Lost in transition from our minds to an external world
Is it possible that there is something logically unsound with the following proposition a proposition that some skeptics embrace?
We can never know anything about an external world because all we have when we make such an assertion is our perceptions and reasoning, all of which occur in our minds. We can not get outside of our perceptions to make any claims about the external world.
Perhaps another way to formulate this skeptical argument is:
[i]1. All knowledge comes either from sensory perception (e.g., visually perceiving a mountain) or reasoning (e.g., solving an algebraic equation).
2. Both perception and reasoning occur in our minds.
3. The external world is, by definition, external, which is outside our minds.
Therefore:
4. Because everything we know exists in our minds, we can not have any knowledge about the external world.[/i]
Im no logician, so it wouldnt surprise me if Ive somehow bungled the argument and I welcome anyones help in formulating it correctly. However, if this argument essentially satisfies the skeptics point, then it seems that the skeptic is contradicting him/herself by making a claim about the external world.
For if one is unable to know anything about the external world, then one can not make any claims about it at all even claiming that knowledge about it is impossible, because that too is knowing something about the external world namely, that it is unknowable.
In fact, wouldnt you need to bypass your own perceptions and go outside your own mind in order to make such a claim? After all, according to the argument, your own perceptions and mind are unable to determine anything about the external world. Given that argument, you would need to employ some means other than your own perceptions and mind to be able to verify whether or not an external world can be accessed by your internal perceptions and mind.
Because isnt it possible that our perceptions are a dependable means of obtaining knowledge of the external world? Again, how would the skeptic know they are not dependable if she/he only has access to her/his own perceptions and mind, which she/he has already argued are unable to determine anything about an external world?
There is something else I find odd when the skeptic asserts that we can know nothing about the external world. Heres the issue:
If we are to know anything, then dont we need to (somehow) have access to that object of knowledge? And to have access, dont we need a means by which we access it? When we go on a journey by automobile, we need a road to access our destination. So too with knowledge; we need a road (or a way) to get it.
Take another example: We solve algebraic problems by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. This is the means by which we access or gain knowledge about the answer. Note that we do not identify the process of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with the answer to the problems they are merely the means by which we access the answer. Without adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, we can not have knowledge about (answers to) the problems.
Is it not similar with sensory perceptions and knowledge about the external world? Arent sensory perceptions the means by which we gain access to and knowledge about the external world? Skeptics misrepresent their critics as identifying perception with the world itself. Rather, arent skeptics the ones conflating process with result; confusing the road with the destination; and identifying addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing with the solutions of algebraic problems?
And one final observation: It seems to me that the skeptic is rigging the game from the start taking away the means by which we can have knowledge of the external world in order to prove it is impossible to know anything about it. Which actually reveals another logical issue that of assuming what is to be proven and then proving it (the fallacy of begging the question):
The skeptic assumes and asserts that we do not have the means by which we can have knowledge of the external world and, therefore, we can not have knowledge of the external world. Surely theres something wrong with that argument. Just because I assume and assert that all black cats bring bad luck, it doesnt (really) follow that bad luck befalls anyone who gets a black cat does it?!
We can never know anything about an external world because all we have when we make such an assertion is our perceptions and reasoning, all of which occur in our minds. We can not get outside of our perceptions to make any claims about the external world.
Perhaps another way to formulate this skeptical argument is:
[i]1. All knowledge comes either from sensory perception (e.g., visually perceiving a mountain) or reasoning (e.g., solving an algebraic equation).
2. Both perception and reasoning occur in our minds.
3. The external world is, by definition, external, which is outside our minds.
Therefore:
4. Because everything we know exists in our minds, we can not have any knowledge about the external world.[/i]
Im no logician, so it wouldnt surprise me if Ive somehow bungled the argument and I welcome anyones help in formulating it correctly. However, if this argument essentially satisfies the skeptics point, then it seems that the skeptic is contradicting him/herself by making a claim about the external world.
For if one is unable to know anything about the external world, then one can not make any claims about it at all even claiming that knowledge about it is impossible, because that too is knowing something about the external world namely, that it is unknowable.
In fact, wouldnt you need to bypass your own perceptions and go outside your own mind in order to make such a claim? After all, according to the argument, your own perceptions and mind are unable to determine anything about the external world. Given that argument, you would need to employ some means other than your own perceptions and mind to be able to verify whether or not an external world can be accessed by your internal perceptions and mind.
Because isnt it possible that our perceptions are a dependable means of obtaining knowledge of the external world? Again, how would the skeptic know they are not dependable if she/he only has access to her/his own perceptions and mind, which she/he has already argued are unable to determine anything about an external world?
There is something else I find odd when the skeptic asserts that we can know nothing about the external world. Heres the issue:
If we are to know anything, then dont we need to (somehow) have access to that object of knowledge? And to have access, dont we need a means by which we access it? When we go on a journey by automobile, we need a road to access our destination. So too with knowledge; we need a road (or a way) to get it.
Take another example: We solve algebraic problems by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. This is the means by which we access or gain knowledge about the answer. Note that we do not identify the process of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with the answer to the problems they are merely the means by which we access the answer. Without adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, we can not have knowledge about (answers to) the problems.
Is it not similar with sensory perceptions and knowledge about the external world? Arent sensory perceptions the means by which we gain access to and knowledge about the external world? Skeptics misrepresent their critics as identifying perception with the world itself. Rather, arent skeptics the ones conflating process with result; confusing the road with the destination; and identifying addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing with the solutions of algebraic problems?
And one final observation: It seems to me that the skeptic is rigging the game from the start taking away the means by which we can have knowledge of the external world in order to prove it is impossible to know anything about it. Which actually reveals another logical issue that of assuming what is to be proven and then proving it (the fallacy of begging the question):
The skeptic assumes and asserts that we do not have the means by which we can have knowledge of the external world and, therefore, we can not have knowledge of the external world. Surely theres something wrong with that argument. Just because I assume and assert that all black cats bring bad luck, it doesnt (really) follow that bad luck befalls anyone who gets a black cat does it?!
Comments (174)
Before we evolved to the point of being able to perceive and reason, we received sensory input and nourishment from that same physical outside; we responded to it, interacted with it, injected waste products into it, manipulated and altered it.
Why should be we not be able to say how we experience it, now that we can enhance, measure and articulate our sensory input?
Stating it thus for me identifies the organism-environment system as the basic unit of comprehension and explication.
That's how I see it: indivisible. But then, I'm a simple-minded biped, not a philosopher.
I think that you are right from your own perspective.
Actually, what makes a lot of confusion in these discussions about external reality, metaphysics, truth, and so on, is the fact that perspectives are ignored. Instead, perspectives, and the way how they develop and interact in the debate, are essential.
Lets try to clarify this question.
Lets start from realists perspective. They say Reality, meant as an external world that exists independently from our subjectivity, exists.
Non-realists perspective starts from agreeing with realists. Non-realists say Lets agree. Lets think that reality exists.
Next step taken by non-realists is to aknowledge the existence of subjectivity: whatever we say about reality comes from our subjectivity.
Until this point, the two perspectives coincide.
Now lets go forward: if everything we say about reality comes from our subjectivity, we have no way to have any contact with reality.
Last paragraph, that I have highlighted in italics, is where you find the logical inconsistency. The inconsistency is produced because this point forces us to create a new perspective, that is the non-realist perspective. At this point we have an inconsistency because the new perspective is actually not fully created yet: we realize that we dont have contact with reality, but we are still thinking in a mentality that assumes the existence of reality, or, at least, assumes it as possible.
In order to solve the problem of this inconsistency, we need to complete the creation of the non-realist perspective. To make it complete, we need to realize that, given the described situation, we not only dont have any contact with reality, but actually, as a consequence, we have absolutely no idea about what the word reality means. We need to realize that thinking that it is possible to think of the concept of reality is an illusion. If whatever we think comes exclusively from a contact with our own subjectivity, then the very idea of reality is an illusion. It is like those who have been born blind and, nonetheless, that try to figure some ideas about what colors are. They do it, they say that they have tried and they have been able to produce some ideas, but it is clear that, whatever idea they have been able to produce inside themselves, it can only be an illusion.
At this point we can reinterpret and make clear what non-realists say to realists: they actually say What you call reality must be considered something we cannot have any contact with. To make it better, they should say What you call reality is just an illusion produced by imagination.
Now you can see that there isnt inconsistency anymore, because we have clearly separated the two perspectives. We dont say Reality cannot be reached, but What you call reality cannot be reached.
And there discussion ends. Forever.
I dont think so: I think that, at that point, an infinite number of questions, perspectives, horizons, hypotheses, come up, waiting for us to explore them.
I can't imagine. But, as long as someone can, by all means, carry on!
This last option is from Berkeley? It would seem to just reverse the roles that subject and object play in a realist account, by placing an idealist subject in the position of the really real object. What you left out is a relativism which eliminates the distinction between reality and appearance. This allows for the existence of that which is outside of or other than the subject without claiming any foundational status for what appears.
Quoting Vera Mont
:smirk:
This strikes me as entirely a claim about the mind, and not about the external world. It's, in fact, rejecting any notion(as in any.. not any particular, but any) of an external world on the basis of a claim about our mind. "The external world is unknowable" is better formulated as "Our minds are unable to directly interact with the external world, and therefore, our minds cannot know anything about hte external world" which says nothing about the external world, to me, but entirely something about our mind's limitation in relation to it. Its unknowable to our mind, not in and of itself.
The second: I'm unsure I necessarily get what you're trying to reject. There is obviously an internal world, and it seem empirically true that our internal world (sense) can't access the external. Are you able to pinpoint what about that you're rejecting?
Apparently, it goes to C.D Broad's Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy which im unfamiliar with.
Yes, it is very similar to Berkeley.
Quoting Joshs
I think that your point shows again the essential importance of taking perspectives into account.
I agree that, until what I said, we have just replaced the external reality with our subjectivity. We can call it solipsism.
But we need to go further.
Once we realize that the very idea of reality is a creation of our mind, it needs just a step forward to realize that anything we think is a product of our mind. This means that the very idea of being and any logic that we use to structure our thoughts cannot be trusted, because they are products of our mind. The conclusion is that, at the end, we can never know what we are talking about, we have no idea of what the verb to be means and we even have no idea about what having no idea means.
At this point, many people object that, this way, philosophy itself becomes simply impossible, because we never know what we are talking about. This objection is, essentially, what produced the creation of analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophers say something like this: In the middle of the great confusion of perspectives, criticism, interpretations, lets concentrate on making clarity, precision.
I would notice that, when those people say that this way philosophy itself becomes simply impossible, it is not philosophy that becomes impossible, but what they think philosophy is, or must be, that becomes impossible.
They keep an essential idea of philosophy as understanding, or finding truth. I think that, for any philosopher, it should be obvious to ask who established or establishes what philosophy is or must be?.
At the end, the remedies and objections of realists and analytics seem to be very similar to the funny story where some people lost their keys in a dark place, but they look for them in another place, because in the other place there is light.
If our research takes us into difficult and uncomfortable places, what is the point of rejecting our research just because it makes us uncomfortable?
My conclusion is that we are forced to accept that philosophy needs to consider a concept of itself as art, rather than as science. If this makes difficult to understand each other and to distinguish serious research from rubbish, we just need to have patience and to work on the problem, rather than reject it.
Actually, if the objection about understanding each other and about rubbish was serious, how is that art is possible? Is art itself entirely just a lot of rubbish, confusion and misunderstanding?
I think this is what makes some philosophers adopt sorts of middle ways, by saying that external reality might exist and so on.
I think that the hypothesis that external reality might exist is a nonsense: the hypothesis that reality might exists ignores that this hypothesys conceives reality in a subjective way, of course. So, whats the point of supposing that reality might exist the way we imagine it? It cannot be the way we imagine it, because any imagination is a mirror and any mirror can never be the reality it mirrors: it is always a distortion of what we call reality. This means that we have no idea about reality, mirrors, mirroring, being; we have no idea about anything and we cannot escape this conclusion.
I simply don't see how this is the case, unless you are restricting this claim to sensible 'idea's. The 'external world' hypothesis, in any reasonable form, to my mind is based on acknowledging that fact and using reason and logic to get past the obstacle of sensory perception. The hypothesis wouldn't be required if we didn't understand that we can never conclude, from sense, one way or the other.
How could there be an internal world if there were no external world? It seems obvious that our imaginations are constrained in their ability to imagine by the sensory effects upon our bodies of what lies beyond them. We can only imagine what we have seen heard, smelled, tasted and so on. We live in and are familiar with, a shared external world, the notion 'external world' has no meaning beyond that.
We know the external world as it appears to us. Our binary, dialectical reasoning enables us to posit an existence which is independent of that appearance, and of course it is true that we cannot know the nature of what might exist beyond our capacity to sense as appearance.
Here i'm using 'internal' to mean "confined to mentation" I guess. I personally take there be an external world. I wasn't meant to be an actual descriptor.. just trying to use the common words.
Quoting Janus
It doesn't appear to us. It appears to our sense organs. Our sense organs then present something which is not the external world to our mind. We don't know the external world.
Quoting Janus
Exactly why the above is true. I'm not seeing an objection other than the issue of my, probably, illegitimately using 'internal' there.
What makes you trust reason and logic?
Though, having had a peruse of your book I would assume you have an objection to that somehow...
Your idea that something is presented "within the mind" is based on an interpretation of the objective sciences of perception and neuroscience. I agree that the evidence seems to indicate that we are precognitively affected by the external world, by things that exist beyond the boundaries of our skins, and that we cannot be conscious of that affection. But it is tendentious to think of our perceptions and judgements as being somehow separated from those precognitive processes, which, as far as we can tell, are both within and without us. In this sense the external/ internal divide would seem to be an artefact of human binary thinking; a metacognitive illusion.
Quoting AmadeusD
It does not follow from the fact that we can consciously know only that which appears to us, that it is illegitimate to say that there is a world of existents external to our bodies. Prior to the science of perception people probably just assumed that things are, as they appear to be, external to our bodies. The notion that things are all in our minds trades on the assumption that the science of perception is not all in our minds, but rather shows us an objective picture of how our senses are affected by the things in the world, so there is a performative contradiction involved in that interpretation.
You don't need to be dishonest to mistrust reason and logic. The problem is that the only way we have to check the reliability of reason and logic is to use them on themselves. How can we trust reason and logic, given that we have no way to assess them without using them again? How can I trust my brain, since I have no way to assess it without making itself in charge of making the assessment, without giving it the responsibility of assessing itself?
So, it seems, not so much an infinite number of questions, perspectives, horizons and hypotheses, so much a tail-chasing exercise.
Harmless enough....
This doesn't...really... seem to be the case to me, though I understand this fairly well-worn objection (Godel and all). Logic, being (in the context Im taking it) a closed system, doesn't need to be 'checked'. Its either accepted or not, to my mind. Obviously,. something can be logically consistent and false, which is why we use empirical data to check our reasoning as a matter of possibility. I suppose I don't feel an issue exists here, but plenty of much, MUCH smarter people do So i could just plainly be wrong.
Quoting Janus
I don't think 'precognitively' is accurate. We aren't affected by anything but sensation. The sensation is not the things in the external world. The effect the external world is having isn't on our mental faculties - Its on our physical sense organs. We are only cognizant of that, not the 'external' object, as it were. Is my understanding...
