Thing' is a word that barely belongs in the philosophical lexicon (with the exception perhaps of Heidegger's analysis of the term), so I don't know what you're driving at. And I am unapologetic about my scorn of the intellectual dishonesty and philosophical miseducation of which you sow in spades, no matter how politely or conciliatory. I couldn't care less if you believe in voodoo dolls or the ghost of Christmas past, but if you diminish and cheapen a field I hold dear at every point with your half-truths and philosophy-by-allusion-and-Google-search, you can expect to be called out on it. — StreetlightX

It sounds like you want to confine philosophy to the tertiary level discipline. You write as if someone needs to be an expert on a billion specific books, know all these esoteric definitions, as well as the history of philosophical works and authors since Plato in and out, before one even opens their mouth during a philosophical discussion. As if one needs some sort of educational qualification, or be some sort of scholar in order to even do philosophy.

This thread has made you mad.

Today I was fishing and as usual was catching nothing, so I started poking sticks in rock pools (this illusion fascinates me haha), and I noticed how you can see this illusion, as an illusion, really clearly.

Get your head on the rocks about 50 cm away from the edge of the rock pool, as close to horizontal with the surface of the rock pool. Basically lie down on the rocks next to the pool with your head sideways resting on the rocks. Get a stick, and poke it into the rock pool in and out of the rock pool while watching it refract.

Sounds fairly stupid, but from this angle it's really clear that the what you see as the lower half of the stick is actually an image on the surface of the rock pool. The water is not see through, and as the lower half of the stick goes into the water, it disappears below the surface. What happens is an image is displayed on the surface of the rock pool of the light travelling from the stick below the surface (light which is refracted) up to the surface. And this image is what you see.

It looks like the water magically melts and bends the stick. But in reality the stick stays straight and disappears below the surface and you see an amalgamation of the top half of the stick out of water, and an image of a (refracted) stick on a surface of water.

From the angle you're viewing the rock pool surface from (while having your head close to the rocks), the image loses a lot of it's depth, so that it becomes a lot clearer that what you are seeing is an image on the surface, and from this angle the degree of refraction is a lot greater than if your standing above the rock pool looking downwards and poking the stick in. The greater the amount of refraction, the more skeptical you become that what you are still seeing is the actual stick.

I think perhaps that what I'm outlining in this thread is just one of those things which you can't just debate someone into believing, they have to figure it out and learn for themselves. That clear things are see-through is such a fundamental belief we hold that it takes something pretty significant happening before you shed that belief.

Personally what happened is I became pretty obsessed with glass and mirrors for like two months, especially mirrors in the beginning. I just couldn't understand how the mirror could teleport my gaze behind myself, so that I could look forward at the mirror, and yet see something behind myself. Eventually I figured out a mirror just displays incoming light as an image on it's surface, but glass refraction still confused me. I remember, I would sit in my car and wind the window down halfway. And I'd look at the side mirror so half was seen through the air and half was seen through the glass. I'd move my head side to side and watch the glass bend the mirror, and wind the window up and down and notice the position of the side mirror shifts as you roll up the window. It kind of 'jumps' back and forward. Anyway, eventually I finally had the revelation while the window was halfway down that the side mirror seen through the air continues behind the window. I can't see it because the window displays an image on it's surface of the light coming from behind it, and I can't see past this image at the rest of the side mirror behind it. You have to roll the window down to actually see the rest of the side mirror. Absolutely blew my mind.

But now, I feel like I drive blind. I just sit in the drivers seat looking at an image on the windscreen, and I can't see past it. I wish it wasn't illegal to smash my windscreen out so I could actually see the road!

Sounds psychotic, I know :D But this is actually how glass works. Looks like it's just one of those things where you have to figure it out for yourself. Have your own 'eureka' moment.

(disguised bump)

Would each person be isolated or would they inhabit, via an avatar of some sort, every other person's virtual world? In other words, will they be networked? — oysteroid

Like two people on other sides of the world each with a chess board before them, versing each other.

In my view, such a life would be pure fluff, like living in a kitsch painting, empty of real and substantial life, completely hollow and superficial. It would be strictly masturbatory. Despite all appearances, a deep desolation would permeate everything. — oysteroid

But even if this was so, you wouldn't know it. Because this is the best possible world, you'd experience the world full of 'real and substantial life', moral significance, and meaning. You may in fact be alone, but you would have no knowledge of this and you'd act and live as if you were among others. Is this really much different to the way in which we exist now?

So what would be the point in leaving the real world? — oysteroid

Suffering. This world is full of it.

I can imagine a Buddhist might describe the body as a sort of vehicle of suffering, a Christian might say it's a lump of flesh that the soul inhabits, a biologist might describe a body as a collection of physiological systems, a physicist might describe a body in terms of mass and gravity. A dancer might describe the body as a tool for movement and expression.

How would a philosopher describe a body?

Or, is your body a package which is discardable without loss of “YOU” — Bitter Crank

I believe this is how souls are supposed to function. The body is a hunk of meat the soul inhabits and controls, then discards it when it dies. Descartes also thought something along these lines with his dualism.

