So that's where Plato's city-state would come in, educating its citizens on what the good is. — dani

Plato's city-state in the Republic is a city made in speech. It has never existed in practice and was never intended to. It is created in order to see justice in the soul writ large. The underlying premise being that a just soul is like a just city. We might wonder why he did not simply point to an existing city as an exemplar. The somewhat troubling answer is that no city is truly just.

If then there is a just soul it is not the result of the city's education.

The cave is "an image of our nature in its education and want of education". (Republic 514a) Education in the cave is at best a likeness or image of the truth. The truth can only be found when one is able to escape the cave, that is, when one is able to escape one's education in the city. The philosophers, who have escaped the cave, are compelled to return in order to rule.

An important question arises. Do they transform the cave or is it still illuminated by the light of the fire? As far as I can see, the cave/city remains in the realm of opinion.

However, the good itself can never be fully grasped because it is not only a "form," in the realm of being, but something beyond forms that actually informs all forms themselves, too. — dani

All of this is, in my opinion, Plato's philosophical poetry, intended to replace the teachings of the traditional poets. In the Republic it is not simply that poetry is banned along with the traditional poets, they are replaced by Plato's own images of the just, beautiful, and good.

Something of the same applies to the Symposium: after a profound debate on the nature of eros-love, the whole thing ends in confusion, a great deal of wine-drinking and some participants forgetting altogether what was discussed — mcdoodle

Good point, but to the end and having drank copiously, Socrates appears to remain sober. The dialogue ends:

Then Socrates, having lulled them to sleep, got up and went out, and Aristodemus followed him as usual. When he got to the Lyceum he washed himself, spent the day just like any other, and having done so, he went home in the evening to rest.

... eros as an expression of a craving to beget - to become pregnant with knowledge of the good and the beautiful. Personally I really like the image of pregnancy-with-the-good — mcdoodle

In the Theaetetus Socrates calls himself a midwife to men but who is himself unable to give birth. (150 b-c)

Still, the connection between the three ideals/forms mentioned - and a person's possible attraction, hence eros, toward this nexus - is where my main interests personally are. — javra

The Forms are said to each be one and separate, but Plato often tread the just, the beautiful, and the good together.

The Greek term kalos is translated as beautiful, or noble, and sometimes good. We should not conclude, however, that Plato was unaware of the problematic aspect of beauty as attraction. As with the desire for the good, attraction plays a role that should not be overlooked or disregarded.

In Melville's Moby Dick Ishmael asks:

How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?

What do you think is inside us that we need to be aware of? — Athena

As I see it, it is more of a question of the particular person. It is connected to the Socratic claim about the examined life. What I need to be aware of may not be what you need to be aware of.

I feel pretty strongly that most of what has benefitted me has come from the outside, not the inside. — Athena

Suppose two people grew up in the controlled environment where everything that happens to one happens to the other. In one sense their experience would be the same, but because they are different people I think their experience would be different in significant ways. Experience is not simply what happens to us, but how we react and respond.

Not all cultures emphasize the individual. — Athena

True. The most important consequence of modern liberalism, for better and for worse, might be to reorient us around the individual. Some take this so far that they reject the notion of a common good. For them the rights of the individual stands at the center.

This is a moment to surprise. I thought I knew what I thought but I am not at all sure I do know what I think. — Athena

From a young age I rejected the idea that we should start writing with an outline. For me writing is a way of thinking.

It seems the idea of eros and the erotic are quite different in these dialogues to the carnal desire it is generally associated with in modern culture. — Wayfarer

just realized, beauty, the aesthetic, too would here be classified as a form of eros and hence erotic in this sense. — javra

In the Phaedrus Socrates speaks,

... in praise of your master and mine, Phaedrus, Love, the guardian of beautiful boys.

(265c)

We might expect him to say the opposite, beautiful boys are in need of a guardian against eros. How to sort this all out is the problem that Socrates immediately goes on to address. A major theme of the dialogue is speech, more specifically, beautiful speech. As the dialogue ends we see that whatever Socrates' attraction to Phaedrus might be, he speaks but does not act.

It is not simply a matter of separating speech and action but of their connection. Indeed, looking at the text that surrounds this we find what Socrates calls a "veritable game", one of joining and separating, bringing together and holding apart. So too, this is what love does.

