And so the problem still presents itself for direct realists — Marchesk

As a direct realist, maybe you can explain what the problem is supposed to be, because it's not clear to me what Wallows was thinking.

I'm not convinced that there is a "what it's like", for bats or otherwise. — Banno

I'm not convinced that anyone isn't convinced of that. I just refers to properties as such. I don't think it's conceivable to think of anything sans properties.

Einstein might disagree. — Banno

More fool him then.

Just so long as we agree that what is true for A is also true for B — Banno

It often won't be (also reading "true" as "what's the case for")

I think it's worth critically examining just how we supposedly know this, too.

For one, the idea of light moving at straight, clean angles and intersecting at a point, where the interaction with the eye seems to be posited as if the eye were more or less a vacuum for light "rays" to travel in seems a bit ridiculous(ly oversimplified).

We still don't even have a really good model of what light is. It doesn't seem to be quite a particle or quite a wave but something that exhibits properties of one or the other in various situations.

Still, whatever... but how about at least a word limit? — bongo fury

That's what I'd like to see. And it's why I prefer chat. (Actually I'd prefer conversations in person, and then via a telephone or video conferencing or something like that.) Something like a 100 or 150 word limit would be plenty. It would encourage conversations rather than people ramblingly "lecturing" at each other.

It's epistemic if you're an indirect realist. — Wallows

How is it epistemic if you're an indirect realist? The issue is whether there's something inherently private and not directly shareable (in the show and tell sense). That has epistemic upshots, but it's an ontological situation. So how do you see it as being an epistemic issue if one is an indirect realist?

Starting from substance, in that order, ending with the mind. — Wallows

What is starting with substance? The world? Someone's theory? Someone's discussion preference?

Are you making any attempt to simplify things in these situations? Stick with short sentences. Don't type or say more than a handful of sentences at a time. Avoid specialized, obscure or idiosyncratic vocabulary. Focus on one idea at a time.

I don't know how you'd see the "beetle in the box" part as an epistemic issue. It has epistemic upshots, but it's an ontological issue.

Substance>Ontological>Epistemic>Perceptual>Mind? — Wallows

Re this question, "Substance>Ontological>Epistemic>Perceptual>Mind?" I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. For one, what are the right arrows symbolizing there?

Just to figure out why you're thinking they'd be incompatible, you're not thinking that direct realism amounts to eliminative materialism, are you? (I need to figure out why you're thinking they'd be incompatible, especially as you didn't understand my earlier explanation of this.)

I'm lost here. Just where did this start and where are we going? — Wallows

You wrote: "One thing, that doesn't make sense is to say that people are direct realists, yet have beetles in boxes, what do you think @Terrapin Station?"

I responded with "It makes sense because . . ." and then I explained.

You asked a clarification question. I answered.

Then you got sidetracked/confused by an issue that I said my response was NOT about--you figured I was saying something about that . . . right after I made sure to explicitly say that the response was NOT about that. And then things seemed to devolve into increasingly weird, incoherent (at least in context) responses.

So you agree or not that it is an epistemic issue? — Wallows

It would be difficult to tell whether I agree from me asking you a question, wouldn't it? How about just addressing the question?

I asked this: "The fact that it's what I've been typing makes it an epistemic issue? "

Because this: "That makes it an epistemic issue, not an ontological one, derp."

Made no sense as a response to this: "Gah! That's what I've been typing. lol "

The fact that it's what I've been typing makes it an epistemic issue?

Let me know why would you think otherwise? — Wallows

Gah! That's what I've been typing. lol

Then please elaborate about ontological commitments in light of private content or whatnot? — Wallows

I'm confused what you're asking about there. I wasn't saying anything about "ontological commitments."

I was explaining how direct realism isn't incompatible with non-shareable mental content.

For one, you're assuming a naive "objective things are just one way" claim. That's not the case. Objective things are all sorts of ways, from different spatio-temporal locations.

My point is that an observer is redundant is God is one and the same with god being nature. — Wallows

Again, what I'm saying is NOT just about perception. It would be the same if no people/no perceivers/observers existed.

That's why I wrote "NOT" in big capital letters--hoping you'd notice it more that way. So you wouldn't think that I'm saying something about perception, etc.

