What does it mean for it to be red when not being seen? — Michael

Basically one would infer (along with so many other things) that a person walking into that room would find that apple still sitting there, still red. We'd have to look at context to see how such a phrase is actually being used. Maybe we are explaining object permanence to a bot. Maybe we are explaining to a child that apples don't change their color when they look away for a moment.

It'll be hard to understand me without checking out inferentialism.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf



Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning and conceptual content. The modern Western philosophical tradition has taken representation to be the key concept of semantics. To understand the sort of contentfulness characteristic of sapience, that tradition counsels us to focus on the relation between pictures and what they picture, between signs and what they are signs for.

The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, “propositional” content, in the philosopher’s jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasons—that is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.
...
Pragmatism in general is the claim that pragmatics is methodologically, conceptually, and explanatorily prior to semantics—thatone should understand the meaning or content expressed by linguistic locutions in terms of their use. The later Wittgenstein, who counseled “Don’t look to the meaning, look to the use,” is a pragmatist in this sense (though he didn’t use that term). Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising one’s authority to make oneself responsible.

Understanding someone’s utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they said—as well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.

Which I think kind of goes to show that there's something of a choice going on between positions, and our choices are largely based upon faults we see in the other position (hence accepting our own) — Moliere

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This is why I view it in terms of discussing which way of talking is better. It's hard to make sense of one side as right or wrong. We make the rules. We perform meaning, perform what counts or not as logical.

We are always already within a sufficient but liquid system of such norms that make discussion possible in the first place. As thinkers we push for the adoption of our preferences as more binding than they currently are. We also try to weaken the bindingness of norms we find fault with.

And the indirect access adds a metaphysical entity in between ourselves and reality, which is directly perceived but not real. — Moliere

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This is why a phenomenological approach is nice. We don't act or talk as if we are seeing images rather than objects. Certain figures of speech seem to be tempting us to pretend we are wrapped in a cloak of illusion through which we must somehow peep.

Hi, Tobias. We seem to pretty much agree on Hegel, so it looks like you misread me. For instanceL

There is no higher court than Us as our norms evolve without foundation or instruction from some authority that would have to be tyrannical and alienated given the enlightenment imperative made explicit by Kant. — plaque flag

What is absolute knowledge other than the knowledge that thought moves and produces deeper more refined articulations in which the older axioms are rejected? Absolute knowledge is the knowledge that one should not asbolutize because the moment that happens the thesis becomes subverted, what moves becomes dogma, dogma for its rigidity is antithetical to thought. — Tobias

Elsewhere I've used the phrase liquid logic. I also interpret Heidegger as an optimized Hegel, where time is [ spirit is, we are ] the endless confrontation of [ among other things ] current semantic norms with themselves.

There is no res cogitans and res extensa, they are the same. Hegel's name for it is spirit. — Tobias

I've been arguing elsewhere for a particular kind of direct realism in terms of the encompassing always-already-historically-articulated lifeworld. The world is all that is the case.

Than we learn something about the features of thought, an insight we may take with us, a ladder to climb and to throw away after we climbed it. — Tobias

Ah but we don't throw it away. We are timebinders. We are out past in the mode of no longer being it. We are our past as that which leaps ahead in every forehaving.

Absolute knowledge is the knowledge that one should not asbolutize because the moment that happens the thesis becomes subverted, what moves becomes dogma, dogma for its rigidity is antithetical to thought. — Tobias

I agree, but this (I hope you agree ) sinks into bland edification --- a mere fallibilist platitude -- without the clarification of what it means to be historical. One has to suffer its having been thrown, 'hear' its having been given over to the junkyard of what everyone and no one knows (of gossip or idle talk.) What a generation takes 'obvious' is contingency mistaken for necessity. Proximally and for the most part we are bots.

Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter. Idle talk, which everyone can snatch up, not only divests us of the task of genuine understanding, but develops an indifferent intelligibility for which nothing is closed off any longer.
— Heidegger

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequencegoes on merely along the surface.
--Hegel

He considers the 'movement of the concept' in the 'Logik — Tobias

I'll just end by agreeing that this movement is central. Semantic norms, which are also inferential norms, are absolutely central, and I think Hegel grasps their timebinding liquidity.