Twice Socrates connects the just and beautiful and good (276b, 278a) At the end of the dialogue he prays:

O beloved Pan and any other gods who are here, grant that I may become beautiful within, and that all my outer possessions be in friendly concord with the inner.

(279b)

"Beloved Pan" is associated with eros in its carnal form. We might wonder whether Aphrodite is also present. She is the mother of the fourth kind of madness, love or eros. (242d, 265b) Aphrodite is known for her beauty. Pan is not. Socrates is known for his outward ugliness, and by his friends for his inner beauty.

Eros, or divine madness, is a beneficial gift from the god(s); it goes on from there. — tim wood

What are we to make of eros as "divine madness"? Rather than attempt to answer this question, I will make a few observations.

If philosophy is the erotic pursuit of wisdom, as Socrates claims in the Symposium, then it would seem there is a conflict between the common description of philosophy as reasoned inquiry and philosophy as divine madness.

Socrates claims:

... enormous advantages now come to us through madness once it is given as a divine gift.

(Phaedrus 244a)

He goes on to argue that it can be preferable to sound mindedness. We may find all of this inspiring, but can we trust it? Is he mad?

If the pursuit of wisdom is divine madness how should we proceed?

Toward the end of the dialogue Socrates says:

But the person who realises that in a written discourse on any topic there must be a great deal that is playful; that not one composition in verse or in prose that deserves to be taken seriously has yet been written ...

(277e)

Are Plato's dialogues the first that deserve to be taken seriously? What does it mean to take a written work seriously? The playfulness of Plato's works has often been noted. Can a work be both playful and serious?

Ending on a serious note: there are some who engage in philosophy who do not ascend to divine madness but fall to human madness.

I don't know if I understand the form that life has taken is something unforeseen ... — Athena

Perhaps for some their life unfolds in predictable ways, either by their own choice or that of others, but when you say that you were totally surprised by a turn your life had taken, this is something unforeseen. So too, what someone will experience, having a coach or teacher influence us, and how they will influence us was unforeseen.

Number one, in our younger years, we don't know enough about life to know if we are fish or fowl. — Athena

I do not think we are clay to be molded by experience to become whatever we will become. Influence flows in both directions. What we experience plays a role in shaping us, but we are born with particular propensities that play a role in how we experience things, which in turn plays a role in how these propensities develop.

Who we are shapes who we become, and who we become determines who we are. This is the process of becoming. At best we become true to ourselves at our best. Traditionally western philosophy gives priority to being. Nietzsche rejects the idea of fixed natures in favor becoming, of possibilities. of potential.

Pray tell, what is to be learned by looking inward? — Athena

How can we tell what is to be learned by looking inward unless we look inward?

So Eros is innate to the soul, but Eros for the good is not innate to the soul because Eros is blind. — dani

Eros for the good is innate. We all desire what is good. The problem is, we do not always know what that is.

... he wanted to school everybody on what he saw was the right path for the betterment of the soul? — dani

This is more complicated and controversial. Despite appearances, Plato does not think we can have knowledge of the good. I have laid out the argument here:
Knowledge of the Good

The question then is, how to pursue the good in the absence of knowledge of the good? In the Republic the philosophers are represented not as those who desires and pursues wisdom but as those who is wise. Those who knows the good and for this reason rule. And this for the good of the citizens.

if this Eros is not innate to the soul (having to be instilled in society), where does it start? — dani

Eros is innate to the soul. We all know eros to the extent that we desire what we do not have. But, as the saying goes, love is blind. Philosophy is, for Socrates, erotic. The desire for wisdom. We all want for ourselves what is good, but we lack the wisdom to discern what is good. The Republic is an extended argument that attempts to persuade his listeners that justice is good for the soul and the city, that is, good for each of us and all of us.

In the Apology Socrates says that he does not know anything noble and good. (Apology 21d). And yet in the Symposium, a dialogue on eros, he claims:

I know nothing other than matters of eros ...

(177d)

Shall we begin with why a mother must hate herself and how this is going to help her? — Athena

A mother hating herself and a mother hating something about herself are not the same. The latter is a practice of love, the former need not be. If it is, it is misdirected. I am not a mother, but I was "Mr. Mom" back when this was either a joke or something seen as suspicious or wrong. To borrow a phrase from Thoreau, as the artist of my own life, the form it has taken is not something foreseen or foreknown.

