In particular, some forms of phenomenalism reduce all talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense data. — Art48

I believe you would say that we do not directly experience electrons and proton but only indirectly. If I follow your views, I believe you will also need to say the same thing with regards "sense data". Let's take the electron/proton example. I do not directly experience electrons/protons; but with my senses and some scientific theory, I can infer their existence indirectly. Similarly, I do not directly experience sense data; but with my senses and some philosophical and analogical reasoning, I can infer their existence indirectly. What is unclear to me is if you mean the idea of sense data, or sense data itself. This confusion arise when you say "I indirectly experience the idea of a tree."

If you, and everyone else, experiences sense data directly, why do you explain what you mean by examples of illusions and other representations of reality? Does not one need a stable real external world to understand what an illusion or representation even is? (I understand what a mirage is because I actual consumed real water.) Imagine a world where the inhabitants never experience hallucinations, illusions, or vivid dreams, would they ever need a sense datum theory at all. But you might say, at least I can point to my direct experience of the sense data itself. Again, as I mentioned before, this is a private exercise that offer very little to how we actually learn, understand, and use language.

Lets say we both are standing in front of a tree. I look at you and see you directly looking at and experiencing a tree. I don’t see you directly experiencing sense data. Is this not being objective? Whatever is occurring “inside” is not in my purview. Whatever is occurring “outside” is shared by both of us and thus we gain an understanding of what we are talking about.

Thanks, something to explore

“We directly experience the idea of a tree and indirectly experience the tree as a physical object.”

Lets re-word this a bit and say: we directly experience the tree and come up with the concepts of a “tree” and “physical object”

I think we can all agree to this.

From John Searle’s “Seeing Things as They Are”

“A mistake of nearly as great a magnitude overwhelmed our tradition in the 17th century and after, and it is the mistake of supposing that we never directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world, but directly perceive only our subjective experiences. This mistake has many different names, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. After Kant it gets worse. Mill and Hegel, in spite of all their differences, would also have to be included.”

A good book of a modern philosopher who attempts to expose the problem of this position and offers his own theory to clear up the confusion.

A is A is kind of boring, but it gets a little more interesting when we think about such things as

Water is H2O
George Washington is (fill in your description)
9 is 4 + 5
Hesperus is Phosphorus

“My view is that ideas already exist in the mindscape, just as trees exist in the landscape. Seeing a pair of apples may awaken our mind to the idea of two, but the idea already exists. Any being which lacks the mental capacity will never perceive the idea "two." Imagine an earthworm, for instance, crawls over two pebbles. I doubt the idea of two ever enters what mind it has.”

Could we not imagine a world where inhabitants sense and emphasizes differences than commonalties that they view all objects as individuals to be named, and that they have memories so great that universals are not needed?Why would I need to hypothesize that inhabitants who use universals can perceive some Platonic realm, when I simply can appeal to our make up that favors detecting commonalities and creating language of universals vs detecting differences and name individuals?

“Suppose you see a hurricane on TV. You directly experience the TV's light and sound; you indirectly experience the hurricane. Similarly, you indirectly experience the tree; you directly experience light, sound, touch, taste, odor. “

This example works if I can directly experience a hurricane. The lights and sounds from the TV are about something that we can experience directly. However, if all I directly experience is light, sound, touch, taste, or odor; the example is problematic because your are not seeing a “TV” or a “hurricane” because all they are is light, sound, touch, taste, or odor.

“Our five physical senses limit us to experiencing sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. So, we don’t directly experience concrete objects. (I have no special “tree-sensing” sense with which I can directly experience a tree.)”

What could this mean “we don’t directly experience concrete objects” I see a tree, I go over to touch the leaves, smell the bark, hear the creaking of the branches, or taste the fruit it produces. How more direct can we get?

Physical objects and Abstract objects, what do these two things have in common that we want to call them objects? A shared essence or some family resemblance? Hard to say it is either.

I like to think this argument is successful at proving its idea, however, what we are left with is a rather shallow and dull view of existence.

The concept of a contingent being is conceived as existing or not existing.

The concept of a necessary being is conceived as existing only.

The concept of God can only be conceived as a necessary being because the concept of a necessary being is greater than the concept of a contingent being.

Thus, the concept of God entails the concept of necessary existence because of the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived.

OK, great, now exactly what exist here after we stop talking about conceptions of God and necessary existence? After all for contingent beings, I can eventually point to some examples to show you what how we can use this term in the stream of life.

True, but you cant point to God because he is not a contingent being.

Your are right, well, I guess you can always point to your ontological argument.