Thing is though, intellectually, you can imagine yourself as existing in the same way as when you die in a shooter video game like counterstrike, and then you get to fly around the map without a body. But if someone bashes your skull in, then well there goes your intellect. Descartes, intellectually, imagined himself as a thinking thing which interacts with the body. But his thoughts were in the form of language, and language isn't something given - it must be learned. One starts off as a squirming screaming rugrat, who must watch, and hear, and learn a language from the people around him. Those people being human bodies. You only survive as a baby because your mother feeds you, either from her body or using her body. She teaches you how to speak using her mouth and voice - through showing you how to do it, using her body.

Take the problem of other minds. It's not called the problem of other bodies. In our everyday life we walk around, talk to people, drive, eat, drink water - we are always embodied, everything we do is done bodily. Yet when we do philosophy all this goes out the window, and we start talking about being an ego or a mind. And then we get stuck in these thought loops, struggling with doubts about our epistemic access to the world, and whether other minds exist transcendentally, or even not at all. But then we get hungry, walk to the kitchen, make some food using our hands, and eat it with our mouths and ingest it into our stomachs. And inevitably someone will want some and you'll end up sharing, and chatting. Minds don't urinate.

Hell right at this moment I'm doing philosophy, using my fingers.

Are you your body, or are you something apart from your body? — Bitter Crank

I think, before we answer this question, we need to be explicit about what we actually mean by body. Otherwise everyone will probably end up talking past each other.

What is a body? A body, at least an alive body, is unlike ordinary objects in the world. For example, you can't misplace your body, but you can your keys. And our bodies can perceive, and be perceived. When you touch your face, your face feels your fingers and your fingers feel your face. Ordinary objects can only be perceived.

This scientific description of the body - as a collection of physiological processes and systems, an amalgamation of cells - or even a collection of atoms, or sub-atomic forces - completely misses the point, which is that the body is something which we live in the world, as.

What actually is a body?

One could define "wrong" (in a very general way) as that which causes harm to someone, directly or indirectly. As well as the factor of timing mentioned above, there are other factors. What is the likelihood of someone being hurt? How many people could be hurt? How badly and in what way? If not people being hurt, how about the chance of an animal being hurt? Or property damaged? — 0 thru 9

Harm is definitely something which we consider when trying to figure out whether something is morally wrong or not. But I think people want "wrong" to go further than this. Imagine a case, of someone being the last person at an open casket funeral to 'pay their respects'. The dead person is wearing an expensive ring. Now, I really can't see how anyone would be harmed by stealing the ring. The dead guy isn't going to be harmed, nobody will ever even know the ring was stolen, so they wont be harmed, and you're not harmed either, in fact you benefit by getting an expensive ring.

We still want to say in this situation that what the guy did was morally wrong. And yet in this situation, it's a net benefit really. The thief benefits, and nobody else is harmed.

If this is beginning to sound like a courtroom argument that one might hear in a criminal trial, perhaps that is to be expected. There very well may be absolutes (right/wrong, good/evil) somewhere in the universe. And these absolutes or ideals may be perceived by some people to some degree. One could perhaps imagine a world where the "absolute/ideal" realm (cf. Buddhism's Two Truths or Plato's Ideals) are completely perceived, understood, and followed by everyone all the time. But for now, we live in a relative world, full of ever-changing circumstances. Where in the best case scenario, people are trying to discern the ideals present in a situation and act in harmony with them. — 0 thru 9

Intention is definitely important. The best form of moral behavior is when someone does something for no other reason than they think it's the right thing to do. Moral behavior is cheapened in our eyes, when it's done for an ulterior motive than it simply being someone doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Compare, handing in a lost wallet to a police station because you could get a reward, and handing it in because it's the morally right thing to do. In both cases it's the same behavior (on the surface) and yet one is more 'moral' than the other, due to the intention.

Maybe there just isn't a "why" as to why we ought be good. We are just given the freedom of choice to match our behavior to the moral facts, or not. As in, there's nothing in the universe which says we ought act morally right/wrong, the universe just contains the moral facts (eg, x action is morally right, y action is morally wrong). It's purely up to us whether we decide to conform our behavior to these facts. There's nothing in the universe which says it's better or preferable to act morally right or not. It just has the facts, it's up to us what we do with them.

Both judgments such as "murder is wrong" and "one ought not to murder" are how one feels about behavior. — Terrapin Station

Not sure about this. At least personally, when I say "stealing is wrong", I don't mean "I do not think that people should steal". What I generally mean (there are other ways of saying "stealing is wrong", such as catching someone stealing and saying "stealing is wrong!" - here it's a more a command for that person to stop what they're doing), by "stealing is wrong" is that there are objective moral facts about what is right and wrong behavior, and stealing is factually wrong behavior. As in, there's something outside human judgment to which our moral corresponds with and gain their truth value. There's moral facts existing out there somewhere, and it is to this that our moral statements correspond. There are objective facts about how it is that people should behave, and one of those facts is that people should not steal.

Notice here there is no contradiction with stealing something, befitting by the theft, and even enjoying the theft - even delighting in the harm you caused to others - and yet at the very same time believing that you've acted in a morally wrong way. Believing that objectively, it is wrong to steal.

This would make less sense if "stealing is wrong" is a judgment about behavior. Because here I would personally be judging that I should not steal, and then I would go and steal regardless, and enjoy it. If I stole, doesn't that kind of negate the judgement? As in, I musn't of really had that judgment. "It is my personal opinion that I should not steal things and also right now I am stealing something." My action of stealing seems to create doubt about whether I really had that opinion.