Quoting Janus
As I conclude, that isn't my idea. I don't think i've said that, either. If so, apologies. Presented to the mind. But only sensuous data is presented - not objects. (having come back to add this, I think we're probably agreeing there?)
Quoting Janus
Is this to say that there is, in fact, a direct link between our impressions and whatsoever caused them? I think that can be inferred, because otherwise we couldn't have cognition on this account. But, that isn't to say there's anything superficially the same about htem. I think that's the issue i'm trying to zoom in on. The 'external' object never appears to us, in any way.
Quoting Janus
I don't think that's the case. Whatever it is (we seem to agree, mechanically, for lack of a better word here) that causes our impressions can be entirely removed from any consciousness of it. How our sense organs pick something out of hte external world to convey to the mind, is where the issue lies - what governs that, seems mysterious to me (though, that's on this account - so i could just be wrong).
Quoting Janus
Oh. I'm really sorry if it's come across that I'm denying an external world/external objects. It just requires that we have zero access to them and cannot gain access to them. My account requires them to exist, though. I think that covers the remainder of your post lol.
One thing that is logically unsound is when the word 'perception' is used ambiguously between two different senses: (1) for the object that you percieve, and (2) for the mental event in the brain that is constitutive for having the perception.
(1) provides us with the perceived object, but there is a lot of philosophy and science telling us that we never see objects as they are, but only (2) our own seeing somehow (or sense-data). Hence skepticism.
The philosopher John Searle says that such skepticism is one of the greatest intellectual catastrophes in modern philosophy (starting with Descartes and onwards). He identifies the argument from illusion as being the main cause for the rejection of seeing objects as they are, and he thinks it's a bad argument.
Well, skeptics often use optical illusions to show that there is a difference between what you see and the object that you see. For example, you get to see a straw that looks bent in a glass of water, and from this you're expected to conclude that you don't see the straw as it is. That's a bad argument, because it is the real straw that you see, including the optical effect of the refraction that makes the straw appear bent. That's exactly what you should see under those conditions.
Hilary Putnam is another philosopher who defends perceptual realism. For example, from fundamental physics one might want to conclude that colours don't exist, it's just electromagnetism, so the colours that we see must be illusions or hallucinations. Yet being insignificant in physics is not a failure in being real in biology where colours are significant. Hence colour realism.
Beside perception you mention reasoning, which is also a set of events inside the brain in one sense, and in another sense about things external to those events. Failures to distinguish between the two senses lead one to choose between a banal kind of naive realism, or being stuck inside the head. But no deep thinker wants to appear banal, hence the popularity of skepticism in philosophy.
What Searle and Putnam and others show is that there are sophisticated versions of naive realism that are neither banal nor lead to skepticism.
But I don't think this helps us much. Colour isn't real in biology either. The colours we 'know' are created by our biology. Other animals see different colours, less or more than humans. Or none. If this realism, it is not external to human experince.
That could be inconvenient when shopping for groceries or calling 911.
Some are born blind even, but that's no good reason to reject the reality of visible things. Colours are partly created by the biology of various visual systems, and partly by the properties of the light or the surfaces that reflect it. For example, a clear sky in daylight is disposed to be seen as blue by any animal with the appropriate visual system, because of the causal relations between the wavelength of the light and the biology of the visual systems. Granted that some lack the ability, but again, that's no reason to reject the reality of the conditions under which the sky is seen as blue.
I dont see how. The appearances are what youre talking about
Im not a philosopher, so I make no claims about what is real. Its common sense to believe what we observe is real but anything common sense is worth questioning. I tend to hold that it doesnt matter either way, since almost all of us behave as realists the moment we engage with what we know as the external world. Even the idealists.
If accepting logic is ultimately up to you, then logic is just an opinion. Since you get from logic the hypothesis of the existence of an external world, then that hypothesis is an opinion as well.
This seems to confirm my idea that philosophy is, or should be, art. An artist doesn't claim that things are the way they conceive them; rather, an artist just shares their opinions, emotions, subjectivity, feelings. This way logic is just a particular way of expressing and sharing our subjective, artistic, emotions and feelings.
Unless one has fallen into the black hole of solipsism, it really isn't so difficult if one is willing to get out of the philosophical armchair. You can give the responsibility of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your cognitive faculties to a psychologist trained to makes such evaluations. You can study the workings of brains and perceptual systems to develop a more nuanced understanding of the various degrees of reliability of human cognitive faculties.
Depending on health insurance it may not be cheap, but you can take a WAIS test (or whatever the equivalent is where you may be) and get some relatively fine grained detail on the subject of your idiosyncratic constellation of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
Perhaps you aren't alone with your armchair? :chin:
The psychologist's perspective is limited inside the field of science. Philosophy wants to understand ultimate questions: that's why philosophy tries to criticize knowledge itself and even criticism itself. Science is unable to transcend its own level, because doing this is not a purpose of science. Philosophy tries to transcend systems, to be able to criticize them from a wider and wider perspective. Science cannot go wider than its own field, because science is a closed system, limited by what can be measured, repeated, expressed with maths. Philosophy is not limited to this, philosophy wants to criticize any system, including science. In this perspective, it doesn't matter if science is supported by experiments: philosophy wants to go beyond what can be supported by experiments.
In this context, thinking that psychologists can solve the problems of philosophy doesn't make sense. Actually, this is not even an intention of psychologists. On the contrary, they have respect for philosophy, because they know that philosophy studies things at a different level.
Sounds like a grandiose rationalization for being scientifically uneducated to me.
The definition "external", which is outside of our minds itself is inside our minds because it is a definition formed of a sentence, and the words "external" and "outside" are both concept, which are all internal to us. Hence, claiming that they are outside of us is incorrect.
We know the external world as representations to our mind. We know both the representations and external world to us, because they are conceivable and accessible via perception and interactions.
the external world , whose origin growth and structure we have been, throughout this book, investigating, is the Mirror of the Mind and the Map of Knowledge in one...In an immediate and direct way, the mind can never know itself it can only know itself through the mediation of an external world, know that what it sees in the external world is its own reflection. (Collingwood, Speculum Mentis)
For anyone who shares similar intuitions about the nature of reality, I cannot highly enough recommend this short book.
Quoting Pantagruel
:cool: :up:
I agree, but the questioning of common sense realism is often limited to a superficial or willful rejection, perhaps because it just seems too banal or mundane for an intellectual to take seriously.
Allegedly Hume rejected naive realism by poking his eyeball so that the object in his visual field was doubled. But since the object had not duplicated itself he rejected naive realism.
Quoting Tom Storm
Right. Many live as realists while defending anti-realim or the relativism or nihilism that follow from it. Kant's transcendental idealism is probably one of the most impressive attempts to solve the skeptical challenge, but his solution is complicated and arguably inconsistent. He too rejected naive realism :cool:
I see. Very useful to know, as it makes all the difference.
But all we know about our "external world" is through our senses and our experiences. Saying that we can't know anything because all we have is our senses is self-contradictory and makes no sense.
Looking through this bad argumentation, what I can see is an allusion to "absolute reality". Namely, that we can never know the absolute reality (of the external world) because we can only have a subjective reality of it. Which is a commonplace, but at least it's a little better than the what has been tried to be argued.
No. This is a completely incoherent sentence/claim.
The opinion is whether or not I want to use logic. Logic, is not an opinion. That's a really, really strange take (particularly given it arose from something i said whcih doesn't indicate this).
Quoting Angelo Cannata
This is very much a good explanation for your position. But i have a nagging/sinnking/growing suspicion that this is in service of defending the indefensible propositions of Catholicism (logically speaking) and turning History and 'the external world' into malleable ideas that can fit any damn thing into them. Far be it from me..
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Comports with the above, for sure. So that's good, i suppose.
Not to humans, for whom the distinction is somewhat useless :P
Who establishes that it is not an opinion?
Saying that logic is not an opinion implies that you can validate its correctness without using your brain. Can you do this? Can you give evidence that 2+2=4 without using your brain? Even if you use any kind of external instruments to get evidence of it, at the end of any validation process there is your brain drawing the conclusion ...then 2+2=4 is correct. Who guarantees that the final conclusion made by our brain is correct?
Who else would waste any time on this question?
Quoting Angelo Cannata
I don't feel that's the case at all. Logic is discovered fact of our world/universe/whatever you want to call it. We didn't event logic. We invented language.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
If i put two eggs in front of you. Indicate that you need to focus on these two eggs. Then put another two eggs infront of you, additional to those two eggs, you will see four eggs. So, that's not my brain doing anything.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
This is a worth-while point to some degree - But only if you're a true sceptic. Though, again, I imagine this is service to theological ends, so i'm unsure how best to approach that fact. Perhaps your idea of 'guarantee' is something I don't need.
On the contrary, your brain is doing everything: it interprets the presence of the eggs, it counts them, it calculates them, draws conclusions and, finally, you used it to write your message. This is actually the essential problem of realists: they decide to ignore their involvement in whatever they think and say, as if what they think and say was something fallen from the heavens and they were invisible and non-existent. This is also the essence of all tricks made by magicians: they try to convince you that what you are seeing is just reality, without any interference of them.
The same way, like a magician, you are trying to convince me that, in calculating that the eggs are four, your brain has done nothing! Who decided that they are four then?
Of course not!
We infer that there are physical processes which give rise to cognitions, perceptions. We cannot be conscious of those processes in vivo, but we can observe and analyze and theorize about how it all works; that's what science does.
In cognition or perception, we encounter things which appear to be external to our bodies. For examples, we see animals, trees, mountains, clouds we don;t see sensations. We infer that these things are presented to us via sensations, but we are conscious only of the things, not of the sensations that we infer preoduced our awareness of the things,
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, my view is that we are presented with objects, not with "sensuous data", the latter idea is an after the fact interpretation, so I don't think we are agreeing.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think all our experience makes plausible the idea that our perceptions are caused by the actions of things and environmental conditions on our senses. The actions themselves never appear to us in vivo but only the external objects do; so our views seem to be diametrically ooposed on this.
Quoting AmadeusD
No need to apologize, we are both just presenting ideas. The question I have regarding what you say here is as to how it is we could have an idea of an external world/ external objects if we had "zero access to them"?
I didn't even mention that process, and in any case its your brain. I don't think this discussion is to go anywhere worth going.
:smirk:
Very much disagree with this(other than the bolded) but I thin its possible terms are getting muddled. So, up top let me say the "object" is two things on my accout - the External Object (whcih i use in this reply) and the object of our cognition.
I don't think there is an arguable case that the 'tree' you are experiencing the view of is "the tree" in an External Object. It's your mind projecting its interpretation of (assumably - key) external data into whatever arena our consciousness gets its visuals from. I don't think it can be another way... Which has some heavy lifting to do further down my reply.. I've just thought of a potentially helpful metaphor..
When you put a DVD into a DVD player you're not looking at a DVD. You're looking at data interpreted by the machine, projected in such a way that you can cognise it. You are not looking at an actual *insert movie scene description*, or a plastic disc with magnetic stripping on it. Merely interpreted data. I see our sense organs as the Laser Disc Reader, and our mind as the Television producing the 'film' that you watch. Obviously, the pre-recorded nature diminishes the helpfulness of hte metaphor somewhat, but hopefully it illuminates what im saying somewhat too.
Quoting Janus
Now, I can, at the least, not object to this. But the 'things' are you talking about aren't external objects. Nor could they be (as above, though, that's my contention - not an absolute claim). They are the objects that result from your brain/mind interpreting the data which (assumably - again, key) is derived from actual external objects interacting with sense organs.
Quoting Janus
Well, maybe to make clearer why I thought were agreeing there, as a semi-visual rep i'm trying to post:
1. External Thing --> 2. ET interacts with sense organ --> sense organ conveys sensuous data to the brain/mind complex --> the brain/mind complex spits out a visual/smell/feeling whatever as a result of interpreting the data. The External Thing is never, and can never be, present to the mind. If you don't agree, fair enough, I got that wrong. I'm guess here you would think the underlined are the same thing?
Quoting Janus
I agree with this (and was the basis of claiming, tepidly, agreement between us earlier in the piece).
Quoting Janus
I agree with this (but as far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't be possible for the objects and not the actions to appear to us).
Quoting Janus
Again, I don't think this is a possible claim. How are you accounting for the mediation our sense organs provide between the object an our idea/cognition of it? I can't see away to reverse through that mediation to the object, without losing either the object, or at least seriously fidelity.
Could your account be coming down to a position that the External Object and the cognition of it are adequately the same as queried above? If so, I can accept that account - but I just can't find good reason to believe it other than shared cognitions (i.e, an apple looks like an apple to 99.9% of people).
Quoting Janus
Because we can assume we wouldn't get any cognition of objects without their being 'actual' objects, given how we understand our sense organs to work. We can't get cognitions out of nowhere.. so we infer (and, rightly, imo) that there simply must be something 'out there' bumping against our sense organs to produce the data which is interpreted to give us our cognitions.
Quoting Janus
Appreciate that. Not always the way it goes :)
I won't reply to the other passages in your post, because I think this is the nub of the issue. Our understanding of the way our sense organs work (as with all objective sciences) is based on the assumption, not the certainty, that we have reliable access to and understanding of external objects.
In other words, we know how they appear to work. We cannot assess this knowledge in terms of accuracy other than to gauge the overall coherency and consistency and predictive success of our scientific accounts because we have nothing other than what appears to us to compare it with.
I think the plausible account is that we have access to external objects insofar as they can appear to us via our senses, but no access to understanding their natures beyond that.
In making the division between mind and body, one renders the two incommensurate.
So it is disingenuous to then complain that you can't put them back together again.
Ok, fair enough. I would then assume this: Quoting AmadeusD
Is a fair, if rough-and-ready, way to say that I can't really disagree, but i see the degree of mediation(provided by the senses) as enough to say we don't have access to the External Objects.
Other Minds (SEP)
Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds (IEP)
Solipsism (Wikipedia)
Solipsism (Uncyclopedia)
... because others' self-awarenesses are harder still to derive than the ground you walk on.
Anyway, maybe minds are parts of the world, not somehow apart therefrom. After all, mind can affect world, and world can affect mind, alike. Then self-knowledge is also knowledge of the world in part. The perceiver just doesn't have to become the perceived to perceive that.
Going by knowledge as justified true belief, one can know of things extra-self.
Yes. Because "the external world" is at a bare minimum what is not us but matters to us. If the external world does not affect us then it does not matter to us. It can only matter to us to the extent that it does affect us. So even if our knowledge is only of our own affections, these affections are tested on a continuous basis. Such that our knowledge must be assumed really only to exist and advance consistent with external accuracy. That being one aspect of knowledge.
If you are saying we don't have access to external objects except insofar as we can sense them, then I would agree.
That, to me, does not constitute access to them - but, it sounds like we agree, just not on terminology.
If it doesn't constitute access to external objects, however limited, then what do you think it does gain access to?
Sense data. On my account, we do not have anything but. So, I can't really understand how, for an example, a shadow is access to it's object - or that the now-empty part of an ocean misplaced by some tidal activity elsewhere, gives us access to that activity elsewhere.
To posit sense data you are relying on the idea that our senses give reliable access to the organs of sense, so it seems to me that your position entails a performative contradiction.
1. We have sense data which is not the objects which is presents;
2. Those objects are inaccessible; and
3. The sense data initiates/induces/informs/whatevers our internally-derived externally-delusional experience.
I am not positing anywhere that the sense data we receive give us anything at all of their objects.
