry way which inferences are allowed.
So claims (judgments) are semantic 'atoms.' Concepts are more like protons in this analogy. They mean nothing without judgements / claims made by a social entity like one of us.
I'm familiar. That's where he shows those with eyes to see that meaning is public, concepts are norms. Beetles don't supply meaning. Back then, it made more sense to think Wittgenstein was crazy. Now we have bots smarter than the average person in many ways. Either they have access to Platonic Meanings or meaning is there [ materially , embodied ] in the linear structure of chains of words.
As I brought up before, it's just like Wittgenstein's beetle-in-a-box, except that we can in principle look inside each other's boxes but in practice never do. So how does that affect his reasoning and your view on language?
This is what I mean by Motte and Bailey. Ryle doesn't use that metaphor, but he covers the confusing shift between casual mentalist talk and the metaphysical kind that goes 100% ghost.
Our ordinary mentalistic talk is fine [the motte]. This happens in what Sellars calls the manifest image. It's a world of people and marriages and motives that we reason about constantly. 'He didn't call me back, so he must still be pissed.' No problem whatsoever with this. We can't help doing folk psychology. As an inferentialist, I think these inferences are where typical mentalistic talk gets its genuine meaning.* The convention of the normative-discursive self lives here, though it takes a Brandom to make it explicit.
But if one leaves the zone where inferences make sense [into the bailey], there's just no grip. That's what Wittgenstein attacks, though frankly he doesn't make it clear in that parable. The inverted spectrum, the Chinese room, etc. They touch on the weirdness. We can go into that if you want. Both Wittgenstein and Heidegger seem to value such talk in their own way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
*Note that logic pretty much is the way we happen to do things. Not God but the weight of convention, presumably tested by time and life like ordinary language.
1. I sometimes feel sad
2. This sadness is reducible to the firing of certain neurons
3. The firing of my neurons is in practice hidden from other people
4. Other people can talk about me being sad
5. Therefore, other people can talk about things which are in practice hidden from them
I didn't mean to accuse you of the fallacy. I just wanted to use the metaphor system, which was linked a fallacy.
I never denied this. Of course. I can talk about the dark side of the moon.
I'd just say that I don't think we can talk sensibly about anything inferentially isolated.
This is why Kant's 'thing-in-itself' stuff doesn't float.
Then why is it that we can talk about something that's hidden in practice but not hidden in principle?
Again with Wittgenstein's beetle-in-a-box. In one scenario we can look inside each others' boxes but never do. We can talk about the thing inside each others' boxes. In another scenario we can't look inside each others' boxes. Therefore we can't talk about the thing inside each others' boxes? I don't see why it would make any difference. If we can talk about something that's hidden from us in practice then we can talk about something that's hidden from us in principle, and so even if there is such a thing as hidden-in-principle first-person consciousness/qualia, we can still talk about it.
The point is that the norms for applying concepts are impersonal, public.
'I fucking hate getting wet, so I ran naked into the rain' does not make sense, does not compute. We would think the person did not know English.
Yes, though the last part is tricky.
That's not the point. The point is that I can talk about your first person experience even if your first person experience is hidden from me, whether in practice or in principle.
Yes, I think you can intend my private experience (manifest image talk). You can speculate about my concealed feelings. Such concealed feelings make sense (I claim) inasmuch as they can function in inferences.
'He's late for the meeting, so perhaps he resents me forgetting his birthday, even though he's too proud to come out and say it.'
It's like toy blocks that we are only allowed to stack in certain ways. It's like a hyperdimensional game of inferential chess.
Words can intend private states (her feelings rather than mine), but their meanings are public (manifest in which inferences involving them are allowed.)
I find this neorationalism beautiful. We philosophers were right along to obsess over logic.
And this isn't exclusive to emotions; it's also true of so-called "qualia" (whether reducible to some physical phenomena or not). Just as words like "sad" and "happy" can refer to your concealed feelings, words like "red" and "sweet" can refer your concealed sensory experience.
Yes, within inferential limits. Stop signs and firetrucks and blood are red.
'I can't make out that sign, but it's not red, so it isn't a stop sign.'
'I was afraid I started my period early, but then I noticed the stuff on my pants was blue. '
I agree that such terms aim at personal experience, but their meaning is public.
What do we make of inverted color spectrums ?
I reject the Chinese room argument. I can tell you that much.
You might find this interesting.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf
Its perfectly coherent. The example of the dress that some see as white and gold and others as black and blue shows that we can have different sensory experiences to the same external stimulus. The case of tetrachromats are another example. Theres empirical evidence that women can distinguish a greater number of hues than men. As personal evidence, the colours I see in my left eye are more full than the colours I see in my right eye.
So its easy to understand, both in principle and in practice, that the sensory experience you call red might not be the sensory experience that I call red.
I guess, if one is careful (we are verging on the ghost here.) Perhaps a colorblind person would use a detector to answer the question or answer 'gray.'
I grant that different people can report different colors (fill out surveys) upon being presented the same object. And it's safe enough to use 'sensory experience' in the ordinary way.
No objection --- until folks start to say that meaning is private and hidden, because (among other reasons) it's a lurch into irrationalism (which is easily overlooked.)
Without private meaning and private concepts there would be no public meaning and public concepts.
If no one ever had the private experience of pain, no one would have any concept of pain, and pain would not mean anything to anyone. In that event, pain would never be discussed in any public language.
Pain is only discussed in a public language because of the private experience of pain..
Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy explains in part how private experience is linked to public language.
There are no private concepts.
But I think I know what you are trying to say.
We give a damn. We're alive. We feel things in some elusive sense. So we create norms together. People write weird poems. Memes can catch on. So a private experiment can be promoted. I'll give you that much.
I'm not saying there isn't a beetle in your box. I'm just saying the concepts are public. You don't get to make up your own language and your own logic ---and that's what oxymoronic private concepts would entail or mean (inasmuch as I can parse the phrase at all.)
And why not?
So I learnt my concepts of time and space, good and bad, red and green, easy and difficult, slow and fast, love and hate, freedom and subjugation, clarity and confusion, hot and cold, loud and quiet, justice and inequity, truth and falsity, etc. from society.
But where did society get its concepts from if not from the members of that society ?
What is the difference between an individual uttering noises or drawing figures on a piece a paper to himself vs an individual uttering sounds or presenting written symbols to another individual?
A concept, a word becomes alive with meaning when a community has a use for it.
Jj asdoin asdmoi valfm capicasdjknca p spdmcsd l sd p p m[ o [o,asdcvvdflmvdf.
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A stop sign is treated a certain way. One stops at a stop sign. One [das Man] is the personified form of life, what Everybody [s]knows[/s] performs.
Just to be clear, no rudeness intended in that last post.
The point is that semantic norms are what link us in a 'space of meaning.' Our brains store our training, but the normal use of the signs is (primarily) independent of any given individual. When 'I' think, it's just as much the impersonal language system thinking, since even inferences have a normative basis. From P, one derives Q. 'I' think (the individual thinks ) only in the sense that we give the hardware credit for the algorithm --- and, crucially, in the sense that the individual is tracked for claim coherence.
Excellent question ! Hegel wrote about this. Brandom's interpretation is very clean and updated for people with AP leanings and background.
You might think of our society as a kind of organism. All of us as individuals we can introduce novelty, make a case for the shifting of norms. Philosophy imposes itself normatively, claiming that it's better to do it this new way and not that old way. You can think of us also as symbolic termites. We build symbolic structures (like marriages and promises ) and live 'in' them. More than any other animal we live in a symbolic realm that we cocreate copreserve and codestroy. If concept are socially performed (I claim they are), then they aren't exact or perfect. But somehow we manage.
The idea that more than any other animal we live in a symbolic realm is something a supporter of Indirect Realism would say, something that I would say.
Quoting Richard B
I agree that a concept becomes alive when a community has a use for it, but a concept may still have a private meaning even if a community doesn't have a use for it
If Wittgenstein can use the analogy of a beetle, I will use the analogy of the desert island. Suppose there is someone who has lived their life alone on a desert island. If it is the case that "There are no private concepts.", he has never had the private concept of pain, and has been putting his hand into the fire badly burning it over the years. This is not something that has concerned him if he has no private concept of pain.
Unbeknownst to him, someone else had also been living in isolation on the far side of the island and one day by chance they meet up in the middle of the island.
Now that there are two people, there is a community, a society. Because there is a community, the concept pain takes on a public meaning within the community.
My question is, where exactly is this public concept of pain, if neither of the individuals has the private concept of pain ?
My view will make more sense if you grasp the claim-making self as a social convention, as part of that enacted symbolic realm. So the person that sees (which is the person that talks about what is seen) is not stuffed in a brain, not trapped behind or as sensations.
There was a tribe of mute jellybears once, and when one jellybear pinched its own nose while looking at another, that second jellybear would give the first a long hug. Eventually some teenaged jellybears started pinching their noses (seemingly ironically, because they fled attempted hugs) at frustrating peers.
Human babies don't survive without help. If a human doesn't learn a language, I don't know how much we can say about them in this context (they would be almost like wild animals?).
That's the problem. The self is this side of our senses, and society is the other side of our senses.
How can we know what exists on the other side of our senses independently of our senses, when we can only know what is on the other side of our senses through our senses.
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I hope you are not inferring that it is ok to kick dogs, in the event that dogs don't have the concept of pain because they have no language.
Are you implying that a public language must be decipherable? What about encryption?
When the public cannot agree on a linguistic convention, as is so often demonstrated when debating the philosophy of language, where does the authority of meaning reside then?
Consider Humpty Dumpty's famous proposition
If meaning is considered to be use, as Humpty is suggesting, then how can meaning-as-use be grounded in linguistic convention?
Also consider the fact that any explicitly defined linguistic convention can only be finitely specified, implying that there is always uncertainty as to the intended meaning of a convention. (which is another of Lewis Carroll's remarks that argues against the grounding of meaning in convention).
This is very odd to say that if someone does not have a private conception of pain he would not avoid the fire. Animals of all sort have no conception of pain but do a good job of avoiding fire.
Consider a bird. If one visited that same desert island and came across a nest full of eggs, one would wonder if the bird had blueprints for such a design, had to attend classes to get educated to engineer such a construction, or a language handed down from bird generation to bird generation. In fact, no such culture need exist to achieve such a feat.
Humans have natural expressions of pain: crying, moaning, and wincing. As a child, human adult will help the child replace these expressions with words from the language, like I am in pain.
We will need to rely on natural expressions and reactions to particular situations that humans typically harmonize to develop this concept of pain.
I suggest checking out that paper by Brandom. The big picture is pragmatic rationalism. Ethics is first philosophy. A person is an essentially temporal social-conventional entity, a focus of responsibility for claims and other actions --a normative avatar in the space of reasons.
You challenge me (within the norms of politeness too, another ethical frame) in the name of inferential norms, calling upon me to defend my claim. Indeed, in making that came, I have indeed committed myself to its defense. If I can't defend a strong challenge, it's my duty to withdraw or modify the claim. I am also not allowed to contradict myself, for the self is the kind of thing (almost by definition) that ought not disagree with itself --- must strive toward coherence, to perform or be a unity.
One supports this approach phenomenologically, which is to say by simply bringing us to awareness of what we have been doing all along. Scan this forum. See us hold one another responsible for keeping our stories straight. See which inferences are tolerated, which rejected. Bots can learn this stuff from examples, just as children do.
:up:
This idea is central in Hegel, as I understand it. Our concepts are never complete or perfectly articulate and never completely internally consistent. The system is always falling 'forward' and gathering determinate negations, increasing in complexity, evolving. This includes the forging of metacognitive and logically expressive terms. Brandom talks about what he himself is an example of, our ability to make our rational nature explicit to itself by the introduction of metacognitive concepts.
But it's not. I claim that you've simply adopted bad assumptions from a more primitive era of philosophy.
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Right ! So words are just one kind of deeds in an inferential predictive explanatory nexus with others.
'Her back hurt when she woke up, so I served her breakfast in bed.'
The self this side of the senses may be in part shaped by what is on the other side of the senses from information passing through the senses, but the self doesn't exist the other side of its senses.
That is, not unless one has the belief in telekinesis, psychic empathy and the paranormal.
As I see it, the whole idea that the self is some gremlin in a control room, redeyed peeping at screens, only guessing at what lives outside its bunker, is a wacky viral meme. Part of its allure is that it seems so humble and careful. It minimizes assumption.
But all of this is a mutation of something real. As a discursive self in a social world, you ought indeed be careful about making claims. It's only in this world where people can punish you or alligators can eat you that such caution about claims and beliefs can matter.
Just look at what you are doing and the assumptions you enact without yet noticing them. You invoke spooky stuff like telekineses as if people who dare to believe they live in a real world with other people are the silly ones. Are you not telling me you are trapped in an illusion ? I respectfully urge you to reconsider this crazy story that came out of old books.
If animals are able to avoid pain but without any conception of pain, then they are no more than automatons, machines. If animals are no more than machines, as it would not be morally reprehensible to hit a machine with a hammer, society would not be disapproving of animal cruelty.
Society is disapproving of animal cruelty because society accepts that animals do have the concept of pain, even if the animal has no verbal language to express it.
For example, see the article Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication
There is the screen, which are the senses. The question is, how do we have knowledge of what is on the other side of the screen, the other side of the senses.
Hegel presented the problem in The Phenomenology of Mind where he wrote:
[i]For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it.
Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium.[/i]
The problem is, how do we know what exists on the other side of our senses independently of our senses, when all the information about what is on the other side of our senses comes through our senses.
The "Realist" in Indirect Realist means that the Indirect Realist believes that there is a real world the other side of one's senses, and that we can certainly be eaten by alligators. The Direct Realist also believes we can be eaten by alligators. The Indirect Realist and Direct Realist agree that we can only know about alligators through our senses. The Indirect and Direct Realist disagree about in which world this alligator exists. There are different worlds, i) inside the mind, ii) inside the minds of a community, iii) external to any mind and iv) the sum of all these.
My question to the Direct Realist remains. How can we know what is truly the other side of our senses, when, as Hegel pointed out, our senses alter what we know about what is the other side of our senses ?
Hegel was setting up that bowling pin to knock it down. Did you not finish the quote ?
I'm just using Bard for the first time. I prompted it and got these replies for you.
Solipsism can be seen as parasitic upon common sense because it relies on common sense assumptions in order to even be formulated. For example, the solipsist must assume that they have sense organs, that they can see other people's sense organs, and that other people are real. If the solipsist did not make these assumptions, then they would not be able to even conceive of the idea of solipsism.
In other words, solipsism is a position that can only be taken from within the framework of common sense. It is a position that is parasitic upon common sense, and it cannot stand on its own.
***
[i]It is absurd to make the sense organs the product of the sense organs because it is a circular
argument.[/i]
Your use of we is a tacit acknowledge of that inferential norms are public --- and that we are discursive, worldly persons, not imps locked up in a cage made sense data. One can only create such a theory as a citizen of the world who sees sense organs and takes them as real.
Exactly, the Indirect Realist believes that there is a world the other side of their senses, an inferential world. A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning, not because we have direct knowledge of it.
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Hegel clearly sets up the problem - here - as to how we know what is the other side of our senses.
The Indirect Realist argues in Hegel's terms that there is knowledge on one side and an Absolute on the other side.
Within the quote forwarded, Hegel says that this is a presupposition, yet gives no reason or justification why this is a presupposition rather than a fact. He makes a statement.
How does Hegel explain how we can have direct knowledge of the Absolute the other side of our senses, yet such knowledge can only come through our senses, and our senses alter anything that passes though ?
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The Indirect Realist is not a Solipsist. Indirect Realism is the philosophical idea that other minds exist.
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Neither the Indirect nor Direct Realist would argue that their perceptions are of their sense organs rather than what has passed through their sense organs.
As an Indirect Realist, I directly see a tree, I don't see the image of a tree.
Ultimately, epistemic agreements and disagreements rest upon assumptions as to what speakers means by their words:
Doesn't it strike you as odd, the assumption that a person can believe in something impossible? For what is said to be impossible is also said to not exist, and so cannot be said to be the cause of the person's belief. So how can a belief even refer to something that is impossible?
And what then of falsified beliefs? Aren't they also a problematic concept for similar reasons, for weren't one's previously held beliefs, that one presently judges to be "falsified", also caused by something that fully explains their previous existence?
Isn't a physicalist, who is committed to a causal understanding of cognition, forced in the name of objective science to always side with the epistemic opinions of the speaker, no matter how wrong, mad or contradictory the speaker might sound? For shouldn't the physicalist always interpret a speaker's utterances in the same manner that he interprets as a sneeze that is understood to refer to nothing more than it's immediate causes?
(When interpreted with empathy, do Flat-Earther's really exist?)
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From the perspective of an engineer who has a causal understanding of AI technology and a responsibility to fix it, the gibberish spoken by an "untrained" or buggy chatbot is meaningful in a way that it isn't for a naive user of technology who is intending to play a different language-game with it. And obviously, any agent of finite capacity can only learn to play well at one language game at the expense of doing worse at the others.
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When you find yourself disagreeing with the beliefs of your earlier self, are you really contradicting your earlier self? For didn't the facts of the matter change that you were responding to?
Consider a sequence of beliefs {b 1,b 2, b 3 ...} regarding the truth of the "liar sentence" L unfolded over time, where L = "this statement is false" :
b 1. Presently at time t = 1, L is believed to be true.
b 2. Presently at time t = 2, b 1 is understood to imply that L is false, and hence that b 1 is false.
b 3. Presently at time t = 3, b 2 is understood to imply that L is true, and hence that b 2 is false.
b 4. Presently at time t = 4, b 3 is understood to imply that L is false, and hence that b 3 is false.
In spite of the fact that each belief negates the previous one, each belief can nevertheless be considered to be "true" at the time of it's construction without entailing contradiction with any of the other beliefs, for none of the beliefs were simultaneously held to be true, and each belief refers to a different object, namely it's own temporal context.
Your pet does not need a concept of digestion in order for it to digest food. So, please feed your pet if you think it does not have the concept of digestion, or it will starve.
Neither do humans. But there cannot be any doubt that pets have the concept of hunger, as well as pain, even though they don't have a verbal language with the words hunger and pain.
They are living creatures, not machines, which is why it is not socially acceptable to hit pets as it is socially acceptable to hit machines.
Probably not, and it would be nonsense to assume the machine has a concept of human pain.
No, it wouldn't be, not because of the pain it would cause to the machine, but because of the pain it would cause to the human if they didn't receive medical assistance.
It is also not sociably acceptable to hit pets, not because of the pain it would cause to its owner, but because of the pain it would cause to the animal.
Say what now ? Is that a typo ?
The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. ... The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary.
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2
We talk about the object and not some private internal image of the object, therefore it's cleaner to talk also of seeing the object and not some private internal image of the object.
I don't believe in 'strict' impossibility. Roughly speaking, norms are fundamental here. Some sentences we can't make sense of or we don't find remotely plausible. This royal we is something like the high ground that individuals fight to assimilate and transform.
Quoting sime
Yes. They make claims about our world in our language. Their claims have inferential purchase. If I believe them, I will also believe implications of their claims --- which may be why I can't believe them, for their claims imply others that are not consistent with other of my beliefs.
A dynamic-evolving logic comes first here.
I also know the tech pretty well, studied it in grad school, for whatever that is worth.
Quoting sime
As far I know, we humans are of finite capacity.
Quoting sime
I view the self as temporally stretched. The nowpoint of physic's time might not be relevant here. The liar statement is a fun example though, maybe because it helps show indirectly that the self must be consistent.
Just to be clear, the point is to be coherent now. So you can imagine two bits that shouldn't both be on at the same time, with one of them having been on and the other being switched on. Zap ! Cognitive dissonance. A discursive self now has the duty to flip one of these bits off. This is a brutal oversimplification, but hopefully you see the point.
No, certainly not a typo, as this is what I have been saying since page 2 of this thread.
The term "Indirect Realist" should be thought of as a name not a description, as some aspects of Indirect Realism are direct and some indirect.
I directly see a tree. There is no doubt about this. The question is, in what world is this tree. There are different worlds, i) the world in my mind ii) the world in the minds of a community iii) the world external to any mind iv) the world as a sum of all these. Problems arise in philosophical discussion when there is ambiguity in the meaning of "world". For example, Wittgenstein in Tractatus para 1 writes "the world is all that is the case.", and creates unnecessary debate by never explaining where this world is.
As Searle wrote:
The relation of perception to the experience is one of identity. It is like the pain and the experience of pain. The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing.
From Searle, the experience of seeing a tree does not have seeing a tree as an object because the experience of seeing a tree is identical with seeing a tree.
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Exactly, for both the Indirect and Direct Realist. The passage from the IEP is consistent with my statement that "As an Indirect Realist, I directly see a tree, I don't see the image of a tree."
From the IEP Objects of Perception section 2:
The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. Ordinarily I see myself via an image in a mirror, or a football match via an image on the TV screen. The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary.
It comes down to the fact that there are different worlds that tend to coalesce into a vague and unspecified mystical unknown whenever Indirect and Direct Realism is discussed.
In the world in my mind I directly see a tree and in the world that exists independently of me I indirectly see a tree.
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In your support of Direct Realism you referred to Hegel. Hegel clearly sets out the problem with Direct Realism in the passage linked to above.
But what is Hegel's solution to the problem of how can we know what is truly the other side of our senses, when our senses alter what we know about what is the other side of our senses ?
I see. I claim: The world is not in your mind. The world is not in our minds.
There is just the one world that we all live in and see and talk about. Yes we need our nervous systems to do this, but we are not trapped behind or in that nervous system. I'm aware that others have claimed that we are, but I claim that this misunderstands the position of the philosopher within a space of reasons which is always already normative and social and worldly. If people deny this, they know not what they do, because they are telling my I am wrong about our world. Philosophical claims take for granted a logic that binds others within a negotiation or articulation of the discursive character of the world.
Quoting RussellA
It's a brilliant and difficult line. The world is all that is the case because it is the articulated world we talk about, the shared world we articulate. The world as articulated is all true statements. It's as if language is always already pointed at an otherwise indeterminate but primordially shared space. The world is the 'target' of claims. It is the wherein of our concerned beingthere. You might want to check out Heidegger on the issue of forehaving and various theoretical prejudices that interfere with grasping this 'object' (the world) correctly.
Quoting RussellA
I think Searle is on the edge of direct realism here, but I think 'pain' has its own weird grammar and distracts from contemplating seeing worldly objects. To me it's just better to say that I see the apple, the one out there in our world. Yes, I need my nervous system to do this. But my eyes and brain let me see this apple in our world directly. Yes, I need light to come from the apple to my retina. That's part of how I see the apple. But I don't see an image of the apple, and I don't see a private world in which the apple is given directly. I see the apple right there in our world, the world. And I talk about that apple. It is the case that an apple is there in front of me.
That 'world in your mind' is basically the same as the internal image I've been talking about. I claim there is no world in your mind --- or that it's at least an inefficient way of talking.
Quoting RussellA
I think you need to read the whole quote carefully. It's a difficult passage. He opens by sketching indirect realism. Then he makes fun of it. He says fear of error becomes fear of truth. Indirect realism seems humble to itself, but it's accidentally a bold theory which is taken for granted.
Following the general Renaissance custom, Locke defined an idea as a mental entity: whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy/The-Enlightenment
If a man is looking at an apple, thinking about eating it, then the object of his understanding is that apple in our world, the only world. But Locke and others created the myth of a tiny picture or internal private world inside people's heads. There were reasons this was tempting (mentalistic talk in ordinary language), but it leads to confusion. It's an oldfashioned idea, demolished in the 20th century by lots of thinkers (the later Wittgenstein and early Heidegger and Gilbert Ryle and...)
His solution is to point out that we aren't on the other side of our sense to begin with ---that this was all just a silly unjustified assumption from the beginning. He's articulating the assumption (that the world is transformed before we get it) in order to make it 'visible' and therefore optional. It's the assumptions we don't know we have made that trap us worse than all others. Phenomenology digs this stuff out and drags it into the light for investigation.
The world that we live in and the world that we talk about refer to different worlds. There is more than just one possible world.
When you say "one world that we all live in" this could apply to a world external to any mind. When you say "the world that we...........talk about", this could apply to the world of language within a social community.
In addition, there is the total world, comprising both minds and everything external to minds.
There is also the world as experienced by each individual. It must be the case that each individual perceives the world differently. I cannot believe that the world as experienced by a thirteen year old growing up in Soweto is the same world as experienced by a fifty year old merchant banker in Wall Street, as you seem to be suggesting.
The world that exists outside language is certainly very different to the world existing within language.
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The Indirect Realist would agree that we are not trapped behind our senses, in that the Indirect Realist has no problem interacting with either other people or the external world.
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It seems highly unlikely that for 13.7 billion years before humans first appeared, the Universe didn't exist because it wasn't talked about.
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A wavelength of 700nm enters the eye and an electric signal travels up the optic nerve to the brain.
How is it possible to directly know what is on the other side of our senses, when the information we receive in the brain has come to us indirectly ?
Fear of error becomes fear of truth is not a reasoned argument.
The Indirect Realist could equally well have said the same.
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To say that the Indirect Realist's position that we are separated from the external world by our senses is a silly unjustified assumption is not a very strong argument.
There must be a stronger argument against Indirect Realism that that.
For example, why does Hegel say that it a silly unjustified assumption.
Let's restart with something simple. Do we see colours?
No. That don't make sense. We talk about the world we care about --- the world we all live in together.
And which world are you talking about when you tell me this ?
Two people in the same room see the world through different pairs of eyes. But it's the same world.
We see red apples, the blue sky. We can talk about colors (as adjectives, concepts,...)
Is the redness of an apple a mind-independent property of the apple?
Don't you see that it's the weird dudes who think they live behind screens that need to make a case ?
Our talk has always been directed toward others and about the one and only world, so it's pretty strange to invent internal images of the world just to explain the fact that people can be mistaken sometimes.
Indeed it is. Our perception (or our mind) of colour does not negate its existence. Its a property of the Apple not a property of our perception of color.
I don't think 'mind-independent' is a very clear term. It might be better to say talk-independent or concept-independent. Then the emptiness of the phrase becomes obvious. It's the sound of one hand clapping.
I'm fine with the scientific image as an aspect of the encompassing (life-)world.
Then forget that term. Is the redness a property of that bundle of matter which is the apple?
How are you talking about it then ? It's a product of language, an empty negation.
Apples are red.
I don't think the scientific image is the Real beneath some paintjob of color and values.
So youre not a scientific realist? You believe in something like colour realist primitivism?
