Well, since the unobserved tree is "unknowable" and all that, and given that we can still talk about it when our backs are turned to it, why not just keep talking of the "tree"?

Not for pragmatic reasons, but because there is no reason to talk otherwise.

(I'm not reaching for pragmatism here, so much as for parsimony). — Banno

Yes. But we can stop and gape at the fact that the unobserved tree is unknowable. We'll all agree to never speak of it again after that.

That 'something that has caused me to perceive a "tree'?

It's a tree.

That's what a tree is. — Banno

Good point. It's just that we wanted to know what it looks like when... you know.. nobody's looking at it. We'll have to let it be that we don't have any way to describe that.

The beginning of time had to be an entropy minimum, since entropy can only increase — SophistiCat

That's not true. Watch the video.

Americans are from outer space. I don't think you're taking that into consideration. We evolved in a different galaxy, so you have no frame of reference for understanding us.

Though by that measure, we might have to judge NOS4A2 as being sarcastic too as I honestly don't believe he'd disagree with anything I've said. — Baden

It's hard to say. Over time, I've come to realize that he holds his views sincerely. I have to respect that.

If the universe did not expand after the Big Bang, it would have stayed as it was shortly after the Big Bang: a hot, dense, uniform plasma — SophistiCat

Dr O'Dowd explained that the Big Bang was an entropy minimum that may have been an aspect of an entropy fluctuation. It may be that entropy was higher both "before" and "after" the Big Bang just because of the ongoing fluctuation. It would appear to us that time was going backward prior to the Big Bang.

I would settle under protest for mere submachine guns though grenades and bazookas never killed anyone on their own and are no more dangerous than cars in that respect. As long as the government continues to give in to such irrational arguments we will continue to be punished for the crimes of others and our utopia must wait. — Baden

This is why I have a nuclear submarine off the coast of Europe: to deal with the rampant sarcasm over there.

I think murderers and criminals will think twice about harming others if they know everyone is packing. — NOS4A2

Or they might think: "I'll kill you before you can kill me."

What about the tree that you climb? Is that a representation? — unenlightened

Not in the context of the standard narrative. I guess people will divide off according to what they think of the stories we tell: are they metaphors as Nietzsche suggested? Or would you agree with Sartre that you are the situation? Or perhaps a non-philosophical, folkways rendition is better?

I don't think any of these questions are directly related to how we perceive the world and ourselves. Maybe indirectly?

Yeah, I had a look, but as one might expect from such a vid, it has just a short soundbite concerning the topic under discussion here. — SophistiCat

Ok. It explained what entropy has to do with what happened before the Big Bang. That part was cool.

Where else are you going to turn to get principles for understanding the reasons for these flaws? — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you tell me the reasons for the flaws?

They're just different ways of talking that make no real difference to the underlying philosophical consideration. — Michael

:up:

Most people are 98% dead.... — Tom Storm

:razz:

Hence fear of being dead is irrational. — Banno

Maybe. Most people are about 98% irrational.

So, an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? Does that resonate? — Tom Storm

Life is an arc. If you're on the climbing side of it, I think you're supposed to have an aversion to death, because you're headed in the other direction: into life, discovering who you are, making plans, exploding forth your potential on the poor unsuspecting.

If your roller coaster car as past the zero slope zone and you're headed downward, I don't know if aversion is still part of it. Maybe if a person has unfinished business? If they never learned to live? So they're still looking for a chance at authenticity (as if they would take it if you handed it to them.)

I see a lot of people die. Even old people are sometimes afraid if their minds are still there. I figure some people have so much love for life that they cling to it till the very end. That's kind of cool.

It's that what we see causes us to realize that what we're seeing is a construction.

There's no escape hatch on that situation, try as we might to find one.

Oh. I see what you're saying.

I think this whole debate is better thought of in terms of "mediated" vs. "unmediated" perception. We run the risk of saying funny things like I indirectly see a tree outside my window. — Manuel

I don't think we need to saddle the average person with having to phrase everything the way a cognitive scientist or physicist would. I don't need for you to tell me that a reflex arc actually kicked the chair. It's ok if you tell me you did it.