What I am a bit stuck on in your objection is this line:
Quoting Janus
I can't grok what you're trying, technically, ask of my position here - our 'sense' is the direct, unmitigated action of our sense organs in experience. I don't understand that quote line, other than to suggest that I want access to... eg my eyes? Is it to posit that somehow, our organs themselves are what we are relying on? If there's some disconnect between the 'initiation' and our 'sense data' then our organs are faulty, in that way, and that's allowable on my account - in fact, it explains it well.
I don't understand that we could have experience without sense data. It is a perfect explanation for experience. It could be delusional, but its data from our senses. Our sense organs need not be of any particular kind, other than capable of relaying something to our brain/mind.
So, you can't understand your experience unless you assume that you have access to external objects, and yet you deny that you have access to external objects? Seems like a performative contradiction to me.
Since your assumption is based on the assumption or inference that you have access to your sense organs, then why would you not infer that you have access to external objects in general? I'm not claiming that you should be certain, I'm merely referring to 'inference to the best explanation'are you certain that you don't have access to external objects?
Quoting AmadeusD
:) Not trying to be 'cute'. But this is just a restating of the same misguided response from earlier. But I don't own the claim you're trying to make for me, so the follow-on doesn't seem relevant as it's not my position to defend.
I am certain I do not have access to external objects. There isn't a way for that to be the case, as best i can tell. Though, that's not a metaphysical claim.
I have literally, and repeatedly corrected your erroneous attempt at enumerating my position. It is wrong. Therefore your conclusions have nothing to do with my position. Note:
Quoting AmadeusD
That claim is:
Quoting Janus
It is wrong and is not described in my posts. The single, only thing I have posited I have access to is sense data. Not sense organs. Not external objects. Sense data. That is it. 100% of the position rests here. I am necessarily ignorant as to the process from Sense Organ to data-in-mind because I do not posit i have access to the organs and so am precluding from knowing/understanding that.
I reject that assumption you made entirely, and my position doesn't require it. If you could please point out exactly where you're not getting it, I'm always more than happy to clarify if you are willing to stick to what i have said, rather than your version of it.
What I have been asking is on what basis do you conclude that you have access to sense data? I presume that you, as we all do, experience a world of things, animals, plants and people etc., that are external to our bodies; so, I'm asking how that common experience leads you to conclude that you have access only to sense data and not to the things, animals. plants and people, etc. If you are interested in continuing this conversation, then lay out the reasoning that leads you to your stated conclusion. If you are not interested that's fine, I don't care.
I know. And I have answered, many times, my friend: I have experience, and I cannot understand that I have experience, other than as a result of sense data, based on the empirical fact of my experience. It is 'sensed' regardless of any external objects. I infer, from the 'sense' that there must be objects initiating the data transfer.
The emphasis is the entire answer you are after - but find unsatisfactory, I guess.
Quoting Janus
In(ie within) my experience, yes, but i refuse to make that claim without qualification. They appear to be external, in my mind, to my body.
Quoting Janus
I really can't tell what's being missed.
Quoting AmadeusD
There is absolutely no reason to jump from "I can see a tree" to "what im seeing is what is actually there". You are literally not looking at anything but receiving sense data and watching a mind-created movie about it (shoddy term, but should be illustrative).
I've used the examples of tidal movements and shadows to illustrate this. You cannot access the object which causes a shadow from the shadow. You cannot access an empty bay by way of the tidal wave its emptying caused elsewhere.
So what's missing?
The more immediate experience is that you sense things, not data. No one prior to the modern scientific era would have thought in terms of sense data, which means the idea is secondary and derivative. If your idea of sense data is derived from modern scientific understanding, the veracity of which in turn is based on the assumption that we have access to external objects, then your belief that you have access to sense data necessarily depends on the latter assumption.
As to your idea that there is no reason to believe the tree you can see is actually there: well, there obviously is, since other people with you will see the same tree and on questioning will confirm that they see the same unique details of the tree, and even animals present will show by their behavior that they also see the tree; e.g. the dog might pee on it and the cat climb it or the bird perch in it.
Fine.
Quoting Thales
That does not follow.
The argument seems to be more that "Everything that happens inside our minds relates exclusively to our minds".
So you would have:
P1 Everything that happens inside our minds relates exclusively to our minds.
P2 All of our knowledge are things that happen inside of our minds.
C All of our knowledge relates exclusively to our minds (that is, not the outside world).
The argument is valid, the issue is that P1 is debatable. A silly counter example: I hit the billiard ball into the hole, everything that happens inside the billiard table relates exclusively to the table. Well, no, because how fast the ball goes through the hole depends on how strongly I hit the ball. It also depends on the gravity of the place (higher altitudes have slightly lower gravity than sea-level).
Likewise, perception does happen inside our brain, but perception is caused by outside factors or so someone defends. If we believe that different causes have different consequences, each different perception we have is caused by a different outside object, so we do have information about the outside world at the very least, that we are interacting with something different from the one before.
And if we take a tabula rasa view of knowledge, reasoning would also not just be something inside of our minds.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I think OP is trying to argue for a brain-in-a-vat kind of thing, but more like mind-in-a-vat instead.
I agree, that evolution has done an incredibly good job of making us think this is the case... maybe that's a distinction I'm making that you're not. In an "every day" sense, I'd agree with you - but this is not an every-day conversation. Fact is, our mind is in receipt of data only. The movie it puts together to play to our experiential faculties isn't actually relevant to that - its an illusion.
Quoting Janus
This doesn't make too much sense to me, unless what you're trying to set-out is an intuitive 'take' on perception, without recourse to the actual processes going on in perception. In that case, I would agree, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be going around thinking everything is askance from your experience. But I do think that actually is the case, as will be clear. I would also say that the claim you make up-top seems a pretty broad stroke to brush. I'm sure i could find plenty of examples of thinkers relating experience to sense data (perhaps in other words) and carving out "actual objects", as it were, from the data. IN fact, that seems to be the entire thrust of Idealism (more specifically, Kant's Transcendental Idealism).
Quoting Janus
1. It isn't. It's derived from the very clear fact that my mind is not actually in touch with any objects, yet my mind is the arena of my experience(the words here don't matter - what's being illustrated is beyond debate). They are necessarily not in touch
2. I can't see why that's the case. I fully agree science proceeds on a physicalist basis and essentially nothing more (until Panpsychism gets its day, anyhow) but I do not think it follows that, based on understanding a process by which we can assess claims empirically from first principles, that I must take on every idea that system has produced. Science itself isn't coherent enough-a-system to make that kind of leap, imo. Scientists disagree on their premises all the time. 'modern scientific understanding' isn't a dogma you can't diverge from. It is a method for understanding empirical data. Not sense data or metaphysics.
Quoting Janus
Hmm, point taken, but also I disgree.. but I think you're a step back from the level of analysis i'm at in this discussion.
Yes, that is, superficially, a reason to think those things are 'out there'. Our experiences converge, as it were. But I have already noted that I assume there are things out there. But its an assumption that those people and their perceptions are also "real", so its somewhat tautological to rest on that, imo.
If it is the case that we don't directly interact with objects out in the world, we don't have access to them. Plain and simple.
If you're inferring we, in fact, do directly interact with objects out in the world, by all means elucidate that process. If its acceptable, My position will need to change.
The veracity of evolution itself is based on the assumption that we have access to external reality, so your thinking here is in turn reliant on that assumption. That's what I've been trying to point out.
Quoting AmadeusD
How do you know that is the case? I don't deny that it might be an illusion, but I also think it might not be an illusion. How could we ever definitively tell, one way or the other? On the other hand, since we and the other animals seem to be very good at navigating and surviving in a complex and dangerous world, the evidence seems to point to our perceptions providing us with adequately reliable information about that world.
Quoting AmadeusD
Kant, as I read him, thinks that the objects of the senses are real things that are independent of human perception. How we see those things obviously is not independent of human perception, and that's why Kant talks about things in themselves. We have no access to the "in itself' nature of things, but of course we do have access to the 'for us' nature of things.
Quoting AmadeusD
The objects appear to you, how is that a case of "not being in touch with any objects"?
Quoting AmadeusD
What you say here shows that your perspective converges on solipsism. Solipsism (like any other philosophical position) can neither be disproven nor proven, but its plausibility rating must be thought to be very close to zero.
You show by your action of posting on here with those who disagree with you that you don't believe in solipsism. As Peirce said Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.
I am fairly sure understand your position and am not missing it(that is obviously possibly wrong)... But, my position is still no, it isn't, and that this is the one of the cruxes. It can absolutely be restricted to evolution of our illusions. Direct access to the "outside world" isn't necessary to explain that illusion beyond inferring that those objects just must be there as brute fact. I suppose i take the Kantian position here that I am allowed to infer these Objects while not saying (nay, not able to say ) anything about them. Maybe that's a sidestep. Will need to think on it.
Quoting Janus
Sure - but it seems highly, highly unlikely that a mitigated data stream is going to result in a 1:1 match when decoded by wetware into an experience. You're right to try to pin me down here though - I do not 'know'. But, my response (as it has been) would be to ask by what method/mechanics would you posit we are literally in touch with those objects? I cannot see one.
Quoting Janus
is sense-data (on my account, and I believe Kant's). This is confusing terminology though. The "nature of things" is different for phenomena versus things in themselves. Its not like its one thing with two natures, applicable to different arenas. They are two separate sets of objects, interrelated we know not how, other than the inference that one causes the other.
Quoting Janus
Hmm..I think this is a little misleading. Kant's position (I think) is that we have no access whatsoever to those objects. No nature, no object, no nothing. It is unspeakaboutable. We can't even conceptualise them because we have absolutely zero phenomena on which to ascertain anything about them whatsoever. But, as noted, I do think this is a little bit of a cop-out in the sense that it just ends up saying "Well, idk, but it sure looks like it!". I just can't see a better answer :sweat:
Kant does not, anywhere I've seen, intimate we have any access whatsoever to the things-in-themselves. The objects he discusses are those of the mind, as a result of perception and understanding arranging sense-data into a lil movie for us to watch via the internal projection system of the visual cortex. It seems fairly clear to me he uses this basic conception
1.Thing in itself: unknowable ->
2. Noumena: knowable, but not to human sense->
3. Phenomena: the internal representations of sense data necessarily imparted by interaction with (1.)
May have that wrong, and would be very much open to any passages you feel either disagree with, or elucidate this in another direction.
Quoting Janus
This seems to betray a basic understanding of what i've said...
Quoting AmadeusD
That includes people. But I also said:
Quoting AmadeusD
Which it is. If the position is that other people's subjective experience is evidence that they exist, that's a big ole circle of reasoning. But again, i assume there are actually people (read: objects) out there. My point was merely that the reasoning of such is always going to be based on inference. The fact that another person claims to be seeing the same tree as me doesn't prove that that's the case. It proves that I'm having that experience.
So my position is not even close to solipsism - I am convinced I am not the only person, and that there are external 'real objects - but as far as proving this, appeal to other minds is weak. That's my point there. Its tautological because those other minds suffer the exact same uncertainty mine does, in that same respect.
On the assumption that we have no access to the external ('external' here meaning 'external to our bodies') world, what would constitute evidence for evolution? Just answer that one question and we might get somewhere.
Correlation, I suppose, would be the only way. Do the things we're experiencing correlate with the expectations Evolutionary Theory posits?
But, I get the feeling I am committed to basically say "its an inference" and im fairly comfortable with that.
The problem with what you say here as I see it is that the expectations Evolutionary Theory posits are based on the assumption that the evidence for evolution, the fossil record, Carbon dating, DNA testing and so on consists in accurate information about the external world, about the world before humanity even existed.
So, any correlation with those expectations would be baseless without that assumption. You say, "it's an inference", but inferences about the external world, the prehuman world, and the present world must all be based on the assumption that the data they are based upon is accurate, that is to say that we do have access to the external world, or else the inferences would be completely groundless. I don't see how this has anything to do with your subjective feelings of being comfortable; it is well-known that many people may be comfortable with contradicting themselves or making groundless claims.
The issue is in the definition the "external world", as you point out. External is usually taken to mean, something outside our minds. So how it that we can go outside our minds (or perceptions that arise in persons with minds) to a completely external world?
In theory I suppose, it would be nice to be able to go outside one's own body to compare if our perceptions are getting something right or wrong about the world as we perceive it. But of course, this is impossible, for a view outside ourselves - and hence outside a framework of understanding - there would be nothing at all to experience.
The issue of correctness or incorrectness of our perceptions is not relevant about the external world, they are relevant in relation to our conceptions of our perceptions about the mind-dependent world: is that flower I am seeing white or grey? Is that the sound of a train or a concert?, etc.
A big issue, to my mind, is what exactly is meant by external here? People often speaking about external and internal, as if that distinction is very clear, I don't think it is. It would be replied that this sofa I am seeing is external to me, that is, it is not in my mind, so it is external in that sense.
But is that a substantial point? For the sofa I was seeing mere seconds ago tells me about how it looks to me, how it feels to me and how I conceive of and understand objects, always in relation to the being in question, in this case, a human being. So by this metric, the sofa I am seeing is not external to me, it is a representation, and representations are internal.
Perhaps a better distinction would be internal internal/ internal external, the former being ideas in my head absent an immediate object, and the latter would be objects as they appear to my senses and how my mind interprets them.
All this leaves aside the issue of the sciences, specifically physics, which is the star of the sciences, there we have good reason to believe that we are studying aspects of the mind-independent world, which is different from an "external world", because, at the end of the day, physics has to make sense to us in some manner, or it wouldn't matter at all, nothing would register.
It is in this area, in which we may come closest to something like the external world, but still with some caveats, which in fact make the science possible at all. Aspects of cosmology and classical physics seem to indicate some abstract properties of the mind independent world, which is fascinating, but structural, as in epistemic structural realism, which may be the best we can do. But, I could be wrong.
I think the knowledge you are discussing as veridical in hopes of showing that true perceptions tell us something about the external world, is more of an issue of accurateness of our perceptions given what many people report experiencing: if everybody sees the sky as blue, but I see it as yellow, then I may have some liver problems, or problems with my eye. But it doesn't reach the external world defined as, something outside our minds.
This raises an interesting counterpoint. I said a couple posts back
Quoting Janus
I didn't want to say 'minds' because that would be to reduce us to a kind of "dimensionless point observer", but 'bodies' can't be quite right either since parts of them at least (and all of them if viewed in the mirror) can be external objects (at least visually speaking).
On the other hand, we feel our bodies "from the inside" so to speak; I don't just look at my arm as an external object, but I feel the sensation within it, its movements, its straining and ease, and I feel its continuity with the rest of the body,
On the basis of this "internal sense" we differentiate our bodies from external objects, feeling them to be part and parcel with ourselves. I think we have good reason to think that external objects are real and that our perceptions of them are real on account of the real affects they, along with environmental conditions, light, sound, molecules of scent and taste, and the nature of our bodies themselves, have on our perceptions.
I think it fair and plausible to count this as "having access to external objects" although I go along with Kant in thinking that we have access only to their perceptible qualities as conditioned by the nature of our own bodies and organs of sense.
Yes, in Kant's scheme this is almost true by definition, since a thing-in-itself is a thing unintuited, i.e., not presented to our minds through sensation. But since that's how we access things, only some logically possible non-sensible intuition (like a God-like perception) could access them otherwise, whereby they would be noumena, not phenomena--and that's not a talent that creatures like us happen to have.