There's nothing strictly wrong about indirect realism talk. It's just clumsy. We aren't doing math here or playing chess. We are debating which approach is better.
My direct realism is going to be hard to grasp without exposure to phenomenology and the idea of a lifeworld. My view is that linguistic sociality is absolutely fundamental. Philosophers presuppose it without even realizing it. It's the water they swim in. If you deny this, you are only engaging in a performative contradiction --- telling me I think the wrong way about our world in a language you expect me to understand.
I largely agree with Popper, so I'm probably a critical realist. But that doesn't mean that atoms are more real than marriages or the scientific norms that persuade us to take them seriously in the first place.
So this is either fictionalism or anti realism.
All of our concepts exists together interdependently in a system. That's a key point.
I'm not sure what ism is best. I like old school commonsense philosophy, on this issue at least:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Thomas_Reid
*********
As Reid understood it, many of his seventeenth and eighteenth-century predecessors (the clearest case may be Locke) had accepted a view along the following lines: in perception, external objects such as rocks and cats causally affect our sense organs. The sense organs in turn affect the (probably, non-material) mind, and their effect is to produce a certain type of entity in the mind, an 'idea.' These ideas, and not external objects, are what we immediately perceive when we look out at the world. The ideas may or may not resemble the objects that caused them in us, but their causal relation to the objects makes it the case that we can immediately perceive the objects by perceiving the ideas.
Reid noted that, as soon as this picture is in place, the question naturally arises as to just how far our ideas might diverge from their causes. Indeed, it begins to seem that we are completely cut off from reality,stuck behind a veil of ideas. This is a counter-intuitive conclusion, and Reid thinks it indicates that the original positing of ideas, as things we perceive that are distinct from the objects was misguided (here, the view echoes that of Antoine Arnauld in his debate with Nicolas Malebranche). Common sense, he argues, dictates that what we perceive just are objects and their qualities. Ideas, then, are a philosopher's fabrication.
I really don't think you've grasped my approach to this issue yet.
Our articulation of the world is deeply historical and constantly being revised, but we live in that articulation (as well as in nonlinguistic aspects of the world that we can't say much about.)
The scientific image describes relatively stable features of our world. But even its concepts evolve (Kuhn, etc.)
But our claims describe the world. The world is that which is the case.
You're right, because I don't know what you're trying to say below:
Regardless, I don't think your approach has anything to do with direct realism at all, even though you insist on using that label.
His reasoning appears question-begging. The world is counterintuitive. Quantum mechanics has shown that. Common sense doesn't trump scientific evidence.
Our ordinary life in which we shop for groceries, promise to walk to the dog, return books to the library....is real. Some entities exist now (men married to men, the internet) that didn't 100 years ago.
The scientific image is counterintuitive. No doubt. But you still seem to be assuming that that image alone is the truly real and not just a layer or aspect of the larger lifeworld, missing the fact that it's still just math, still just language. It all only makes sense as part of an inferential nexus that involves measuring devices and professors with PHDs and the hamburgers they order for lunch. It's all one world.
That's not relevant to the epistemological problem of perception. What matters to this topic is whether or not objects like apples and cats exist even when not being perceived, and whether or not the properties they are perceived to have are properties they have even when not being perceived. And this is to be understood in a literally true and realist sense, not in some fictionalist (e.g. pragmatic narrative) or antirealist sense.
And you missed a paragraph from that description of Reid's philosophy:
I've already explained that we shouldn't bother with folk psychology. This is a matter of how best to talk about this stuff. We aren't doing math either. And it's not about winning an argument.
Quoting Michael
I didn't miss it. I just quoted the part I liked for convenience. I don't pretend to embrace all of Reid's stuff. But he was ahead of his time on the idea idea.
This is a silly question !
At least without further specification, it's just way too vague.
I'd say I'm a pretty hardcore realist in some sense, but not in a sense familiar to you.
I like pragmatic neorationalist at the moment. Or normative monist. But these cute phrases can only do so much.
"Best" as in "pragmatic" or "best" as in "true"? We're concerned with what's true.
It's a perfectly reasonable question. And direct realists do say that the properties we perceive objects to have are the properties they have even when not being perceived. That's what the "direct" in "direct realism" means. It's why they believed that there wasn't an epistemological problem of perception. This contrasted with indirect realists who said that the properties we perceive objects to have are properties of our mental phenomena (at least in the case of Locke's secondary qualities) and not properties of external objects. That's what the "indirect" in "indirect realism" means. It's why they believed that there was an epistemological problem of perception.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#BeiWor
According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us with its skin off (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls value-predicates (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a pure experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance. What is perhaps Heidegger's best statement of this opposition comes later in Being and Time.
What we first hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to hear a pure noise. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside sensations; nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide a springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a world. Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood. (Being and Time 34: 207)
For Heidegger, then, we start not with the present-at-hand, moving to the ready-to-hand by adding value-predicates, but with the ready-to-hand, moving to the present-at-hand by stripping away the holistic networks of everyday equipmental meaning.
Sure. But concepts are normative. Logic is liquid. The meanings of words change. Our notion of rationality itself changes.
The world is not a chess board, not an array of bits that are simply on or off.
We coarticulate our lifeworld (its linguistic aspect). Does gay marriage exist or not ? Sociality and language are fundamental to the discursive subjects they make possible, and these subjects direct claims toward others and about the world. We coperform and comodify semantic norms and more traditional norms (sexual, property, etc.)
Not in a metaphysical realist sense, unlike (perhaps) the existence of electrons.
So when you say that apples are red, are you saying that this is true in the metaphysical realist sense or the antirealist sense? Does the apple being red depend on us (on the way we perceive and talk about the world) or does it being red have nothing to do with us and everything to do with its innate nature?
If I close my eyes, the apple is still red.
I reject the idea of 'innate' nature. It's like asking me to talk about the apple as it is when no one is talking about it.
So what does "is red" mean? What is the physical property red?
Then you don't appear to be a realist of any sort, let alone a direct realist.
Logic is normative. As an inferentialist, I take it that 'red' gets its meaning from the claims involving the concept. The key point is which inferences involving red are allowed.
There's one real world that we live in and talk about. I find it funny that that's not supposed to be realism.
I think I just don't fit into your categories yet. But I'm not coming from nowhere. I have well-known influences.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/
Well I guess I don't embrace metaphysical realism.
At least that description pretends that promises and divorces aren't real. Nor are scientific norms. Does the past exist ? Was it real ?
But wait a minute ! Not even metaphysical realism is real.
I've said this many times before: antirealism isn't unrealism. Being a realist about something doesn't just mean that you believe that thing is real. You need to get past the use of the word "real" in the name.
I've read Braver's A Thing of this World. But I don't like all this ism talk. I like Hegel & Heidegger, so yeah I guess I could be classed as an antirealist. But I embrace direct realism, try to use a minimal amount of jargon.
I take people reasoning about a shared world as the center of the circle, that legit fixed social-Cartesian starting point. To reason is to both appeal to semantic-inferential norms and propose the modification of those norms. A self is held responsible for telling a coherent story. I can disagree with you but not with me.
The world is that which is the case. True claims articulate the world (describe it), but we can believe a claim and turn out to be wrong.
The claim [not the concept ] is the semantic atom. This is because we can only take responsibility for claims, not for concepts. Individual concepts, like protons (subatomic), get their meanings from the roles they play in claims. If we look at the inferential relationships of claims, we find a single inferential nexus, so that all concepts are linked inferentially and have interdependent meanings.
We are constantly negotiating semantic norms (which requires appealing to them), so logic is liquid or malleable. As discursive timebinders, we tend to enrich the lifeworld, increase its complexity. As Goethe put it, we are the ancients, thickened by sedimented cultural memory, living also among ruins and inherited infrastructure. Divorces and promises and handshakes are real, as real as anything else. All concepts 'live' in the same system. No inferentially isolated concept or entity is intelligible (please propose counterexamples that occur to you).
I talk about my social world, which is something I care about. I talk about the external world, Planet Earth, etc, which is something I care about.
There are different worlds that I talk about.
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Again, more than one world. The world from the person's perspective ,"see the world through different pairs of eyes" and the external world, "the same world".
The fact that I see a stick bent in water doesn't mean that in the external world the stick is bent in water.
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If you see a stick bent in water, you are not mistaken in that you actually see a stick bent in water, but are mistaken in believing that the stick is actually bent in water
If what you saw is not an image, then you would be directly seeing the actual object in the external world.
Then how to explain the contradiction that on the one hand you are not seeing an image of a stick bent in water but directly seeing a stick bent in water and on the other hand are not seeing a stick bent in water.
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The external world is not a product of language
I don't need language to be able to see things, there are many things I see that I don't know the name of.
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That we have language is not an argument against Indirect Realism
Indirect Realism is the view that you quoted in discussing Reid.
In perception, external objects such as rocks and cats causally affect our sense organs. The sense organs in turn affect the (probably, non-material) mind, and their effect is to produce a certain type of entity in the mind, an 'idea.' These ideas, and not external objects, are what we immediately perceive when we look out at the world. The ideas may or may not resemble the objects that caused them in us, but their causal relation to the objects makes it the case that we can immediately perceive the objects by perceiving the ideas.
As the passage shows, Indirect Realism isn't about the nature of language.
But you're not defending direct realism. Direct realism claims that there are mind-independent objects, with mind-independent properties, and that these mind-independent objects and their mind-independent properties manifest themselves in conscious experience such that conscious experience provides us with information about the nature of mind-independent objects and their mind-independent properties.
Your position doesn't defend this view, and so doesn't defend direct realism. Your position doesn't seem to say anything about perception at all.
This quote highlights the problem with indirect realism. First, specific terms the community of language users all understand is used like rocks and cats. Second, the metaphysical theory is introduce, sometimes obfuscated with current scientific theories of perception (probably to give it credibility). Third, these ideas are perceived directly that are claimed to be certain which cannot be doubted. The next step is where a lot of confusion is introduced. Those initial terms we all understood are now in doubt, the external objects may or may not resemble the ideas. So, all the indirect realist can say is some object caused an idea of rock and some object caused an idea of cat. Which then reduces to some object caused an idea of some object. We are left with some trivial generality that does not say much.
Welcome to metaphysics!
That's precisely why the indirect realist says that there is an epistemological problem of perception.
I would argue that our modern scientific understanding of the world, such as that of quantum mechanics, the Standard Model, string theory, etc. supports that conclusion above. The world is a mass of fundamental wave-particles, bouncing around, interacting with each another, and when the right stuff interacts in the right way, there's the conscious experience of seeing a red apple.
I think I am. I believe I've already explained and argued for this above. It's true however that I'm not a metaphysical realist as described in the quote you provided.
The key point is that one sees the apple and not an image of the apple. Hence 'direct.'
:up:
I understand why that view is plausible, but I think it doesn't hold up. Kant was shrewd enough to make the hidden Real completely indeterminate. The scientific image, from within a dualist perspective, is still just that: it is image or mind or consciousness. It is map, not territory.
That's an impoverished account of what it means for perception to be direct.
What does it mean to see an apple? What does it mean so see an image of an apple? What does it mean for the schizophrenic to hear voices?
My position is minimal. To me philosophy is not psychology. Instead it's more like hermeneutical phenomenology, which is to say a making explicit of what we are already doing anyway --- which is giving and asking for reasons.
I say we see the apple and not an image of the apple. The apple is red even when our eyes are closed. Even blind people can figure out the apple is red. Concepts are linguistic norms.
That's its virtue.
No, that's why it fails to address the philosophical disagreement between direct and indirect realism. I've already shown you the SEP articles. There is simply far more to the argument than the overly simplistic grammatical issue that you are asserting.
I've referred to inferentialist semantics several times by now.
A mentally ill person might mistakenly think they heard voices.
They do hear voices. They mistakenly believe that the voices originate outside their head. You confuse experience itself with our interpretation of experience. There is a difference between seeing and thinking, between perception and cognition.
I can elaborate in some directions but strategically leave the wrong kinds of questions unanswered.
I am defending a minimal direct realism in an unusual way. I doubt that all direct realists agree on the details of direct realism or on their defense strategies.
It's not confusion. I'm well aware that the linguistic norms are less decided here. My position (if memory serves) is close to Sellars' position. Consider that you saying they hear voices is just you joining them in their madness. I see why it's tempting, but I think it's cleaner the other way.
Indirect realism wants every mistake about the world to get something right about a private image or private experience. I think that's messy.
I thought the shadow was a dog, but it was just a shadow. I did not see a dog.
It's not me joining them in their madness. The primary auditory cortex in their brain really does activate. It's just that it activates without being sent signals by the cochlea.
I agree. So it's not crazy to adopt a metaphysics of intermediaries (fake voices, fake apples). It's not like saying 2 + 2 = 3. I just think it's less clean than direct realism, especially since we intend and talk about the worldly social object. So it's nice to be consistent.
Sure. But there aren't any voices. People can be fooled (by their own nervous systems) into making incorrect judgments about the world. It's not disastrous if you want to talk about fake internal voices. We can and do work them into an inferential network. Seems better the other way, though. We don't have to have two kinds of everything.
That pretty much says it all.
In order to know that A is not equal to B, one must have access to both. By definition, an indirect realist stipulates that we cannot have direct access to the world. Kant's distinction between Noumenal and phenomenal suffers the same fatal flaw. Arguments outright denying objectivity based upon the idea that everything ever believed, known, and/or stated come through a subject do as well.
Untenability by virtue of being strung up by one's own hamstrings.