How do the young go about knowing who they are before they have the life experience that is essential to knowing? — Athena

The potential therein contains the beauty and comedy of youth, but also the potential for tragedy. Whether it be one or the other is a great but often overlooked theme of philosophy.

Do you think war makes a man a better husband and father? — Athena

This, at least in part, depends on what one is battling against, but in the most common usage of the term, for most I do not think it does and often just the opposite. "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien is a book about war that might speak to you. It is a short book about war and what those who go to war carry to and from it, written by someone who does not like war.

Warning, if a person is not willing to fight for his/her life make sure there is a "Do Not Resuscitate" request registered because if a person does not have that, everything will be done to keep the person alive and living may mean being bed ridden and completely incapable of caring for oneself and living out the rest of life without the ability to communicate. — Athena

A living will is an important document. It is one thing to fight for life, but in some circumstances one should not have to fight to die.

the question remains why they "doubt" in the first place, — Ciceronianus

Good question. There is good reason to doubt that Descartes doubted all he claimed to have doubted. After all, he took his motto from Ovid:

He who lived well hid himself well. (Bene qui latuit bene vixit)

So why does he doubt? Quite simply to avoid the fate of Galileo at the hands of the Church. Doubt is for Descartes a rhetorical device. In the terms of this thread it was an affectation.

Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built on them collapses of its own accord ...

He hides behind but argues contrary to his pious pretenses. The building he intends to undermine is that of the Church. But he could not hope to live and have his work published if he openly spoke in opposition to the Church. And so, he calls everything into question without overtly calling the authority of the Church and its teaching into question.

In the first Meditation he says:

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses
or through the senses.

He begins the discourse on optics by affirming this but to other ends:

All the conduct of our lives depends on our senses, among which the sense of sight being the most universal and most noble, there is no doubt that the inventions which serve to augment its power are the most useful that could be made.

The science of optics is a study and theory of the nature of light. Its explanations are in terms of a physics of motion and physiology. Further, what is at issue is not the fact that the senses can deceive us but that they can be augmented and improved upon.

In a letter to Mersenne, Descartes reveals:

...there are many other things in them; and I tell you, between ourselves, that these six Meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But that must not be spread abroad, if you please; for those who follow Aristotle will find it more difficult to approve them. I hope that [my readers] will accustom themselves insensibly to my principles, and will come to recognize their truth, before perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.
– René Descartes to Mersenne, January 28, 1641, Œuvres de Descartes,
3:297–98, quoted and translated by Hiram Caton in The Origin of
Subjectivity, 17

Quoted here

Still cautious, but Aristotle was for the Church the authority on secular things. Often, when citing his authority, it was not even necessary to call him by name, only "the philosopher"

What do you like about that talk of enemies and war? — Athena

In general I do not like talk of enemies and war, but like it or not talk of enemies and war are at the root of our culture and history.

Nietzsche uses a language and ideology intended for other purposes and turns it against itself. The struggle is turned inward. It becomes a matter of self-knowledge.

Nietzsche takes an exhortation from the Greek poet Pindar:

Become who you are.

To know and to be who you are is a struggle. It takes honesty. We too easily lie to ourselves about ourselves. And honesty takes courage. The warrior's virtue.

To become who you are requires becoming an enemy to that which you come to hate about yourself. Nietzsche uses the analogy of the art of the sculpturer who, unlike the painter who adds to a blank canvas, removes all that is extraneous, superfluous, and false.

Glad to help. If you have questions about Wittgenstein rather than Pears I will try to help.

Without having Pears' book in front of me, there is too little here for me to comment.

Neitzche brings out the warrior in me. — Athena

A few quick comments. I see in Nietzsche the ancient and transcultural theme of the politics of the soul. In Zarathustra he says:

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself ...

(I. 17: The Way of the Creator)

In section 10: "War and Warriors", Zarathustra says:

BY OUR best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!

My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy.

Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts!

Maybe I just read Nietzsche all wrong but as a woman who was left alone in a harsh environment with children to keep alive, I question some male values that underestimate the value of putting others first. — Athena

With regard to questioning the values that others might impose on you, I think you read Nietzsche correctly.

With regard to others: I assume that it is not all others but those who are yours, of you, those who are your children.

As you say:

I can be as self-centered and oblivious of the needs of others as Nietzsche... — Athena

but it would be wrong the conclude that Nietzsche was oblivious to the needs of others.

Zarathustra answered: "I love mankind."