Quoting AmadeusD
Kant was so steeped in the philosophy of his time that he seems to be understood today as promoting the idea of a barrier between inside and outside, and that's a shame, because when you read him you see that this is not really what he's doing. Rather, he is emphasizing that perception is not a barrier so much as a guarantor of access, and that we really can and do know objective reality (this is the whole point of the Transcendental Analytic). So I'd say the thrust of his thinking is the opposite of how he tends to be taken now, at least in the Anglosphere.
He is certainly explicitly against any movie-in-the-head kind of idea. Think of his epistemology more as stating what was not so obvious at the time, namely that when you think or discuss things, you are doing it in the only way you can: using your faculties of perception and understanding, which have their own structures. You're not a mind in a fleshly container equipped with receptors; you are that container, which includes the brain, directly connected with the rest of the world.
'Before' is a concept.
A deepity?
What is your point?
Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between firsthand knowledge and secondhand knowledge. I do not have firsthand knowledge of history, for example. The skeptic seems to be arguing that sensory experience isn't firsthand knowledge of an external world. I think there's some truth in that. But I think it a fallacy to argue that all knowledge must be firsthand knowledge.
The question, then, is whether or not our secondhand knowledge of an external world is reliable. The answer to that likely depends on whether or not the naive realist view of perception is correct.
That's a plausible way to explain how we arrive at such an internal/external distinction, just as having a dream and waking up to discover that its content was not realized, might also lead to that distinction.
But it's still a quite fuzzy distinction that, while it may suffice for everyday dealings, becomes more problematic as we think and analyze it with some depth.
Sure, you can say external objects are real, but to go on to argue,
Quoting Janus
Raises a serious problem.
What about the objects' effects are we interacting with? As Descartes points out, the heat is not in the fire, and as almost everyone says, the orange and yellow colour is not in the fire either, and so on down the list of properties.
Something other than the heat we feel and orange we see must account for these things, and furthermore they must be different from the heat we feel or the orange we see. For if the effects of the objects were identical with our internal causes, we wouldn't be able to make the distinction between an object and an idea.
So, we are still left with the issue, what is external? I don't see an easy answer, outside of ordinary (and I hate this word) "folk" psychology.
Not an easy issue, but it does revolve around external to what? Heres an outline of my current take on this: Suppose idealism. Fine, but even here my mind will be located within that body of percepts (both extrinsic and intrinsic; with no pun intended) which I immediately know to constitute my physical body to which, for example, this keyboard Im now typing on is external. But then what if the cosmos is all a dream? Fine, but even here the conscious minds of those who I perceive to inhabit different bodies to my own will hold contents (intentions included) that are foreign, external, relative to my own mind. Here, maybe we all share a foundationally common, universal unconsciousness from which the dream of the cosmos in large part results but our conscious minds will yet be other relative to each other. So, even if there were to be no notion of physicalitythough physicality is intrinsic to the objective idealism of CS Peirce, for examplethere would yet be other conscious minds external to my own with which I interact. But how can I know that they are in fact conscious? They apprehend what I do and at times react to what I do: this then signifying conscious agency, one apart from and independent of my own. I can at times imperfectly predict as best I can what their contents of mind will consist of, but I cannot know what their contents of mind have, do, or will consist of. These other minds, then, inhabiting what is relative to me the external world, i.e. the world which is external to my own conscious mind.
I know there likely are questions/issues that could be raised of the just stated outline, and I'll be grateful for hearing of them. But if one is in search of infallible certainty, Im as certain as I can be that such does not occur. For anything and at any time. (This likely being a different issue regarding fallibilism.)
I agree it hasnt to do with properties of things, but it does seem quite easy just to say the external is that by which sensations are possible.
Wanna get stickier .the external is the permanent in time, simply because the internal never is.
Helps to be a unrepentant dualist, though, right? If one isnt, he would have a harder job with the issue, methinks.
Que?Quoting Manuel
I think the distinction between inside and outside the skin is a useful and valid one. A basic principle of semiotics is the idea that life and experience is only possible once there is a separation between an 'inside' and an 'outside', most primordially realized by the cell membrane.
It's true that when we think about and analyze it we may become confused due to ambiguities of terms.Quoting Manuel
I don't see that as a serious problem. Whatever is actual and external to the body can act on it to produce perception, and the nature of that perception depends on the actual nature of the body being acted upon. I see no reason to think that what is reliably and cross-sensorially perceived is not real in some sense. After all, that is generally what is meant by the word 'real'.
So, the colours and the heat are real phenomena that exist in the interaction of the body with fire and the light reflected off objects. You say the heat is not in the fire. but the fire can burn objects and even entirely consume them, even in the absence of anyone perceiving the fire.
Heat is defined by science as the agitation of molecules caused by friction or combustion, but of course heat defined as a felt phenomenon is only possible for a percipient.
Of course, I wouldn't dream of saying no such distinction exists, because, as you say, the difference between inside and outside is massive and would not be possible absent a sentient, much less a thinking being.
I only want to stress that I think it makes more sense to think of it in terms of "internal internal" and "internal external", because this latter, as you also point out, is a representation (or a presentation, whatever word you prefer) and hence not AS external as is usually thought.
At least, I find this persuasive at the moment.
Quoting Janus
Yes, the word "real", is thorny, often distracting. Everything is real is some sense, even Harry Potter, though he would belong in the books of J.K. Rowling.
Heat and colors are quite real, they just don't belong to the objects alone, as you point out. I said heat, but heat is relative to us, a paper or piece of plastic burning, feels not heat, it disintegrates, due to an interaction between fire and the relevant object.
Well, if you want to get super sticky, then in so far as your first sentence goes, sure, in SOME cases. What happens when we receive stimulus with no external object, such as dreams? Or cases in which, for no apparent reason, we suddenly have an intense flashback and literally forget where we are at this moment. We would need to account for cases of internal stimulation too.
Agree with your second statement, quite perceptive.
Dualism, shmualisms. Seeing is extremely different from hearing, yet we say they are both senses. Serious monism requires a lot of imagination, in my mind.
The ideas of other people could be said to be external to you, in so far as they don't express what they are thinking, otherwise we assume they are a person-like-me.
But then we may be stretching the term "external" a bit. It would be perhaps more accurate to say, these people's thoughts are hidden from me.
We only see behavior, from which we guess internal states. Reading a good novel, is, I think, the closest you could get into the mind of another person, though of course in a much more structured form than what actually happens in our heads all the time.
As for the notion of a single mind or consciousness, that's too much Kastrup like for my tastes. But there is an interesting aspect here, and it applies to everything: if you take the brain of a person and do certain experiments, we assume that this brain applies to all other brains on Earth, given we are essentially the same creature with superficial differences.
This happens with all creatures and plants too. So there's plenty to chew on.
That's fine by me. But then when you stipulate "external" what are you saying "external" in reference to?
I'm only trying to show how the term is problematic, and I find this puzzling given all this talk about "externalism", as if this idea is so clear. I don't think it is.
If forced to pick, I'd say external is what is not literally in my mind at any moment. But I have to tweak it more.
I dont think it is the case dreams are the reception of stimuli, for one thing, and for another, reception of stimuli just is sensation anyway, which is only possible by the causality of external things.
But you probably mean the brain receiving stimuli from itself, which requires no immediate sensation. But then, does any dream contain that which was not at some former time a sensation, or at least a possible sensation? If so, then external objects are at least the mediate content of dreams, even if not their cause.
Quoting Manuel
What does serious monism look like? By what description might I understand what it is?
Yes, that's what I should have said.
Well, if you consider say, geometrical shapes as sensations, then by definition everything in a dream would be some aspect of a prior sensation.
I think that the most we can say about objects is that they are the stimulus for our ideas and conceptions, to awaken them in a manner of speaking or to put them to work, though they were there all along, dormant.
But then the combination of actual objects to possible objects, does not involve sensation, or if it does, it would be a quite minor part.
Quoting Mww
I think Galen Strawson's conception of materialism, in his essay "Real Materialism", would be a very good approximation. You don't even have to accept it as materialism, you could call it "actual monism" or "ideal monism" - he does have an essay called Realistic Monism, which is not as good.
You don't even have to buy into his panpsychism (I don't.)
In short, everything that is, is X, wherein X is whatever designation you want to call the stuff of the world, which include our minds. And by everything, I mean everything: history, novels, ideas, flowers, cabbages, kings, atoms, art, grass, dreams, all sensations, etc. It's all a modification of X.
It that does not sound persuasive, then, we have the classical problems, how con two (or more) totally distinct things, which appear to have nothing in common, interact? No one has been able to answer this in a convincing manner that I can see.
All good. Thanks.
Except, my mind isnt included in stuff of the world. Or, at least, I make every effort to prevent the world from getting its grubby paws on it. I mean, really ..who or what would have the power to decide such a thing anyway?
Yeah, you've said something similar before I believe. I think the mind is part of the world, it isn't the same thing as an object, clearly, but it is a modification of world stuff.
If that's not true, then minds are literal miracles, and I don't think we need to go that far.
Do not agree. If you replace 'assumption' with 'inference' then, yes, that is where i stand. I think this is where science actually stands. I do not think 'evidence for evolution' is the factual, undebatable schema it is claimed to be outside its competition with other theories. I'm just unsure why the failure of theory is a problem for the underlying fact (if so) that we can't access the external world at all. I understand the problems you're bringing up, but they're straws being clutched at if my position holds any weight, and not arguments against it. Just ... results of it.
Appreciate the pov.
I have to say, I cannot grasp this in Kant at all.
It seems he is deeply committed, whether he states it or not, to a barrier between the world and our ability to intuit.. anything. However, it is clear Kant provides for various interpretations. Would you mind pulling out any passages you think speak to this? Your formulation doesn't strike me as particularly workable - where's the access, if the system necessarily precludes it? If you mean to say that Kant advises us that the access we do have, as indirect and unreliable as it is, is in fact access, i would reject it even if i read that into Kant.
Quoting Jamal
Which is exactly why he is committed to the above, imo. Happy to read anything you think does not require this in Kant :)
Quoting Manuel
Well, if it's true, we do :)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Since intuition, in Kants technical sense, is the capacity to form representations, and since he spends a lot of time showing how important it is for us, its clear enough that he does not think we intuit nothing. But maybe thats not what you mean.
Anyway, the barrier, such as there is, is between human knowledge and things as they are in themselves.
Quoting AmadeusD
In the Critique of Pure Reason he sets out to show how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, without considering that it is not. Synthetic a priori knowledge is knowledge that is informative, universal and necessary. This is the reliable access you seek, and our sensibility provides the direct access to things about which we can have this knowledge.
As I pretty much said, if you are instead seeking access to things that cannot be accessed (things as they are in themselves) you will struggle.
Note that everything I said was standard and uncontroversial, except for my bit about the fleshly container, which is a modern spin on it.
Suffice to say it isn't - But i also am entirely unsure how you got there, so I'll refrain from going further.
Quoting Jamal
It's not access at all. This is why I'm asking for passages - I recall, and can find, nothing to support this formulation. Quoting Jamal
Which things are not 'in-themselves' or external. They are, themselves, representations. Degree of separation (or several) remains.
Quoting Jamal
Perhaps you're not quite understanding me. You seem to be admitting we have no access to external objects - because those objects are things in themselves. Representations are necessarily internal. They could not appear to us otherwise. So i'm really not seeing anything here that changes my position..?
Quoting Jamal
Perhaps - but with recourse to the response immediate above this (within this comment, I mean) I don't think you're arguing against my position.
We do what, perceive and think? Sure.
But if it's a miracle (meaning, minds are not part of world-stuff), then maybe it happens once ever, in the whole history of the universe.
But if it happens several billion times, as is the case with our species, it can't be a miracle and thus our minds are a property of the world.
I don't see an alternative between these two options.
Which formulation, exactly? Im not sure which passages I should be looking for, since all I did in that paragraph was remind you what Kant famously set out to do in the CPR.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is crucial. Kant does not conflate the empirical with the internal. In other words, things perceived and theorized about are not in the head, for Kant. A way to think about it: just because we perceive external things under an aspect, i.e., in a certain way, or expressed more generally, as phenomena, it does not follow that we do not perceive external things. Kant is explicit that external things are things we can possibly experience. External = empirical, and Kant is an empirical realist.
There are those who claim that Kant failed in his efforts not to be construed as a subjective idealist, and they sometimes have a pointit was his own fault to some degreehowever, I think the direction of his project is in a contrary direction, and of course he was explicit in rejecting that interpretation, e.g., in the Refutation of Idealism, in which he argues that perceiving your own inner states is dependent on the existence of objects in space, i.e., so-called external objects.
I'm unsure why - this seems to define miracle as rare. As i understand, we could get a miracle per moment; as long as it's something which requires the suspension of established natural law, it would just be a lot of miracles. Though, this does go to the origin of those laws - and a force which overcame them. I don't think I either know enough, or care enough, to go further but 'being common' doesn't seem a defeater, to me. Might be misunderstanding!
I do, though, presuppose that if mind-at-large is a thing (in mind of panpsychism, lets say) then there will be natural laws regulating its behaviour and so there's no miracle in it. If it is somehow totally inexplicable, then yeah, it would have to be an ingression to reality, rather than some discreet aspect of reality.
Quoting Jamal
Of Kant's project (though, i refer to success./failure rather than intention) establishing access to the external world. I just can't get that from anything in the CPR, as my understanding currently sits. It seems patently., inarguably clear that Kant does nothing but outline teh exact problem with the claim that we have access to the external world. This said, I also think his intention was not to establish that, but to remove the basic scepticism of Hume in the sense that Kant's system allows us to not doubt external existence, but still remain totally out of touch with it. I do not think he intended, and absolutely reject that he succeeding, in establishing any way to access external objects.
Quoting Jamal
Again, I would need passages. This is alien to my reading, and through conversations with Mww, seems to contradict the practical use drawn from the synthetic apriori. It seems to be that the synthetic apriori is the only possible way to gain reliable information about external objects to which we have no access - logical consistency derived from inferential experience. I do not see Kant anywhere inferring, much less stating, that this consistency traces up access to those objects. Quite hte opposite, to my mind.
Quoting Jamal
Absolutely. And again, we have no access to those objects (on my, and I am weakly confident, Kant's account).
Edited after Jamal replied (and I haven't read it): "in space" is the giveaway here. That means he's definitely not referring to the external world, in which he seems to believe time and space are incoherent.
And If I am wrong, then I am arguing against Kant, not you. But I maintain that we do not have that access. As noted earlier with, i think Janus, You absolutely cannot access an empty bay in Bengal by experiencing a tidal wave in Chile.
Maybe youre thinking of a different philosopher, because this is a really odd thing to say about Kant. Your move at this point ought to be to say that for Kant, external objects, which we do have access to, are mere phenomena, and thus mind-dependent. I take issue with that too but its at least a decent interpretation.
But thats probably enough Kant for now.
Quoting AmadeusD
You are most definitely arguing against me too. We are animals in direct sensorimotor engagement with the environment. To deny this like a 17th century philosopher is perverse.
I know I said enough Kant, but just a small point about this. You make a good point, although in the Refutation he does state that inner experience is itself only indirect and is possible only through outer experience. (B277)
Whether he carries the argument from the existence of external things to the experience of those things, its obvious that he thinks the latter is possible.
Also, if you need me to get the bits where he sets out his empirical realism I guess I could do it tomorrow, if youre interested. However, you are not precise enough in saying what you object to.