The result renders the distinctions/dichotomies themselves meaningless/useless in that they cannot be used as a means to draw and maintain the distinctions of their own namesake.
The Indirect Realist would not say "some object caused an idea of some object", as that is presupposing objects like rocks exist in the external world. The Indirect Realist would say that "something caused the idea of a rock". From the position of Neutral Monism, that something is elementary particles and elementary forces in space-time.
One could reword as "something in the external world caused an idea of a rock in the mind"
But one could also say "something in the external world caused the idea of a pain in the mind".
I doubt that anyone would say that pains exist in the external world independently of any sentient being, so why suppose that rocks exist in the external world independently of any sentient being.
Why suppose that just because we perceive something it must exist in the external world.
The point is that them hearing and them making a judgement are two different things. Hearing voices happens when the primary auditory cortex is activated. We then judge this to either be a response to external world sounds or to be an hallucination. In neurological terms, first the temporal lobe is activated (we hear), and then the frontal lobe is activated (we make reasoned judgements about what we hear).
By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; in reality atoms and void.
But...also by convention...atoms and void.
We articulate the life world, and the scientific image is a system of claims we are confident in that tend to describe relatively stable features of our world. So we believe our tables are made of atoms, and are no less tables for all that. Our wives are made of quarks, but the marriage is as real as quarks.
We believe in atoms because folks appealed to scientific norms which we made possible by atoms. Circularity, interdependence, a single inferential nexus with no foundation except that we cannot doubt as philosophers what makes philosophy possible.
That's plausible enough, but (as Derrida might point out against Sarl) you are putting hearing voices in quotes for a reason ---because the voices aren't real. So you can create new entities (fake voices) or speak of mistaken claims. 'He needs to see a psychiatrist. He says he's talking to his grandfather, but his grandfather is dead.'
It's not like we can't introduce fake apples, fake voices. They would be as real as promises and whiskey, if we treated them as such in making inferences. Liquid logic. We decide how concepts are properly applied and how to articulate the lifeworld.
So I don't even say you are wrong. I only suggest that direct realism has certain advantages.
I like naive realism in the above. Scientific realism is already too indirect, in my view.
Well, I would say that the scientific evidence proves scientific realism and disproves naive realism. You might think that question begging, but I think I have more reason to believe in the truth of science than to believe in your theory about language.
I don't mind if I haven't convinced you, but I don't think science answers metaphysical questions, and I don't think my views interfere with science.
I still don't think you understand my view, but that's OK.
I don't think perception has anything to do with metaphysics. Perception has to do with biology and psychology and physics. and so science is the appropriate tool to use.
It's the same world viewed by different people with eyes in different places.
That's fine, but
Also, a philosophers account of perception is intimately related to his or her conception of the mind, so this article focuses on issues in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. The fundamental question we shall consider concerns the objects of perception: what is it we attend to when we perceive the world?
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/
I've tried to shift the focus to us talking about the apple and not the image of the apple, from early on, in any case.
So youre shifting focus away from perception.
Well, if I ask you what is causing your headache, and you tell me Everything. This answer does not have much value or any value at all other than maybe expressing frustration.
Quoting Michael
Whether you describe a rock ordinarily or scientifically, neither is more fundamental than the other. Each serves it own purpose to adequately and accurately described our experiences.
No. I thought you were. We see the red apple and not its image, and it's still there if we close our eyes ---and still red.
If we really wanted to (as a community), we could put fake voices, fake apples, fake cellphones....or, to get it all done at once, a fake private world... in each head.
Just as we invented marriages which we can include in our reasoning, we can make indirect realism true by fiat, just by living in that articulation of the world.
But I think there are other, cleaner ways to solve the problem it wants to solve.
Its both.
Quoting plaque flag
What does it mean for it to be red when not being seen?
Only one accurately describes the independent nature of the external stimulus. The other describes an appearance, which is (at best) only representative of that external stimulus. Hence indirect realism.
Quoting RussellA
To be consistent, the indirect realist cannot say rock. The only meaning this term could mean by this theory is some object or something.
Which reduces to say something caused an idea of something. Again this is trivial and does not say much of anything. I don't see adding external and mind as adding much to the significance to the statement.
But please solicit the help of scientific theories to help give the metaphysical theory some creditability as I expect. Sometimes if you intermingle the two theories enough you can fool folk into believing they are saying the same thing.
Sounds like you are begging the question now.
Is being a scientific realist question begging?
What evidence do you have that external stimuli, when not being seen, are accurately described by our description of how they appear to us when seen?
We will have begging the question again if you define evidence as only counting as how they appear to us when seen.
Yup.
Quoting Michael
Couldn't there be a metaphysics of perception? Isn't that the distinction between direct and indirect? Such as @RussellA's worlds, where there is an external world and an internal world?
I think that if science is an appropriate tool to understand reality, then we must have access to reality to be able to assert such a thing reasonably. And the indirect access adds a metaphysical entity in between ourselves and reality, which is directly perceived but not real.
So I'm not seeing how you connect yourself back to reality to be able to assert that science is an appropriate tool to use to understand it -- it seems that your perception will always directly be of something that is not real, and so your perceptions, at least, aren't reliable in judging whether science is a good tool for understanding reality.
It has the smell of an antinomy.
I suppose that depends on whether or not you're a dualist. If there is such a thing as a non-physical mind then it is literally meta physics.
Quoting Moliere
I think the distinction is that the direct realist believes that apples and their properties are manifest in conscious experience such that how an object appears is how it is (even when it doesn't appear), whereas the indirect realist believes that the properties which are manifest in conscious experience (e.g. shapes and colours and tastes and smells) are properties only of conscious experience, albeit causally covariant with (and perhaps in a sense representative of) apples and their properties.
Quoting Moliere
I wouldn't read too much into such terminology. After all, there's no metaphysics involved when we talk about the "world of show business".
Quoting Moliere
There's nothing metaphysical about it (unless the mind is non-physical). Just look at perception from a purely biological perspective. Electromagnetic radiation stimulates the rods and cones in the eyes. This sends signals to the occipital lobe which processes visual information, which is then sent to the temporal lobe where the visual information is processed into memory and to the frontal lobe where the visual information is processed into intellectual reasoning and decision-making.
Now what happens if we ignore the eyes entirely and find some other means to activate the occipital lobe, such as with cortical implants or the ordinary case of dreaming? I would say that the subject undergoes a conscious experience. And I would say that their conscious experience is one of visual imagery, such as shapes and colours. Seeing shapes and colours does not require electromagnetic radiation stimulating the rods and cones in the eyes (or an apple to reflect said light). Seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex.
Given that seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex, regardless of what triggers it, it's understandable why one would argue that the shapes and colours we see are "in the head" and not properties of apples. Seeing shapes and colours is no different in principle to feeling pain or hot or cold.
The brain activates, a sensation occurs, and we are cognitively aware of this sensation. We then (often) infer from this sensation the existence of some responsible external stimulus. The mistaken naive view is to think that the quality of this sensation (e.g. shape or colour or smell or taste) is a property of the external stimulus.
Are you familiar with Markus Gabriel's ideas? What you say above reminds me of his philosophy. I am somewhat partial to his notion of "fields of sense". He says the world (taken to be an overarching realm that "contains" all the different discursive fields of sense) does not exist; it's a kind of collective hallucination.
:up:
This is why a phenomenological approach is nice. We don't act or talk as if we are seeing images rather than objects. Certain figures of speech seem to be tempting us to pretend we are wrapped in a cloak of illusion through which we must somehow peep.
:up:
This is why I view it in terms of discussing which way of talking is better. It's hard to make sense of one side as right or wrong. We make the rules. We perform meaning, perform what counts or not as logical.
We are always already within a sufficient but liquid system of such norms that make discussion possible in the first place. As thinkers we push for the adoption of our preferences as more binding than they currently are. We also try to weaken the bindingness of norms we find fault with.
Basically one would infer (along with so many other things) that a person walking into that room would find that apple still sitting there, still red. We'd have to look at context to see how such a phrase is actually being used. Maybe we are explaining object permanence to a bot. Maybe we are explaining to a child that apples don't change their color when they look away for a moment.
It'll be hard to understand me without checking out inferentialism.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf
Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning and conceptual content. The modern Western philosophical tradition has taken representation to be the key concept of semantics. To understand the sort of contentfulness characteristic of sapience, that tradition counsels us to focus on the relation between pictures and what they picture, between signs and what they are signs for.
The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, propositional content, in the philosophers jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasonsthat is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.
...
Pragmatism in general is the claim that pragmatics is methodologically, conceptually, and explanatorily prior to semanticsthatone should understand the meaning or content expressed by linguistic locutions in terms of their use. The later Wittgenstein, who counseled Dont look to the meaning, look to the use, is a pragmatist in this sense (though he didnt use that term). Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising ones authority to make oneself responsible.
Understanding someones utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they saidas well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.
***************************************************
For Kant, our normative status as autonomous, our possession of the authority to make ourselves responsible, to bind ourselves by conceptual norms (either cognitively in judgment or practically in exercises of intentional agency) is simply an ontological fact about us, definitive of creatures like us. Hegel takes a large step to naturalizing this fundamental discursive normativity by treating the possession of this normative status as a social achievement. Indeed, for him, all normative statuses are understood as social statuses. (Slogan: All transcendental constitution is social institution.) More specifically, he understands normative statuses, including those corresponding to Kantian autonomy, as socially instituted by practical normative attitudes of reciprocal recognition. Norms are understood as implicit in social practices. This is his understanding of the Enlightenment insight that there were no normative statuses of authority or responsibility, no commitments or obligations, before or apart from our practices of taking or treating each other as authoritative, responsible, committed, and obliged.
These are lessons the classical American pragmatists take over from Kant and Hegel. They, too, see intentionality in all its guises as fundamentally a normative phenomenon. One of their master-ideas is to further naturalize the normativity of intentionality (both discursive andpractical) by construing it as arising from the role intentional states play in the generically selectional processes whose paradigms are Darwinian evolution and individual learning (both supervised and unsupervised). These have in common the feedback-loop, Test-Operate-Test-Exit (TOTE) structure. The pragmatists model and emblem for the faculty of reason is neither the Enlightenments reflectively representational mirror nor Romanticisms creatively illuminating lamp, but the flywheel governor that is the flexible instrument of control for the engines of the Industrial Revolution.
Placed in the context of Kants normative insight, it is the methodological strategy of giving explanatory priority to norms implicit in practices or practical abilities to norms explicit in the form of principles. The converse explanatory strategy, which looks for something explicit in the form of a rule or principle behind every practical capacity deployed in cognition and agency, is what Dewey called intellectualism, (or Platonism).
The stage-setting for pragmatism of this sort is the notion of practical intentionality. This is the sort of skillful practical coping nonlinguistic organisms exhibitepitomized at the high end by the efficient foraging strategies of orangutans and the stalking exploits of apex predators, but discernible at the low end even in the TOTE-based behavior of radar-guided missiles. Nonlinguistic animals are already in a distinctive way oriented to or directed at (onto) the environing objects in their world that play significant roles in their lives. In its most basic form, fundamental pragmatism seeks to situate discursive intentionality within the larger field of this sort of practical intentionality. This project can take the form of exhibiting discursive intentionality as a kind of practical intentionality: a species of that genus. Or it can take the form of trying to show how discursively intentional abilities can arise out of more primitive sorts of skillful doing.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor
There's what Heidegger called 'understanding' at the bottom.
Relatively speaking.
There is the ontology of the nature of reality, in that, is the Neutral Monist correct when they argue that reality is elementary particles and elementary forces in space-time. There is the epistemological problem of how we know the nature of reality, given the problem that between our mind and the external world are our senses, and the senses alter any information arriving at our minds from the external world. But we can only discuss these things using language.
But language is a symbolic system, where words symbolise what they represent. Therefore, any understanding we get using language must be founded on a symbolic understanding, where, for example, the word "world" symbolises something else, in this case, the world.
This leads into the philosophical problem of where does language get its meaning. What does the word "world" actually mean. Is there an absolute meaning to "world", or is its meaning relative to its users.
If there is an absolute meaning to "world", then it cannot depend on the users of the language, as each user may use the word differently. Therefore it can only be found outside users of the language. But language wouldn't exist if there was no one to use it, leading to the inevitable conclusion that there can be no absolute meaning to the world "world".
Therefore, the meaning of "world" must be relative to the users of the language. But if meaning is relative to its users, the meaning of the word "world" depends on who is using it. Therefore, no one use is correct. My "world" may be different to your "world", meaning that there is no one meaning of "world" but many. In fact as many meanings as there are people using that language.
It is correct to say "she lives in her own world", where the world exists in the mind. It is correct to say "you are my world", where the world exist in a social community. It is correct to say "there is an unknown world out there", where the world exists external to any mind. It is also correct to say "there is only one world", where the world is the sum of all the above.
We may be worlds apart in our world view, but then again, the world is a strange and mysterious place.
As an Indirect Realist, I can say "I see a rock", because the rock I see exists as a concept in my mind. External to my mind is something, but it is not a rock.
In my mind, the rock exists in part as a direct perception and in part as part of language, neither of which are independent of any mind.
No, but I will have a look.
From a quick scan on Wikipedia Markus Gabriel, I definately agree with:
"In an April 2020 interview he called European measures against COVID-19 unjustified and a step towards cyber dictatorship, saying the use of health apps was a Chinese or North Korean strategy."
