It's not even a question. There is no more reason 'why' the "sun rises" than why there is a universe in the first place! — charleton

But cosmologists do ask and attempt to answer the question as to why the observable universe exists, and how it came to be the way it is. Saying there is no reason why is settling for skepticism before all possible science and metaphysics has been explored. How do we know there isn't a why?

Like with any rule or principle of necessity, what we mean by causality cannot be verbally represented but only behaviourally demonstrated, similar to how a mathematician cannot linguistically represent what he means by "infinity", for it is a rule pertaining to the behaviour of the mathematician and it is not an object that the mathematician is pointing at. — sime

I don't agree with that notion of mathematics at all. And as for the white/black swans, all that example shows is that induction means we can be wrong about what we take to be universal. That doesn't mean there aren't universal laws.

There are various suggestions as to what that something might be. As there are criticisms of them. But noone conception of causality seems to be free of legitimate criticism.

* What I understand here as necessary connection is "production", not just dependence. — Πετροκότσυφας

Good point. There needs to be something else to show why A necessarily follows B, but D only follows C by accident. Or to show how correlation differs from causation.

It's true that all conceptions of causation have difficulties. I lean toward an underlying relationship between phenomena, because it all came from a common starting point in or prior to the Big Bang, whether that was the quantum vacuum or what not

It's not that there are brute particulars that happen to always behave a certain way, it's that all the particulars are related in a way that necessitates their common behavior. And that's why physics has been so successful in unifying phenomena, such as electricity and magnetism.

In short, there are fundamental underlying relationships to the cosmos that explain the observed regularities. That's the causation, however it works.

Using that as an argument in favor of a metaphysically thick theory of causality is really weird, since what Kant does is to take causality out of the world and put it in us. — Πετροκότσυφας

Right, but the point was that Kant saw a big problem with Hume's view of causation, which was that it led to widespread skepticism, and made science impossible. So Kant's objective was to save science by reintroducing causality and other necessary categories as structures of human thought.

The consequence is the unknowable things in the themselves, but at least we're still able to do science confidently within our human filtered objective (or intersubjective) world of common experience.

So mechanics is just a limit state description of fluctuations gone to equilibrium. It is not the way the world fundamentally is - at the small or primal scale. But it is certainly the way the world has pretty much become once it has cooled and expanded enough to be completely constrained by its own history. — apokrisis

That's a much better attempt than mere regularity. Regularity renders everything as brute. The sun could stop shining for no reason, but it just continues to shine for no reason. The fact that we can come up with good explanations for many necessary situations belies this account of causation.

It's only when we get down to the quantum level, or are dealing with entropy that the causal explanations turn into probabilistic explanations, and we arrive at brute posits. But there's no reason to do that for phenomena we can provide causal explanations for. As such, Humean causation is impoverished.

The laws we devise are consequent on this and not things that the universe is compelled to obey. It's just the way things are. Making physical laws is just a short hand to assist us to describe our understanding, and as such are contingent on the continued observations we make. — charleton

That still doesn't answer the question as to why the sun would rise hundreds of billions of times in a row. The claims is that there is no reason for the sun to continue to shine, it just does. This is at odds with scientific explanation, which posits reasons why the sun shines, and thus it's perfectly valid for us to expect it to continue to do so. This isn't because of habit, it's because of gravity and nuclear physics.

Hume demands that we can only observe and record. The only way we can have knowledge about the universe is to see if our observations repeat, and by habitually we can come to conclusions a posteriori. — charleton

Kant doesn't think Hume can do this without causality being a structure of our cognitive capabilities. It's not that we observe B always following A and then come up with the concept of causality out of habit, it's that we're wired to filter the world that way. We expect causality to be a feature of the world like space & time, because that's how we experience the world.

Hume demands that we can only observe and record. The only way we can have knowledge about the universe is to see if our observations repeat, — charleton

The worry here expressed by both Plato and Kant is that skepticism is the result, not knowledge. Sensory impressions alone can't give us knowledge. There must be something that structures our experiences, whether it be Kantian categories of Plato's forms/remembrances.

See, I think that sounds perfectly sane. I think the reason you think it sounds absurd is because it goes against what you thought causality is (but is not.) — Magnus Anderson

Nah, I think it goes against any adequate explanation of necessary relations between A & B.

Information? So facts are cognitive things? I guess that the answer to the original question, then, is that facts are observer-dependent (even if the object/event/state-of-affairs isn't)? — Michael

Not sure, but I'm not comfortable with saying facts are out there in the world. There is a close relationship with facts and states of affairs, but they're not the same thing in my view. Consider that the facts can be wrong. States of affairs can't be wrong. But what we take to be the facts can be.