Quoting Jamal
It seems so. But i find that very odd. It seems like some kind of idolatry to think he did this. Though, that may not be far off - he appears to inspire as much stupidity as insight.
Quoting Jamal
So you say. But you have no addressed anything I've put forward as reasons for my position, so far. The tide example is a really good one, to my mind because (to the bolded) that isn't access to external objects. And your formulation earlier in this same comment seems to agree with that.
To the underlined: This seems to be an extremely restricted way of considering different view points. It's not idealism to contend that while we're able to reliably infer external objects (and take them as 'given' in some noumenal sense), we cannot access them. In fact, as best i can tell, that is exactly what 'transcendental idealism' amounts to. Again, why I think Kant's intention was never to pretend to overcome the mitigatory fact of sensory organs producing experience 'of the world'.
Quoting Jamal
This is fully self-contradictory to my mind. If they are "mere phenomena", they are not external objects(this seems as simple as "cold is not heat"). This is why I am pretty hard-up in accepting Kant intended to establish that. It is nonsensical in his language, and his own claims. Also, why i've asked for passages. Having very recently finished (in a three-month go) the CPR, it is incongruous with even the most basic reading of hte overall thesis to think he's trying to, or has established that necessarily internal phenomenal representations could possibly be external objects, rather than the result, we know not how, of external objects. He seems to explicitly acknowledge that we have no access, and require reason to infer anything about hte external world. Is he not illustrating hat the upper limits of pure reason are within? It seems unavoidable... as an eg Kant relies in many places on the concept of mathematical a priori to ground the limits of his own system in cognition of intuitions, not objects "as they are":
"Mathematics gives us a splendid example of how far we can go with a priori cognition independently of experience. Now it is occupied, to be sure, with objects and cognitions only so far as these can be exhibited in intuition"
It's funny - you're, I think, the third poster with what I take to be some serious understanding of these things to deny this denial (my denial of Kant's either project, or success in it) and yet none have proposed any possible solution to the mitigation depriving us of access to the external world. Only externalities. I am, in my 'heart', as they say, fairly sure I must be wrong. Yet, I take up the horn, and nothing comes of it...
Again, if the argument is that synthetic a priori's give us access, my response is "No, they very, very clearly do not and that would, to my mind, make the mistake Kant spends his entire introduction trying to avoid".
Quoting Jamal
This is all Kant :)
Quoting Jamal
This seems to be a fairly direct explication of what i'm positing - we can be 'sure' that intuition is 'caused by' external objects of whatever, unknowable, kind. But our experience is indirect and we do not have access to those objects.
Quoting Jamal
For sure. But its a mediation which necessarily precludes us, as thinking beings, access to the 'cause' of our intuitions.
Quoting Jamal
I'm unsure that's true - I'm wanting something from Kant that indicates he thinks we have an access to things-in-themselves.
Would be weird if there was such a passage, right?
I have never claimed anything like that, so I dont know why youd be looking for it from me.
Of course, I actually do. Youve said it yourself: you think an external object just is a thing as it is in itself. But the latter is merely an aspect of an external object, the aspect that we logically cannot access (what it looks like when youre not looking).
If youd prefer to use a different scheme, one in which its all in the head, then do so if youre into that, but dont try to use Kant in support of your position. He doesnt think what you think he thinks.
That said, he does appear to contradict himself quite a lot so I understand the misunderstandings.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think maybe you have misunderstood. He is saying that inner experience, unlike outer experience, is indirect.
Here he summarizes the idealist position:
[quote=B276]Idealism assumed that the only direct experience is inner experience and that from it we only infer external things; but we infer them only unreliably, as happens whenever we infer determinate causes from given effects, because the cause of the presentations that we ascribeperhaps falselyto external things may also reside in ourselves.[/quote]
Then he goes on to present his own contrasting position:
In a footnote for direct:
Since we have direct access to external objects, their existence is not merely inferred.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sorry, I didnt read any of your previous posts in the thread so I dont know your arguments. Whats the tide thing?
I wont address your comments about transcendental idealism, because TI is not very relevant at this point. TI plays a special role in allowing Kant later on to establish human objective knowledge of the world.
Aside from Kant, for the sake of argument lets say (which I would never say) that we infer external things. Why wouldnt you accept that this inference is a neural component in our access to the world outside our skulls?
I am not aware of any competing theories. And as I have already acknowledged scientific theories are never proven; it is always the case that they may be wrong.
I'll repeat this once more because I don't think you have grasped it: the distinction between the things in themselves and phenomenal objects is not meant to be a claim that there are two worlds: the world for us and the world in itself.
If we are affected by things via the senses, then in that connection we have access to them. We know how they appear to us. The dialectical development of that realization is to say that while we know, that is have access, to things as they appear to us, we do not know, and do not have access to what and how they are in themselves. It's really not that hard to understand.
By miracles I mean something which goes beyond whatever naturalism encapsulates, naturalism meaning, in my case, a thing of nature. Mind you, my definition of naturalism allows for novels and movies and drama and all that, so it is far from being a scientisitic designator. We don't know the limits of what nature encapsulates.
By supernatural, I would mean something that goes beyond what nature can do. It's a kind of substance dualism, which can't be defended intelligibly. So, if a miracle could happen, it couldn't be part of nature by definition (my definition), but since we don't know the limits of nature, we shouldn't invoke the miraculous. So if a mind is not part of the world, and since the world is part of nature, mind must be part of nature too, unless there is argument given as to why minds cannot be natural, which doesn't make any sense.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well that sounds like Kastrup's idea, except he doesn't believe in panpsychism, because he doesn't believe there is mind-independent matter. But if you are a panpsychist in general (like Strawson or Goff) then, sure, that's one way to explain the mental.
I am personally a "radical emergence" guy, minds arise from configurations of natural stuff, but we have no idea how.
The short answer is that Kant is an empirical realist, but the thing-in-itself is not an empirical thing. It's a conceptual construction, a thing imagined as having no properties, and as such a limit beyond which there is nothing more to know. We should not expect to have access to such a thing.
Regarding possible knowledge of empirical things, Kant is a scientific realist, not unlike many contemporary scientific realists. However, one might add that scientific realism is typically an indirect kind of realism based on the dubious assumption that we never see things as they are, only figments of our own perceptual faculties or brains.
Unlike sound skepticism that assumption explains us blind, and keeps us busy with the problem of explaining how we as blind can access things.
A better assumption is, I think, that the processes that occur in our perceptual faculties and brains constitute the accessing of things.
For example, when I move my head and, say, a tree appears in the visual field, a process arises in my brain that is the conscious awareness of what I see. My visual access to the tree is direct in the sense that the tree is not seen via something else that represents the tree. The tree presents itself in my visual field, and that's how I access it. It's direct realism.
Unlike a belief which can be separated from what it is a belief of (hence subject to doubt), conscious awareness cannot be separated from what it is awareness of, e.g. a tree.
Id join that club, if there was such a thing.
Honorary membership will have to do. Our views are considered very silly in much contemporary science/philosophy. Oh well.
Quoting Janus
And this seems, clearly to me, but perhaps not others, because we have no direct access to confirm or deny any findings. We are necessarily precluded from 100% certainty for this reason. Inference can never be 100%.
Maybe I'm picking up something irrelevant to your formulations? could be, and if that's true, we may not even be disagreeing. But, I mean, I agree, carving off theologica, with your assessment. That's not really relevant. It could be that even the theologica didn't exist, and this theory could be un-ensurable.
Quoting Janus
I understand (it's clear) you think this, but it is inaccurate. It doesn't change my position whatsoever. That said, I disagree with Kant, using his own account. Its not possible, from CPR, to conclude there is "one world" where somehow our intuitions (which are not the objects they represent) actually are those objects. This is probably something beyond this discussion..So, idk. Maybe I'll leave that one here because it doesn't seem we'll come to terms.
Quoting Janus
Disagree and have outlined in detail why not, in previous replies. Will leave this one.
Quoting Janus
According to your responses, it's extremely difficult :smirk: I am genuinely joking - I don't know what to do with this passage given my position. I don't think its well-placed.
=================================
Quoting Manuel
I certainly agree with this, so perhaps I just misunderstood.
Quoting Manuel
I think I'm leaning this way, but i'm not all that well versed in metaphysics thus far. Panpsychism, on its face, seems to solve a few problems i see. Not tied to it.
=================================
Quoting Jamal
My position is that that is the a fact. A version of 'external object' which resides in the head(i.e experience) is quite plainly nonsensical. I think claiming this isn't Kant's position, even with Kant possibly not owning it, is tantamount to being dishonest (more on why, below, after you quoted something which seems to ensure that this is the case). His writing is known to be confused in places, and this seems to be one. He does not give us room to make this chess move in the CPR.
Quoting Jamal
Which is literally all we have. I'm having a lot of trouble understanding what you're objecting to...
Quoting Jamal
The quote you presented is a perfect example where I am arguing against Kant, partially because he makes no sense, and partially because I think he's wrong.
The quote posits that, somehow, even though internal experience is all we have to judge (which Kant accepts) we have 'direct' access to external objects, not found in experience. Totally incoherent on his account itself.
Quoting Jamal
We don't. I think you're making a misreading of Kant either way. The quoted does not infer that we interact directly with external objectsin experience but via our sense organs, prior to experience (hence synthetic a priori). Our experience is necessarily internal. We do not even have an external experience on his, or most people's account because it makes no sense at all if our experience is mediated by sense organs. Kant's rather extreme and important addition to this scheme is to show (and I take this to be true, essentially) that we can infer without doubt that those objects exist through the synthetic a priori. But, he still concludes, even with this certainty, that we can't even conceptualise anything about them (aside from Noumena.. not available to humans, it seems).
Quoting Jamal
If this were the case, we'd have nothing to discuss. We would agree. So i'm unsure how you can claim that... So if that is the case, I apologise, and must have missed something extremely important. Perhaps you could assist?
Quoting Jamal
The example was in response to (i think Janus) positing that via the senses, the inference we make to external objects is essentially 'perfect' and provides 'direct access' to those objects in some way.
My response was to deny this categorically, and the examples used were:
A shadow does not give us any access to the object that caused it to appear, despite (possible) a 1:1 match in dimensions.
The second example was that if you're standing in a bay (A) and a tidal wave hits (lets assume you're Dr. Manhattan) this gives you no access whatsoever so the empty bay(B) across the ocean whcih caused it. While crude, I think these hold for Experience (A) and ding-an-sich (B).
============================
Quoting jkop
Fully agreed. I'm unsure why others seem to think my position is otherwise. It's a mere observation of this fact.
Quoting jkop
I think that's a ridiculous assumption (well, if your adding 'direct' to the formulation) for reasons previously stated. But, that may just be a disagreement of kind. If you're not positing 'direct access' by our mind to the thing perceived, I have no issue. If you are, I can't get on the train.
Quoting jkop
*the sense-data your brain is decoding into a visual experience it provides for you, a posteriori. I don't see how this isn't the case, given what we know about how our senses and perception work.
Quoting jkop
It is, though, empirically. It is 'seen' by your mind only via sense-data mediated by sense organs, and possibly aberrations in the brain, into your experience. This explains visual delusion, for instance, well.
Quoting jkop
Absolutely not. Your visual field is produced inside your mind. Nothing is presented to it except impressions/sense-data/perceptions. Objects in-the-world aren't available unless you're collapsing the non-physical experience into the physical world. I would again, not get on the train.
Quoting jkop
It can though. Visual delusion(without qualifier - could be drugs or whatever else causing the aberration), is again, a great exemplar. If different people can be seeing something empirically different in their experience, then our perception seems mediated in an unreliable way. This is to say that in most cases, a shadow seen by any person might accurately represent the thing it is a shadow of. That much is fair enough. But it does not follow that this is reliable or that it is access to the thing. Plainly, when an aberration of the brain can result in an individual receiving and decoding ostensibly the exact same sense-data and experiencing something different, we're seeing something less-than-direct going on. If we lived in a world of shadows, and literally never encountered the objects, not a lot would change except the number of 'delusional' individuals.
I would certainly be open to exploring whether that latter issue is actually additional and sans aberration there's some way to assert reliability in perception. I've yet to see that though. unsure what it would look like, either. No one has taken that route, so hard to know how I would feel about it. I would not be an adequate fellow to follow it from this conversation..
You might be interested in reading this short but concise text by John Searle: Philosophy of Perception and The Bad Argument
Searle was a student of Austin. Austin famously deconstructed the idea of sense-data in the book Sense and Sensibilia.
I think the use of 'see' throughout this essay is misleading. It assumes direct perception, instead of 'proving' it.
"If the perceptual experience could talk it would say, If I am to be satisfied (veridical) I must be caused by the very object of which I seem to be the seeing.
Why would we need this to happen, unless you're trying to prove direct perception? This seems to reverse engineer a situation that supports the conclusion. It seems to be that Searle has, here, smuggled in the requirements of his fourth element (intentionality). That seems to be lifting everything from that bullet point forward.
"Confining ourselves to seeing the tree in front of me we can say that the conditions of satisfaction of the visual experience are that there has to be a tree there and the fact that the tree is there is causing in a certain way the current visual experience. "
but this artificially removes the aspects of perception that would dog this account...like the mediation of the senses as delusion (sans brain aberration) shows.
"but when I see the tree I cannot separate the visual experience from an awareness of the presence of the tree."
Only IFF you're directly perceiving (i.e he's referring to the tree, not the representation of the tree.. Important below).. as above.
"This is true even if it is a hallucination and even if I know that it is a hallucination... I have the experience of the perceptual presentation of an object even though there is no object there."
True. Which is why the initial contention doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You could just plum be hallucinating a tree looking out your California Coast window. Would this just collapse into a representation? Then how do you know the difference, in practice? Seems tautological or requiring an unstated axiom, which is that there's a 1:1 match between reflected light and visual experience. That seems an odd contention well-guarded against by the reality of our visual system.
"but when I see the tree I cannot separate the visual experience from an awareness of the presence of the tree. "
I seem to be capable of this. My visual experience gives me awareness of my visual experience. Not whatever caused it (on my account). As noted elsewhere, its unavoidable that something caused you to experience the perception of anything, other than pure hallucination (dreams, for instance, where no empirical avenue is available). But directly perceiving it...
"What is the relationship between the sense data you do perceive and the real world that you do not perceive?"
I'm not all that interested in this question, but I have no idea why the rejection of it.. Is it because its hard, or devalues philosophy generally as discussion of hallucination? Doesn't strike me as particularly an issue..
"these visual experiences. Call them sense data."
Not how i'd use the word. The "sense data" is fuel for the experience - its fed into the machine of our cognition and output as a visual experience - but we're not seeing our own photoreceptors or brain-regions when we 'experience' vision. We're seeing a coherent set of data represented to our visual faculties - only made coherent by the activity of our cognitive faculties. Thus, stroke patients do not have a coherent visual field (by accounts i've heard) while their brain is unable to adequate synthesise the sense-data into a coherent experience. I have had that experience, though not by stroke but by drug use and mental exhaustion (separately).
"The crucial step in the argument from illusion as stated is step 4."
And there we have it.
"In the hallucinatory case, there is no independently existing object causing the experience"
I think this relies on a misuse of the word "hallucinatory". Hallucination is defined as he posits... it can read across (as a negation) to "actual perception" as such without his take. If you, without adequate empirical reason, immediately note what is already understood as a hallucination, to be importantly different to "seeing" then you just might be defining-out actual visual experience without noticing. On my account, it's quite likely. Though, I don't see 'hallucination' in quite the denatured light Searle appears to. My response would, prima facie be "yes, that's right. And while you're recognising that, by definition, an hallucination is not the same as 'seeing' that's just linguistics being tricky".