I don't think that it has ever been suggested that a 'gaze travels' or that anything 'travels out' from the ear to the source of sound. So why would the fact that this doesn't happen constitute a problem? — Wayfarer

We hear the sounds in the world around us. The lawnmower is making a loud noise. When I perceive a noise, I perceive it to be located at the source of the noise and not say located in my ear. We say "what is that noise?" and search in the world around us to find the noise. The sound of the telephone ring, is perceived to be located at the telephone. Even though physiologically all that's detect is a change in the pressure in the cochlea. How can I perceive the sound to be where the telephone is? By what physiological means does this happen, when all the auditory system does is send neuronal impulses into the brain in response to changes in pressure in the cochlea (caused by sound waves vibrating the ear drum).

As in, how is that we somehow access the sounds in the world around us, when it does not appear, at least from our current observations of the auditory system, that there is any means by which this could happen?

"Murder is not to be done."

Is this statement truth-apt? If so, what makes it truth-apt?

For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation

Right here Hume is stating that they aren't synonymous.

To say something is morally wrong is to say it ought not to be done. — Wayfarer

I have spotted another prescriptivist.

Do you want to claim there is a problem with saying that 'morally wrong' means 'not to be done'? — John

Yes. It is generally held by most people I would guess, that moral statements (eg "murder is wrong") have the form of: X act instantiates the property 'wrongness'.

Sounds like you're arguing for a form of moral noncognitivism called prescriptivism.

That's like arguing "x is a good movie" is synonymous with "one ought watch x movie."

One's an ascription of a property "good", the other is a prescription for a behavior.

"X is morally wrong" is not synonymous with "X ought not be done." One is an ought and the other is an is. There's this common idea that you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is", which would make no sense if the two statements above had the same meaning.

Morally wrong means something like, "not in accordance with what is morally right or good." When we say something is morally wrong, what we are saying is that thing has the property of being morally wrong. It is a separate thing to say that one ought not do that thing.

The statement that "one ought not do wrong things" is practically a tautology. You can query whether a particular action is wrong, but asking why wrong things out not be done is like inquiring into whether all bachelors are unmarried men. — Aaron R

Why?

What is the connection between, "x is morally wrong", and "one ought not do x"?

You act like the connection is obvious, so you should be able to explain it.

"X is red", has no connection to whether anyone has any reason at all to act or be a certain way. So why does "X is morally wrong" have this connection?

Both statements are of the same form: X has a particular property. So why does one entail a prescription of how one ought behave, whereas for the other there is no such prescription, at all.

I'm just speaking from my experience, that's how I imagine such a thing. I picture in my mind, a person with a saw, going and cutting a tree. Then I tell myself seventy times. And to imagine this, seventy times, I try to picture 70 in relation to other numbers like 60 and 50, but this seems somewhat vague. So I picture seven in relation to one by counting in my mind, and tell myself ten times that. Then I picture ten as two groups of five. Now I can imagine ten groups of seven, and this is the number of times that the person cuts trees. In this way I can avoid picturing the person cutting a tree seventy times. — Metaphysician Undercover

What in the fluck?! It must take you like 37 years to read a single book haha.

To answer the question: nothing. — Benkei

Clearly not. GID/gender dysphoria is a terrible disorder to have, with an awful prognosis. Apparently 41 percent attempt suicide at some point. Being transgender is just the medical treatment for the disease (gender dyshporia, or Gender Identity Disorder). It's a shame this medical illness has been tacked onto LGB issues and causes/politicized.

It is completely against our survival in evolutionary terms and looks like an aberrant disorder of the mind that serves no purpose and is completely backward to procreation as a species. For if everyone was a transgender and/or gay that would mean no one would have babies (assuming IVF does not exist). — intrapersona

This argument doesn't work because evolution has no teleology. It's not that organisms ought reproduce, it's just that those that do are more likely to have copies of their genes show up in subsequent generations. So it's not a competition between species, or even just a singular species trying to propagate itself into the future. Rather, evolution can be understood as a 'competition' between individual genes, although here is no teleology or 'want' to reproduce, it's just that those that do, are likely to have gene copies show up in the subsequent generations, and those that don't reproduce, aren't.

However, I think an argument can be made that there ought be a better treatment to Gender Identity Disorder than 'transgendering'. As in, changing genders as a medical treatment is a bad treatment. It strikes me as much like giving liposuction to an anorexic.

What I've noticed (I have no stats or proof for this it's just anecdotal) is that transgender people have these highly rigid notions of gender. As in, pink is for boys, blue is for girls. But not just for how one appears but also for how one ought act. A man ought be responsible and not effeminate, nor 'pretty', nor interested in make up, or other men sexually or romantically, dresses, and a man ought be dominant, confident, not sexually submissive, and a man ought be interested in mechanical things and science rather than art and poetry. And likewise for female to males. It's as if they can't see that you don't literally need to inject testosterone in order to wear suits, be sexually dominant towards other women (transgenders have a far higher rate or homosexuality (in terms of their birth sex) than cis), and not care about your appearance.

I suspect a lot of transgender people had parents with really rigid notions of gender. "No! You can't cut your hair, short hair is for boys, and you are A GIRL, and girls have long hair!" If you imagine a parent with this sort of attitude towards all notions of gender, this could confuse the hell out of a child or teen. A young or teen girl doesn't care about clothes, pink, being submissive, liking arty things, wanting children, boys sexually or romantically, or any other stereotypical notion of the female gender. And yet has it drilled into her, all through her childhood and teens that only boys DON'T want these things. You can see the logic from here: "I don't like X, I like Y. Only boys like Y. Therefore, I am a boy." That's my pet theory anyway..