(Prologue, 2)

It is easy to get lost if we don't keep in mind what is at issue:

3.323
In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word has different modes of signification—and so belongs to different symbols—or that two words that have different
modes of signification are employed in propositions in what is superficially the same way.
...
(In the proposition, ‘Green is green’—where the first word is the proper name of a person
and the last an adjective—these words do not merely have different meanings: they are different symbols.)

3.324
In this way the most fundamental confusions are easily produced (the whole of philosophy is full of them).

3.325
In order to avoid such errors we must make use of a sign-language that excludes them by
not using the same sign for different symbols and by not using in a superficially similar way
signs that have different modes of signification:
that is to say, a sign-language that is governed by logical grammar—by logical syntax.

Put differently, what is important for Wittgenstein in the Tractatus is not what we say, but how we say it.

This sheds light on the following:

4.4611
Tautologies and contradictions are not, however, nonsensical. They are part of the symbolism, much as ‘0’ is part of the symbolism of arithmetic.

4.462
Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality. They do not represent any possible situations. For the former admit all possible situations, and latter none.

In a tautology the conditions of agreement with the world—the representational relations—cancel one another, so that it does not stand in any representational relation to reality.

Tautologies lack sense. They do not represent any one possible situation because they admit all possible situations.

This may leave us wondering why as part of the the symbolism they are not nonsense. Circling back:

3.3421

A particular mode of signifying may be unimportant but it is always important that it is a possible mode of signifying. And that is generally so in philosophy: again and again the individual case turns out to be unimportant, but the possibility of each individual case discloses something about the essence of the world.

And what is this essence? The logical structure that underlies both the world and language. The logical grammar or syntax he advocates is not then simply a matter of saying things in a way so as to avoid error, it is the logic of the world that makes possible saying anything about the world at all.

But why does David Pears states that those tautologies are empty? — javi2541997

Because they do not tell us what is the case. They do not tell us anything about the world. It has no factual content.

The problem raised by the argument is that he treats every step in it, including its conclusions, as absolutely necessary, without treating them as empty tautologies. — javi2541997

It has been a long time since I read Pears. I don't know specifically what argument he is referring to, but in general I think he is getting at the following. From the Tractatus:

2.06
The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality.

2.061
States of affairs are independent of one another.

2.062
From the existence or non-existence of one state of affairs it is impossible to infer the existence or non-existence of another.

In other words, propositions about the world are contingent. They are not necessarily true or false. The problem is that if a proposition is not empty, that is, if it tells us something about the world, how can it be absolutely necessary?

Added:

Perhaps he is referring to the formal or logical structure that underlies the world that makes it possible to say anything about it. The one to one correspondence between simple elementary names and simple elementary objects.

From the Tractatus:

4.46
Among the possible groups of truth conditions there are two extreme cases.

In one of these cases the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the elementary
propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological.

In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions
are contradictory.

In the first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction.

4.461
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is
true on no condition.

Tautologies and contradictions lack sense.
(Like a point from which two arrows go out in opposite directions to one another.)
(For example, I know nothing about the weather when I know that it is either raining
or not raining.)

4.462
Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality. They do not represent any possible situations. For the former admit all possible situations, and latter none.
In a tautology the conditions of agreement with the world—the representational relations—cancel one another, so that it does not stand in any representational relation to reality.

But Plato is claiming that we never see reality, and that's the central issue in sense-datum theory. — Ludwig V

What Plato is claiming is that we do not have knowledge of those things that are of central concern to the Republic, that is, of the just, the beautiful, and the good. We have opinions about such things not knowledge.

He acknowledges that the craftsmen, physicians, ship captains, and others have knowledge. They see the "reality" of those things they have knowledge of.

The cave has been discussed in other threads and, of course, a new thread can be started.

Plato seems to me to be an early progenitor of the mistakes we are talking about, because he believes that ordinary perceptions are all false and develops something that is close to sense-datum theory in the "cave" metaphor. — Ludwig V

It is not at all close to a sense-datum theory.

This is what Socrates says, the image of the cave is:

... an image of our nature in its education and want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind.

(Republic 514a)

The images whose shadows we see are not sense-data, they are:

... statues of men and other animals wrought from stone, wood, and every kind of material ...