Yes “someone can believe something that has been proven false”. Here is the proof:

I believe “someone can believe something that has been proven false”. (Call this I believe S)

If “I believe S” is true, S is true

Or

If “I believe S” is false, S is true because I just demonstrated I can believe something that has been proven false.

Does an atom have free will?

“Water” does not have an essence but “H2O” does have an essence. Both are concepts and both can refer. And both could be used interchangeably in many context. So it is quite strange to say one has an essence and one does not.

“Things the words refer to” have essences. Not sure what this could mean. I point to an object and call it a “rock”. So the word I use does not have a essence but the rock I point to does. And what is that? The shape? The color? The chemical composition? I point to another object and call it a “rock” It looks similar to the first rock but does not have the same color, shape or chemical composition. Is there one essence both rocks share, and what is that?

Lastly, “H2O” has an essence. Let us first give it a little specificity. These symbols are used in chemistry as expression of atomic theory. This theory makes successful predictions of our macroscopic world. But like any scientific theory, it can be replace by a better theory, which may do away with the symbols of “H2O” And if this happens, what happens to “H2O”’s essence.

“I can as a philosopher talk about mathematics because I will only deal with puzzles which arise from the words of our ordinary everyday language, such as “proof”, “ number”, “series”, “order”, etc”

And

“But I will talk about the word “ foundation” in the phase “ the foundation of mathematics”. This is a most important word and will be one of the chief words we will deal with.” From Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics(LFM)

Keep this mind that this is what Wittgenstein is trying to show - that philosophers of mathematics are creating bewilderment because these words are being pulled from their typical surroundings.

W “By “seeing the contradiction” do you mean “ seeing that the two ways of multiplying lead to different results”?”
T: “Yes”
W: “The trouble with this example is that there is no contraction in it at all. If you have two different ways of multiplying, why call them both multiplying? Why not call one multiplying and the other dividing, or multiplying A and the other multiplying B, or any damn thing? It is simply that you have two different kinds of calculation and you have not noticed that they give different results” LW (LFM)

I thought this quote from Daniel Dennett might be useful and somewhat amusing for the current discussion at hand:

“Happily, in those days before tape recorders, some of Wittgenstein's disciples took verbatim notes, so we can catch a rare glimpse of two great minds addressing a central problem from opposite points of view: the problem of contradiction in a formal system. For Turing, the problem is a practical one: if you design a bridge using a system that contains a contradiction, "the bridge may fall down." For Wittgenstein, the problem was about the social context in which human beings can be said to "follow the rules" of a mathematical system. What Turing saw, and Wittgenstein did not, was the importance of the fact that a computer doesn't need to understand rules to follow them. Who "won"? Turing comes off as somewhat flatfooted and naive, but he left us the computer, while Wittgenstein left us...Wittgenstein.” From 1999 Time Magazine

I believe Wittgenstein was trying to convince Turing of the following:

1. If you arrive at a contradiction the result would be inaction

2. If a bridge collapsed, an engineer is not wondering if the foundations of math is problematic, but if the calculation was wrong, it was not put together as per plan, or materials used were inferior

As for the Liar paradox, “I am a Liar” has a clear use is ordinary circumstances of life. Take it out of that and put it in the philosophical world, and one gets deep into confusion.

Recognition of evil comes before knowledge and belief of evil. First, we need a group of human beings to experience and react to situations they would call evil. As they come across experiences where they similarly judge to be exemplars of evil, their concept solidifies and they past on their “knowledge” to their community. Obvious, future experiences may be similar more or less to their original exemplars of evil, and so the concept of “belief” may creep in to express uncertainty.

I think a simple passage from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations can be a reply to the sentiment being explored in this discussion: “71. One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. “But is a blurred concept a concept at all?” Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all” Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?”

So, we give a “rigorous” definition of reality. Some things are excluded and some things included to our liking. I suppose someone can come along and say “but wait you don't want to exclude this or include that”. So, we modified the definition again. This can go on until when? Until we reach 100% agreement or enough agreement until we can call a small minority ,who disagrees, crazy.

What started out for the search for truth looks more like search for consensus and exclusion.

Ok, I am not my body. Let us say I am just a sum total of all experiences up to some point time. The brain is just the collector, organizer, and repository of those experiences. The brain along with the body can use language to communicate with other brains and bodies these experiences. Maybe some day we can transfer these experiences in some computer and this can do the collecting, organizing and storing. And communicate to other brains/computers such experiences. You could call this the “I” or the “soul”, if you like. And that is the solution to such a philosophical puzzle, call it what you like, and see if someone will go along with it.

Bob: Hey that was a great idea, where did you come up with that?
Mary: When I was studying Philosophy at the University of Sunset.