I suspect that, rather than people with GID starting off with a primary desire being to alter their body to appear like the opposite sex biologically, (and therefore they're really a girl because they have this desire). It's more like, their primary desire is to act and appear like girls do (and therefore they're really a girl because they want to act/appear this way, (and girls don't have penises)).

1. Is it ever ok to remain skeptical of an "absurd" conclusion to a clever argument even when one can't pin-point the exact flaw in the reasoning? — Aaron R

Not if you're doing philosophy. If you can't pinpoint a flaw in the reasoning, then what ought follow is skepticism towards your already held conclusion. Otherwise you're just a cultist, essentially. You might as well just pick the religion that appeals to you the most and then dogmatically assert it's truth.

What is the world independent of us? — Marchesk

No idea!

Naive realism strikes me as incoherent, on any sort of reflection. But our perceptions have this sort of 'naive realist' quality to them. It really feels like my eyes shoot out a gaze at objects which exist in an independent world (i.e. not dependent on my mind). As if I look through my eyes. It feels like the laptop I'm touching is 'out there' and 'not me'. But when we learn about the biology of our sense organs, they don't seem to support this. Looking at the eye for example, the retina just responds to light by shooting off charges into the brain. There's nothing in the biology of the eye which would support a gaze through it.

Realism has no explanatory value. It shifts the 'unexplained' level of reality out from the ideal into a mind-independent world. The realist has no problem with unexplained things, he just has a problem with perception/ideas being that unexplained (as in, it doesn't have something else which is causing it) thing. For some reason the realist is more comfortable with the unexplained 'level' of reality being the material world instead of the ideal. Even though they have to posit an entire 'level' of reality, for no real explanatory reason. I actually think the reason the realist is more comfortable with the material world being the uncaused/unexplained level of reality is due to the school system. In our classes on biology, or physics, or chemistry, we're taught atomic realism, physicalism, biological materialism. Basically we are taught that materialism is the case until we're 18 years old, and beyond into higher education. The realist just struggles to shed this indoctrination.

I wonder why there's no 'super-realism' position? As in, our perceptions are caused by a material world, which isitself caused by some other level of reality. The realist would probably see this position as silly. And yet he does the very same thing in relation to the ideal 'world'. He sees the ideal 'level' of reality as needing an explanation and a cause, and yet has no problem with the material level of reality not needing a cause nor explanation. His problem is not with things which cause their own existence (as in, nothing causes their existence or 'holds' them in existence), in principle. He just has a problem with ideal things causing their own existence. And like I say, I think this double standard comes down mostly to the education system; 18 years of being indoctrinated into realism.

But I also think that idealism assumes too much. Nobody knows there isn't a material world. And there's something intuitively repugnant about the idea that this laptop before me is merely constituted by my perception of it. Intellectually I can peel away my visual perception, the touch of my fingers, etc, ask myself "what's left?" and struggle for an answer. But it just seems wrong that there would actually be nothing! It's a sort of paradox, realism seems intuitively obvious, our perceptions even have a naive realist quality. And yet on reflection, intellectually the position appears incoherent. Or at the very least pointless.

Basically any actual position taken towards this question goes too far, in my opinion. We just don't know. And it's all made way more complicated by inter-subjectivity - how is it that other minds fit into the picture. Idealism struggles with solipsistic tendencies, and yet realism places other minds in a noumenal (as in, entirely independent/separate from our own minds) realm, which is solipsistic in its own right. We (at least me) want direct encounters with others, and yet have what's encountered be, in-principle, incomplete/not all there is to others. A direct encounter with something which transcends ourselves.

I wouldn't press that darn button mate. Just leave the world as it is, it's already great. — Agustino

The world is shit, I'd press it in a heartbeat.

I'd even go as far as saying you have an ethical obligation to push it. For all those people suffering and literally starving to death, for all those dying of horrible diseases, or all the tragic prolonged deaths people will go through in the future. For everyone with material want, for everyone suffering the evils of mental illness, for all those with disabilities, for all the lonely people wanting partners, for all the sterile people desparate for kids, for all the wars, natural disasters, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

You would rid the world of suffering. Why would you not push it?

The blue on the top face of the cube on the left, is the same colour as the yellow on the top face of the cube on the right.

And on both cubes the middle square of the top face is the same colour as the middle square of the front.

This is a problem for direct realists.

I don't think that is objective idealism; it is more like Berkeley's view that the Universe continues to exist in God's perception, in the absence of other perceivers. — Wayfarer

Woops, that's what I meant!

And from this idealist statement it can only follow to be skeptical of the existence of other minds. What would keep you from taking that last step into solipsism? If you are skeptical of the existence of the forest without experiencing it, then you must also be skeptical of some other mind in the forest (essentially being part of this forest), for a sound to occur. — Harry Hindu

Does my mind need to be perceived by another in order for it to exist? No, so why would it be any different for other minds?

Idealists who haven't taken that last step into solipsism are inconsistent in that they claim to believe in the existence of things they have never experienced (other minds) while not believing in things that they have experienced before but aren't experiencing right now (trees). —

But this argument only works if you conceive of the world you inhabit as being completely private to your perceptions, which would beg the question of solipsism. I think that when for example you 'meet someones gaze', it's a direct encounter of minds. And not say a private to myself perception of a person which may or may not be a representation of the actions of another person which exists in an independently existing 'mind-bubble', depending on whether you're a solipsist or not.

