It's not so much individual-body, but the social-body — Moliere

Or maybe it's empathy. You put yourself in other people's shoes, but the basis is innate.

And doesn't chirality -- left and right handed objects -- still exist in their world without being able to utter it?) — Moliere

Imagine a possible world in which there are no people. Are there directions there? Only from the point of view of someone outside that world who can establish a reference.

And so you've joined the ranks of those to whom it's obvious that space doesn't have a left and right. We give it directionality.

Left" and "Right" seem vary obviously conventional, just like "up" and "down" -- anything relative to a speaker. It's more like a name for a direction from yourself -- like an angle, but less precise -- than an ontological category. — Moliere

Yes. It has to do with the fact that you're peering out of a body with ears that produce a sense of up and down. Left and right follow from that. Space doesn't come with a left and right.

The coordinate system gives an orientation. Neither of these require an "observer". — Banno

I don't think Liebniz or Kant meant there has to be someone standing there gawking in order for directions to exist. It's just that directionality does not exist in the wild.

I'd say it's convention. I was taught which was what.

I'm not sure that has ontological import though. — Moliere

What does have ontological import?

How do you tell your left from your right?

It's something we pick.

A coordinate system is not an observer. — Banno

Are you saying space has a built in coordinate system?

Anywhere off the plane. — Banno

Some points will make the glove right-handed. Some will make it left-handed? Correct?

Now you have chirality. — Banno

I don't see what you're talking about. Where's the point?

Any point. — Banno

So you have a point. Now what?

We have a point. — Banno

Which point?

Your observer is reduced to a point. That is all that is needed. — Banno

So you have an observer.

Syphilis. — 180 Proof

I actually did lol at this.

It's not necessary to "insert an observer" to settle the issue; simply choosing a point on this or that side of the glove will suffice. — Banno

How can you have choosing going on with nobody to choose?

Quadruped? That's my problem then. Not enough feet. — Banno

Tetrapod.

You're kind of like Sisyphus.

This is interesting from stack exchange.

But only a conscious being can construct a point of origin or use. — Philosophim

:up: It's a kind of relativity.

Yes, I see where you’re coming from now. However if you take a look at France, one of the most socialist Western countries. There are maverick’s studying and developing their own unique ideas everywhere. One only needs to look at their culinary diversity. Chefs strive to come up with new novel recipes, breaking the mould, pushing boundaries to win their Michelin star. Also in the arts, artists are given a stipend by the government allowing them to experiment and diversify to their hearts content. I travel around France a lot (I’m going there on Saturday, can’t wait), there are institutions, societies, venues, creative people everywhere. Often supported in their endeavours by the state. — Punshhh

I agree. You definitely don't need capitalism for innovation. I just think it helps. But there's an example from France about how authoritarianism can work out: an invasive plant was released into the Mediterranean from an aquarium in France. One guy noticed that it was an ecosystem destroyer and notified the brass at the aquarium. He was told that it's natural and don't worry about it. It turns out he was right. The plant crowds out other plants and it doesn't provide food for sea animals, and it's naturalized all over the Mediterranean now. In other places in the world where it appeared, it was eradicated before it could do any damage. That's just the kind of thing I've come to expect from authoritarian situations. Inevitably the decision maker has to be an idiot. Where there's more of an open forum for ideas, there's a greater chance that the puny, but correct opinion can make a difference.

The supposition is that somehow therefore consciousness is essential to telling left from right, but the case for this cannot, I think, be made. All that is needed is an arbitrary point from which to assess the chirality of the glove. — Banno

Being in a quadruped body is the basis for the distinction. Directionality is something we give to space. It doesn't have that on its own. Some responders to this thread have said that this is blatantly obvious, others like me, arrived at it intellectually, but it still seems weird, then there are people who reject it?

As a tidbit, the mRNA vaccine was originated by a woman who found it difficult to find funding because all except one of her peers scoffed at the idea. Capitalism just does better with innovation because stray, crazy ideas have better survival chances. Central planners tend to be thud-heads who resist change due to the risks involved. Usually.

Socialist countries have capitalism and investment capital too. Or are you thinking of Communism?
Anyway I’m just saying they can do it too, just in a different way. — Punshhh

Ah. We weren't thinking of the same thing. Where there's capitalism, that's actually the foundation of the society's wealth. The kind of socialist economy I was thinking of operates by central planning. I don't think there are any economies of that kind anymore.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was funded by the U.K. government and charitable organisations. This would have been the same under a socialist government. — Punshhh

The UK had the funds because they draw off of a capitalist economy that expands and contracts. During expansion, there is an abundance of virtual capital that funds things like R&D. How would a socialist economy do that?

It’s true that research into RNA vaccines has been funded by investment capital around the world for decades. But that is just how the pharmaceutical systems we have, have developed. In a socialist world, there might have been more money invested in more cost effective ways rather than as a means to generate vast profits for shareholders etc. — Punshhh

I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't know how a socialism would handle a pandemic. Socialist economies don't expand and contract. They're stagnant. That makes me think they would be less financially flexible compared to capitalism. Actually, much less flexible.

That seems intuitively true. — Tom Storm

So it would go back to the hand you write with, unless you're left handed? :grin:

That's more like the Internet in general. Jamal has a nice crown icon in the Discord I saw, so anyone who is foolish enough yet on a philosophy site to be tricked into such likely doesn't have much to give anyhow and as such is what you call a "non-target". Bigger fish to fry, as they say. — Outlander

They don't contact you within the group. They look for people who just signed up to Discord and present themselves as say, thephilosophyforum, complete with logos and whatnot. Then they assure you that money is needed.