"In a 2018 interview, Gabriel complained that "most contemporary metaphysicians are [sloppy] when it comes to characterizing their subject matter," using words like "the world" and "reality" "often...interchangeably and without further clarifications. In my view, those totality of words do not refer to anything which is capable of having the property of existence"
I don't think so. Not essentially. I've provided links to alternatives.
Quoting RussellA
The language, its users, and the world are primordially unified. [ Heidegger writes about this. ]
I claim that trying to shatter this unity leads to confusion.
Our situation is being-in-the-world-in-language-with-others as one phenomenon with different aspects (we can focus on this or that.)
Quoting RussellA
Claims are semantic atoms, not concepts. That I claim is a better way.
Quoting RussellA
That's just a fake problem made up by long dead philosophers who didn't notice the structure of their own game (philosophy.)
The world is all that is the case. There is genius in that simple statement.
Quoting RussellA
:up:
Not primordial, as language only began about 50,000 to 150,000 years ago.
Users of the same language agree to a basic meaning of a word, even though they can have very different concepts as to its particular meaning. For example, an Australian living in Alice Springs will have a very different concept of the word "grass" to an American living in Spokane.
Quoting plaque flag
My approach to "the world is all that is the case" is similar to that of Markus Gabriel:
"In a 2018 interview, Gabriel complained that "most contemporary metaphysicians are [sloppy] when it comes to characterizing their subject matter," using words like "the world" and "reality" "often...interchangeably and without further clarifications. In my view, those totality of words do not refer to anything which is capable of having the property of existence"
For us now primordial. The social normative worldly linguistic situation is as deep and central as it gets.
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
I think Gabriel is missing the point. The world as that which is the case is methodically minimally specified.
If Gabriel says that that kind of metaphysics is vague, he is describing what is the case, talking about the world --- as whatever is the case.
Finally, this property of existence he mentions seems like a less effective attempt to do the same job, given its ontological baggage (real versus unreal, etc.)
To get my point is to see what we are doing right now, to see what underspecified world we are always already talking about, to see us as discursive selves arguing what is the case.
Forget this superstition of the meanings of individual words. Also no one agrees. Language is received like the law and endlessly renegotiated.
Look at which inferences are treated as valid. Look at which claims are treated as if no argument is necessary to use them as premises (as 'obviously' true.) There's so much baggage and assumption about this stuff that it's hard to just watch & see what you are doing already.
The underspecification of the world is also its endless openedness for philosophy. We can debate whether it is a flat black square, is really made of cheese, any kind of weird stuff. And who can predict what future philosophers might dream up ? But philosophy as a truthgiving intention specifies some world, which is always the world, 'target' of our claims. If you deny it, you tell me that such is not the case, which only supports my point.
The [ minimally specified ] world [ [s]World[/s] ] is what we are alwaysalready talking about.
For more on this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13308/our-minimal-epistemic-commitment-fixing-descartes-cogito/p1
I claim that the minimum rational intelligible epistemic situation is a plurality of persons subject to the same logic and together in a world that they can be right or wrong about. I intentionally leave open the details of persons and world and logic here, for these are very much part of what's discussed within this minimum assumption.
Wittgenstein's "The world is all that is the case" is poetry.
Robert Frost also talked about the world
[i]Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what Ive tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.[/i]
Poetry is fine, but open to numerous interpretations, which is its nature.
If the writer knows his words will be open to numerous interpretations and doesn't find that a problem, then either they are a poet or they are, as Markus Gabriel said, being sloppy about their subject.
"properties", "manifest", "conscious experience", "cause" -- these are what I'd term metaphysics. Not in the literal sense of the mind being above what is physical, but in terms of that discipline of philosophy which deals with ontology, and these are the sorts of words I'd use in talking about what exists and how we relate to them. There's a way of thinking that states -- this is what exists! And as far as I can tell you believe two things exist: science, and experience. Science is what is real, and experience is what is indirectly connected to science.
This way of using "science" though -- it's not scientific! "Science is real" is a political slogan, or an ontological assertion, but not a scientific truth deduced from the body of knowledge thus far generated, though widely believed. It's what I'd term a philosophical belief.
So what I'm asking is -- how do you get to the "Science is real" when you start with "experience is not-real though causally connected to what is real" ? That's the part I'm failing to understand. Why is science real, philosophically speaking?
I've never claimed that.
My claim is that things like shapes and colours and tastes and smells are properties of conscious experience, which is restricted to the brain, not properties of objects outside the body like apples and chairs.
You're asking why I'm a scientific realist rather than a scientific instrumentalist?
It's not indirectly connected to reality. My conscious experience is as real as everything else.
Also on this point, as Bertrand Russell explains, it is in fact direct realism that is incompatible with scientific realism:
But then if the direct realist tries to save the direct aspect of his position by arguing for scientific instrumentalism then he loses the realist aspect of his position, and might as well be an idealist.
That's the antinomy again. I feel I've already given the best account I can of my side, though I can see it's orthogonal to a lot of the concerns you've presented. I'm trying to puzzle through how you make indirect realism coherent.
I feel pain when I put my hand in the fire. The pain I feel is "in my head", not a property of the fire. Do you understand this much? Now just replace "feel pain" with "see red" and "put my hand in the fire" with "open my eyes and look in a particular direction". It's the exact same principle.
Yes. Different things have different properties. Pain is a type of brain activity, and apples don't have brain activity so don't have properties of pain. Red is a type of brain activity, and apples don't have brain activity so don't have properties of red.
Quoting Michael
So the brain has the properties of colour, shape, sounds, and smells.
The apple, insofar that its properties are one of those, is in the brain.
What are the properties of whatever it is that's not in the brain? And how do we ascertain those?
Philosophy is often a serious kind of poetry. Yes, we like inferences. But metaphors do much of the lifting.
Poetry is not always fiction. It makes explicit various aspects of the world. It helps us see with better eyes.
I think there's something to be said about the claim that seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex. That is false. It's akin to claiming that phantom limb pain does not require having once had a limb.
If we ignore the eyes(or previous limb) we're also ignoring everything that led up to the ability to 'activate' the biological machinery. Much of what's being ignored is not located in the head.
This is how it seems to me as well.
I also don't think it works. Ideas of scientific entities are experienced. That's why Kant was shrewd enough to say nothing at all about the Reality behind appearance. While I don't embrace Kant's approach, he deserves credit for seeing that, for dualism, Newton's science must be part of our representation of the Real and not the Real itself.
I suggest that the ordinary world we talk about is Real --- and that real roses are red and made of atoms at the same time.
You must mean (?) that you feel pain when an internal image shows you 'your' hand in a fire.
Why would you trust such a image ? And how would your knowledge ever be more than a correlation between various private personal sensory [s]experiences[/s] ?
I don't mean that.
My gripe is that indirect realism smuggles in naive realism to set itself up with a world in which social organisms have sense organs and nervous systems. Taking all of that for granted, then intermediate images or some kind of dualism is postulated.
OK. So...what is a fire then really ? What is your hand really ?
I don't think it smuggles in naive realism. It accepts scientific realism. But you highlight here the exact point Bertrand Russell made, as I explained here. Naive realism is self-refuting.
Bundles of superstring according to one theory.
But that's just an image in your head, right ? Why would math be more real than color ?
I read the Russell quote. I think it's a confused dualism.
I'm not saying that math is more real than colour. I'm saying that colour is a type of sensation, i.e. brain activity, not a property of apples.
You said your hand is really something like strings from string theory. Is that correct ?
Why isn't math also just brain activity ? 'Appearance,' image, etc.
I suppose it is. I'm not a Platonist.
Quoting plaque flag
If superstring theory is correct.
But string theory is just math. It's something in consciousness like redness.
That's fine. I'm just saying that colours, like pain, are a type of brain activity, not a property of apples. They're still real. They're just not what naive realists think they are.
I say 'in consciousness' as if from your point of view.
I think you're being pedantic here. If string theory is correct then the entities that the theory describes superstring are the constituents of all material things. Just as if the theory of gravity is correct then the force that the theory describes gravity is the thing responsible for objects falling to the ground.
I understand why you would say that. I'm just saying that it's artificial to call color unreal and yet keep shape or mass. Kant went the whole hog and said the Real was utterly unknowable, because he saw (in my opinion) that there was no good reason to keep just half the apple.
If all we ever have is Image, then all of our math scribbles and concepts are just image too. To say that your hand is 'really' strings is not far from painting the apple red.
So there's Kant : the Real is hidden. Everything else is Image.
You : the scientific image is Real, but Experience is Image.
Me : We see and talk about the Real, which doesn't mean we can't be mistaken.
My gripe is that string theory is part of Experience, hence just Image, so it's weird to say it's also the Real, because that's like half direct realism. Somehow our mathbrain is directly in touch with the Real but not our eyes...
I'm not saying that.
Semantic not pedantic. The scientific image is just that, an image, a model. But you seem to say that the map is the territory. That atoms are really there but color is not --- as if our nervous systems weren't giving you the idea of atoms indirectly like everything else (according to your theory.)
I understand that.
Are there trees inside the blind person's head that they can see only after activating the biological machinery? If so, then all that is required for seeing trees is activating the biological machinery.
You think color is just in our head, right ?
I'm a scientific realist, not a scientific instrumentalist, if that's what you're getting at.
Colour is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, colour is real.
Pain is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, pain is real.
Apples don't have pain-properties. Trees don't have colour-properties. Fire doesn't have the property of being wet.
I get that. But what can the scientific realist mean ? Indirect realism looks like dualism, so why does math get to poke through the veil of images ?
Math is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, math is real.
Apples don't have math-properties.
That the entities described by our scientific models are real and discovered rather than just instrumentally useful fictions.
As I said before, if you argue for scientific instrumentalism over scientific realism then you might as well abandon direct realism and just be an idealist (or a transcendental idealist à la Kant).
Are apples real ?
I know that. I mean the claim is indeterminate in the context of dualism. I've studied some physics. It's a bunch of math and abstract concepts.
The issue is that you call everything brain activity except math and physics concepts, not explaining why this stuff is truly real but color and smell isn't. I understand there are pragmatic reasons for caring about one aspect of an object rather than another. But I don't see the metaphysical justification for letting math off the hook here.
Personally I think your hand is made of atoms and has a color. But I'm not a dualist. Color is a normative concept, not a immaterial experience in my view. A blind person could infer that an apple is read or that it weighs 230 grams or that it's radioactive from sitting in a bucket of uranium.
No I don't. I claim that the sensations which constitute conscious experience are brain activity. We know this from the fact that we can stimulate the appropriate areas of the brain, such as the occipital lobe, and the subject will see shapes and colours in response to this stimulation.
Isn't indirect realism about a mediating image or consciousness which is not the Real itself ? Presumably created by the nervous system ?
Sensation is the mediation. I am directly aware of feeling pain, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that pain I am indirectly aware of my hand being in the fire. I am directly aware of feeling cold, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that cold I am indirectly aware of the Arctic air surrounding me. I am directly aware of seeing red, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that red I am indirectly aware of the apple on the table.
Yes. Which is basically dualism, it seems to me. You experience sensation which you refer to (which represents or mediates) some forever hidden real.
No, because I'm saying that sensation is a type of brain activity. In the case of visual sensation, that brain activity involves the primary visual cortex.
Indirect realism has (1) images and (2) reality itself, right ?
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/
When I look at the coffee cup there is not a material candidate for the yellow object at which I am looking. Crudely: there is nothing in the brain that is yellow. Sense data, then, do not seem to be acceptable on a materialist account of the mind, and thus, the yellow object that I am now perceiving must be located not in the material world but in the immaterial mind. Indirect realism is committed to a dualist picture within which there is an ontology of non-physical objects alongside that of the physical.
Quoting plaque flag
If there are non-physical objects then they are as much a part of reality as the physical is.
Quoting plaque flag
I don't think it's committed to this. It's committed to a picture within which there are sensations, which are restricted to the brain, and things like apples and chairs. Many indirect realists may also be dualists and believe that sensations are non-physical, but that's not necessary. I'm explaining a non-dualistic indirect realism. I am simply arguing that colours are of the same kind of thing as pain; a type of brain activity, not a property of apples.
Do you believe in consciousness ?
Of course.
I'm not seeing how you get around dualism exactly.
Then everything is strings, which is what string theory argues. I don't understand what you're getting at.
So pain is strings ?
By not arguing that some non-physical substance exists?
If string theory is correct, yes.
Yes.
Is color strings ?
Yes.
So maybe our views aren't so far off.
It's not wacky, it's just wrong. It's like saying that fire is wet. A red colour occurs when the appropriate areas of the occipital lobe are activated. Roses don't have occipital lobes.
Presumably the concept of a string occurs when the brain is tickled just right.
Yes.
You are willing to project strings on all of reality but not color. Yet both are just the brain being tickled.
Does it require having seen red before?
I literally just said above that colour is composed of strings.
No, otherwise nobody could have ever seen red in the first place. At some point in my life I saw red for the first time.
And really it can only be reports of having seen red, I'd think, which is the application of a concept requiring language.
So, the very first time someone sees red, it does not require anything not in the head?
Something is fishy here. According to you, I'm guessing your last post was strings, but I shouldn't be able to see such tiny things. You are basically pretending that meaning doesn't exist. While one might say that the normative realm of meaning depends on strings (or atoms) and maybe even reducible to complex motions thereof, it has to be accounted for in any serious theory.