Once we start doing a little more analysis on how stuff actually happens, we should be past the point of causing confusion to anyone about who did what. Right?

So there's quite a bit more to cognitive function than just a piece of glass. We don't know all the details, but we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier.

Yes, which has nothing to do with perception. — Michael

Right. The point I was making earlier was that since indirect realism is the view of science, an advocate of direct realism needs to address in some way how direct realism is supposed to work.

The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. — Michael

I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. With a deflationary account of truth, this acknowledgement is just a social convention. It says nothing about whether you actually talked to your parents or not, which the SDR advocate thinks is a meaningless question?

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. It’s either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both — Michael

Correct.

When you understand that indirect realism undermines itself, as proposed in the op, and the problems of direct realism persist, the door to idealism will open within you. I'll be waiting for you at that door, which opens inward rather than outward. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do see that they're both flawed. Do you mean that this leads to idealism?

Did you get a chance to look at the video?

That's a fair assessment, yes.

How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers? — Michael

The sound you hear on a phone is the output of a digital-to-audio converter, so you're definitely hearing a representation. It's indirect.

In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism. This painting by Magritte is about this very issue.

Another oddity with indirect realism is that it implies that communication is always between me and someone I've constructed.

:up:

I think the answer is that the question is language on holiday. We can't stand outside ourselves in order to answer it.

Naïve question: in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER? What is the point of it? I can grasp its introductory use as a kind of thought experiment, but what else is there to this idea? — Tom Storm

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati.

How I deal with it…..the senses are directly affected by real things. I need nothing else from the notion of direct realism. — Mww

That's not direct realism tho.

frank

Yikes!! Can’t have that. Point it out for me? — Mww

Direct realism doesn't makes sense, but it's necessary. How do you deal with that?

Doesn’t make any sense with respect to the central nervous + peripherals system from a physical point of view, nor with respect to some theoretical cognitive system from a metaphysical point of view.

Direct realism is a necessary condition for the proper functionality of sensory apparatus as such, nonetheless, and should be taken as granted from either point of view. — Mww

So you have a contradiction on your hands. What do you do about that?

Your conclusion doesn’t follow. Another possibility which is consistent with the premises is this: we see things in certain human ways, but it’s the things we are seeing, not representations thereof. That’s direct perception. — Jamal

What would be the justification for that view?

Ah, so here we go. — L'éléphant

I'm not going to read the rest of your post. Thanks.

But you already know how it works, I see with my eyes and touch with my skin and hear with my ears. The onus is on the indirect realist to explain what this interface could possibly be that is neither me nor the world. — unenlightened

I think the usual answer is nerves.

what do you say? — unenlightened

Ha! As if anyone cares what I think. :grin:

:up: :up: :up:

Interesting!

You probably know this already, but I learned some interesting stuff about entropy from this video:

The contact with the rest of the world is direct. So how can one perceive indirectly a world that he is in direct contact with? — NOS4A2

The ocean contacts the shore, but it's not perceiving the shore. We don't fully understand how perception works, but it's apparent that a multitude of afferent nerves present electrical stimulus to the central nervous system, which is doing something with those impulses that coincides with awareness.

Lets be clear that indirect realism is the dominant view among scientists, because as @Mww noted, direct realism doesn't make any sense on its face. If we directly perceive objects without any nervous interface, how exactly do with do that? Your eyes don't see things. Your ears don't hear things, and your fingers don't feel things. Your central nervous system sees, hears and feels. There clearly is an interface between the CNS and the world. Thus, indirectness appears to be the way it works.

The onus is on direct realists to explain, if only broadly and superficially, how direct realism is supposed to work. Thoughts?

I think you're mistaken, frank. "Indirect realism" is an epistemological view (i.e. representationalism) — 180 Proof

Ok. That's fine. Although it has an ontological dimension wrt the nature of what you take to be the world. Ontology and epistemology are usually joined at the hip I think.