(514c)

Whether ordinary language misleads us is precisely the question. Though there's no doubt that language can mislead - as it is clearly misleading Plato when he concludes that all we see is shadows. — Ludwig V

The irony here is that those who rely on what you go on to call the "traditional view" are chasing shadows. The shadows are the opinions that influence how and what we see, including what we see when we read Plato through the lens of the opinions of this tradition.

Surely Plato does differentiate between the Forms and the ordinary world? — Ludwig V

The distinction is between what is and what things seem to be for us. The ordinary world is the world of our opinions. Ontology determined by epistemology, or, as the problem has been articulated at least since Parmenides, the problem of thinking and being. Although the term 'ontology' is a modern neologism, its etymology points not to what is, but to what we say and think about what is. The Forms are hypothetical:

So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.

(Phaedo 99d-100a)

See also the discussion of dialectic in the Republic:

Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic, making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses—that is, steppingstones and springboards—in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole.

(Republic 511b)

We are, however, never free from hypotheses. We remain in the realm of opinion. We never attain knowledge of the beginning (arche) of the whole. It is not that Plato is misled by language. Quite the opposite. He recognizes the limits of what can be said. The Forms are philosophical poiesis, images of the truth and knowledge that those who desire wisdom strive for.

The first thought that occurred to me was: Why would we need a reason to believe the world exists? Reason suffers when such unreasonable demands are put on it. Such doubt only arises when reason is abstracted and treated as if it were independent from our being in the world.

I have come to see the respective systems of thought as preannouncing the message of the gospel in terms of ethical questions about life. — Dermot Griffin

It is, rather, post hoc. Just another example of how just about anything can be put through the meat grinder of Christian apologetics and come out looking like something it is not. It is unapologetically chauvinistic.

Therefore, we should use these great Asian traditions ... so long as we understand them in terms of grace. — Dermot Griffin

So long as you understand them in terms of grace you do not understand them.

We cannot, from the biblical point of view, save ourselves from ourselves by ourselves. — Dermot Griffin

If you include the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") this is simply not true. It is the opinion of Paul. Part of his campaign, in opposition to Jesus' disciples, to bring the Gentiles to his Christ.

Analytic philosophy is a broad church... — Banno

Camouflaged to look like a barn (?).

In defense of @Corvus, he says he has on order Catalina González Quintero's

"Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics".

I do not know this work or what he will get from it. Perhaps after reading it he will modify his claims or give us reason to rethink some of our own. In any case, even if we disagree with what he will say or Catalina González Quintero says, it demonstrates an attempt to become better informed about such things.

Since appeals to Hume and Kant and academic skepticism will take us too far from the topic of this thread I won't pursue it here, but I would be interested to read what you have to say if you start a thread on Hume and Kant and their connection to Academic Skepticism, and more specifically your claim that:

... when you are not perceiving it, there is no more the ground, warrant or reason to believe it. — Corvus

But to do so, it would seem, would be to involve you in a performative contradiction when you go on to council us unperceived beings:

I would say stopping believing in something when there is no ground, warrant and reason to believe it would be definitely more rational ... — Corvus

It strikes me as being unreasonably reasonable.

I mean we have no ground, warrant or reason to believe in the world, when we are not perceiving it. — Corvus

And yet both you are Hume write for an unperceived public.

How long must the lights stay out before this form of skepticism takes over? Do you doubt the existence of the world each time you blink?

...learning about philosophy — dani

I make a distinction between learning about philosophy and doing philosophy. The former is a view from outside, being given someone's views on what philosophers have thought and said. The latter develops your own thinking through engagement with the writings of philosophers, working to understand them rather than relying on how someone else understands them. In my opinion, the major philosophers do not simply tell us what they think but teach us how to think, that is, a way of thinking.

Some of Plato's shorter dialogues is a good place to start. Socrates is responsive to what his interlocutors say. He calls himself a "midwife", helping others to birth their ideas, beliefs, and opinions. By imagining what we would say in response to him Plato helps us to develop and give birth to our own ideas. And in the process allow us to alter or abandon those that we no longer wish to call our own.

This last point can be both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of philosophy.

Enjoy the journey.

The duped see a barn. — Banno

Then we are in agreement.

We are also in agreement that they failed to correctly identify the building.

But we don't see a barn, we see a church that looks like a barn. — Banno

If by "we" you mean those who are not duped, then yes. But it may be that we would be among the duped, in which case we would see a barn.

That depends on whether one is aware that it has been camouflaged, of course. — Banno

Right. What would be the point of camouflaging it if not to fool those who do not know that it is a church?