(there is a brute distinction between a sound and a visual). — Harry Hindu

What about when you 'see someone talking to you'? Your experience was a cohesive whole, and the two senses only become separate afterward when you separate them intellectually.

My answer is, "what forest?"

As in, if there's nobody around then there's not even a forest.

However, the forest in this case is an assumption or axiom of an imagined scenario in someone's mind. "Given that I am imagining a forest with a falling tree in the absence of a human, would this falling tree make a sound." And so you'd answer in terms of the imagined scenario. You can answer how you want, because the forest is just an imagined scenario here.

But in ontological terms, there exists no forest in the absence of mind. At least that's my opinion.

Here's an outline of some of the other options:

Naive/direct realism: the tree 'looks' green, and produces the actual qualia of "TIMBER!" even in the absence of humans. All the ears and brain do really, is allow one to perceive the externally existing 'qualia'. Sounds, colours, smells, etc, are in the world which exists independent of mind.

Indirect realism: A bunch of atoms which make up what we call a tree, falls down according to physical forces (such as gravity) obeying physical laws, producing physical sound waves in the external world. As in, no actual noise or sound qualia is produced, but a physical sound wave is created by the falling tree and travels through the physical forest interacting with the environment. If somebody was around, the persons ear would convert the sound waves into neuronal impulses which would be processed by the brain into an internally generated experiential representation of the sound wave - the actual perception of noise, the sound of the falling tree.

Objective idealism: the tree and forest is dependent on minds, but even in the absence of human minds an all seeing mind 'holds' the forest and falling tree in existence, so that the qualia of the falling tree noise still exists even when no human is around.

What other options are there?

Do they really? Could you point me towards the poll that was taken? — Michael

I think part of it has to do with the (mostly white) progressive condescension towards 'dark people' basically. They see Muslims as a group of oppressed 'noble savages' who need care and protection by whites. Kind of like a white saviour thing.

I agree, it's utterly absurd. You have groups of western progressive homosexuals speaking out against the 'racism' (Islam isn't a race) and oppression that Muslim minorities face, and yet the majority of those Muslims literally think homosexuals should be punished by death.

The progressives would never have this sort of attitude to a minority group of white people. You can often hear them insulting stupid dumb redneck hicks etc. And yet to level these sort of insults at Muslims ("terrorist" "camel-jockey" etc) is blasphemy to the progressive mindset.

Progressives don't see 'darker' people as morally culpable as whites. When a white Christian says homosexuals should be punished by death he's (rightly) slammed as a violent bigot. When a middle eastern Muslim says the same the liberals go silent *crickets chirping*, or they start mentioning the crusades, or some other irrelevant nonsense.

Progressives = crazy

They are deliberately targeting blacks because cops get promoted according to how many successful busts and convictions and courts are more likely to convict a black man. — wuliheron

Because black people commit more crimes. You seem to think courts just let white people off because they're white and punish the blacks for the same crime, which explains the disparate conviction rates.

This is simply untrue. Blacks get convicted of crimes more often because they commit crimes more often. A cop gets called to a murder scene and sees both a white and a black person fleeing the scene. He's better off chasing the black guy because statistically the black man is far more likely to have pulled the trigger. Racially profiling doesn't just happen because cops deliberately are targeting blacks for no reason.

Blacks rioting in the streets and executing cops is the only viable way they have of making the war too expensive to continue. They already tried the peaceful approach and look what's happened as a result. — wuliheron

Or they could just stop being criminals? Wtf man? Executing cops because you're getting arrested for breaking the law is never viable. What do you even mean "the peaceful approach"? Black people should be allowed to commit crimes and face no concequences? And if this doesn't happen the viable response is to murder cops?

Looks like you've swallowed the BLM kool-aid.

In what way is the state of affairs any different to the proposition which expresses it?

State of affairs: the cup is red
Proposition: "the cup is red"

What makes the proposition true or not is whether it expresses the state of affairs correctly (or you could say, corresponds correctly to the state of affairs).

The proposition is mind dependent, right. So, what makes the state of affairs any different when all it is is the proposition absent quotes?

It seems to me that the state of affairs is just a particular kind of language use/way of speaking. We 'say the world' and also say propositions.

Ok let's say the state of affairs that the propositions expresses is not mind-dependent. "The cup is red" is true or not independent of mind.

But then what's even the point of positing this mind independence? Whether the proposition is true or not, isn't contained within the proposition. So by that I mean, "the cup is red" doesn't seem to posesses some sort of invisible truth value. How is it that we ourselves come to know the truh value? Well we actually have to find out whether the cup is red or not. This process of finding out is mind dependent, and if you're an idealist so is the cup. So here we have an entire mind-dependent analyses of how it is that we come to know a propositions truth value. But you'd have to then hold that there's a separate mind-independent matching of the proposition to the state of affairs going on, for truth to be mind independent. The proposition, independent of mind would either match the state of affairs true or false, and it would have this truth value. But the truth value would be invisible to us, likewise the way in which the proposition matches itself to the state of affairs. We don't know how this happens. And both of these are entirely irrelevant to how it is that we ourselves actually find the truh value of a proposition, which is we do our own matching.