Therefore, in this situation, thinking took place at a university.

“To others I am a part of their objective observable universe just as a chair or the sky is. I am outside of them. They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be”

This is a very puzzling thing to say, “They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be” So, base on what is said here, one understands what it means to be “aware and alive” is something that is private and inaccessible to anybody. But if this is the case, anyone partaking in this conversation has no idea what anyone is talking about when we say “aware and alive like they feel”.

We share one world, we react similarly to one world, and we talk about one world.

“Perhaps while we’re asleep we first think of a cool sequence of events and then forget the order so that we can visually re-enact it. Then our subconscious would have “foreknowledge” of what will happen to us in a dream.”

No way ever to verify this and there never will be.

Consider this thought experiment how such thinking could be problematic about “moods”.

Let us say we hooked up a device to someone and asked the subject “what mood are you in?” She says “Happy” and the device reads “neuron 250”. A day later you ask the subject the same and she says “depressed” and device reads “neuron 890”.

A week passes and you hook up the device again and it reads “neuron 890”. You say to her “So you are feeling depressed? And she replies, “No, quite the contrary, I feel happy”.

What are we to say here? 1. She is lying and the device speaks the truth. 2. She was lying or confused during the first experiment, she was actually depressed when she said she was happy and happy when she said she was depressed. 3. The machine was not working today. 4. The machine was not working last week. 5. She did not understand what we are asking her. 6. She is not in touch with her feelings.

Have we made talk of “moods” easier by adding talk of biochemistry? I am incline to say we have added unnecessary complexity that added uncertainty to the conversation.

“In the laboratory, when subjected to an electric current, for example, someone says with his eyes shut “I am moving my arm up and down” though his arm is not moving. “So,” we say, “he has the special feeling of making that movement.” Move your arm to and fro with your eyes shut. And now try, while you do so, to tell yourself that your arm is staying still and that you are only having certain queer feelings in your muscles and joints!”

Wittgenstein, PI, 624

“When people talk about the possibility of foreknowledge of the future they always forget the fact of the prediction of one’s own voluntary movements.”

Wittgenstein, PI, 628

I think it worth considering what Wittgenstein said in his later philosophy in Philosophical Investigations:

“Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But suppose the word ‘beetle” had a use in these people’s language? If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. No, one can “divide through” by thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and designation’ the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant”

Perfect circles don’t exist in nature and pi has an infinite number of digits. So when you rotate around and move forward in a certain direction, we don’t ever know with perfect accuracy what that direction is. — Michael McMahon

So, if I understand this correctly, if we can’t prove without “perfect” accuracy the outcome of some predicted event, this is evidence the world is not real. This is an odd conclusion. For example, I shoot a cannon ball and predict with current scientific principles that it should travel 15.01 feet. But when I measure it, it is only 15.00 feet. So, I must conclude the world is not real? Maybe we should consider other possibilities, measurement error, technology limitations, revision to principles, etc. Historically speaking, we have become more accurate with our scientific prediction, by Special and General relativity. So does this means the world in becoming more real? No, we can just make better predictions.

The mind is more arbitrary and whimsical in nature than the physical structures we observe. — Michael McMahon

I guess the mind is not “arbitrary and whimsical in nature” when we determine the physical structures we observed so we can make the claim “the mind is more arbitrary and whimsical in nature than the physical structures we observe.”

I believe an anti-realist can also be pragmatic. Our power is limited in this world whether it’s real or not. — Michael McMahon

This is a fascinating claim, "Our power is limited in this world whether it's real or not". From an anti-realist perspective, this claim does not make much sense. If there is not "a world out there", what sense can we make of the idea that we can have shared agreement about this world's content?

But let us assume for a moment that there is a world we conceptualize together, what is being articulated when we question whether it is "real or not"? This distinction has no meaning when applied to the world as a whole. Think how we come to use this concept of "real". Usually after contrasting two different situations or objects, we find it useful to make a distinction in calling it "real" or "not real". In the case of the "world as a whole", what am I contrasting? I have no experienced of two different worlds, there is just one. What about looking at it it from a scientific perspective? How would a scientist go about determining if this world is "real" or "not real"? Or, take the hypothesis that this "world is not real", what experience(s) could falsify such an idea?

What if I said that the world is one of three possibilities: real, not real, and null. You may ask, "what is null?" and I replied, "the world is exactly as we perceived it if it was real or not, but it is neither, it is null." Have I really described three possibilities here? Maybe there is not three possibilities, but only one actual.

“If you look at a photograph of people, houses and trees, you do not feel the lack of the third dimension in it . We should not find it easy to describe a photograph as a collection of color patches on a flat surface; but what we see in a stereoscope looks three- dimensional in a different way.