Are you advocating a form of idealism in ontology? — Wallows

If we have no people/no perceivers, how do we have ideas (for idealism)?

I'm not saying anything about the third man argument. You'd have to explain the Spinoza comment.

Yes, of course. Nothing is identical from two different spatiotemporal locations. This is NOT just about perception. It's about ontology (or "the ontic") in general. It would be the case if no people/no perceivers existed.

It makes sense because properties are unique at each spatio-temporal location.

So for example, we have this:

A...............................@......................................B

The properties of @ are different at @, at A and at B (and at every point in between). If A and B are persons with perception, etc., they can directly perceive what @ is like at their spatio-temporal location, but that's not identical to what @ is like at any other spatio-temporal location.

In addition to that, there's also what it's like to have subjective mental content, including qualia, with respect to those perceptions.

Sure. (Although I think my analogy is better. I'm not much of a Wittgenstein fan.)

If there are parts of language that are invisible, — Banno

... to others, sure.

then we can't talk about them. — Banno

You can talk about them, you just can't directly display them.

It would be like if everyone had their own home, but no one was allowed to go into others' homes, there was no way to take pictures of others' homes, etc. The person who lived there would know exactly what it's like inside, but other people wouldn't. That wouldn't stop anyone from talking about what their homes are like inside, however.

One of the outcomes of the behaviorism of the 20th Century was Quine's inscrutability of reference. By way of some reflection on that viewpoint that I could lay out if I really had to, meaning in human communication ends up collapsing altogether. — frank

Behaviorism? I'm not sure what you think behaviorism has to do with it.

Human communication doesn't end up collapsing. There's just always a potential for ambiguity/it's never completely transparent, because parts of it are simply not observable to others.

Circularity only winds up being a problem when at some point in the circle, you don't have an intuitive grasp of what a term refers to, or an intuitive grasp of its connotation and denotation.

For example, if we say "That's a snarblaff." And you go"What's a snarblaff?" And we say, "It's a grutparp." And you say, "What's a grutparp?" And we say, "It's a snarblaff." (And we can extend that any number of steps.) If you don't have an intuitive grasp (usually via experience, including ostensive references, etc.) of what either a snarblaff or a grutparp is, then it's circular in a way that's a problem.

If we say, "A snarblaff is a toaster," then you're not going to have a problem with that, because you know what a toaster is. But if you didn't know what a toaster was, then that would refer to other words, and so on, and at some point you need to have an intuitive grasp of one of the terms, or it's going to be circular to you in a way that's problematic, even if we've gone 50 steps or whatever before completing the circle.

You realize that all definitions are eventually circular, right? We have a finite set of symbols or terms, and within whatever system at hand, we define those symbols and terms by other symbols and terms in the system. They all sooner or later point to each other, which means that all definitions wind up being circular.

A common formal definition of "possible" is:

◊A=∼□∼A

.

Right. He's giving multiple characteristics is that, explaining it from different angles so to speak. That's why I said earlier that "One needs to have a grasp beforehand re what 'possible,' 'accessible,' and 'true' refer to."

No, that's part of explaining the accessibility relation. That's what I was telling you in my first post.

The whole point is that Kripke explains it in terms of a concept (accessibility) which requires the notion of possibility to be understood, which seems to be circular. — Nicholas Ferreira

He's not explaining possibility, though, he's explaining the accessibility relation.

You're not saying that you do not understand (the general modal logical sense of) "possible," are you? Again, the statements in question are both explicating what the accessibility relation is.

What it neglects is approaching epistemology the way that analytic philosophers approach it.

It's a bit hard to ignore what we know/how we know it when one is an idealist, for example, and there are plenty of idealist continental philosophers.

When he talks about the accessibility relation R (p. 4), he says that a world H2 is accessible to H1 if every proposition A that is true in H2 is possible in H1. But then he defines a proposition A is possible in the world H1 iff there is a world H2, accessible to H1, in which A is true. But isn't this circular? In order to understand what the accessibility relation means, I need to know what it means a proposition be possible, but to understand what means a proposition be possible, I need to know what the accessibility relation means. — Nicholas Ferreira

He's not really defining either "possible" or "accessible." He's rather defining what he's calling the accessibility relation. He's saying that it obtains when there are the relations he's describing between H1 and H2 with respect to true and possible propositions. So it's just one definition and not two (where the two could be circular). One needs to have a grasp beforehand re what "possible," "accessible," and "true" refer to.

