You say that on the one hand you're not committed to perception as essentially linguistic but on the other hand you say that perception is linguistic. — RussellA

No, I was switching between provisionally explaining the argument that perception is linguistic as if it were true, and expressing doubts about it. This should be obvious.

Yes, I see. I'm flexible on this point, probably because I'm confused about it.

Yes, I think that's getting into the substantive debate, beyond the misunderstandings that I noted. I'll let @plaque flag respond if he wants to, because I'm not sure what to think about it.

I don't, and I'm not sure what that would mean. Closest I can come is to imagine how perception works when we're wrapped up in a physical activity, like running to catch a ball or playing an instrument (or hammering of course). These don't seem very linguistic to me, though I could well be wrong. I'm not committed to perception-as-essentially-linguistic, I'm just saying that to make this claim is not to say that one cannot see a tree without forming the sentence "that is a tree" or whatever. It's a deeper point than that, to do with the fact that in situations of perceiving we are always already linguistic, because of what we are.

I guess I should have clarified. It's about human perception. The idea is that in perceiving, a human cannot help but be linguistic. Both we and dogs perceive, but our perception is inextricably linked to our concepts and thereby to language.

I can see things without saying anything. — Michael

To perceive a dog as such is already linguistic. — plaque flag

I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean.

Here’s a definition:

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth — Adorno, Minima Moralia

I’ll do my best to interpret this gnomic utterance. Magic, the ancient practice involving the supernatural, attends to the particularity of things in terms of spirits and demons, believing or pretending that there really are such entities, which can be invoked or defended against with incantations. This is untrue. There are no spirits and demons.

Art was the means by which magic was performed, with fetishes, amulets, symbolic carvings and decorations, and also ritual music and dance. But art did not decline along with the decline of magic rituals and beliefs; and now, in invoking and manipulating the spirits of things in its works—in bringing out the meaning of things in their interconnectedness and in their irreducible particularity, in treating things as spiritual rather than as specimens for scientific study—art continues to perform magic but liberated from the need to claim that there are supernatural entities or that it has the power to influence nature and events.

Adorno quotes his own definition in his lecture course, An Introduction to Dialectics, to illustrate the difference between a “vulgar” definition and a good, philosophical one, his own being an example of the latter, of course. His point is that his definition is only meaningful to someone who is responsive to art and who is able to understand it. Thus he is explicating a concept, allowing it to unfold in a meaning-full context. In a sense, then, whether an explicative definition comes at the start or concludes a work or discussion is irrelevant. Similarly, we can make arguments by beginning with a statement of the conclusion—indeed I think this is the clearest and most common way of presenting arguments in philosophy.

Over the course of a few lectures he argues against the dependence on definitions in philosophy, and one of his arguments is pretty much the same as @Banno’s, about the circularity of definition and the primacy of use (in Adorno’s terms, the life of the concepts), although in Adorno’s case it’s wielded to show that Hegelian dialectics is the best philosophy for explicating the truth of concepts. The aim is something like allowing concepts to speak rather than imposing others on them.

Every concept is indeed internally dynamic, and the task is somehow to do justice to this dynamic character. And here it is often enough language itself that will have to furnish the canon for the appropriate use of concepts. — Adorno, An Introduction to Dialectics

That is to say, it’s in the use of a term that we can understand the meaning of concepts, not primarily by definitions. I guess this is about what we should expect definitions to do: should they help us think new thoughts or should they keep our thoughts on the rails?

It's the kind of joke Nietzsche would make (which I hope you understand as a compliment.) — plaque flag

:up: :blush:

Not that it's important, but you mentioned that PlushForums responded --among other things-- with "Perhaps the next time a user reports such a case, send us the specifics (email address, approximate time, expected reason for the notification), we will comb through the email logs." — Alkis Piskas

He works for PlushForums, so he already has access to all the email addresses, because members of this forum signed up to a PlushForums forum. He nicely offered to do something extremely tedious to help solve this non-existent problem. Email addresses are not shared or used in any way outside of TPF/PlushForums.

RussellA perceives direct realists only indirectly: the direct realist in his head does not resemble the direct realist as it is in the external world.

So, based on the above two remarks, "bookmarks" do not seem to work or at least not consistently — Alkis Piskas

They do work. The issue is dealt with.

Is it an invasion of privacy to give out someone’s email address without asking permission first? — Alkis Piskas

Who said anything about giving out email addresses?

I’ll answer that question, because I have no intention of discussing it: nobody did.