So you’re shifting focus away from perception. — Michael

No. I thought you were. We see the red apple and not its image, and it's still there if we close our eyes ---and still red.

If we really wanted to (as a community), we could put fake voices, fake apples, fake cellphones....or, to get it all done at once, a fake private world... in each head.

Just as we invented marriages which we can include in our reasoning, we can make indirect realism true by fiat, just by living in that articulation of the world.

But I think there are other, cleaner ways to solve the problem it wants to solve.

I don't think perception has anything to do with metaphysics. Perception has to do with biology and psychology, and so science is the appropriate tool to use. — Michael

That's fine, but

Also, a philosopher’s account of perception is intimately related to his or her conception of the mind, so this article focuses on issues in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. The fundamental question we shall consider concerns the objects of perception: what is it we attend to when we perceive the world?
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/

I've tried to shift the focus to us talking about the apple and not the image of the apple, from early on, in any case.

The world from the person's perspective ,"see the world through different pairs of eyes" and the external world, "the same world". — RussellA

It's the same world viewed by different people with eyes in different places.

Well, I would say that the scientific evidence proves scientific realism and disproves naive realism. You might think that question begging, but I think I have more reason to believe in the truth of science that in your theory about language. — Michael

I don't mind if I haven't convinced you, but I don't think science answers metaphysical questions, and I don't think my views interfere with science.

I still don't think you understand my view, but that's OK.

Perceptual realism is the common sense view that tables, chairs and cups of coffee exist independently of perceivers. Direct realists also claim that it is with such objects that we directly engage. The objects of perception include such familiar items as paper clips, suns and olive oil tins. It is these things themselves that we see, smell, touch, taste and listen to. There are, however, two versions of direct realism: naïve direct realism and scientific direct realism. They differ in the properties they claim the objects of perception possess when they are not being perceived. Naïve realism claims that such objects continue to have all the properties that we usually perceive them to have, properties such as yellowness, warmth, and mass. Scientific realism, however, claims that some of the properties an object is perceived as having are dependent on the perceiver, and that unperceived objects should not be conceived as retaining them.

I like naive realism in the above. Scientific realism is already too indirect, in my view.

It's not like we can't introduce fake apples, fake voices. They would be as real as promises and whiskey, if we treated them as such in making inferences. Liquid logic. We decide how concepts are properly applied and how to articulate the lifeworld.

So I don't even say you are wrong. I only suggest that direct realism has certain advantages.

"Hearing voices" is something that happens in the head, when the primary auditory cortex is activated. We then judge this to either be a response to external world sounds or to be an hallucination. — Michael

That's plausible enough, but (as Derrida might point out against Sarl) you are putting hearing voices in quotes for a reason ---because the voices aren't real. So you can create new entities (fake voices) or speak of mistaken claims. 'He needs to see a psychiatrist. He says he's talking to his grandfather, but his grandfather is dead.'

I like Democritus:

By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; in reality atoms and void.

But...also by convention...atoms and void.

We articulate the life world, and the scientific image is a system of claims we are confident in that tend to describe relatively stable features of our world. So we believe our tables are made of atoms, and are no less tables for all that. Our wives are made of quarks, but the marriage is as real as quarks.

We believe in atoms because folks appealed to scientific norms which we made possible by atoms. Circularity, interdependence, a single inferential nexus with no foundation except that we cannot doubt as philosophers what makes philosophy possible.

It's not me joining them in their madness. In the case of schizophrenics who hear voices, the primary auditory cortex really does activate. It's just that it activates without being stimulated by signals sent from the de. — Michael

Sure. But there aren't any voices. People can be fooled (by their own nervous systems) into making incorrect judgments about the world. It's not disastrous if you want to talk about fake internal voices. We can and do work them into an inferential network. Seems better the other way, though. We don't have to have two kinds of everything.