:up:

analytic philosophy seems more ahistorical. — Coben

Yeah, that's part of it seeing science and logic/mathematics as methodological ideals. Continental philosophy often seems like its ultimate goal is to be about "the human condition" in much the same way that (especially realist) fiction often has an aim of "illustrating the human condition." So that's more likely to be historico-cultural.

Analytic philosophy is more concerned with "what is this stuff/how exactly does it work," where that often has very little if anything to do with humans or "the human condition." Continental philosophers want to point out the necessity of epistemology in talking about "what is this stuff/how exactly does it work" but analytic philosophers see the constant focus on that as being as OCDishly annoying as if we were to constantly tell physicists or chemists that they need to be talking about epistemology all the time and not just talking about forces and atoms and molecules and bonds and so on. It's not that the epistemological aspects are being denied or ignored. It's rather that analytic philosophers, like most scientists, most mathematicians, etc. think that we don't have to constantly just talk about epistemology.

Natural selection implies a sort of dog-eat-dog competition. — Teaisnice

What is the basis for this claim? Naturalists would say that all traits of all living things emerged under or via the rubric of evolution/natural selection. But not all traits exhibit "dog-eat-dog competition." So obviously naturalists do not say that evolution/natural selection implies dog-eat-dog competition.

We also can't forget that a big part of the distinction is simply a stylistic one with regard to writing:

* The structure of individual sentences, including the length of sentences and the relative simplicity versus complexity of them, including willingness to nest countless prepositional phrases, to write run-on sentences, etc.

* Word choices, including just how eager the author is to invent neologisms or to use words in very novel ways that might change connotations in many different contexts

* The flow of one sentence to another--that is, the logical and semantic scope and flow of sentences. Is the semantic scope broad or narrow? Is the logical flow tightly controlled versus something more free-flowing or even stream-of-consciousness?

* The willingness to incorporate relatively obscure or esoteric references and allusions in conjunction with the willingness to explain them or not

Etc.

TS being purposely obtuse — Mark Dennis

There's nothing obtuse about simply pointing out that "atheism" doesn't refer to views about evidence, evolution, or sundry other things.

How wonderfully well (and typically) argued... You're free to disagree, but if you cannot point out an inconsistency in it without dragging in some strawman assumption of your own, then it is not crap at all. — noAxioms

The problem isn't inconsistencies. It's that it's just arbitrary crap we're making up. We could make up anything.

There are a bunch of other things we could be doing. For one, imagine if folks were interested in others persons' views simply because they find other people and their differences interesting.

If you've got nuthin' to say about nuthin' it's hard to keep a message board going.

Yeah, I should have left the second quotation marks off. Thanks.

Re "Ain't that the root of all our problems"--I think I'm more inclined to say that seeing it as a problem, or wanting it to be otherwise, is more at the root of many problems.

But I don't what you to write it, I want you to point to it. — Banno

I can easily point to run(ning), but you need to come visit me to see it, obviously. So when are you going to be around?

That sort of pointing is sort of metaphorical. — Banno

Metaphorical?? At any rate, if it's "metaphorical" how would any pointing not be "metaphorical"?

Well, if you cannot see the circularity in "Run points to running"... let that be an end to the discussion. — Banno

Again, phrased this way, how would any reference not be circular? What I'm addressing is the odd claim that words don't have references if they're not nouns. But if you have a problem with "run" pointing to "run(ning)," then you'd have an equal problem with "Joe" pointing to "Joe" or "cat" pointing to "cat" or whatever . . . which would have nothing to do with the odd idea that only nouns pertain to reference.

All of the instances of "run"? You got a lot of fingers. — Banno

You can't point to all of the instances of anything by that token, including Joe. So again, what would this have to do with the curious idea that reference only comes into play when we're talking about nouns?

What you did was request definitions as if that would help our discussion. — Banno

What I did was write, "Verbs do not refer to anything in your view?" a la "What sort of crackpot nonsense is this?"

I personally have never seen or read anything that contested the suicide rate data — Pantagruel

Suppose that in the 1700s or 1800s, say, suicides tended to be reported as some other cause of death (to the extent that any specific cause was noted). What do you think we could find as evidence of that?