An odd post Alkis, but I'll assume you've written it in good faith.

As my post made clear, the problem is dissolved, which means that we have discovered that there was no problem in the first place, except that we didn't know how the system works. Now we do. Read on while I explain it again...

Notifications about PMs are sent only...

• When a conversation is started [i.e., when a PM is first sent to you at the beginning of a private conversation]
• When a bookmarked conversation is updated [i.e, new messages are sent in the conversation], assuming it has been read, and the user has this option enabled

So if you haven't bookmarked a conversation, you won't receive notifications of new replies.

So, to receive notifications for all PMs including updates/replies, be sure to bookmark your conversations and check the checkbox labelled "Email when my bookmarks have new comments".

Does this mean that my mail server (receiver) is unreliable? Javi's too? — Alkis Piskas

No, ignore that. He only suggested that as a possible cause, but it's clear that the problem was just our expectation that updates/replies to a conversation trigger email notifications.

I don't think this is legal. It's a privacy violation. — Alkis Piskas

Not true, but it's irrelevant, because we won't be asking him to do that.

But I had not "bookmarked" anything when I received a notification about your PM, twice or more times — Alkis Piskas

That's because that PM was the initial PM of a conversation, rather than a reply/update to an existing one.

@Alkis Piskas @javi2541997

The response from PlushForums:

It would seem unlikely for some emails to be received and others not, unless the receiving mail server was unreliable or being throttled, which can happen.

Perhaps it's a misunderstanding of when notifications about PMs are sent. They're sent when a conversation is started, primarily. Users also have the option of being notified about updates to bookmarked conversations, assuming that conversation has been read and therefore the new message is "fresh".

Perhaps the next time a user reports such a case, send us the specifics (email address, approximate time, expected reason for the notification), we will comb through the email logs.

He later clarified that notifications about PMs are sent only...

• When a conversation is started
• When a bookmarked conversation is updated, assuming it has been read, and the user has this option enabled

So if you haven't bookmarked a conversation, you won't receive notifications of new replies. This dissolves the problem, I think (on the assumption that the messages you weren't notified about were updates to an existing conversation).

NOTE: To bookmark a conversation, toggle on the star icon at the bottom.

The point of the OP of that thread was a fairly simple one, that definitions do not, in a very important sense, give us meaning. — Banno

Yes, but I think many in this discussion would say that it doesn't follow from this, from the circularity of definition and the primacy of use, that one should avoid beginning their discussions with "let's first define our terms". This is because in defining terms they merely want to remove ambiguity, direct the discussion to what they're interested in, etc., rather than supplying exhaustive criteria or an ultimate ground.

Great! I'll pick it up next time I'm there.

Overall, the findings suggest that Common Mynas do not display more food-related aggression than other species in suburban habitats, suggesting that competitive aggression over food is not likely to be one of the behavioural traits leading to the success of Common Mynas in suburban habitats. — K. M. Haythorpe, D. Sulikowski & D. Burke (2012), Relative levels of food aggression displayed by Common Mynas when foraging with other bird species in suburbia

I just learned that both were recklessly introduced to Australia around the same time in the mid-19th century. Your evidence suggests that mynas have the edge over their European cousins. Why can't they all just get along? Families eh.

@Alkis Piskas @javi2541997

I just sent an email to PlushForums support:

A few of our members on thephilosophyforum.com have said that they're not receiving email notifications for private messages, although they are still receiving them for other things. Some of them are saying they receive such notifications for PMs sent by me, but not for PMs sent by others. None of this makes sense to me except maybe that their email platforms are sometimes classifying the emails as junk or rejecting them, and other times not, seemingly randomly.

What do you think?

Because figuring out the language is part of the experience of poetry. Because providing definitions would, in many cases, distract from the experience of the poetry. — T Clark

I believe this is the point, or part of it. There is a kind of clarity that doesn’t depend on definitions. Poetry much more than prose aims for precision. Unlike prose, good poetry doesn’t settle for the handy phrase or for common imagery. Its metaphors are bespoke, not off the rack. Clichés are to be avoided because they do our thinking for us (and imagining, feeling, etc), or they shut out thinking; and the same could be said of some up-front definitions in philosophy.

I think this is a good insight but as I say I have not yet bothered to follow the article’s substantive argument, which is in the poetry analysis (I presume).

Yep, and it’s not just the problem of other heads.

Of course, I understand that. Obviously. I was calling back to your schizophrenia post.