It seems to me that your view has collapsed into a monism of strings. The representative image is strings and yet represents still more strings. The meaning of your theory is...strings ! Logic must be strings too.
This is like when it became clear yesterday that scientific realism doesn't exist according to scientific realism.
It requires the appropriate areas of the occipital lobe to be activated which does not in principle require anything outside the head (notwithstanding the fact that the brain isn't an isolated system and energy has to come from somwhere).
In fact on this point you might want to look into the notion of Boltzmann brains.
Well, I do not think that seeing red requires language. Our discussion of it does. I'm just baffled by the claim that seeing colours and shapes does not require anything outside the head. That makes no sense. Or better yet, it leads to saying that everything is inside the head.
Does feeling pain require something outside the head?
Of course it does. Phantom limb pain requires once having had a limb. The limb is outside the head. As is any prior object that caused injury to the limb.
The position you're arguing for seems to completely neglect all the events that lead up to the ability to reactivate the biological machinery.
No it doesn't. I accept that we (usually) see red in response to electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of 700nm stimulating the rods and cones in our eyes, which then send signals which are processed by the occipital lobe. I just reject the claim that the red we see is a property of apples. Like the pain we feel, the red we see is "in the head". It's (usually) a response to things outside us, nothing more.
Okay. Then seeing red does require things outside the head.
It doesn't require it. It's just how it usually works. It only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the occipital lobe.
The evolution of seeing red...
You used "activation". I think it's better put as a "reactivation". The difference is one of evolutionary explanation of seeing red. There's no way to check, but I think it's much safer to claim that we could not induce seeing red for the first time with someone who was in the complete dark, had never seen red before, using only the means you're suggesting are required.
Why not? If electromagnetic radiation stimulating the rods and cones in someone's eyes can cause them to see red for the first time then why can't we (with a sufficiently advanced technology) do this artificially? Is there something unique about the electrical signals sent by the photoreceptors such that we cannot in principle replicate them?
In fact we're trying to do exactly that to enable the blind to see.
"Electromagnetic radiation stimulating the photoreceptors can cause someone to see red for the first time" is a gross oversimplification.
It is true that "The world is all that is the case", but is this the world of Indirect or Direct Realism.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein studiously avoids addressing this question.
Good luck in the absence of red things outside the head to play a role.
Mostly noting the similarity between bodies and space, and everything is some small one-dimensional entity traveling through a multitude of dimensions (as the pop accounts would have it --I don't claim to understand such stuff)
For Epicurus he thought there were very fine atoms which made the mind -- so the mind was a composite of atoms, which isn't too far off from the mind being a composite of neurons.
Later:
A fair interpretation of this translation is that Epicurus is a direct realist, in the sense that our perceptions and senses are directly connected to or apprehend real objects outside of the activity of the brain.
Nothing quite like bundles of properties, though, as I understand that. So different than your distinction where there are different properties, or maybe kinds of properties? Like a property-dualism?
That's the highest I went in terms of classes in physics. Very fascinating stuff.
What I found in reflection is that none of the sentences in QM meant something like what I might mean when I'm talking about anything in my life, such as "I went to physical chemistry class today".
Further, QM equations of systems more complicated than hydrogen using this model are not analytically solvable. So there'd be no necessary relation, at least, between these absurdly complicated systems (when we consider them expressed in scientific physical terms) and, say, me walking to physical chemistry class, or my memory of walking to physical chemistry class.
And lastly, absolutely no one really understood all this stuff in their day to day life. So while it's fascinating and reveals unexpected things about reality, it surely can't be the case that it is all there is to reality because we have to grasp reality well enough to have survived this far.
Not so much a refutation as sharing why I am doubtful of scientific realism.
The world is whatever we as philosophers are talking about.
'Deeper' than this or that contingent metaphysical thesis is the necessary or 'primordial' structure of philosophers articulating how it is whatever is the case.
The philosopher's intention to articulate the truth is intrinsically social and worldly in a strategically indeterminate sense. The details are what we philosopher's debate, and we can expect claims to be abandoned, revised, synthesized. Wittgenstein is trying to dig deeper, say something about 'eternal' logical-linguistic structure.
What's strange and yet familiar is that this same world is seen with the help of ('through') so many different pairs of eyes.
We have thinkers like Democritus brilliantly postulating that all the stuff of the world is made of indestructible pieces too tiny for us to see. So Democritus himself is made of such pieces. But this does not make the person or his reasons an illusion under which atoms hide. A tree is 'made of' leaves and branches, but the tree is no less real because we can consider it as a unity.
The redness of an apple is a property of that apple within an unshattered lifeworld that includes norms for the application of concepts. Some people mistakenly (or imprudently) insist that 'atoms and void' are on some separate and deeper and realer plane of existence like a substrate. But this forces us into a confused dualism and a reification of consciousness. Our concept of atoms-and-void in the normative realm is somehow supposed to also be radically other than concept.
Also, even 'private experience' happens within the world, as if in a room that only a particular room can access. This is because we include it in our inferences (folk psychology i the manifest image.) We explain a divorce in terms of a headache.
If one looks for meaning in terms not only of use but more specifically in inferential use (normatively governed), then all entities are 'obviously' in one and the same world.
The world is that which is the case. This ineluctably minimal concept of world is that which philosophers can be right or wrong about. It's the apriori target of claims. To deny this is to tell me I am wrong about something -- about what is the case ---which is only to support my point.
I suggest that we look at what the philosophical situation always already accepts (without noticing it) and work outward from that.
I think the focus on sight is a detriment to the discussion. So forget sight for the moment and consider the other senses. It's fine to say that we taste apples, but it's also correct to say that the tastes we taste are not properties of the apple. Tastes are a neurological response to stimulation of the gustatory cells by the chemicals in the apple. We might want to talk about apples having a taste even when not being tasted, but that is properly interpreted in the counterfactual sense of what it would taste like were we to taste it, not in the sense that it has in its own right some material property which is a property of taste. And the claim that there is a right or wrong way for an apple to taste is false. It's not right that sugar tastes sweet. It's just the case that, given the way the human body is, sugar tastes sweet to most humans in most situations. To a different organism (or a human with an uncommon body) sugar might not taste sweet, and that is no more or less correct.
The same with how an apple smells, and how an apples a feels, and how an apple sounds (were it to make a noise).
And the same with how an apple looks. Sight isn't special. The visual characteristics of an apple (such as colour) are a neurological response to stimulation of the photoreceptor cells by light, not properties of the apple. It's not right that apples look red (or green, depending on the apple). It's just the case that, given the way the human body is, apples look red to most humans in most situations. To a different organism (or a human with an uncommon body) apples might not look red, and that is no more or less correct.
But do people really share the same belief objects whether agreeing or disagreeing about the truth of a proposition? For how can linguistic conventions decide what the object of a proposition is?
If you accept that the Earth isn't flat, then you presumably accept that a flat Earth cannot be the physical cause of a Flat-Earther's beliefs. In which case, how and in what sense can he be said to be referring to the Earth?
When you interpret a flat earther to be speaking about 'our earth', are you claiming to have knowledge about the speaker's beliefs, intentions, mental state, circumstances and so on? or are you merely referring to what convention says about the speaker's verbal behaviour?
The norms of linguistic convention are certainly correlated to facts about the world, for otherwise nobody would ever trust each other's remarks. But can this justify elevating the status of convention to the ground or justification of meaning? For don't our conventions often mislead and betray us about the facts of truth and meaning?
Our conventions continually evolve, precisely because they continually fail us in some ways. I think it's important to call them norms to emphasize their use. I appeal to norms in order to challenge them. I play some norms against other norms. Think of Kinsey offending sex norms by appealing to scientific norms. Think of an atheist when it was riskier to be one offending community religious norms while protected by the norms of individual freedom and rationality.
It'll be hard to understand me if you stick to a representationalist semantics. I like inferentialism, which I connect to something like neorationalism, (resource linked earlier in the thread if you are interested.)
I think what you say makes sense --- within your framework which I don't share.
Quoting Michael
To me red is a concept that's applied according to certain norms. Saying the apples look red sounds to me like dualism, as if one peels off the redness and leaves the real apple behind.
I've tried to summarize my metaphysics in a new discussion ( I invite you to join.) Our conversation has been great for me, by the way.
I embrace a flat ontology, no dualism. I lean toward understanding consciousness as just the world for a 'discursive' self. So consciousness is not its own thing. It's just the being of the world, which an organism is aware of with the help of eyes and noses, etc. But even dreams of organisms are in the world. We can talk of anger or any entity X as long as it's inferentially linked to all other entities.
In case it helps, I don't think of words like 'sweet' getting their meaning from this or that quale. Instead concepts are norms, even if in some sense they are aimed at quale (inferentially linked to 'quale.')
Here's an alternative view of meaning.
The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, propositional content, in the philosophers jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasonsthat is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.
...
Pragmatism in general is the claim that pragmatics is methodologically, conceptually, and explanatorily prior to semanticsthat one should understand the meaning or content expressed by linguistic locutions in terms of their use. The later Wittgenstein, who counseled Dont look to the meaning, look to the use, is a pragmatist in this sense (though he didnt use that term). Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising ones authority to make oneself responsible.
Understanding someones utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they saidas well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.
It's no different to saying that apples taste sweet.
Quoting plaque flag
Then how are we able to disagree on how an apple tastes?
And how does the person with synesthesia come to describe numbers as having colours, given that nobody else in his language community uses colour vocabulary that way?
A flat-earther would be committed to the implications of their view. So one could ask them what happens if one keeps going West forever.
We can look at what statements are accepted as premises and also at what inferences are tolerated. Concepts get their meanings from the claims they are used in in this approach.
I agree that everyday language is very squishy. I probably shouldn't emphasize the anti-dualism too much, because I can assimilate a folk-psychology of what the apple tastes like to Suzy. But the meaning of the-apple's-taste-for-Suzy does not get its meaning from a quale. I say instead that it gets its meaning inferentially. 'Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting, so she threw it out of the car.'
What does the word "disgusting" mean in the sentence "Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting, so she threw it out of the car"?
Fair point. Hopefully addressed above.
In my view, concepts are not semantic atoms. They get their meanings from the claims that include them.
Which inferences are allowed ?
To me that's central.
[ Also which premises are allowed ? ]
To make a claim is to assume a responsibility.
Ethics is first philosophy.
That's odd, because my attacks on conventionalism are precisely an attack on representationalism, including the idea that conventions tell us about what speakers mean.
If meaning is inferential, then the references of a speakers utterances are strongly identified with the local and proximal causes of the speakers utterances, and only weakly identified with distal causes that perfuse the convention the speaker is using in an optional capacity.
How do you reconcile your commitment to inferential semantics with your apparent claim to know the propositional content of speakers utterances?
1. Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting
2. Suzy threw the apple out of the car
We should be able to make sense of the meaning of 1) without reference to 2). Especially as there are any number of reasons that can explain 2):
3. Suzy thought the apple smelled disgusting so she threw it out of the car
4. Suzy thought the apple felt disgusting so she threw it out of the car
5. Suzy thought the apple looked disgusting so she threw it out of the car
6. Suzy is sexually aroused by littering so she threw the apple out of the car
Or even:
7. Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting but she doesn't like to litter so she didn't throw it out of the car
How an apple tastes (or smells or looks) to Suzy is one thing, and her throwing it out of the car is a different thing entirely.
And I would say that how an apple tastes (or smells or looks) to Suzy concerns what's going on in her head (specifically, with her brain).
I claim that meaning is public. Claims don't represent claimant's meaning-as-hidden-stuff.
Quoting sime
'Content' sounds representational again. The point is to look at which inferences tend to be accepted. Let me emphasize that these norms are 'liquid', unfinished, an infinite task.
:up:
Yes !
So it's no single inference that gives 'disgusting' its meaning. It's all possible inferences involving claims involving 'disgusting.'
I think you missed the point. There's no inference that gives "disgusting" it's meaning. The meaning of "the apple tastes disgusting" has nothing to do with whether or not Suzy throws the apple out of the car.
I think Wittgenstein has already made a good case against that kind of representationism.
Chatbots are the nail in the coffin.
Well, I think he didn't. As I asked above, how does the person with synesthesia come to describe numbers as having colours, given that nobody else in his language community uses colour vocabulary that way?
I very much disagree. I don't think one can found meaning on private experience. Clearly bots can learn the structure of our language.
How does a heretic decide that God is love or tolerates incest ? We can postulate causes, and we'll need premises and inferences to do so.
I'll rephrase it.
If Wittgenstein is right then the person with synesthesia wouldn't describe numbers as having colours, given that his language community doesn't use colour vocabulary that way.
The person with synesthesia does describe numbers as having colours.
Therefore, Wittgenstein is wrong.
I don't accept that inference.
I think we can include an entity like synesthesia, but its meaning will be the role it plays in claims in inferences.
Synesthesia is the perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, e.g. seeing colours when sound waves stimulate the chochlea.
This common sense, scientific understanding is far more believable than the Wittgensteinian account you're pushing.
Yes. The key thing is that concepts of internal entities are still public norms. If Suzy claims to have synesthesia, then, all other things being equal, we'd expect her to be able to give an example.
Claims commit claimants to the implications of their claims. Selves are expected to avoid contradictions in the set of claims for which they are currently responsible. We can get lots of milage from this, I think.
Putting aside what privacy means, there are two very distinct ways of interpreting that claim.