So what's then the point of saying "but also the proposition was true or not independent of us looking at the cup and deciding whether it's true." Isn't that just totally irrelevant to us? We could never acces this mind independent truth value, it's not present to us in the proposition itself. It really has no bearing on how it is that we ourselves find out the truth value of a proposition. So why posit it? Does it have any explanatory value?

It seems totally unnecessary.

You might say the cup is red independent of mind. But don't we then get into an argument over theories of perception? You'd be arguing for direct realism, the 'redness' of the cup existing out in the world. How would we even know that the state of affairs is mind-independent?

We always experience blue when a particular wavelength of light strikes our retina. If it didn't then we'd never be able to make heads or tails of what it is we are experiencing. — Harry Hindu

Just splitting hairs here but this is not entirely true. Check out this illusion for example, the same wavelength of orange is striking our retinas but we perceive two different colours:



Objects which appear blue in the day still emit the same 'blue' wavelengths of light at nighttime, just not enough for the cones in our retinas to respond to.

No. Sounds only exist in the mind. Vibrating air molecules are located within the world and sound is a representation of those wavelengths of air molecules. Just as colors don't exist out in the world, they only exist in the mind as representations of wavelengths of light. We don't see wavelengths of light, nor hear vibrating air molecules. If we did, that would be direct realism. We don't, which is why indirect realism is the case. —

Ok. Getting back to the thread topic the question is then, does the brain internally represent physically transparent objects by producing a visual perception of an image displayed on the surface of a transparent object, in much the same way as the brain internally represents ulexite? Or, is the depth which we perceive in glass not an illusion, and the brain is producing a visual representation of the physical objects which exist behind the physically transparent object?

Or, to speak poetically, what is the 'length' of the visual field which the brain produces. Does the visual perception span from your eyes to the surface of the glass, or does it span beyond the glass to the objects behind it? So, when the brain internally represents ulexite, the 'length' of the visual perception is from the eye to the surface of the ulexite. Is it the same for other physically transparent objects (physical objects which allow light to pass through them).

As I explained, our sense of touch is more direct than our sense of vision because we physically come into contact with the object when we touch it.

Well, how do you know you're touching an object? Through sight. But if your sight is indirect then the object you are touching is an internal representation. If you look at the biology of the sematosensory system this makes sense as well. There's nerve cells in your skin which fire off neuronal impulses (in response to various stimuli) to the spinal cord, where some processing may occur, the impulses then travel to the brain for further processing. In much the same way as there's only an incoming process for the visual system (retina responds to light and sends impulses into the brain where a visual perception is produced, i.e. an outgoing gaze isn't then produced which goes in the opposite direction beyond the brain and into the external world beyond), likewise nerve impulses don't travel from the sematosensory receptors to the brain, and then you directly feel the physical object. It's more like in the brain there's an internal model of the body and the brain collates all the different data coming from the various sensory organs into this model. The touch perception exists internally within the brain, the objects which you see yourself touching are internal visual representations of physical objects in the external world.

Heres a representation of a cortical homunculus. It shows the parts of the brain which are devoted to sematosensory data coming from those particular regions of the body. Note how the fingers take up far more brain power than say, the back. There's a far higher density of sematosensory receptors in the fingers compared to the back.



This is what's entailed by indirect realism. You don't have indirect access with some senses and direct access with others. Rather the brain produces a cohesive onboard self/world model, which is what you have epistemic access to only. The world around you, your body, other people, it's all an internal (private) representation. You exist entirely cut off from the physical world.

Is the state of affairs anything other than the sum total of all the propositions the linguistic community hold to be true?

What actuay is the "state-of-affairs" that our propositions correspond with? Does correspondence even make sense? As if our propositions fly out of our mouths into the world and try and match themselves to how the world is, and get imbued with the property of truth if they match the world correctly, or false if they don't?

The proposition doesn't actually do this, I mean the whole notion of reference is kind of nonsensical. Like our mouth is a bow which fires out words like arrows which fly around the world and hit things. "Eiffel Tower" refers to the Eiffel Tower in France, but my words don't fly there and highlight the tower in order to gain it's meaning.

I think what's happening with propositions is they don't *themsves* correspond with the world/state-of-affairs. Rather it's us humans which decide that the proposition is a correct way of "expressing the world." A community of language users come together and form a consensus of the state of affairs, eg that the Eiffel Tower is in France. The proposition that, "the Eiffel Tower is in France" is then judged to be correct/true because when the quotes are removed it becomes the state of affairs which the community of language users have agreed upon (the Eiffel Tower is in France). When the quotes around "the Eiffel Tower is in Antarctica" is removed, this state of affairs is not something which the language community has agreed upon so it's then deemed to be false.

If we understand truth to work like this then we don't need to think of reference as our words matching themselves in some unexplained manner with the external world, like arrows hitting heir targets.

"According to the ACLU’s original analysis, marijuana arrests now account for over half of all drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana. Nationwide, the arrest data revealed one consistent trend: significant racial bias. Despite roughly equal usage rates, Blacks are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana." — wuliheron

I don't buy the notion that what's causing the disproportionate rates of drug arrests between blacks and whites is simply racist cops. There's many other more plausible explanations. Black people are far over represented in nearly all categories of crime. So if black people are commiting more crime (a lot more) on average than white people, this means there's a far higher chance for a black person to be arrested on an unrelated matter, or to have dealings with police.