This suggests that facts are observer-dependent to an extent. And what sort of facts we're interested in will impact how we talk about a particular state of affairs. One could say that we generate facts (or information) from our interactions with states of affairs, based on what we're interested in.

o what's a fact, if not the object/state-of-affairs? Is it the true statement? — Michael

It's information about the states of affairs, which can be as simple as noting the color property of grass, or the direction the object is moving.

And what are states of affairs? Facts or objects? — Michael

Objects or events. The facts are gleaned from the states of affairs.

I don't know. Do true statements refer to facts or objects? Does the statement "the ball is falling" refer to the fact that the ball is falling or to the falling ball? — Michael

True statements regarding empirical conditions have to refer to objective states of affairs other people can verify, however we wish to metaphysically classify those things. The ball is falling is true when it corresponds to an empirical situation with a falling ball.

where the green grass is just a statement based on individual experience that is much like the beetle in Wittgenstein's box. — Posty McPostface

It can't just be individual experience per Wittgenstein's no private language argument. Statements of facts must be sociological. Other people agree that the grass is green such that we can construct propositions about it.

I have a hard time with the concept that B following A always happens, but it could also not happen. It just so happens in our universe that the sun will continue to shine as long as the physicists estimate, but the nuclear/gravitational process that produces fusion might not hold tomorrow for no reason.

In the podcast, they were noting that Wittgenstein's analysis showed that scientific laws are mistaken when presented as reasons for why things always happen a certain way. The sun doesn't shine every day because of gravitational pressure resulting in fusion of atoms, that's just what a bunch of atoms in the sun happen to do for billions of years. But they might not tomorrow. However, in our universe, it just happens to be the case that they will (or so we think).

Thus Wittgenstein/Hume can preserve necessity (if B does end up always following A), while not introducing any mysterious causality. That sounds absurd.

This does not imply that they are a matter of chance. Indeed, admitting that they are a matter of chance would amount to offering a further explanation—a chancy one—of their presence. The friends of RVC firmly deny the alleged need to appeal to a different ontological category (something which is not a regularity but has metaphysical bite) to explain the presence of regularities — Psillos

But the claim was that the sun could cease to rise (shine) tomorrow. That it continues to rise is just a contingency that has always held to this point.

I don't see how that's different from the coin always landing heads. It could land tails, but it just doesn't. That sounds no different than probability, except we wouldn't know what sort of probability to assign to a star ceasing to shine, since we haven't observed that.

I always felt some sympathy for poor Madame Guyon. — Wayfarer

You've read Madame Guyon? Her stuff is pretty deep. Sort of reminds me of Buddhism in a way, with a Christian interpretation. The whole attempt to achieve union with God sounds like trying to achieve Nirvana, death to self sounds like becoming detached from desire, and so on. Runs a lot deeper than your average religious teaching, anyway.

Life is not Jeopardy folks! — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Don't you mean Wheel of Fortune?

What what did he put between which what? What what is what? — Sapientia

Depends on what the definition of what was. I wonder what Augustino is doing about all this.

I'm rather upset you put what in between two whats. Ruined my night.

Is it what it is?

Confirmed universe is click baiting physicists.

Are we looking at our experience, or are we looking at the tree? — creativesoul

We say we're looking at a tree, because we have an experience of seeing a tree that can be backed by other people, instruments, etc. The tree is empirically verifiable.

This isn't the case with dreams, hallucinations, etc. Although pre-scientific cultures may have thought otherwise.

I'll have to think about it. Seems like you have memory and perception going on at the same time.

My eyes are open the entire time. — creativesoul

Stay woke, brother.

Even if you find out your pain is simulated.

So perception is not equivalent to experience. — creativesoul

Nope, but perception is one kind of experience.

Perception and experience in the sense Marchesk put forth are a catch-all for everything and anything mental... — creativesoul

I meant experience to mean anything we're conscious of, which includes mental images. Sometimes those are the result of perception, and sometimes other faculties, such as dreaming.

The question in the OP is whether the ability to experience mental images when not perceiving has any bearing on the nature of perception. The notion that we "behold" a mental image when seeing is at the root of both idealism and skepticism about the external world.

The realization that there is a physiological and psychological process that must occur for us to perceive is a the root of Kantianism.

Perception seems to imply some sort of conscious recognition. You feel the floor beneath you feet more often than you perceive it. — Banno

Makes sense.