A. Private Language is False.
This is a semantic claim . According to this interpretation, private language is a thinkable possibility that is nevertheless false in either theory or in practice. Often this interpretation assumes conventionalism about meaning, whereupon public convention is believed to undermine a speaker's ability to mean what he wants. Those who hold this view often attack a speaker for talking about "private language".
B. "Private Language" is Nonsense.
This is an ontological or meta-semantic claim. According to this interpretation, whatever might be called a "Private Language " is actually "public" as a matter of tautology. According to this interpretation, which makes no semantic claims, a speaker is free to say and mean anything he wants, because the act of speaking is always understood as referring to something that is happening in the world of the speaker, either via direct acquaintance with the speaker as in the case of "qualia", or indirectly with the speaker via some causal theory of reference. In both cases, the speaker is interpreted as referring to something true that is nevertheless "public", even in the case of "qualia".
Which claim are you making?
Quoting plaque flag
So do you agree that social norms are generally a terrible way of inferring anything about an individual's behaviour?
The key thing is when the person with synesthesia talks about numbers having colours he's referring to some characteristic of his conscious experience, i.e. his neurological response to certain stimulation.
I view philosophers as imposing themselves on their community's rational norms --necessarily in terms of those norms. Following Brandom, I focus on which inferences are treated as valid. I then look for the meaning of concepts within the inferential relationships of claims involving those concepts.
Ethics is first philosophy.
Claims, not concepts, are semantic 'atoms.'
To make a claim is to make a commitment.
I radically disagree.
Social norms govern inferences in the first place. The situation is liquid enough, however, that an individual philosopher can get a new inference accepted / treated as valid. --- typically by using inferences which are already so treated along with uncontroversial premises.
I don't see a problem with reference, but the reference is not the meaning. The concept is not some conventional tag on a physical or psychological entity.
To refer to an entity is commit oneself in a certain way. If I say that X is a round, I ought not say that X is a square. I should not contradict myself.
But an object is the kind of thing that can't contradict itself ( squareness excludes roundness ).
Fundamental in principle, deduced and proved, in 1787.
My point from the start has only been that words like "red", "sweet", and "pain" refer to some characteristic of conscious experience, not to some property of the apple or fire.
I would still say that the apple is red. The point of 'nothing is hidden' (for me) is a rejection that everyday reality is a kind of appearance or paintjob on some Real that hides beneath.
I understand that we tend to explain something like the perception of redness in terms of the brain. That's fine. But the concept red tends to be applied to the objects. Since concepts are norms, I'd just appeal to how we tend to use the concept.
If this means the apple looks red or the apple appears red then I agree.
Quoting plaque flag
Applied wrongly. Its the naive realist fallacy. The characteristics of conscious experience are falsely projected onto external stimuli. Much like in the case of phantom limb syndrome where a particular feeling is falsely projected onto an empty area of space. This is the illusion of conscious experience. It seems as if it extends beyond the body, which is physically impossible.
There's something iffy here. What is this illusion of conscious experience ? Are we back to dualism ?
Why is conscious experience not real ? If it's (as you say ) made of strings/atoms, etc. ?
By convention also : atoms and void ! Fascinating this willingness to treat shape as real and so much else as not real...geometric-platonistic bias ? Why not the nose for the one true access to the Real ? Ah because we need eternal objects...and smells won't stay put.
The characteristics of conscious experience create the illusion that they extend beyond the body. It seems as if the red colour I see a property of some external world stimulus, but it isn't. It seems as if my amputated arm is still there and hurting, but it isn't.
Quoting plaque flag
It is real.
What is an illusion ? And why isn't it real ? Why does the redness that sure seems to stick on the apple not 'really' there ?
Given that society rarely agrees upon anything and constantly changes its mind, not to mention the ever-changing customs of isolated Robinson Crusoes who have no access to society, I can't see what "social norms governing inferences" amounts to, nor do I see the ultimate relevance of social norms with regards to inferential semantics.
Do you mean that remark descriptively in the non-controversial general sense that philosophers are often influenced by their society, or do you mean it in the controversial prescriptive sense that philosophers ought to align with the prejudices of their society, because society gets to define what truth is, or that society must know better?
Even if that redness is causally connected to the brain, I don't see why you need to put it in the brain.
It's a characteristic of conscious experience, and conscious experience doesn't extend beyond the brain. Unless you want to argue for some non-physical mind that has some connection to the brain but ultimately reaches beyond it and out into the world?
Because you don't understand social norms governing inferences, I'm going to write a poem now about Frosty the Snowman (with help from Google's Bard.)
[i]Frosty the Snowman,
Could dance and he could sing,
And he loved to play,
In the winter snow,
With all the children of the town.
Frosty the Snowman,
Was a friend to all,
And he brought joy,
To everyone he met,
Until the day he melted away.[/i]
Quoting sime
Given !
Underestimate norms granted for take don't or semantic.
I relate to the sense I think we all have of being behind our eyes. I also think awareness requires a functioning brain. But the redness of that distant apple is just as intuitive.
You call that experience of distant redness an illusion. What is this illusion ? How can the illusion, trapped in the brain, be of something red at a distance ? And why would shape not also be an illusion ?
****
In order to assert anything about consciousness we must be able to access it. If we have an indirect access to whatever that is that is not consciousness, then it seems we have a direct access to consciousness by comparison. In this set up consciousness is a real illusion which is indirectly related to whatever it is that is outside of consciousness, while consciousness itself is direct.
For what is consciousness direct? What is on the other side of conscious experience such that the real illusion is a direct relationship, and the real whatever is outside of the illusion is an indirect relationship?
How does phantom limb syndrome work? I don't know how it happens, I just know that it happens.
Or as a more ordinary example, there is an apparent depth in flat images, e.g when watching TV. Various pixels on a screen being lit up in the right way creates the illusion of one person being behind another. This is even more evident in the case of "3D" films. It seems as if things are reaching out of the screen, but they're not.
Reactivated neural pathways in spite of no longer being complete. A consequence of the largely autonomous central nervous system simply doing it's thing in spite of its having lost most of the input mechanisms of those pathways.
Neural pathways are not just in the brain.
May have something to do with neuroplasticity as well(the biological machinery repairing itself by virtue of using different structures than before to perform some task/function that was once performed by the missing structures).
Severely damaged nerves can do weird things. I nearly cut off the end of my thumb once. Dr said that I was very unikely to recover much feeling in the part beyond the laceration due to the nerves being completely severed. Years later, for a brief time, I experienced odd pains in that area, despite there not having been anything external to me playing a role.
I don't think that in reality you are a Direct Realist, but someone who has the position that the world exists fundamentally in language. Perhaps a Wittgensteinian approach. This is what all the evidence points to. You say i) The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics ii) that what really matters are linguistic norms and iii) "to see the tree is more usefully understood as a claim to "I see the tree".
For the Direct Realist, the world we see around us is the real world itself. Things in the world are perceived immediately or directly rather than inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence.
As you say "A tree is 'made of' leaves and branches, but the tree is no less real because we can consider it as a unity", something the Indirect Realist would agree with, in that we have the tree as a concept in the mind. But the Direct Realist is also saying that this tree exists in the world exactly as we perceive it in our minds.
Using Wittgenstein as a starting position, from the Tractatus
1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things
Things in the external world are not static but change with time. For example, the life cycle of a tree has six main stages: seed, sprout, seedling, sapling, adult tree, and decline into coarse woody debris.
The world is all that is the case, and the world is the totality of facts. Facts are states of affairs that obtain in the world and about which we can make true propositions.
The sapling becomes a tree, but the process isn't instantaneous. It requires time for one fact to change into a different fact.
At an earlier moment in time, there is the fact that the sapling is short and we can say "the sapling is short" is true. At a later moment in time there is the fact the tree is tall and we can say "the tree is tall" is true. But there is an intermediary period when neither fact obtains, the fact that the sapling is short doesn't obtain, and the fact that the tree is tall doesn't obtain.
If Direct Realism was true, and we directly perceive things in the world as they are, then every observer will agree about the moment when the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact in the world changes into a different fact.
But we know that different observers will make different judgements as to the moment the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact changes into another fact over an extended period of time.
My question to the Direct Realist is, if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact.
Is there no distinction to be drawn and maintained between a direct realist and a naive one?
:yikes:
Could you rephrase this question by dropping "facts" and "external world" out of it?
The world is much more than language, yes, but I have to use language to reason about it --- and language discloses / articulates / shapes the world in certain ways. I walk into a men's restroom, not just some room. We largely live in our symbols.
Quoting RussellA
People can disagree about the world and be wrong about the world, but they are seeing and talking about the world and not their images of it.
Now one can invent a weird language of internal images, and physicists have talked of phlogiston and ether (both eventually abandoned as useless), so it's not a matter of wrong or right but of better or worse.
:up:
This is the dualism I've been mentioning. The given is the image of the hidden.
But I say it's all on the same inferential plane, has to be to make sense.
One reason why and/or how is because each person brings their own worldview along. They each have their own sets of thoughts and beliefs about themselves and/or the world around them. It is through these respective worldviews that people 'see' the world. One's pre-existing belief system largely mediates how one comes to terms with the world and what happens in it(and in them). There are all sorts of preconceived notions at work in each of them, and these preconceived notions can and do influence the way the events are taken into account while being witnessed. Thus, any differences in testimony about what happened is often due to the differences in worldviews.
Eye-witness testimony has also been proven to be quite unreliable at times. It does not follow from the fact that different people have different accounts of what happened that they did not all watch the same set of events unfolding in real time.
Correct me if I am wrong about your view :
Apples aren't red, because redness is in the brain.
============================================
But why do you believe in the apple in the first place ?
Why should you believe that shapes exist outside of the brain ?
Why believe in 3D space at all ?
Why believe that elementary particles (strings, etc.), mere ideas of the imagination, are not only outside the brain but 'under' all appearance as their truth and reality ?
If everything is image (mediated), it's all 'really' in the brain.
I'm sure there is, but it is probably very subtle.
According to Wikipedia Naive Realism:
In philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, naïve realism (also known as direct realism, perceptual realism, or common sense realism) is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are.
Quoting creativesoul
I was trying to incorporate Wittgensteins 1.1 "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" in the Tractatus
By external world I mean whatever exists external to any mind. The IEP uses the term in their article Locke: Knowledge of the External World
Yeah, I should probably not continue here. My own position rejects both direct and indirect realism as it's currently defined. That is due to the stark ontological differences in what constitutes thought and belief, and subsequently... a mind.
:up:
Yes. We might use the metaphor of a distorting lens. I might claim that you are biased, and you might claim that I am. But we look at apples, not at images of apples. We intend and talk about apples, not images of apples. (Of course we can talk about images of apples as philosophers debating indirect versus direst realism.)
:up:
Yes, and we can see it the grammar of the words. It's a different account of the same events. All of the accounts intend the same 'object.' But I'm just making conceptual norms explicit in saying so.
I've called it the worldly fingerprint placed upon each of us by virtue of natural language acquisition/adoption. That's another matter in its own right, and would be too far tangent to be considered on topic.
If all Direct Realists are immediately and directly seeing the same world, on what grounds can they disagree about what they see.
I can understand Indirect Realists disagreeing about the world, as they are not seeing it immediately and directly, but are dependent on personal interpretation.
Different positions in space, different sense organs, different personalities. The 'directness' is the absence of intermediaries and not (and never was) the assumption of an identical response ('experience'). Two people can see the same apple differently. Joe is nearsighted. Jane is colorblind. They don't see individual images of the apple directly. They both see the apple directly, but differently.
Well, this is where my actual beliefs differ from the more limited argument I've been making.
I believe in the existence of objects other than myself and that these objects have a causal effect on my experience. I am unsure as to whether or not I can say anything more about these objects than this, and so unsure as to whether or not I am something of a transcendental idealist à la Kant. Tentatively, I am a scientific realist. I think that something like the Standard Model (or string theory) might describe what Kant would call "noumena".
Given that the entities described by our scientific theories are unlike the entities that appear to us, I do not think it correct to say that the everyday objects we are familiar with (chairs and tables and apples) are reducible to the entities described by our scientific theories. On this account I consider myself something of an antirealist (with respect to everyday objects).
So strictly speaking it's not that I believe in the existence of a perception-independent apple that causes me to see a particular shape and colour but that I believe in the existence of perception-independent entities that cause me to see a red, round apple, and that our talk of these perception-independent entities as being the red, round apple is a pragmatic narrative à la fictionalism.
As to why I believe in the existence of objects other than myself, I suppose it's a parsimonious explanation for the occurrence and regularity of conscious experience. It seems to be more reasonable than solipsism.
OK, that was quite helpful.
I guess the delicate issue is whether the current scientific image (or any possible scientific image) makes sense as the Real which causes experiences of red apples. To me that 'image' would (in this context) just be more appearance, albeit organized conceptually in an impressive way.
I used to agree more with Kant, so I can relate. It's a tricky issue in any case.
All I am doing is interpolating from my own experiences whether or not the sentence "We are seeing the same object" meets my personal criteria of assertability.
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf
By giving a causal account of how ideas get formed in the mind as the result of the external world
pouring into us through the senses we can arrive at an epistemological account of how these ideas can be put together in knowledge. Causation here yields justification, or in Rortys description, a quasi-mechanical account of the way in which our immaterial tablets are dented by the material world will help us know what we are entitled to believe (1979, 143). The history of seventeenth century philosophy forwarded in Mirror has it that the legacy of modern philosophy is a Cartesian-Lockean metaphor in which minds are construed as representing machines whose units of representation are ideas.