There is a difference between seeing and thinking, between perception and cognition. — Michael

I agree. So it's not crazy to adopt a metaphysics of intermediaries (fake voices, fake apples). It's not like saying 2 + 2 = 3. I just think it's less clean than direct realism, especially since we intend and talk about the worldly social object. So it's nice to be consistent.

They do hear voices. They mistakenly believe that the voices originate outside their head. You confuse experience itself with our interpretation of experience. There is a difference between sensations and an inner monologue. — Michael

It's not confusion. I'm well aware that the linguistic norms are less decided here. My position (if memory serves) is close to Sellars' position. Consider that you saying they hear voices is just you joining them in their madness. I see why it's tempting, but I think it's cleaner the other way.

Indirect realism wants every mistake about the world to get something right about a private image or private experience. I think that's messy.

I thought the shadow was a dog, but it was just a shadow. I did not see a dog.

No, that's why it fails to address the philosophical disagreement between direct and indirect realism. I've already shown you the SEP articles. There is simply far more to the argument than the overly simplistic grammatical argument that you are asserting. — Michael

I can elaborate in some directions but strategically leave the wrong kinds of questions unanswered.

I am defending a minimal direct realism in an unusual way. I doubt that all direct realists agree on the details of direct realism or on their defense strategies.

What does it mean to see an apple? What does it mean so see an image of an apple? What does it mean for the schizophrenic to hear voices? — Michael

I've referred to inferentialist semantics several times by now.

A mentally ill person might mistakenly think they heard voices.

That's an impoverished account of what it means for perception to be direct. — Michael

That's its virtue.

Your position doesn't seem to say anything about perception at all. — Michael

My position is minimal. To me philosophy is not psychology. Instead it's more like hermeneutical phenomenology, which is to say a making explicit of what we are already doing anyway --- which is giving and asking for reasons.

I say we see the apple and not an image of the apple. The apple is red even when our eyes are closed. Even blind people can figure out the apple is red. Concepts are linguistic norms.

There's just a mass of fundamental wave-particles, bouncing around, interacting with each another, and when the right stuff interacts in the right way, there's the conscious experience of seeing a red apple. — Michael

I understand why that view is plausible, but I think it doesn't hold up. Kant was shrewd enough to make the hidden Real completely indeterminate. The scientific image, from within a dualist perspective, is still just that: it is image or mind or consciousness. It is map, not territory.

So, all the indirect realist can say is “some object caused an idea of rock” and “some object caused an idea of cat.” Which then reduces to “some object caused an idea of some object.” We are left with some trivial generality that does not say much.

Welcome to metaphysics! — Richard B

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But you're not defending direct realism — Michael

I think I am. I believe I've already explained and argued for this above. It's true however that I'm not a metaphysical realist as described in the quote you provided.

The key point is that one sees the apple and not an image of the apple. Hence 'direct.'

I've been trying to defend direct realism from a position that takes the philosophical situation itself as the only meaningful center of reality.

I take people reasoning about a shared world as the center of the circle, that legit fixed social-Cartesian starting point. To reason is to both appeal to semantic-inferential norms and propose the modification of those norms. A self is held responsible for telling a coherent story. I can disagree with you but not with me.

The world is that which is the case. True claims articulate the world (describe it), but we can believe a claim and turn out to be wrong.

The claim [not the concept ] is the semantic atom. This is because we can only take responsibility for claims, not for concepts. Individual concepts, like protons (subatomic), get their meanings from the roles they play in claims. If we look at the inferential relationships of claims, we find a single inferential nexus, so that all concepts are linked inferentially and have interdependent meanings.

We are constantly negotiating semantic norms (which requires appealing to them), so logic is liquid or malleable. As discursive timebinders, we tend to enrich the lifeworld, increase its complexity. As Goethe put it, we are the ancients, thickened by sedimented cultural memory, living also among ruins and inherited infrastructure. Divorces and promises and handshakes are real, as real as anything else. All concepts 'live' in the same system. No inferentially isolated concept or entity is intelligible (please propose counterexamples that occur to you).

I'll leave you to your monologue.