Let's say the rates for marijuana possession for both black and white people is 5/10. Half of all people are walking around with cannabis on their person. But, the rate for say theft is 3/10 for black people but only 1/10 for whites. So we'll say monthly, 3/10 blacks commit theft, but only 1/10 whites do. Let's say that the odds of getting caught stealing are 1/2. This means that per month, 1.5/10 black people get arrested, while only .5/10 whites do. Because half of both blacks and whites are carrying cannabis, and all arrestees are searched, this would mean that per month .75/10 black people are charged with cannabis possession, while only .25/10 white people are. Even though blacks and whites posess cannabis at the exact same rates.

There could be other reasons as well, such as black people being more likely to behave ways that causes them to be arrested for possession more often. This could be say, smoking cannabis in public places more often than whites, dealing cannabis in open air markets at a higher rate, driving high more often, not hiding heir cannabis well enough.

There's plenty if explanations other than just "white people are racist and use drug laws to 'punish' blacks for being inferior."

I don't think direct realists deny perception exists. If you believe that there is a world, and in that world there is a brain, and in that brain is a perception, then you are an indirect realist. This is uncontroversial.

The direct realist position involves the mind being out of the brain and in the world. Their understanding of how vision works, for example, is "light waves travel to the retina which send electrochemical impulses into the brain.... and then one looks at objects in the external world. The eye, for the direct realist are 'windows upon the world'. No perceptions are located within the brain for the direct realist. Sounds for example, are located within the world. The ear and brain just allow the direct realist to perceive the sounds in the external world. The sound perception isn't in the direct realists brain. Colours, the actual way things look (red,blue, etc quales) are for the direct realist located out in the external world. The eye and brain are just a mechanism by which these external existing colours are perceived. The red, blue, green look to things are not located within the direct realists brain, they're out in the world. For the direct realist externally existing objects are literally presented in their experience. The mind essentially superimposing itself upon things in the external world. The 'look' of things exist in the external world. As in the red cup literally still 'looks' red even when it's in the cupboard. The mind just allows one to have access to how the cup looks in itself.

From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Direct Awareness of Material Objects

Before considering whether a case can be made for the second direct realist thesis, we need to look a bit further at the first thesis. How are we to understand the claim that we are “directly” or “immediately” aware of material objects? Here there are at least two initially plausible things that a direct realist can say. First, contrary to what a representative realist view might seem to suggest, our perceptual awareness of material objects is obviously not, at least in ordinary cases, arrived at via anything like an explicit inference from either beliefs about or awarenesses of subjective entities such as sense-data. On the contrary, in most ordinary situations, it is material objects and situations that are the primary and usually the exclusive objects of the perceiver's explicit awareness and thought, with no hint that this awareness has been arrived at via any sort of transition from anything else. Second, as Searle and others have argued, there is an obvious and intuitively compelling way in which perceptual experience seems to directly present physical objects and situations. Direct realists have sometimes spoken here of “openness to the world,” a locution that suggests the way in which such objects and situations seem to be simply present in their own right in experience. The direct realist need not deny (though some have seemed to) that sensory experience somehow involves the various qualities, such as complicated patterns of shape and color, that sense-datum or adverbial views have spoken of, nor even that the perceiver is in some way aware or conscious of these. His point is that whatever may be said about these other matters, from an intuitive standpoint it is material objects and nothing else that are “directly before my mind” — and that any view that denies this obvious truth is simply mistaken about the facts. — SEP

The direct realist is not aware of perceptions which are located within a brain. When he sees a red cup, the 'redness' which he perceives is literally located within the external world. The eyes, brain etc are just a mechanism that allows one to have direct access to the externally existing 'redness'. The redness is NOT located within a perception within a brain! That's the position of representationalism or indirect realism. It does not matter at all how accurate the perception which is located within the brain is. It could literally be a 1:1 copy of the external world. Because it's still a copy!

Anyway, this debate has gone so far off topic. The direct realist would see an image on the surface of clear objects, which is located in the external world. For the direct realist the image would still be there even if nobody was around. (He doesn't realize it's an image though, because it's so 'crisp'). You might say you can't believe there is an image there because there's no plausible physical way by which glass could display an image. But, it is uncontroversial that this is exactly what ulexite does. Ulexite has fiber optic properties which cause an image to displayed on its surface. Same sort of thing is happening with all other physically transparent objects (objects which allow lightwaves to travel through them).

Now, "the Earth exists" is a sentence. It follows that if there are no sentences, it cannot be true. So to find a situation in which it's not true, we suppose that the planet in this situaiton is as it was before thre advent of language. Since there are no languages, there are no sentences, and a fortiori no true sentences. So, in this situation, "the Earth exists" is not true. — The Great Whatever

I don't think it would be correct to say "the earth exists" is not true. Because a non existent proposition can't have a truth value. It's more like, "so, in this situation, "the earth exists" doesn't exist." There can't be a world with no propositions and also false propositions.

Is it a mind dependent truth that truth is mind dependent? Say there were no minds, would truth therefore be mind-independent instead, or truth just wouldn't exist at all? If it didn't exist at all, wouldn't that therefore be a mind-independent truth ("truth does not exist at all", is true).

Anyway, what confuses me is that the "world-state/state-of-affairs" is itself linguistic. As in,

("The earth existed 1083987 years ago", is a statement. The earth existing 1083987 years ago is not a statement it's a state of affairs, but everything within these brackets is language).