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What Sellarss Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs. A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge (Sellars 1956, 77). This led Sellars to the point that there is no way to draw a direct link between the supposedly immediate (or non-conceptual) givens of perception and the mediated (or conceptualized) takings of knowledge. For perceptual inputs (e.g., sensations) to be in any way relevant to processes of justification and hence of knowledge they must already be conceptual in form so as to occupy some place in what Sellars called the logical space of reasons (1956, 76). Sellarss claim, upon inspection, is a rather modest one: every conclusion in belief stands in need of
reasons as supporting premises. Modesty, of course, is often a high virtue in philosophy. And in any event, its appearance can be deceptive. In this case, a modest point calls into question the very project of epistemological foundationalism. For what Sellars is suggesting is that as-yet-unconceptualized
perceptual inputs cannot play a determinative role in justificatory practices involving classificatory concepts. The Jamesian blooming buzzing confusion of raw sensation may find its way into our experience on occasion but it cannot play any direct justificatory role in so doing.
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Perceptions are of course conceptually classifiable but not for that reason justifiers of any particular conceptual classification. Every perceptual given is always amenable to a multiplicity of conceptual takings this is Quines thesis of ontological relativity or inscrutability of reference, made memorable in his example of the Gavagai-Rabbit translation (Quine 1960, §7ff.). It follows that concepts by themselves do not yield justifications. Concepts are not, merely in virtue of being concepts, justifiers for any other concepts, even though (as Sellars showed) only a conceptually-laden belief can justify a conceptuallyladen belief. Quines claim also seems rather modest. But the view it leads to is the radical divorce of epistemology and ontology which follows from the insight that, as Rorty put it, there is no such thing as direct acquaintance with sensedata or meanings which would give inviolability to reports by virtue of their correspondence to reality, apart from their role in the general scheme of belief
(1979, 202). Rorty takes Quine to show that perceptions do not enter into us one at a time, but rather as part of complex webs of theory and practice such that any perception is always bundled together with many other perceptions as well as many other beliefs.
I directly see the apple, and you directly see the apple, but the apple I see is different to the apple you see. My private experience of the apple is different to yours.
I directly see the colour red, and you directly see the colour red, but the colour red I see is different to the colour red you see. My private experience of the colour red is different to yours.
Then how can there be a public language about apples and the colour red if our private experiences of apples and the colour red are different.
Concepts are public. Concepts are norms. How else could you even ask me that question with a sense of being entitled to an answer ? A tacit commitment to the philosophical situation is prior to every other issue. I touch on that in my new thread, if you want to join.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14264/nothing-is-hidden
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf
Rortys argument was that the Quine-Sellars combine poses an enormous problem for a representationalist empiricism which makes use of two claims that seem unproblematic but turn out to be enormously puzzling once submitted to scrutiny: the first claim being that simple ideas come into the mind in the form of nonpropositional awarenesses, the second claim being that these ideas once in
the mind somehow get converted into something that can stand in inferential relations to propositions in the mind. Lockean ideas had always tried to play the double role of representations of an outside world and justifications for other inner ideas. But explaining how ideas can in fact do this double work is a task that may be impossible. Even the most obvious counterexamples stemming from cultural variance, perceptual illusion, and even just plain ignorance are enormously difficult to explain away. The rain outside may cause me to believe that the Gods are conspiring against me, but that belief is not therefore justified, especially if my audience for justification in this case is a group of evidence obsessed meteorologists, or perhaps neurosis-analyzing psychiatrists). Sellars helps Rorty show that nothing except a conceptually-structured belief can count as a justification for another belief (thus the physical fact of rain by itself justifies nothing) only concepts are capable of being justifiers. Quine helps Rorty show that our being caused to believe something does not for that reason alone justify that belief (thus the rain causing me to further faith the conspiracy by itself justifies nothing) no concept by itself can be an unimpeachable justifier. Thus taken together, as Rorty showed us to take them, Sellars and Quine break the link between causation and justification at the heart of modern epistemology.
How have (or could) you establish my private experience of apple is different to yours?
Individual differences in visual science: What can be learned and what is good experimental practice?
What Sellarss Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs.
The Direct Realist argues that they perceive immediately or directly things in the world.
If a belief can be justified only on the basis of another belief, and beliefs only exist in the mind, then there can be no connection of any kind between the mind and the world. This is more an argument for Idealism than Realism.
A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge (Sellars 1956, 77).
There is a causal chain from the external world through my senses to my mind
When I see the colour red, I don't believe that I see the colour red, I know without doubt that I see the colour red. I don't need to justify my belief as it is not a belief in the first place.
IE, the Indirect Realist doesn't need to justify what they perceive through their senses.
True, its an assumption, but a reasonably strong assumption.
But if I was a South African cab driver and you were an Icelandic doctor, the chances that our private experiences of apples are exactly the same is highly remote.
From https://scitechdaily.com:
Its a question that arises with virtually every major new finding in science or medicine: What makes a result reliable enough to be taken seriously? The answer has to do with statistical significance but also with judgments about what standards make sense in a given situation. The unit of measurement usually given when talking about statistical significance is the standard deviation, expressed with the lowercase Greek letter sigma (?). The term refers to the amount of variability in a given set of data: whether the data points are all clustered together, or very spread out.
I probably have a six sigma level of confidence.
You are forgetting uncontroversial or undisputed basic statements. We might all believe the same witness, and reason from her testimony, to justify some more complicated claim.
Personally I wouldn't put beliefs 'in the mind.' Language is worldly. It is marks and noises of a certain kind.
Quoting RussellA
Do you see claims through your sense organs ? I think not. You don't bother to justify claims to yourself unless you feel doubt. Others may or may not expect justification.
That concepts are norms isn't the same as saying that concepts are public. These are two distinct semantic claims.
I have only had a precursory glance at Brandom's introduction to inferentialism but I suspect you might be misreading, or at the very least dramatically oversimplifying his views, which to a large extent is understandable given this is an abbreviated public forum space where people speak with highly constrained time and space and without knowing of each others prior knowledge and agendas.
In Chapter 5, "A Social Route From Reasoning to Representing" , Brandom makes generally non-controversial arguments that language serves as a medium of 'representation' in the context of social norms.
So, when speaking in the context of language being a medium for representation , then qualia - which by definition is said to refer to only what an individual speaker could know - gets the chop.
But what Brandom doesn't do in that passage is insist that meaning is essentially representational or that meaning and knowledge are necessarily public affairs. Indeed, that interpretation of Brandom would contradict the very idea that Brandom was an non-representational semanticist at heart. I suspect that Brandom, much like Wittgenstein, makes no negative semantic, metaphysical or mentalistic claims regarding the meaning or existence of "private language". I suspect that all he means, is that private concepts aren't being used representationally and hence beetles in boxes aren't an extensional aspect of the social representations inculcated by social norms. Nevertheless Beetles do matter when it comes to the perspectival and idiosyncratic aspects of language that are relative to each individual who must individually adapt their mother tongue in a bespoke inferential fashion to match their own worlds; such beetles are necessary, but lie beyond the aperspectival limitations of social norms and communication.
i.e. an idiolect.
Either the public body is a set of individuals, meaning that concepts only exist in the minds of the individuals making up the public body, or, the public body supervenes on a set of individuals - a non-reductive physicalism - meaning that concepts exist in the public body and not in the minds of the individuals.
As I personally find non-reductive physicalism hard to believe, my belief is that concepts can only exist in the minds of the individuals.
Quoting plaque flag
:up:
I think it's cool that you looked into Brandom. I've put a fair amount of time into his work, but of course I've only used a few key concepts of his, for my own purposes. I don't feel constrained by my influences, naturally.
Quoting sime
To me private concepts is an oxymoron, but I'm open to something like a continuum. Philosophers try impose upon current norms, usually by appealing to norms which are not currently being challenged. They want an eccentric candidate inference or world-disclosing metaphor to become widely recognized. If one thinks concepts get their meanings from claims, then concept modification will often involve using familiar concepts in new inferences, thereby mutating the concepts. We also have an expressive enough language to talk about concepts directly, and such claims might be accepted as explication (obvious upon hearing, etc.)
I personally avoid talking about 'pure' or 'internal' meaningstuff which is contained in expressions. I suggest that equivalence classes of expressions are a nice alternative to the idea of this meaningstuff. Different sentences can be used for pretty much the same purpose, so they have the same meaning (as use). Eccentric uses are advertised and defended by philosophers for admission as standard uses.
Some hold that idiolects in this sense do not exist or that the notion is useless or incoherent, but are nonetheless happy to use the word idiolect to describe a persons partial grasp of, or their pattern of deviance from, a language that is irreducibly social in nature.
I'm happy with the bold part. In fact that's probably all of us as individuals. But we push toward a center. The philosopher as such manifests a truthbringing intention. I'm not sure that's the best way to put it, but there's a motive, a push, a project. It is deeply social, essentially outward and self-transcending.
Just as a coherent self is an infinite task, so is the community's co-articulation of the world.
Hegel denies the intelligibility of the idea of a set of determinate concepts (that is, the ground-level concepts we apply in empirical and practical judgment) that is ultimately adequate in the sense that by correctly applying those concepts one will never be led to commitments that are incompatible according to the contents of those concepts. This claim about the inprinciple instability of determinate concepts, the way in which they must collectively incorporate the forces that demand their alteration and further development, is the radically new form Hegel gives to the idea of the conceptual inexhaustibility of sensuous immediacy. Not only is there no fore-ordained end of history as far as ordinary concept-application in our cognitive and practical deliberations is concerned, the very idea that such a thing makes sense is for Hegel a relic of thinking according to metacategories of Verstand rather than of Vernunft.
All that he thinks the system of logical concepts he has uncovered and expounded does for us is let us continue to do out in the open, in the full light of self-conscious explicitness that lets us say what we are doing, what we have been doing all along without being able to say what was implicit in those doings.
Concepts don't exist in the head. They exist in the movements of the body, including the movements of mouth and hand and all the [ other kinds of ] action that claims are used to justify, explain, predict.
This is one of the problems with indirect realism. It's dualist ! You are trapped in your head. But I say we perform conceptuality, primarily in the time dimension, for we are the timebinding primate. What Hegel calls Geist ('spirit') is just complicated patterns in the Nature from which it emerged. What is called consciousness is, in my opinion, better understood as the being of the world for a [discursive] self. A 'conscious' person sees the world and not immaterial meanings and sensations, etc.
To me anyway that makes more sense, but I didn't start here.
If my belief that it will rain tomorrow isn't in my mind, how can I know that this is my belief.
Quoting plaque flag
[i]The first claim being that simple ideas come into the mind in the form of nonpropositional awarenesses
The second claim being that these ideas once in the mind somehow get converted into something that can stand in inferential relations to propositions in the mind[/i]
As regards claim one, true. I can see many things without knowing its name.
As regards claim two, partly true. Some things I see I do know its name.
Now that you mention it, I think beliefs would largely (maybe usually ) function inferentially in the usual way of folk psychology. A guy on LSD jumps off a building, because (we speculate) he believed he could fly --even without articulating that belief. But we articulate in our attempt to explain.
Note that we attribute beliefs to dogs and cats too.
If you claimed to believe P, people could still argue you were lying. You might fear that you are lying to yourself. Or you could be very confident, say it out loud, etc. So it's a rich issue.
What is needed is claims, propositions, premises --- though classification will often lead in that direction.
Where in my body is my concept of open government.
Quoting plaque flag
If trapped in my head, how have I managed to survive X years in a harsh, brutal and unforgiving world.
Look in the dimension of time.
Can you summarize that concept in a sentence ?
Imagine a photograph taken of a dancer. It's just a frozen pose and not the dance. We are the most intensely temporal creatures we are aware of.
That's why (I claim) you aren't trapped in your head with immaterial meanings and imaginary apples. [ Or at least I argue for direct realism. ]
I think I'm tracking -- you're not a dualist in terms of substance or properties. Maybe a simpler way to put it: some entities which we speak about exist, and some entities which we speak about don't.
And upon coming to find out strange things like the dress, or the various other phenomena which have been mentioned to point out a difference in individual experience, one has a reason to doubt that our experience is like what we thought it was before, whatever that may have been.
Quoting RussellA
Because they're seeing different parts.
Suppose our senses are represented by a circle on a plane -- everything inside the circle is our mental-bodily-insides, and the outside surface of the circle is our sensual limit. This is a world defined by shape, line, space, and relative position. As the surface conforms to other geometric shapes we'll get a different description. In fact, one would actually have to be [s]me[/s] the same circle to get the exact same description. But because all reality is perspectival, an unfolding surface, that's impossible. I'm tempted to claim that a phenomenological direct realism predicts that we'll see things differently, but that's not right either (because if it were a transcendental phenomenology, it'd be the opposite)
For me the inferential plane is just a metaphor that emphasizes that all entities (angels, attitudes, anvils, aardvarks) have meaning in the first place because they are related to other entities (keeping in my the semantic basis of the proposition in which concepts embedded). I can claim that repressed terror causes toothaches. I can claim that god caused the world. Whether or not the claim is plausible or accepted is secondary here to its meaning. Note that God can be the highest entity in terms of status and still be just on the plane in terms of the interdependent semantics I'm trying to make explicit.
All roads lead to Rome, and all concepts and claims lead back to the inferential philosophical-practical situation. In more practical situations, I explain my actions by giving reasons. Here on the forum, it's almost entirely about justifying or explicating claims.