What if I punch myself? Is that perception? How does it differ from kicking a rock? Am I beholding a mental construct of myself? Am I experiencing myself or a mental construct of myself? — creativesoul

I'm not sure. Nobody has talked about the worst argument ever from Stove that Street linked to.

Feeling is not perceiving? — creativesoul

There is proprioception in addition to the five senses. Feeling the floor under you counts as perception.

If I see with my eyes, why don't I feel with my toe? — creativesoul

You don't perceive with just your eyes, although we say you see with your eyes. Cut out your visual cortex, and there will be no visual perception.

So yeah, in ordinary language, you do feel with your toe. But your toe itself doesn't perceive anything.

Your toe doesn't perceive, but it is part of an organism that does. The nerves in your toe feed the tactile and pain signals to your central nervous system.

I'm perceiving kicking the rock? — creativesoul

Yes, and then the pain of a stubbed toe afterward. The nerves in your skin provide tactile perception.

I'm experiencing pain when I stub my toe on a rock. Seems you want to say that I'm experiencing the rock. — creativesoul

You're experiencing kicking the rock, which is painful.

Can I stub my toe on a virtual rock? — creativesoul

On Star Trek you can, if you disable the Holodeck safety protocols.

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, it's possible to elicit an experience. We might call it a hallucination.

But what if it were possible to create a visual experience of the device being used while it's being used to create the experience? Would we be "beholding" the device, or a mental image?

An experience of an external object that results from use of your sensory organs.

I also find it reassuring that we regularly navigate the world with considerable success, and even modify it in ways which indicate, to a reasonable degree of probability, that we're interacting with something which is very close to what we think it is and perceive it to be, and that, e.g. the roads we see and build and cars we drive on them are very close to what we think them to be and won't suddenly prove to be something else. — Ciceronianus the White

That is a good point. Technology works, we're able to survive, experiments are repeatable, etc.

I'm not going to read the whole thread - but thanks for pointing this out to me. I don't see anything objectionable in it. — Banno

I seriously doubt you actually agree with Street's position, but perhaps I never fully understood yours. I took you to argue for direct access to trees. The tree we see is what the tree is (within the limits of our perceptual abilities).

All those threads about Mount Everest being the tallest mountain before anyone knew it, and post apocalyptic chairs existing without any perceivers sounds pretty real to me.

And I tend to want to agree with you, but posters like Apo, Michael, Street, etc. make rather good points against it.

No, I think we neither see 'directly' nor 'indirectly'. We simply see the trees: which is not to say we see them 'directly' because it's not even in principle possible for 'seeing' to take place 'indirectly': the qualifier 'direct/indirect' is a defunct one that has no place in talking about perception, it's a distinction without an intelligible difference. — StreetlightX

I see what you're saying, but it really is equivalent to the indirect realist position, assuming you allow for those external inputs. What you're arguing is that naive realism cannot be true, because the act of perception generates an appearance for us. The tree we see is an appearance. It is not whatever is generating the external inputs, because it makes no sense to talk about what a tree looks like when nobody is perceiving it.

Edit:

Perhaps this is more Kantian than indirect, depending on what the indirect realist has to say about the actual tree (if it is a tree), not it's appearance.

The objections to the OP posted by Ciceronianus and Street are quite right; — Banno

Good of you to finally join the conversation. Now all we need is TGW and Landru to make this topic great again.

But, you ignored the post where Street quoted a neuroscientist talking about how waking experiences are a form of dreaming, and then his follow up discussion on how the tree appears to us cannot be what it is, since it is an appearance.

So I don't think Street's approach is in agreement with yours at all, except that he is trying to dissolve the issue by saying it is an abuse of language, like yourself. But you think access is direct, and Street, from what I understand, thinks that kind of talk makes no sense, since all we perceive are appearances.

Or at least, that's what I've surmised from this thread.

t would seem to me, also, that they don't provide much cause to reasonably doubt "normal waking experience." In fact, of course, we don't doubt it. — Ciceronianus the White

We don't, but we do (sometimes) worry about what we're perceiving. To quote random scientist in Mr. Robot:

"And I'm fascinated by the greatest unsolved mystery. Do we see reality as it is? If I close my eyes, I can imagine that everything we experience, everything we see, think and do, is unfolding simultaneously in a parallel universe. And if so, how many copies of ourselves exist? And might our mental states be conjoined?"

Not to endorse parallel universe crossing consciousness, but just the popular idea that reality isn't necessarily as things appear to us. That our senses might be "deceiving" us.

Thus the question of whether perception is direct or not. Or more broadly put, the problem of perception. How do we know that what we perceive is real, and if we don't know, then how do we justify knowledge?