Propositions are either true or false depending on whether they 'express' the state of affairs correctly. But what's actually being expressed? It seems like the state of affairs is just the proposition without quote marks. "Donald Trump is the president elect of USA" is a true statement. Why is it true? Because Donald Trump is the president elect of USA. The state of affairs here is just the propisition but without quote marks.

So what's going on here? Truth is when the quote marks around a proposition can be removed and nobody objects to the state of affairs being expressed that way? I say "expressed" because we express propisitions sure, but the state of affairs is also expressed, it's still linguistic, but it's being expressed in a way that doesn't bring attention to that it itself being expressed (whereas a proposition does). It's an expression which doesn't indicate it's own nature as an expression.

The state of affairs is just a particular way of speaking?

You might object that the expression of the state of affairs (Donald Trump being president elect, without quotes) matches up to something beyond language, it isn't literally the world being expressed. But that would make it a propisition. Donald Trump being president elect is not a propisition. The state of affairs doesn't correspond with anything, it is itself that which our propositions correspond to.

No, it isn't. That's why I'm telling you that you're arguing against a straw man. Direct realism is still perception. You're presenting it as if direct realists are attempting to eliminate perception from their theory of perception. They're doing no such thing. — Terrapin Station

If you believe your visual field is located within a brain you are an indirect realist.

The process is analogically like light entering a camera and creating an image on film. — Terrapin Station

That's indirect realism though. Camera = body/eye. Roll of film = brain. Image is on the film, which is located within the body.

It doesn't matter how accurate/photorealistic this image is, it's still an image. It's still not the physical world which exists in the world outside the camera. Clearly it's you who doesn't know what naive realism is.

Why is it that you can't see anything, transparent or not, when there is NO light and why you see such vividness and detail when there is plenty of light? Why does the level of detail and vividness seem to correlate with the level of light in the environment? — Harry Hindu

What point are you getting at?

It's my contention that (B2) is not only what's functionally going on with talk about transparency and "see-thoroughness," but that that's what people typically have in mind with "see-thoroughness." And thus it's my contention that arguing against anything else is arguing against a straw man. — Terrapin Station

You are arguing that when someone says an object is "transparent" or ''see-through'', what they mean is that the object has a property which enables seeing the objects behind the transparent object.

Ok, sure. But the point of this thread is that physically transparent objects don't actually have that property. People may think they do, but they don't.

[/quote]'m pretty sure they just see glass, and believe they're seeing the objects behind the glass.
— dukkha

Yes, which is what I think, too, but what it is to see objects behind the glass is that light passes through the glass, and light waves/photons stimulate your eyes, etc.[/quote]

Can you finish this ''etc'' and actually outline how it is you think visual perception works? Because I'm pretty sure all you're going to say is, ''light travels from a source towards the glass, the light then travels through the glass (at a refracted angle) to the other side and carries on towards the eye, the light then travels through the lens of the eye and is focused upon the retina, the retina responds to the light wave by producing and sending an electrical signal, a signal which then travels through the optic cord and into the brain along a massive series of neurons, eventually reaching the visual cortex, and then we see the object behind the glass in the physical world."

What's actually happening in the italics? Whereby we've traveled from processes within the visual cortex to way back out into the physical world beyond the brain. How does this happen? I argued earlier in this thread that there is no (known) biological mechanism by which this occurs, and so the physical account of perception entails indirect realism. As in, ''...electrical signal which travels through the optic cord into the brain, eventually reaching the visual cortex, which then creates/generates an internal (within the brain) visual representation of the glass in the external world. And this internal representation is what we perceive.

When I talk about stuff like this, my intention isn't to follow the conventions of any discipline as a set of social practices. I'm a physicalist or "materialist," so I'm going to believe that there aren't separate domains in ontological terms. — Terrapin Station

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. It doesn't have any ontological commitments. What I meant by ''separate domains'' is two different disciplines, or areas of study. In the domain of physics, we study and describe light waves, mass, etc. In phenomenology we study (or really, analyse) our visual 'quales'. A physicalist should have no trouble practicing both disciplines. There's nothing contradictory about the two (well, unless you're an eliminative materialist!).

When we dream, remember and so on we don't see anything, we imagine things. — John

I have visual experiences in my dreams. But regardless we DO see hallucinations and illusions. You conveniently skipped over these.

The indirect realist believes/assumes his representations are accurate depictions of the external world. Your argument only works if you believe representations are not accurate.
— dukkha

If the indirect realist believes that then their position is no different than the direct realist's who does not deny the veracity of the scientific model of perception. — John

No, there's a huge difference between seeing a physical object directly, and seeing a representation/model of a physical object. It's the difference between a map and a territory. No matter how accurate a map is, it's still not the territory.

If objects were represented by perception then it would follow that there must be originals that are being represented and this is an incoherent idea. — John

You're just asserting this. Why is the "thing-in-itself", "noumena", "mind-independent object", an incoherent idea?

You can fit your head into the cosmos, but you will go insane if you try to fit the cosmos into your head. ;) — John

But you can fit a model/representation of the cosmos within your head. For the direct realist, a physical brain exists within an external noumenal reality. Physical neuronal processes within that brain generate/cause ("are equal to" if you're a type identity theorist) an experience of a phenomenal world, which is what the indirect realist has access to.