((It is anything but a matter of course that we see ‘three-dimensionally’ with two eyes. If the two visual images are amalgamated, we might expect a blurred one as a result)” Wittgenstein, PI

“The colour of the visual impression corresponds to the colour of the object (this blotting paper looks ponk to me, and is pink) - the shape of the visual impression to the shape of the object (it looks rectangular to me , and is rectangular) but what I perceive in the dawning of an aspect is not a property of the object, but an internal relation between it and other objects.” Wittgenstein, PI

“ We can describe our thoughts through language but some of the experience of emotions are not readily describable.” The first part of the sentence sounds like I have thoughts and once I have a language then by some inner observation can describe them. I think what you mean is “through language we express our thoughts”, which is quite different. The second part of this sentence is equally confusing. As children, we have many emotions that we can not articulate with words. However, when we react similarly to the adults around us in similar circumstances those adults will try to train us to express this nonverbal behavior into words. So to say that something internal to yourself that is not readily describable leaves one wondering what you are talking about at all. However, if you would like to add that sometimes we react to situation unlike those adults who have trained us to express ourselves in particular ways, then I believe we start to have a situation where we just can’t relate to that person.

What are these kind of paradoxes suppose show us?

1. That something is dubious about reality because the logic is sound.

2. That something is dubious about our logic because reality is not problematic as it appears in the argument

3. That logic analysis is sometimes a fruitless tool that does not reflect or describe the world we live in.

I am incline to say #3 when it comes to these kind of paradoxes.

“It seems to me that they can if beliefs or the forming of beliefs take the form of brain states or changes in the structure of the brain, but I’m not sure.”

First, let me recommend a book that presents the conceptual difficulties in developing this notion that beliefs correspond to brain states. The book is “Memory and Mind” by Norman Malcolm.

I will try to summarize these difficulties as follows:

1. First, we seek a natural correlation between the elements of the two domains, and not a stipulated correlation. For example, like the relation between tides and phases of the moon vs the relation between the english language and morse code. So, the isomorphism between experiences and brain states is one by nature not by convention. To determine if there is a natural isomorphism, we propose a hypothesis and thru observation see if it holds in the world.

2. Problem of defining the elements in the “Experience” domain. - Take the desire “wanting to catch a bus” and designate it as an element, call it “E” . The problems start to arise when one begins to think of all the different circumstance one would call “wanting to catch a bus”. We find there is not one common factor among all the cases. So, what brain state element is to connect to what “Experience” element?

3. Problem of duration - where mental states and brain states employ different concepts of duration. For example, Wittgenstein put forward the following example, “Indeed one scarcely ever says that one has believed, understood or intended something “uninterrupted” since yesterday. An interruption of belief would be a period of unbelief, not for example the withdrawing of attention from what one believes - e.g. as in sleep.” This would be unlike the duration of many physical events, say the motion of a ball across the floor could be observed and clocked. Thus, how could we ever determine if one element was simultaneous with other element when the one kind of duration is specific and the other duration is quite vague.

“when you look at a star, you are actually seeing what it looked like years ago. It is entirely possible that some of the stars you see tonight do not actually exist anymore.”

Yeah, like if I watch a movie tonight and see a group of actors. It is entirely possible that some of the actors I watch in a movie tonight do not actually exist anymore.


“One world is enough
For all of us

It may seem a million miles away
But it gets a little closer everyday

One world”

The Police

“The starlight we see are light years away. This means we’re not seeing the real stars as such but a perception of them as they were years ago.”

This is a bizarre “anti-realist” way of putting.

Let me put it like a typical scientist would “The starlight we see is light years away. This means we see these stars as they were years ago.” “Real” and “Perception” is drop out because they are superfluous.

“The third world breathes our air tomorrow
We live on the time we borrow
In our world there's no time for sorrow
In their world there is no tomorrow
One world is enough
For all of us
One world is enough
For all of us
Lines are drawn upon the world
Before we get our flags unfurled
Whichever one we pick
It's just a self deluding trick” The Police

The choice between “realism” and “anti-realism” should be decided based on ethical and/or practical consideration rather than some decision of the veracity of a metaphysical picture. If my fellowing human being is just a mere projection, would making them suffer carry any consequence in ones mind. If the charging lion is attacking me, would or should the mind care about the inevitability of the pending doom?

If you say, the mind would react as if real, this distinction then seems useless: thus let us commit it to the large pile of useless ideas that have littered humanity’s long intellectual history.

Wittgenstein wrote this in his last section Philosophical Investigations “The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a “young science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set Theory). For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.)

The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.”