I think of myself as having two halves and I know the left is the side I don't write with. I think that's how I tell the difference. Is it objective? It's certainly an intersubjective agreement shared by culture - a tool we use to organise space. While there might be some who are confused as to which is which. Those who can tell will always agree as to which is which. Does that make it objective? Of course, further complicating this is that left or right change depending upon one's position or perspective - they are not like compass points. — Tom Storm

I guess the point is that it's not mind-independent. We need a conscious entity (or two) in order for directionality to exist. All by itself, space doesn't have directions like left and right. That's kind of mind-blowing if you're used to thinking in terms of absolute space.

Long story short, I think just about everyone here knows and is aware of the point you're trying to get across. — Outlander

Well that's just like... your opinion, man.

What if that someone claims to be frank instead? — javi2541997

Tell them a "yo momma so fat" joke.

There is a distance between a set point in itself, and another set point in itself. "Up" is an interpreted relation between our observation view point, and that relation. So yes, "Up" does not exist in itself, but the Earth, and the distance to space for example, does exist in itself. — Philosophim

Right. "Up" is observer dependent. That one's a little harder for me to grasp than left-right. :grin:

If someone already mentioned this, ignore it, but Discord is known for scams. If someone contacts you claiming to be jamal, asking for money, ignore it.

Ok, so now to finally answer your question!

On what basis do you make this distinction? Is it a matter of experiencing the world through a human body? Or is there something objective about it?
— frank

The objective basis is 'the thing itself'. We have 'hands' in themselves. How we interpret them is up to us. We could call them "quack and bark" hands if we wanted. We could say that hands involve the forearm. We part and parcel our interpretation of reality as we wish. As long as our interpretation is not contradicted by the thing in itself's existence (I can cut my hands off and they will still work does NOT match reality) then we're good. — Philosophim

Yes, the question is whether or not space has mind-independent directions. That question doesn't appear to be answered by noting that we have hands. I think you're agreeing that space does not have any innate directionality (in the same way there is no unmoving reference point out there). Adding more objects doesn't fix that. So there is no "up" in itself.

Right. Austin was saying that people who claim that all vision is indirect are undermining the meaning of the very words they're using. That's true.

If the claim is that if everything is indirect, then nothing is because we would have no notion of what an alternative could be, or something along those lines, then I think that's right. — Manuel

If that's Austin's claim, then he's misrepresenting indirect realism. Their view is that one directly apprehends sense data (or a model populated with sense data).

I don't think any of these transitions are bad in and of themselves, it's more that people generally don't care about sustainability or responsibilities. — jorndoe

I don't know, millions of Americans faithfully put their garbage into recycling bins, not realizing that there are limited options for doing anything with all that material. China used to take a large portion of American recyclables, but not anymore. In other words, caring doesn't necessarily equal beneficial action.

Hummuna hummuna hummuna

Ok, not fertilizer. I was thinking of Jethro Tull, so you're right, it was about industrialization:

"Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill contributed to the population increase during the British Agricultural Revolution:
Seed drill
Tull's horse-drawn seed drill allowed farmers to plant seeds in straight rows, which increased the amount of seeds that germinated. The seeds were planted below the ground, out of reach of wind and birds.
Agricultural Revolution
The seed drill allowed farmers to cultivate larger areas and produce more food, which led to a population increase.
Modern agriculture
Tull's methods were adopted by many landowners and helped to establish the basis for modern agriculture." -- google AI

To be very succinct (and therefore maybe inaccurate!) Ayer claims that we never see any material objects directly; we only ever see our own 'sense-data'. For Austin (one of the ordinary language philosophers Gellner is writing about), this is an example of a claim 'so loose, that [...] everything must fall under it. The term then loses any contrast; it is then used "without antithesis".' There would no longer be any such thing as 'seeing directly' – it wouldn't even be possible to imagine what that might be – so to claim that we 'only see indirectly' would be meaningless.

Gellner is trying to argue against Austin (and implicitly for Ayer) in this section about the 'contrast theory'. I'm just trying to get to grips with what exactly his argument is, and why it's wrong. — cherryorchard

I think indirect realists would say (or at least imply) that a person sees sense data directly, by which they mean that back when we thought we were seeing the world directly, that world is actually a model populated with bits of sense data.

@Manuel Manuel, would you agree that Austin is wrong about indirect realism becoming meaningless due to a lack of contrast? I think an example of that kind of breakdown in meaning is the kind of idealism where one says everything is ideas. That makes the concept of idea meaningless because the very stuff that once gave the word meaning, that is physical stuff, has been redefined as ideas. If everything is ideas, the concept of idea becomes meaningless.

ALL of meaning? — Banno

I'm not sure what that means, so I'll just go with yes, all of it. :blush:

@cherryorchard

One might well object that this doctrine itself does not appear to have a contrast, that the Contrast Theory itself would require, presumably, that language should sometimes be used to unify and sometimes to separate. (The Contrast Theory when made explicit leads to a neat paradox; on its own grounds, a language should sometimes be usable without contrast, so that "contrast" may have a contrast.)

I think it's true that meaning is dependent on negation, but I don't see why that would exclude speech that's about unification. For instance, we may first talk about males and females, and then let that distinction fall away and talk about humans. Human still has a negation, which is all the other animals, or all the other living things, or all the creatures that don't wear clothes. I guess the negation is context dependent.

At first glance, it looks like the concept of the universe has no negation, but it does: the void. Could you explain what he means by speaking so severely or loosely that there is no real negation?

I guess there's a sense of truth where it's a matter of apprehending the existence of something or some situation (state of affairs). Sometimes "true" is synonymous with "real."

There are other senses, like Heidegger's phenomenology of truth: that it's about revelation, like something was hidden or obscured, and now it's uncovered.

The analytical approach is to see it as a predicate, even in the case of truth skepticism, where truth is just a facet of speech.