"The visual experience is a conscious event going on in the brain but, and this is the important point, visual experiences cannot themselves be seen because they are the seeing of objects and states of affairs in the world. When you see something, the seeing itself cannot be seen, just as when you hit a nail with a hammer the hitting cannot itself be hit."
This is true whether an object is there or not(hence, the immediately-previous comment) - it just presupposes that in use of 'see' Searle has established an object is there, actually. Definitionally, within this essay, sure, but its not supportive of the thesis imo.
Ok, so it appears this essay isn't dealing with the problem I'm identifying at allllllll:
"The scientist says we are trying to explain the cause of your visual experience and what we discovered is neurobiological processes cause a conscious visual experience. But then, surely, it seems that the visual experience is the object of your capacity of perception. It is what is seen. This last sentence embodies the mistake. The visual experience is not seen because it is the case of seeing the object. "
This isn't an issue for me. Obviously the "visual experience" isn't seen. It is the experience of seeing. But again, Searle would fall back on a definition of 'see' that requires direct perception - I can't see that he's gotten past the mediation required for visual experience to happen at all. I really hope to learn to write Philosophy well, specifically to counter-act this type of jiggering and misunderstanding within a piece of writing. Conflating an 'experience' with it's contents is a real problem, imo.
"The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain."
Duhhh. They are identical in that there is only the experience of pain... there is no "the pain" to my mind. Who claims that "the pain" is different to the experience of pain? I've not seen that anywhere. Is someone claiming there's 'pain' out there not being experienced?
"Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving."
This strikes me as if Searle confused himself, then tried to untangle his own confusion. The "experience of perceiving" is not an "experience" in-and-of-itself. It consists in its contents. So, that's a misnomer. Perception is a biophysical process which results in an experience - but an experience must be of something. He's rejected sense-data and then just not dealt with it at all... Interesting read. Of what, John?
I'm getting a bit too busy at work now to read more at the present moment. Probably everything above is nonsense and I look forward to being told why :)
Initially you seemed to be asking for someone to correct your interpretation of Kant if youd got anything wrong, which is the only reason I commented. But you are sticking to your misinterpretation, and sticking to what really seems like a wilful misunderstanding of what Ive said, e.g., that I've claimed, contrary to what I've explicitly said a few times, that Kant believes we can access things as they are in themselvesso I wont continue down that road. I'll just leave you with these, which I think you have not absorbed:
Quoting Jamal
Quoting jkop
(There is a very slight tension between these descriptions, which seems to align with the difference between the thing-in-itself and the noumenon)
Quoting AmadeusD
These are just analogies. Assuming they apply is to beg the question. I thought, from what you said, that you had a better argument.
Said the flypaper to the fly.
You must take us to be fools! :rofl:
Corrections are intended to correct. I do not see that you've done this. Asking to be corrected is not asking to be either taken for a ride, or to accept any objection on its face. I've tried to explore the ideas you've put forward and tehy are left wanting to me. If you see this as you describe, far be it from me :)
Yes. They are. Unsure why you're somehow using that as the examplar of the argument, rather than a fairly direct and illustrative couple of analogies. Which you've said it is. So, at a bit of a loss mate :\ They illustrate well that aspect of what I've put forward that you are not getting. If you're not wanting to explore that, then so be it! No issue :) Perhaps I just don't understand - and if that's the case, I couldn't accept what you're putting forth anyway so please don't fault me for either 1. disagreeing with you; or 2. Not understanding you. I am trying to be honest, not difficult.
But as an example, it seems patently incorrect when you reject the notion that Kant uses the 'two worlds' model. It is clear he does, and this is expressed by other philosophers constantly (most recently for me, in episode #063 of Philosophize This!) as "Noumenal world" and the "Phenomenal World". This sits well with my reading. As does this response from DeepAI:
Q: does the Critique of Pure Reason set out two worlds, one being Noumenal and one being appearance? (i purposefully formulated this badly to see if It required any massaging to get the answer I 'wanted'.
A: Yes, the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant does set out two distinct worlds: the Noumenal world, which is the world of things as they are in themselves beyond human perception, and the Phenomenal world, which is the world of appearances as they appear to us through our senses. Kant argues that we can never know the Noumenal world directly, as our perceptions are always shaped by our mental faculties and categories of understanding. The Phenomenal world, on the other hand, is the world as it appears to us, and is subject to the limitations of human perception and cognition.
If, to you, this isn't exactly what i've been putting forward, im unsure where we could go.
Stream of consciousness is cool in modernist fiction but confusing in this context. :wink:
Anyway, its rhetorical bluster with a hint of bullshit, but it seems good-natured so youre forgiven :grin:
Quoting AmadeusD
Patently incorrect to agree with the majority of philosophers today, who reject the two world interpretation? Its a debate with respected adherents on each sideand always has been. So its patently incorrect to say that the two aspect interpretation is patently incorrect. The key secondary text is Allisons Kants Transcendental Idealism.
Having said that, I always feel like saying that the two world interpretation is patently incorrect, since Kant is quite obviously drawing a dichotomy between things (regarded) as X vs things (regarded) as Y. But I cant say that, since Im forced to admit that Paul Guyer, proponent of the two world interpretation, is a respected Kant scholar.
Talk of a noumenal world looks plainly wrong to me, since noumena are objects of thought, insofar as they are objects at all. They are conceptual. Bearing this in mind, Kant does address a two world interpretation:
[quote=A255]Hence the division of objects into phenomena and noumena, and of the world into a world of sense and a world of understanding, cannot be permitted at all in the positive signification, although concepts do indeed permit the distinction into sensible and intellectual ones.[/quote]
This is because the concept of a noumenon is
But remind me why were talking about the two world interpretation?
BTW I have personally found LLM AI tools to be sometimes bad with philosophy so I suggest you avoid them except perhaps for guiding your studycertainly dont give them the last word.
Searle's analogy (pain) shows how absurd it would be to assume that you never feel pain as it really is, only via your own sense-data. Likewise, it is absurd to assume that you never see objects, only your own sense-data of them, hence leaving the objects out there unseen.
When a bundle of light rays reach your eyes, the eye's lens projects the bundle upside down. So, the photoreceptor cells are responding to a projection that is upside-down relative to, say, a visible object that reflected the light.Yet the object does not appear upside-down in your visual experience.
That's a simple example of how visual experiences adjust themselves to the relative orientation of objects as they are. The experience has a mind-to-world direction of fit.
It also has a world-to-mind direction of causation, e.g. from visible objects, light, photoreceptor cells etc. to the experience that arises in the brain.
These two relations give us access to the perceivable world.
I can't grok what you're getting here, but there's no bullshit to be found. Using analogies isn't bullshit, and neither is what im trying to get across. Appreciate being forgiven for something I didn't do, though :)
Quoting Jamal
It is, if you want to support that position(im joking; I'm not up at all enough to say something like that - However, from what I know of this text its main thrust is purely to point out that Kant isn't denying external reality). But, having recently come to the CPR I literally have never seen a respected philosopher claim what you're claiming. Perhaps 'patent' is a touch far, but as I see it, this is the standard for anyone not trying to be edgy. It also seems to be actually be what Kant said he was doing. So, fair play, if there is an entire swathe of top notch fellas/fellettes who are saying what you're saying. I am unaware and plead ignorance on that one. I would also note that post-hoc discussions about Kant aren't what I'm referring to anyhow - though, I appreciate that to your mind that's a problem. For me, it would be a problem had i read a number of secondary sources and then pretended their interpretation was bunk on its face. Trying to illustrate that I've not got that option open to me, currently.
(at this stage, I just want to say I really appreciate the tone and engagement in the remainder of your post. Not sure how I'll be responding but I appreciate it)
Quoting Jamal
I agree with this. Mww sorted me out in terms of when and when not to refer to Noumena, though, that seems to be a real debate among 'scholars'. But, i run with the idea that yes ding-an-sich is 'actual object', 'noumena' are conceptual as are beyond our perception, but not conception, whereas phenomena/possible phenomena are wholly ours to perceive and conceive as we wish. Unsure what that does for our discussion, but i definitely didn't do anything to help myself there lol.
Quoting Jamal
I don't use them for anything except summarizing passages/chapters/sections in my 'academic' life :) Appreciate the advice!
Quoting jkop
This is an extremely loud red flag to me. There is no analogy between 'pain' and 'actual objects'. That was actually the entire point of the rhetoric i put out. No one claims there's 'pain' out there not being experienced.
The same can't be said for objects. It's not like there is pain, which enters the brain, and is projected into experience. Pain is the experience of certain biophysical causal chains. Not so with visual data, imo.
Quoting jkop
Agree, and noted earlier (repeating as its relevant, not out of annoyance) that the direction of fit in terms of us thinking we 'see' things is one of evolutions greatest feats. That says nothing for us 'seeing' objects. Though, again, use of the term See, as Searle quite rightly points out, is extremely difficult here. 'see' might only refer to receiving light rays. 'experiencing' might be more apt for the experience of the mind-created visual. I would prefer "look at" to represent the act of turning ones eyes to an object, and 'seeing' as the process of world-to-mind and 'visual experience' as .. well, what it is :P
Not directly at anyone:
I'm still wanting an explanation of how it's possible we're seeing "actual objects" that i can explore. Every explanation attempting to do so just ignores entirely that we literally do not see objects, but reflected/refracted light which in turn causes us to 'see' a visual construct. No one seems to disagree, but still reject the fact that we cannot ever access external objects. It's an odd thing to note. Seems to always boil down to 'we look at something, therefore...' with no treatment of the intermediary..
What is the light reflected/refracted by?
Ah, so youre one of those guys!
I can see rain over there behind that hill
Actually, you cant
What?
All we see is light!
Oh my God, this shit again.
Your questions imply that you consider the seeing of a thing to require that there be no light passing between the thing and the eye; that if there is a physical process involved in the perception of a thing, that thing is not being perceived. Why would you think this? We see things by means of reflected/refracted light, don't we? This is part of how we access things around us.
But its actually quite hard to tell what you think, because your use of terms seems quite unstable. You say we see light, which in turn allows us to see visual constructs, which suggests that you think we don't really see things or the visual constructs of those things (since you put the word "see" in quotation marks for the latter). But a more common form of phenomenalism would say that internal images (or models, representations, whatever) are the objects of perception, rather than the raw sensory stimuli; I would have expected this to be your kind of position. And in any case, why does your personal use of the word differ so much from everyone elses?
The propagation of light, the movement of the perceivers eyes, the retinal photoreceptors, the special cells, the electrical signals in the nervous system and so on. There is a lot that happens to enable us to see things. And yet you deny that we see things. Dont you think its weird that we would have evolved such an elaborate system if it were not for perceiving things in the environment?
Of course, the particular problem here is really just linguistic (ideological too, but I won't get into that), like when people say, without thinking, that what we think of as solid objects are not really solid. I'm not going to fully untie the tangled usages, since what I've said should already suggest a strategy of auto-disentanglement.
To use an analogy: neither travelling to New York, nor travelling to New York directly, demand that I use a teleporter. There is an intervening process, and yet its still New York Im travelling to, directly.
At the risk of being moderated for self-promotion ... I deal with some of these issues in an old article that used to be on the TPF articles site but is now just on my blog: The Argument for Indirect Realism (and there are also two discussions on TPF about the article).
Quoting AmadeusD
We were talking about two worlds vs two aspects. The latter is the predominant interpretation of Kant among philosophers. You didn't know that, but now you do. Check the books and the internet if you don't believe me, rather than shouting about how incredulous you are. They asked this question in the last PhilPapers Survey: Kant (what is his view?): one world or two worlds?.
Just because two aspects is more popular (except in Canada) doesn't mean it's right, but it does show that your incredulity is inappropriate.
And didn't you see my quotation from Kant himself, arguing against two worlds? Is he not a "respected philosopher"?
However, if you're referring to the more edgy side of my interpretation, namely that Kant is not any kind of idealist at all--despite incorporating something called transcendental idealism in his system--then that has support among respected philosophers too, notably Arthur Collins in his book, Possible Experience: Understanding Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. As I recall, I actually think Collins goes a bit too far and lets Kant off with too much--but anyway, I haven't even said much along these lines in this discussion; most of what I've said is pretty standard.
If there is any particular statement of mine about Kant's philosophy that strikes you as outrageous, then please quote it and I'll either elaborate on it until you begin to nod in agreement, or else correct myself.
The analogy is between feeling (pain) and seeing (objects).
Quoting AmadeusD
Is visual data not the result of certain biophysical causal chains? Or do you just mean that it's the result of other causal chains? What Is an example of positive empirical evidence for visual data?
I agree. This is the issue with the very meaning of the terms "direct" and "indirect". Each often seems to be defined as the inverse of the other, which is no definition at all.
Traditionally direct and indirect realism provide two competing answers to the epistemological problem of perception. The epistemological problem asks if we can trust our experiences to provide us with accurate information about the nature of external world objects. Direct realists conclude that we can and indirect realists conclude that we can't.
The usual way direct realists phrase their position is just to say that we perceive external world objects. But it doesn't follow from this that we can trust our experiences to provide us with accurate information about the nature of external world objects unless they mean something very specific by perceiving external world objects.
So what meaning of perceiving external world objects would entail the direct realist's conclusion that we can trust our experiences to provide us with accurate information about the nature of external world objects?
My own take is that the properties of the experience the look, the sound, the feel, the taste, the smell must be properties of the external world objects. If they are then we can trust our experiences to provide us with accurate information about the nature of external world objects and if they aren't then we can't.
But what if someone were to say that the properties of the experience are not properties of the external world objects but that we are nonetheless perceiving external world objects? At the very least it seems to show that the usual dichotomy is an overly simplistic division. There should in fact be four options to consider:
1. We perceive external world objects and the properties of the experience are properties of the external world objects
2. We perceive external world objects and the properties of the experience are not properties of the external world objects
3. We do not perceive external world objects and the properties of the experience are properties of the external world objects
4. We do not perceive external world objects and the properties of the experience are not properties of the external world objects
We can perhaps dismiss (3) as a viable option, (1) I understand as naive realism, (4) I understand as indirect realism, but what of (2)?
(2) disagrees with the indirect realist's claim that we do not perceive external world objects but entails the indirect realist's conclusion that we cannot trust our experiences to provide us with accurate information about the nature of external world objects.
Is (2) direct or indirect realism, or something else?
Although I suspect that indirect realists will claim that we perceive external world objects if and only if the properties of the experience are properties of the external world objects, and so that (2) is a contradiction.
Yes, I understand. You can be a phenomenalist or indirect realist without making mistakes like all we see is light. So yeah, your view is more advanced, since it avoids the linguistic confusionsbut it is thereby even more deeply wrong. :grin:
I'm not going to get into it this time. This is partly because I don't like the debate any more, but also because since you developed your more reasonable version of indirect realism a couple of years ago, it pushes the debate back to more deep and difficult matters: the distinction between appearance and reality, the idea of things "as they really are", etc., all of which I am deeply suspicious of. I think that internally your position is well-argued, but I just don't think I accept the terms any more, the way it's all framed. Sorry to be so vague.