I've said this many times before: antirealism isn't unrealism. Being a realist about something doesn't just mean that you believe that thing is real. You need to get past the use of the word "real" in the label. — Michael

I've read Braver's A Thing of this World. But I don't like all this ism talk. I like Hegel & Heidegger, so yeah I guess I could be classed as an antirealist. But I embrace direct realism, try to use a minimal amount of jargon.

Well I guess I don't embrace metaphysical realism.

At least that description pretends that promises and divorces aren't real. Nor are scientific norms. Does the past exist ? Was it real ?

But wait a minute ! Not even metaphysical realism is real.

I think I just don't fit into your categories yet. But I'm not coming from nowhere. I have well-known influences.

Then you don't appear to be a realist of any sort, let alone a direct realist. — Michael

There's one real world that we live in and talk about. I find it funny that that's not supposed to be realism.

So what do "is red" mean? What is the physical state of being red? — Michael

Logic is normative. As an inferentialist, I take it that 'red' gets its meaning from the claims involving the concept. The key point is which inferences involving red are allowed.

Does the apple being red depend on us (on the way we perceive and talk about the world) or does it being red have nothing to do with us and everything to do with its innate nature? — Michael

I reject the idea of 'innate' nature. It's like asking me to talk about the apple as it is when no one is talking about it.

And direct realists do say that the properties we perceive objects to have are the properties they have even when not being perceived. — Michael

If I close my eyes, the apple is still red.

"Best" as in "pragmatic" or "best" as in "true". We're concerned with what's true. — Michael

Sure. But concepts are normative. Logic is liquid. The meanings of words change. Our notion of rationality itself changes.

The world is not a chess board, not an array of bits that are simply on or off.

We coarticulate our lifeworld (its linguistic aspect). Does gay marriage exist or not ? Sociality and language are fundamental to the discursive subjects they make possible, and these subjects direct claims toward others and about the world. We coperform and comodify semantic norms and more traditional norms (sexual, property, etc.)

This might help.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#BeiWor
According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance. What is perhaps Heidegger's best statement of this opposition comes later in Being and Time.

What we ‘first’ hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling… It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to ‘hear’ a ‘pure noise’. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside ‘sensations’; nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide a springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a ‘world’. Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood. (Being and Time 34: 207)

For Heidegger, then, we start not with the present-at-hand, moving to the ready-to-hand by adding value-predicates, but with the ready-to-hand, moving to the present-at-hand by stripping away the holistic networks of everyday equipmental meaning.

And this is to be understood in a realist, literally true sense, not in some fictionalist (e.g. pragmatic narrative) or antirealist sense. — Michael

I'd say I'm a pretty hardcore realist in some sense, but not in a sense familiar to you.

I like pragmatic neorationalist at the moment. Or normative monist. But these cute phrases can only do so much.

At least without further specification, it's just way too vague.

and whether or not the properties they are perceived to have are properties they have even when not being perceived. — Michael

This is a silly question !

That's not relevant to the epistemological problem of perception. — Michael

I've already explained that we shouldn't bother with folk psychology. This is a matter of how best to talk about this stuff. We aren't doing math either. And it's not about winning an argument.

And you missed a paragraph from that description of Reid's philosophy: — Michael

I didn't miss it. I just quoted the part I liked for convenience. I don't pretend to embrace all of Reid's stuff. But he was ahead of his time on the idea idea.

The world is counterintuitive. Quantum mechanics has shown that. His reasoning appears question-begging. — Michael

The scientific image is counterintuitive. No doubt. But you still seem to be assuming that that image alone is the truly real and not just a layer or aspect of the larger lifeworld, missing the fact that it's still just math, still just language. It all only makes sense as part of an inferential nexus that involves measuring devices and professors with PHDs and the hamburgers they order for lunch. It's all one world.

You're right, because I don't know what you're trying to say below: — Michael

Our ordinary life in which we shop for groceries, promise to walk to the dog, return books to the library....is real. Some entities exist now (men married to men, the internet) that didn't 100 years ago.

Pursuing ideas for their own sake is pursuing life for its own sake. — Joshs

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