I'm not seeing(!) a point here, either in favour or against the arguments we are considering. — Banno

The point is about what it is that we see. What is the basis for the distinction between what something looks like and what we see? It seems as though Austin is basing the distinction on a questionable assumption about objectivity, as if we don't see a barn because it is a church.

And if pressed, I'd have to agree with Austin, that what we see is a church, albeit one that looks like a barn. — Banno

If "a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn" why would you think that what you see is not a barn but a church? How would you respond when you saw it? Would you approach it with the intention of praying?

A brief comment on the Butterfly Dream. The last two lines are important:

Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the transformation of things

.

Distinctions are made between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly and being awake and dreaming, but beyond the distinctions is the transformation of things. Throughout the Zhuangzi one thing becomes another. Often it is not simply a distinction between things, but from one thing to its opposite. Understanding comes through this transformation from the limited perspective of one thing to that of another. The story is told in Chapter Two: On Equalizing Things.

all I see is patches and blobs from which I infer(?) the existence of a cup. — frank

I think the indirect realist gets it backwards. She sees the cup and based on a theory of perception infers that she sees patches and blobs.

Put her in a room that contains only patches and blobs my guess is she would see patches and blobs. But if some of those patches and blobs were arranged in a certain way, in dim light, and at enough of a distance she might see a cup or pen or chair. That is to say, there is, I think, a constructive element of seeing.

That admission seems to be how he denies any sort of comprehensive indirect realism. — frank

Terms such as 'realism' in all its variety of flavors confuse me. I try to avoid them. The fault may be entirely my own, but I have not been able to find any consistent usage that makes me confident that those who talk about such things have the same concerns and are arguing for or against the same things.

I am also trying to understand that, because unless I do understand that, I don't understand what "indirect" means. — Ludwig V

To say eyes are one of the mediums of visual perception is to point out that perceptions are indirect. — Corvus

The distinction between direct and indirect is stated on page 2:

The general doctrine, generally stated, goes like this: we never see or otherwise perceive (or 'sense'), or anyhow we never directly perceive or sense, material objects (or material things), but only sense-data (or our own ideas, impressions, sensa, sense-perceptions, percepts, &c.).

Well, sometimes what we see is what there is... — Banno

In the case of the camouflaged church what we see is not, as Austin claims, "a church that now looks like a barn". (30) What we see is a barn. If we didn't what would be the point of camouflaging it?

He continues:

We do not see an immaterial barn, an immaterial church, or an immaterial anything else.

While this is true, and is the reason why he cites this example, the distinction between what we see and what it looks like cannot be made unless we can see that what it is, a camouflaged church, is something other than what it looks like. If the camouflage is removed we might say that what we see is a church that now looks like a church, but if the camouflage was not there in the first place we would not say that what we see is a church that now looks like a church.

How do you think this impacts on Austin or Ayer's arguments? — Banno

From an earlier post:

In the case of a table, and perhaps more clearly in the case of a pen or cigarette, what we see in not simply an object in passive perception, but something culturally and conceptually determined. In a culture without tables or pens or cigarettes what is seen is not a table or pen or cigarette. But neither is what is seen "sense data".

If, to take a rather different case, a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn, how could any serious question be raised about what we see when we look at it ? We see, of course, a church that now looks like a barn.
(40) [correction: page 30 of text/40 electronic]

I agree with Austin that what we see is not something immaterial, but I do not think it a matter of course that what we see is a church that looks like a barn. It is only when the camouflage is removed that what we see is a church. What it is and what we see are not the same. What we see is what it looks like to us. — Fooloso4

The sense data (indirect)/material object (direct) dichotomy, taking either one or the other or both together fails to encompass the problem of seeing.

To quote Wittgenstein:

PPI 251. We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.

Is that consistent with me using a cup to trap a spider? — wonderer1

I think so.

People surely have the ability to see ways of using things, in ways no one has before. So surely what we 'see' is more than just previously recognized linguistic and usage associations? — wonderer1

I agree.

That's what RussellA said. It's linguistic idealism. — frank

I think it is more a matter of what we do than what we say, of what cups are made and used for. The role or function that cups or, to use two examples Austin does, cigarettes and pens play in our lives.

What I am getting at is that there is more to perception than passive reception. What we see when we see the cup is not something separate from or independent from what we call it and what we use it for.