Under certain definitions I can settle for either (1) or (2). It depends. (2) could describe various correlationisms. Whether it's direct or not might not be a fruitful debate, because the way the term is understood is so diverse as to be hopelessly confusing. One person might mean "as it really is, independently of perception," and another might mean "perceived without intermediate objects of perception" or whatever. Seems like a historical debate and I don't know what to do with it any more.
On that I agree.
To expect accuracy is to assume that seeing something is a re-presentation of something, which it isn't.
A Sunday painter might have the intent to re-present Lisa accurately, assuming there is a certain way she really is. But what could such a way possibly be? A human, female, friend, foe, happy, sad, still or in motion in various projections all at once? The assumption of accuracy is based on bad philosophy of perception.
By convention there are ways to paint objects in more or less useful ways, e.g. photorealistically or contextually. But there is no accurate way to see Lisa, just different ways under different conditions in which Lisa can be seen. Visual experiences of Lisa are different from, say, beliefs of what Lisa looks like. A visual experience arises in the observer's conscious awareness, and so does a belief of what Lisa looks like. The belief is subject to doubt, and it can be refined and elaborated depending on use, but the visual experiences are biological facts that arise under certain conditions of satisfaction.
The epistemological problem of perception seeks to understand the relationship between visual experiences and the external world objects that such experiences are putatively of. Roughly speaking indirect realists claim that the relationship is only causal, whereas direct realists claim that the relationship is more than that.
For example, we mostly agree that we experience a red colour when electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength stimulates the sense receptors in our eyes, and that the wavelength of this electromagnetic radiation is influenced by the atomic structure of an external world object's surface.
What we don't agree on is whether or not it is correct or even sensible to say that this red colour is a property of that external world object. Indirect realists say that it isn't, whereas direct realists (or at least naive colour realists) say that it is.
Right, I recall something Hilary Putnam wrote on color realism, that surface properties of objects have dispositions to appear in such and such ways under such and such conditions. Searle is more brain-oriented and although he is a direct realist he thinks of colors as systematically occurring hallucinations.
The surface properties of the materials of a building, for instance, systematically reflect certain wavelengths of light that observers identify as the colors of those surfaces under ordinary conditions of observation (e.g. daylight). When the light conditions change the colors that we see also change (e.g. dusk, night, dawn, cloudy etc. ), but the surfaces typically remain the same, including their disposition to reflect the same colors under the same conditions.
Not knowing about something does not mean you know about it. It means you DO NOT know about it.
You cannot get any knowledge out of anything that is unknowable, or in other words, you cannot get any knowledge if there is no knowledge there.
Quoting Thales
They DONT know if their perceptions are dependable or not, that is the whole point. They DOUBT, or question, if they are or not. But the point is, can YOU prove it one way or another?
Quoting Thales
The main way the skeptics can throw doubt on this is by saying that someone or thing PUT that information into your head. (like brains in vats, or something similar to The Matrix movie.)
Think about it like this:
I suppose you could say, well I know that the world exists, even if I know nothing about it, but according to the skeptics, you cannot know even if it exists at all. For example, if the word as you know it is really all some kind of hallucination and you live in a universe that is totally different, but you have no knowledge of the universe you live in because all you can see is the hallucination of this world, then you know nothing about the world you think you know, you only know about the hallucination.
Quoting Thales
When we do adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing etc it makes sense to us, and also, then the answer makes sense, but what if someone or thing is controlling our minds and TELLING us that it makes sense, but in reality, it doesnt at all? Like, when in a dream, we may accept that we can be in one place one minute and then magically be in another place the next. In the context of that dream, it makes sense to us and seems normal, but in reality, it isnt.
I guess it is like the skeptics are taking away (excuse the pun) all the adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividingor throwing doubt on all that and if we cannot rely on that, then, as you said, we have no means of accessing the answer.
Quoting Thales
I do not think that they think the images we see ARE the world. I think they accept that they are images.
But the skeptics are saying, what if we cannot trust the images we can see? If the image is all distorted, then we are not getting a true picture of the world.
Such as colour blindness or mirage/hallucinations or dreams
Quoting Thales
They do not assume the truth of anything, they do the opposite, they say that they do NOT know the answer.
They are not saying the world is NOT real. They are saying that they do not know if the world is real or not, and then they ask if you can say if it is real or not.
They are also not taking away the means by which we can get knowledge, they are asking if we can trust those means. How reliable are they? If we cannot rely on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing etc then we may still have an answer, but how useful is that answer?
The same as, if we cannot rely on our senses and what we see/perceive etc then we may still know about a world, but how useful is that if the world is just a hallucination?
Quoting Thales
Are you saying, Just because someone assumes that black cats bring bad luck, it doesnt mean it is true. ?
Which would be like saying, Just because the skeptics assume the world isnt real, it doesnt mean it is true?
Which would also be like saying this, just opposite:
Just because I assume the world is real, it doesnt mean it is true?
What this boils down to is, we do not know either way. That is what the skeptics are questioning.
In my view, it is impossible to get around the skeptics doubt. Descartes thought he had, but he hadnt. The truth of the matter is, in my opinion, that nobody can know ANYTHING for absolute certain. But we, as humans, do not like to accept this, and hence, you get people like Descartes who went to absolute extremes to dispel the doubt because he so desperately didnt want to accept it. But the fact is, we have been living for millennia without knowing everything for certain, and we havent done too bad. Of course, there have been many times when we THOUGHT we knew things for certain, and then we found out later that we were wrong. But then we just moved on.
I believe the important thing is to keep trying, to keep searching for the truth, even if we are aware we may not totally get there, because there are levels of certainty. So, some things are much more likely to be true than others, and we can base things on this to some extent. It seems prudent to do so.
For example, say a plane crashed, and the airline wanted to work out why it had crashed to prevent it from happening again, if they didnt take into account likelihood then they could just as easily say the fact that there had been a black cat at the side of the runway at the time was the reason for the crash. Then they might go out and shoot all the black cats in the area. (I am against cat shooting by the way) But taking likelihood into account would probably mean that they would inspect the mechanics and electrics etc of the plane from top to bottom. Then, if they found something wrong, they could fix it, which seems to be a lot safer bet than shooting all the black cats (and the black cats get to live! Yay. Poor black cats, they are given such a bad name!)
The other thing that always springs to my mind is, we may think we want to know the answers to everything, but do we really? Okay so, suddenly we know the answers to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. So, now what? What do we do next? Is there any point anymore? First of all, we may as well shut down this forum. There would be absolutely no point in philosophy anymore. Somehow, there seems to be a great irony here because we need to keep searching for truth to keep motivation in our lives, but once we find all the truth, we lose all the motivation we were trying to keep!
In the meantime, you should know that your mention of Descartes brought a smile to my lips and a song in my heart:
Quoting Beverley
I remember reading the Cogito decades ago and being really moved by systemic doubt. Doubt everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste and think until you come to a place where doubt is not possible:
I cant doubt that Im thinking because doubting is, itself, a form of thinking.
It was so cool and impactful that it put a dance in my step all the way from the library to my room.
Unfortunately, my Cartesian bubble was eventually burst (I believe by Bertrand Russell) when I learned that even if doubting/thinking is irrefutable, the I is not; Descartes had snuck it in through the back door.
So with that, and while its still open, Ill sneak out the door myself! <smile>
Yes, but I do not see any analogy between them, as noted, for the reason noted. I think your terming of the sides of the analogy is inaccurate to what they represent.
Quoting jkop
Well, when i refer to 'visual data' I mean the electrical information being passed from whatever the light rays have reflected off of, into the eye, through the cones etc.. and then into the brain - the data itself is not experienced at all. The brain forms an experience-apt representation of that data. I guess I'm trying to delineate between the electrical 'fuel' fed into the brain, and the experience of it. Similarly with pain - pain is an experience of C-fibres firing in the absence of a brain or neuronal aberration. This may be coarse or imprecise, so I apologise if its hard to grasp what im saying - haven't gotten a great handle on translating thought to clear language in the philosophical context, as is probably obvious LOL.
Quoting wonderer1
No idea. My part in the process(and as such, the point at whcih I could say anything about it) comes after that, as best I can tell. I could say "the objects" but then im stuck with literally nothing else to say about it.
==============================================
Hi Jamal; it will become quite clear throughout my response that I'm of the view you have misread (and, from what I can tell, willfully) large parts of my responses throughout the last couple of pages evidenced by 1:0 matches in your response to specific passages. Forgive any instances where I appear to have my back up. I do. You do not appear to be dealing with my positions properly, and its difficult to get through as I'm being forced to discuss views I don't hold, in the context of a defense. But know that I appreciate any words anyone is willing to bother putting down for me.
Quoting Jamal
This bodes extremely badly for whatever you have to say...
Quoting Jamal
This is not my position and I have absolutely no clue how you could possibly glean this from anything I have said. I've not intimated anything of hte sort. I want an explanation, from someone who claims visual access to the external objects "behind" perception (as it were, on my account) about how that happens. Really simple, if you have a theory about it, lay it out. If not, I will assume you have none. But, ironically in comparison to a quote of yours further down this response, your uses of 'seeing' and 'perception' here are extremely confusing.
Quoting Jamal
I do not. I have been clear to point out that uses of the word 'see' in conflicted instances have muddled the entire thing and attempted to clear up my terms that 'see' are used for into "look at" and "see". I did this very recently in the exchange and apologise for any preceding confusion. I'll leave that there.
Quoting Jamal
It is. And having gone back through my posts, I have to say its bizarre to me to have gotten something other than this from my writing. If you could please outline for me precisely where this idea has come from, I'd be more than happy to clarify wherever I misspoke (as must be the case given this is exactly my position), or adjust/reject my clearly erroneous utterance at the time.
Quoting Jamal
If you mean 'see', its because its used in an extremely bad way and the colloquial meaning is usually taken on, even here, and I've merely done what most philosophers do (though, I am not one, obviously) and defined my terms - just happened to be part-way through the exchange because this isn't an academic exchange in the sense that I needed notes beforehand. We "look at" objects, receive the light being reflected and perceive the internal mind-produced representation. Provide another mechanism, if you don't think this is correct...
Quoting Jamal
Yes, and that has been my position since realising no one has provided anything resembling an objection. This is why i defined terms, and Why its really hard to read this all in good faith.
Quoting Jamal
Practically, sure, and 'practically', I don't walk around noticing that I'm not in touch with my environment, directly. But you are patently not traveling 'directly' to New York if you're passing through other spaces between your current, and New York. That would be indirect, obviously. Colloquial uses of words are a serious issue, and apparently, not cleared up on a forum like this, ironically.
Quoting Jamal
I literally pointed out that I am not incredulous, and apologised if I appeared so. This exchange is becoming more and more clearly a punt on your part.
Quoting Jamal
There is none, as above. It would be helpful (and I am not at all being facetious here) if you could carefully read what I've typed before replying to it - the number of patent errors in terms of your groking my passages is uncomfortable.
Quoting Jamal
Unless I'm misremembering, yes, and I responded to it directly and we exchanged on it. Kant contradicts his own system in such a claim. So, again, the above interpretation.
Quoting Jamal
Yep, I know. Indirect Realism seems both Kant's position, and the best representative of the scientific facts of our visual/perception complex. If this entire exchange and objection/response flow actually just boils down to an unfortunate assumption on your part that "two worlds" in my mind means literally two separate worlds, then that's a shame and perhaps I underestimated the stupidity of certain philosophical positions. The idea that there are literally 'two worlds' is utterly bizarre to me and it hadn't occurred to me it was being used this way.
The idea that there are clear two absolutely distinct aspects to reality from a human perspective, seems undeniable. If this murky use of words has been the issue then, returning to your claim that its a linguistic problem, yes. End of.
Quoting Jamal
Given that I began my substantial replies with something to the effect of 'everything you have said is fair enough and reasonable' I feel fairly justified in just saying, nah dude. Please read more carefully. Nothing you've said about Kant is anything but reasonable, even if I think its wrong.
===============================
Quoting Michael
Is this to say things like 'redness' and 'warmth' inhere in the objects (on this account)?
Quoting Michael
fwiw, and maybe this will help Jamal, this is closest to where I am currently.
"What does it mean to literally see an object?" (sorry, had to copy from my notifications as I couldn't find hte post
Well, yeah, that's a serious issue given we seem to all mean different things. And the definition of 'to see' includes two separate concepts: to look at something (i.e "with the eyes") and "perception" which is an act of the mind. So, its an incongruent complex imo and largely is hte reason for what I take to be Jamal's misapprehensions of my position, let alone my arguments.
On my use of the word, it would mean to have a visual experience without any mediation from the object to the experience. My preferred terms, as noted, work thus:
To Look: To turn one's visual sense organ to an object (obviously, thats redundant.. our eyes work lol).
Conference: An event, in which photoreceptor cells/cones etc.. respond to light by shunting electrical signals through various apparati to the visual cortex.
To See (perceive): To have a visual experience which the visual cortex has produced from that received data.
I don't note any objection to this formulation of how sight works. So I can't understand objections to the position that "to see" is not to directly perceive an object. Im not sure how you can claim that we 'perceive' objects.
==============================
Quoting AmadeusD
I got it straight from this:
Quoting AmadeusD
Here, you imply that we cannot see objects, for the reason that light intervenes between the objects and the visual system. If that is not what you meant, and there is some other argument here, I cannot see what it could be.
Quoting Jamal
Quoting AmadeusD
But thats what you said:
Quoting AmadeusD
Is there some other way to understand we literally do not see objects, but reflected/refracted light?
If you dont actually mean what you say, and you cant remember what you said, and youre unwilling to read over what youve said before to understand my objections, then its not surprising that Im not getting through to you.
I cant tell if its just that your reading comprehension is bad or if youre intellectually dishonest. Ive responded to you patiently and very precisely, each time quoting what you said and responding directly, and now youre flying off the handle, ranting and raving, and making very little sense. This discussion hasnt gone the way I hoped, so Ill bow out.
Thank you for going through and finding the relevant passage. I cannot understand how you're getting there, though:
Quoting Jamal
Not at all. The inference (and, from what I see, the only reasonable one) is that I deny that we directly perceive objects because the light is what is affecting hte visual system - not the object. You can glean this easily by noticing the following:
Quoting AmadeusD
I even scare-quoted 'see' because of the linguistic issues. This is your use of hte term not mine. I would have used 'perceive' if I was writing to an open audience. Light doesn't intervene - it is the vehicle by which the object reaches the sense organs. Space intervenes, I guess. There is a distance between the object and our eye/s. Light traversing that distance is mediated by the environment, in most cases, which we've not touch by further goes to my point that we do not directly perceive objects, nor could we. I also highlight, again, the underlined above as its required for an adequate alternate view to consider. I notice, from the comment box, you are bowing out. So be it.
Quoting Jamal
You are simply not reading very well, and choosing passages you think support some 'gotcha' around what im saying. Aside from the fact that i've been very open about re-defining the terms to make sense of the ideas as I go, this is a very bad-faith way of going about things. I get that you don't want to, anymore, but just ask me to clarify if you have issues. here, though, I already did - twice, so you're still remaining in a box of your own creation, if you're taking obviously badly-formulated statements over the clarifying ones. It is not that you're not getting through to me, my friend. It is that you are not adequately engaging what i've said.
Quoting Jamal
Oh, my. LOL. It's neither. But, I also note that you think directly addressing objections, and clarifying my position is "ranting and raving". I have no idea why you're bringing such emotionally charged language into an exchange that should be about achieving clarity, if not a coming to terms. You seem to me more than happy with obstructing clarity, and then concluding its my issue to overcome.