Lemons are sour and yellow, i.e., taste sour and look yellow. That you think this is (equivalent to) an hallucination plus an external trigger is just your headbound epistemology.

You misrepresented me there by taking me out of context, but never mind.

The indirect realist argues that this exact same thing happens in the case of veridical experience. The only relevant difference is that in the case of veridical experience the voices-in-my-head are triggered by external world voices rather than by spontaneous brain activity. — Michael

Yes, I understand that this is what indirect realists argue.

I’m in two minds about whether to get drawn into this debate again. Even to address your points directly seems to be conceding too much, because your starting point seems to me utterly wrongheaded, although you’re arguing your case well.

I’m familiar with Robinson. I think you’re right that he’s identified something significant with his distinction between phenomenological and semantic direct realism. It doesn’t defeat direct realism but it does defeat the weak arguments for it. But the thing is, there is more to direct realism than the story that you and Robinson are telling about the retreat from “how the tree looks is how it is” to “I see the tree, not an image of the tree, whether or not what I’m seeing is how it really is”.

Given my body, being in a particular temperature will cause me to feel cold. That cold feeling doesn’t “resemble” a low temperature. I don’t even know what that could even mean. And I’m not entirely sure what it would mean to say that the cold feeling “represents” a low temperature. It’s just a consequence, and one that wouldn’t follow were my body or brain sufficiently different. — Michael

I don’t think anyone would disagree.

There can be no talk of resemblance between how something looks and how something is, if the latter means beyond perception. It’s not comparing like with like. That kind of talk secretly or unknowingly depends on the notion of something’s having an appearance without an appearance.

Now you may say: Exactly! And that’s why the direct realists are wrong, and I’ll say no, that’s why the indirect realists are wrong, because they misinterpret direct realism. And as always, I wonder which direct realists you’re thinking of. So it goes.

I would, but right now I’ve got Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” in my head and I can’t shift it.

Fair enough comrade.

I was wondering about that distinction when I was writing the OP, whether I should distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions as criteria for the use of a term and n&s conditions as properties of a thing.

I downloaded that book when you first linked to it. Looks interesting.

It seems to me that even 'nice' conservatives, don't like to have their world reformatted, so that it becomes more inclusive of those they all often call 'them.'
I don't want to sweep any viewpoint aside so I understand the last paragraph I quoted from you but I do want to challenge 'conservative ideology' 'vigorously,' and defeat it 'totally,' in the minds of as many of our species as possible, so that our species can finally understand that 'gated, secured, ideology driven, privileged, conserved, small communities, is not the way for our species to progress in a VAST universe.
The way forward is as one united planet/species. — universeness

But this just strikes me as unhinged rhetoric. I mean, who are you talking to here? Who are you trying to impress? What do any of these proud declarations on TPF actually achieve?

Indirect realists argued that we can't trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because experience is, at best, representative of the world and its nature. — Michael

If x is representative of y then x by definition informs us about what y is like, no?

Meh! — universeness

That’s fair. I did wonder if I was being too soft there.

That’s fine with me Arne. Maybe read the rest of it.

Making a definition in philosophy is (sometimes) like explaining a joke. I think that was kind of the point of the article.

Cool, we’re on page 3. Gotta beat @Banno’s 8 page discussion on definitions from three years ago.

I also didn’t bother following along when he began analyzing the poetry, and skipped to the end, which didn’t seem to be saying very much. Could be I’m missing out, but what I took away from it was that Collingwood is a good one to read on this stuff. (Self-reliance doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t read books, only that you shouldn’t get all your ideas from books.)

Tried it. It was too close to black so it just blended in with the other text.

Thank you for adding more complexity to the problem. :wink:

Your email platform’s classification of the email as spam might be to do with the fact that the domain doesn’t have a DMARC record published, in which case I’ll need to fix that myself rather than getting PlushForums to do it.

Maybe that’s causing the other problems, but it doesn’t account for the fact that people are notified about messages from me but not about those from others.

I guess I could make the links a bit darker.

Thanks. I'll wait a while to see if anyone else has more to say about it, then I'll send an email to support. They usually respond quickly.

I didn't have it turned on for myself. I do now if you want to send another.

I’m currently in Kazakhstan and they’re native here, filling the same niche as their relative, the European starling, does in Europe. They hang about outside where I’m working, demonstrating their impressive mimicry.

Back to the topic: if people can send PMs among themselves to test this, I’d be grateful.