I was right to note that "This bodes extremely badly..". I should have left it there.
With great care, Austin dismantles the accounts of perception that are so problematic here.
In any case, it is now apparent that is dreadfully confused. He will happily talk about not seeing objects, but seeing light - as if the light by which we see were more corrigible than the very things we see.
Or, as is in fact the case, I've been very careless with my words and you have no interest whatsoever in anything but destructive commentary. Far be it from me, mate. You're allowed.
That thread is actually what made me realise interacting with you was pointless.
Quoting Thales
There's an (in)famous counter to this, from David Stove, a parody:
1. One only ever tastes oysters with one's mouth
2. Therefore one never tastes oysters as they in themselves
3. Therefore we do not know how oysters taste
Do you still think that argument you presented in the OP is convincing? Since you did present it, should we take it that you have some doubt?
Your account is muddled. Blaming me won't fix it.
And yet here you are...
But it certainly helps to contextualise you.
Hopefully your philosophy poisoning isn't so deep that you can't recover.
And yet here you argue that you don't know anything about the world around you. So I don't know why we should take you seriously when you talk about experience off the forum.
In my view, everyone is equal in their worth. There are learning opportunities to be had from everyone, no matter if we agree or disagree with them. For example, what I learn from just a brief reading of these correspondences is that some people are quick to jump on the bandwagon when someone else's comments are not being valued or respected.
If I had any sway in anything, which I don't believe I do, I would tend to encourage people not to write comments that are too negative on here, especially if they are personally directed at specific people because then there develops a situation where people naturally become defensive. It is understandable. But the way I see it is that we are all here in our precious free time to enjoy thought provoking discussion. It seems unfortunate if that time is spent in a negative way. But I am also experienced enough to know that is what often happens in life.
Quoting AmadeusD
I also learn that AmadeusD appears to have faith in the people in this forum, and since he has been using this forum for longer than me, I am encouraged to also see the good in people on here too.
Heh - I am barely a fledgling - I just post a lot because I am able to, and am currently studying so it's useful. Plenty of regular users have been here going on a decade (and from a previous iteration!). I'm still in the 'driveby' window, by my lights haha... and, related, I was intimating the 'poison' was confined to the forum. But it was entirely jest - I don't know why people get so serious here.
Ah okay, I may have misread this, thinking that you meant there may be poison on here but it is well controlled. But anyway, I had the feeling before that you seem to think generally that people are fair on here. Maybe I misinterpreted that, but it seems to have stuck in my perceptions of things.
One thing I do note though, is that people here, versus any real-life philosophical context, seem very quick to anger, dismiss and generally be dicks if they're either not getting something, or someone else is doing something they don't like. More than likely, me included. And that counts against it.
Relax. All is not lost.
Might it help to examine whether the other senses meet the same criteria youve assigned to vision?
I mean jeeeezzz, aint it nonsense to suppose actual basketballs impress the eyes? Imagine how much that would HURT!!! Nevertheless, on the other hand, it is actually quite necessary that actual oysters (technically, some thing conceived of, named by, and eventually experienced as, oyster) impress the tongue. How in the HELL would you even call that slimey mess an oyster .or whatever you did end up calling it . if it never hit the sensory device which allows that kind of determination? Does one ever call it an oyster because it sounds like Ravels Bolero?
(Sigh)
Perception does not occur in the mind; it occurs in the senses. Why the fork else would there even BE senses? What is done with what the senses inform you of, is in the mind.
(Crap-on-a-cracker, I hate that word. There is no mind; there is only reason. Or something. Whatever it is that humans have. What kinda fool denies whatever it is that humans have, huh??? Except rabid physicalists, but they dont count. Sorta like analytic philosophers. You know .forest-trees/map-territory paradigmatic deniers)
(Double sigh)
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Stoves Gem? Ehhhh dont worry bout that Happy Horse-hockey. Guy just wondered how stupid things could get, and to give an example of it, he did something stupid. Wanna defeat Stoves Gem? Just dont do what he did, which 99% ..ok, fine: 80% ..of otherwise intelligent humans never did do in the first place. DUH!!!!)
(Double-double sigh)
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Now that we got the attaboys out of the way, time for the awww-craps.
It make no sense to infer the existence of real, external objects, as the sole criterion of their reality. Kinda silly to trip over the dog, but only credit the dogs existence to the inference there was something there to trip over. Which would you have done first? If you tripped over the dog it means you didnt know it was there, so why bother inferring its existence from the floor onto which youve quite unceremoniously planted your face? Nahhh the damn dog was already there, which makes explicit you didnt need any inference at all for it.
And if that dont blow your dress up, think of it this way: inference is a logical maneuver, and there is no logic whatsoever in perception. Aristotle said so, as did his somewhat chronologically removed protege. I believe him, or, them, and so should you. Trust me; I wouldnt steer you wrong, Honest.
Anyway just sayin. Even if you dont believe a word of it, wasnt it more fun to read that whats passed as philosophical discourse here recently?
Quoting Mww
To this point, I'm with you. I am about 99.5% sure that actual objects are presented, in some way, to our actual sense organs. I would need to ask though, is that enough for you to say we 'see' those objects? If so, alrighty. It doesn't do that for me.
Quoting Mww
I can't make sense of this. Where are 'the senses'? Are they in the sense organs? Or in the mind? I can't see that could be anywhere else. Additionally, perception seems to be defined in various ways. Most seem to begin post-sense - meaning, perception is what is done with the sensory information to create the experience it either constitutes, or initiates. Can you let me know where you see that as incorrect?
Quoting Mww
See above. This appears to be what perception is, on most accounts. But, aside from that, I suppose I do not see the mechanics the same as you do. I also then bring in to the discussion, the problem of inaccurate sensory perception. Meaning, there's weak reason to think that what you're "informed of" is necessarily information about any actual objects, as it were. It could be informing you that your eyes are fucked
Quoting Mww
I really don't see a problem with doing so. I mean, adding that correlation with vision helps doesn't alter my argument, but would help on your end :) My problem with that restriction is that we don't have any other experience of the dog. Inference is the only available avenue to infer (in the "posit" sense) that it is an external, real, mind-independent object: That we have an experience of it.
Quoting Mww
Not so. I could have run too fast, I could have slipped on something, I could have forgotten in preconsciousness, I could have been mistaken about where I was stepping or where the dog was etc... But more importantly, I find you to be describing experiences. Experiences occur in the mind.
Where is the mechanism by which we 'directly' access these objects? You nearly touched on it with the basketball quip - but, in actuality, it would need to impress on the visual experience itself, for the claim to hold. And that seems plainly impossible, as it's not physical.
Quoting Mww
I do not think I agree here. I think, ala Kant, this is how we perceive. Using a priori concepts, logically consistent as to allow for possible experience, to organise sensory information into an experience.
Quoting Mww
105.33%
This was the very first response in the discussion and it might still be the best one. It eschews a direct engagement with the OP's argument and instead offers a better conceptual framework (or paradigm or what have you), one that can replace the worn out assumptions of the early moderns. Philosophical advances tend to be made that way, rather than with direct point-by-point refutations.
But some philosophers, or enthusiasts of philosophy at least, tend to cast such responses as philosophically naive, as if the modern scientific conception of lifeforms reciprocally engaged with their environments, while it might be okay for practical purposes, is inadequate to the higher demands of philosophy, where it obviously just begs the question (because evil demons and the Matrix and so on).
The OP begins in the head. Vera is saying, let's begin in the world. My question is for everyone here: is there a serious problem with this? If you say it's begging the question, that scepticism about knowledge and about the external world is still appropriate, then don't you need grounds for that doubt? In the face of our knowledge of the world, of the evolution of animals, of ethology, anthropology, and sociology, what warrant do philosophy enthusiasts have to carry on interrupting by saying, ah, but couldn't it all be a dream?
In any case, what justification is there for beginning in the head anyway? Developmentally, we are social first, and only later retreat into our thoughts.
I specifically mention philosophy enthusiasts rather than philosophers per se, because as far as I can tell, the latter indulge in this kind of scepticism as a teaching tool for the history of philosophy, and no longer take it very seriously. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.
We've had two centuries* of philosophers rejecting the solipsistically-inclined philosophy of Descartes and Kant's epistemology of the independent bourgeois individual, etc. When is everyone else going to catch up?
* Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein all reject the Cartesian starting point in philosophy
I prefer to say my sensory devices are affected by them. Any object is an effect on each sensory device according to that devices physiology, and from which a corresponding sensation ensues in each, which just is to perceive.
Quoting AmadeusD
Cognition is what is done with sensory information. Experience is cognition by conjoined perceptions. Each in its place, doing only its job, as a system should.
Quoting AmadeusD
Wasnt that the whole point of my intervention here? We dont directly access anything; we have the capacities and abilities by which things are given access to us.
And now the really cool part: do you see how the thread title is backwards?
(source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 2)
:up: :100:
Agreed. As Steven Jensen says in his "The Human Person," if one begins in the "box" of the mind (or inside the "box" of language) one never gets back outside of it. The solution is "to not start out from inside the box in the first place." A paradigm shift is required. Ideas are not "[I]what[/I] we experience," but rather "[I]how[/I] we experience."
It is just like how we write [I]using[/I] a computer. We do not say "we cannot write, it is impossible, because it is always a computer (or a pen, pencil, etc.) that does the writing, and a medium (computer, paper, mud, etc.) that receives the writing." We are the ones that write, the computer/pen/finger is the tool we use to perform this act, and the word processor/paper is the medium by which writing is recorded. To see the computer/pen as an insurmountable barrier between us and the capacity for writing is to fundementally misunderstand the relationships at work here.
It is a a fallacy of composition, the bad assumption being that things are infinitely decomposable, that one can take the whole of human action and break it down into "parts" without losing anything. The world is first removed from the analysis , and then we are shocked that the world is gone. It is, in a way, another one of the ways in which smallism, the dogma that all facts about larger wholes must be fully represented in facts about "smaller, and thus more essential," parts leads to a blind alley. "Neurons do not [I]see[/I], thus man is blind."
From the birth of semiotics, the study of meaning, as a distinct area of inquiry with Saint Augustine, we have seen the process represented in terms of a tripartite structure. There is the object known, the sign by which it is known, and that which interprets the sign. Getting stuck in the boxes of ideas or language requires presupposing that signs are an impermeable barrier between objects and interpretants, rather than the means connecting the two and transmitting the intelligibility of objects. The mistake lies in assuming that meaning must be totally reducible to just the interpretant (or in the case of positivism, that truth lies only in the object).
For me, a key realization was that the concerns over being stuck in such boxes are not remotely new. While these are often presented as horrible truths about the limits of knowledge that we stumbled upon after recognizing the "dogmas," of earlier ages, this is not the case. Radical skepticism, getting trapped in the box, the impossibility of communication, relativism these all show up from the very birth of philosophy. They are in the Platonic Dialogues, and in the pre-Socratics as well. Aquinas comes up with Berkeley's position, but considers it to be a reductio ad absurdum.
They were effectively dealt with through philosophical anthropology, a field now unfortunately neglected. Human beings are essentially involved in veracity. The Sophists announcing the relativism of all concepts, the impossibility of communication or knowledge, the absence of anything that might be called "truth," nonetheless feels the need to convince others that these things "are true." Finding communication impossible, they strike out to communicate this to others. Finding truth impossible to grasp, they set out to make others grasp this truth.
In general, Socrates' strategy is to show how the Sophists don't even pretend to believe their own words. In their abandonment of veracity in principle, they come to stand on nothing, yet even still are spurred on by a vestigial sense of veracity in trying to convince others that "they are right that they cannot be right." The Sophists are generally not rebutted, rather they lapse into sullen silence after it is shown that, if they were right, they should not bother speaking, nor should they even trust in their own opinion.
Great post. I particularly appreciate two things: the analogy of writing, which Id never thought of before (Ill probably use that in future); and the idea that the back-and-forth between radical sceptics and their opponents is perennial, rather than just a debate of the modern period.
I think its likely we are speaking the same metaphysical language here, but i can see i'm working from imprecise uses of those two words as i can find conflicted definitions/uses around the net.
On this usage though, I'm with you.
Quoting Mww
I really, really like this formulation and it answers much of where my issues have been by removing the entire issue of "see/to see" linguistic indeterminacy. I guess this makes sense as you helped me through many passages that got me where I see myself now, in regard to this question of access. Quoting Mww
I do, now. It didn't occur to me that that also solves my mental conflict around the different perspectives in the last couple of pages. Much appreciated :)
Yeah, but you know ..even though we share a language, it remains we may hold with different systems into which that common language fits. For me, perception is this and only does that, for you perception may be something quite different. So it is with CPR: it is a system, thought out and written as complete in itself. Whether it is right or not is irrelevant, it only matters that it is complete, and ..well, you know .logically comprehensible.
Quoting AmadeusD
And it answers how the thread title is backwards: the real transition loss, is from world to mind. Even science grants that, in the exchange of energy forms always and necesarily involves loss of data or information or whatever you want to call it. It follows that anything given to the mind, meaning anything exchanging domain from the external as one energy form, to the internal in a very different energy form, something will be lost in the transition.
The secondary mark of truth is that for which the negation is also true. As such, it is true there is no possible loss of data or information or whatever you want to call it, from mind to world, re: the thread title, insofar as the mind creates or generates or composes of its own accord all the data with which it is concerned, it follows that a loss created from itself, is impossible.
Long story short .loss in transition from mind to world? There isnt any. Or maybe better yet, it makes no sense to say there is such a thing.
Quoting AmadeusD
Thanks, but, I gotta say whatever you got from me I got from CPR, which reduces to, insofar as theres no measurable qualifier to support Im that much smarter than you, you could have got it from CPR on your own. Might just be a matter of time spent on study. Personal attachment of value. Relative significance. Dunno.
Yes, the debate on skepticism is perennial, but the notion of consciousness is arguably modern, as is the conceptual separation of consciousness from the object that one is conscious of.
From this separation follows a skepticism that is radical enough for Berkeley to get rid of the object entirely, and keep only consciousness (or ideas). In this sense idealism is the result of a radically skeptic assumption. Also indirect realists assume that we never see objects and state of affairs directly, but typically play down the significance of the skepticism. My guess is that forthcoming periods won't be as skeptic as the modern.
I think its more than is being allowed, on some of the conceptions in this thread, though. Reading a passage from North-Whitehead this morning struck me as highly relevant:
"The ultimate momentary 'ego' has as its datum the 'eye as experiencing such-and-such sights'. In the second quotation*, that reference to the number of physical points is a reference to the excited area on the retina. Thus the 'eye as experiencing such-and-such sights' is passed on as a datum from the cells of the retina through the train of actual entities forming the relevant nerves, up to the brain. Any direct relation of eye to the brain is entirely overshadowed by this intensity of indirect transmission"
*from Hume's Treatise, wanting to know how the eye is sensible of anything by coloured points (in space, assumably).
On this type of thinking (which is my intuitive mode, and has remained so even having sorted out many other problems in my thinking) gives me a distinct feeling that
Quoting Mww
is true, and that arguments around "direct perception" don't even get off the ground, when it comes 'the external world'. I am loathe to present anything it seems your view is, but it appear you must conclude this from the bits and pieces you have proffered. I just cannot understand how Jamal inter alia, is able to talk about that "direct perception" with a straight face, anymore.
Quoting Mww
This, and my dumb, uninformed, choice to get a second-tier translation of the A version.