The fact that we make mistakes, mis-identify, are tricked, and all the other things Austin explores, should point (as Austin does) to the ordinary ways by which we resolve those issues. Philosophy turns these instances into a intellectualized "problem" which underlies all cases, thus unconnected from our procedures and familiarity, because it can then have one solution, here "direct perception", or "qualia". — Antony Nickles

It's an example of what Dewey called The Philosophical Fallacy, now that I think of it--simply put, the disregard of context. Whatever is thought in philosophy to be true (or I would say untrue) under certain conditions may be claimed to be true (or untrue) under all conditions.

Austin, of course, has been the butt of many jokes, the quintessential irrelevant Oxford Don, putting the anal back into analytic, and so on. — Banno

It doesn't matter. Think of the loonies and colossi of affectation he savaged, so politely. Well, fairly politely.

Reading Sense and Sensibility resulted in a kind of epiphany, for me. The revelation of the profoundly errant views of the proponents of sense-data and such artifices was stunning. I felt as if I was Paul, but on the road to some kind of metaphysical Damascus, struck in the face by a cream pie and knocked off the high horse of philosophy as it became after Descartes.

[I've been wanting to do something with Paul being hit by a pie in the face for some time now. Best I can do for now].

He had the decency, in his mature thinking, to pretty much drop talk of "truth", replacing it with "assertion" — Banno

"Warranted assertibility" is the language he used, in place of "truth" and "knowledge." The idea being to avoid the baggage coming with both terms, and focus on function in the process of inquiry.

You're treating a thought as if it's an object, a thing. I say a thought isn't a thing. You merely beg the question when you compare a thought with a building. Your analogy doesn't work. Now if you were to claim I must know what a building is to say a thought isn't a building, that seems clear, but I don't think that helps you much.

What has changed? To reply, "I've thought about a cup" doesn't help enough. We know that; what we want to know is, How are we to understand this thought event if it isn't a thing and it isn't an image? — J

If you're looking for an answer that would satisfy a neuroscientist, I can't give one.

We walk. Walking isn't a thing, nor is it an image. We eat. Eating isn't a thing or an image. We understand what it is to walk and eat even though they aren't things or images. Walking, eating and thinking are activities we engage in when interacting with the rest of the world; they're part of how we live.

In order to write the sentence "Sorry, but I don't think there is such a thing as a "thought of a cup."" you must have had the thought of a cup. — RussellA

No. I knew instead what "a thought of a cup" would mean in the context of our discussion. When I think about a cup I'm doing something, but no "thought of a cup" exists.

"Thinking about a cup" seems to me a fairly good description of thinking about a cup. But thinking about something takes place; thinking is a process. We think in certain circumstances. We don't think about a cup when we look at it. We might think about a cup when we need to use it and wonder where we left it, for example. When we do that, an image of the cup doesn't suddenly form in our mind; we don't begin scanning objects around us comparing them with the image. "Is that the cup? No, it's a toaster--it comports with the thought of a toaster in my mind, not the thought of a cup." That doesn't happen. We know what a damn cup is; we refresh our steps, we check the cupboards we normally put cups in, or the dishwasher.

Who are we to condemn for this? — FreeEmotion

For what?

It's interesting that scholars have concluded that the Gospel of Luke was written 10 years or so after the Roman siege of Jerusalem and their destruction of the Second Temple and most of the city in 70 A.D. or C.E. It explains the reference to the encirclement of the city. Construction of ramparts around a city and encircling it with legionary camps was standard Roman practice during sieges.

It is not a cup that is the object of consciousness, but rather the thought of a cup that is the object of consciousness. There is no cup in our minds, only the thought of a cup. — RussellA

Sorry, but I don't think there is such a thing as a "thought of a cup." We may think of a cup, certainly, but no "thought of a cup" results; we create no "thought of a cup" thereby.

A very predictable one. — Vera Mont

Well, don't be too hard on yourself.

This morning, when making a cup of tea, it didn't pass my mind whether the cup was an appearance or a thing-in-itself. But this is a Philosophy Forum, where such considerations are of interest. — RussellA

Well, philosophy isn't necessarily devoted to questions or issues which make no difference. It's been called the love of wisdom, for example, and wisdom to me doesn't involve doubting where is no reason to doubt. It would seem wiser to accept that the cup we use every day without mishap is, indeed, a cup rather than something else.

Regardless, I think that what you call Indirect and Direct Realism reflect a pseudo-problem.

Let's take as an example what you say in response to Banno:

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist see a red cup, take it out of the cupboard, boil the kettle and make themselves a cup of tea.

However, the Indirect Realist takes into account the fact that science has told us that the cup we perceive as red is actually emitting a wavelength of 700nm. This causes them to question whether what they perceive as a red object is actually red. They then begin to question the relation between the appearance of an object and the object as a thing-in-itself. — RussellA

Judging from this, both Direct and Indirect Realists see a cup emitting a wavelength of 700nm. If that's the case, both see the same thing. They can agree that there is a cup emitting a wavelength of 700nm which isn't part of them. What is the problem? What are they supposed to see? Presumably, they're not supposed to see a cup which doesn't emit a wavelength of 700nm. Is the problem the fact that a cup emitting a wavelength of 700 mn looks red to us? Why is that a problem? It might look to be another color to a hamster. It remains a cup emitting a wavelength of 700mn, though. It looks to be another color to a hamster because it's a hamster, not a human being.

The cup is made up of atoms (another example). We see a cup made up of atoms, then. Does that make it any less a cup? Might it be a plate or pan?

"Fair and square"? Well, the U.S. certainly did it's best to hide its conquest, theft and fraud in the trappings of the law in some cases, though there was no contract (treaty) it was unwilling to breach or see breached as convenient.

Regarding ownership of land, I don't know whether Israel needs to justify its own existence anymore than any other state. It exists and continues to exist. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't think it need justify its existence; I simply don't think it has any claim to exist because God wills it or because it's the homeland of the Jews.

Providing the callous a reason to ignore their message. — Vera Mont

A very sanctimonious response!

his kind of thinking occurs to most people by the time they are teenagers. For some it's a pathway to radical politics. For others it's a retreat into denial and the status quo. — Tom Storm

And for others, it's an opportunity to be sanctimonious.

Yes, there is a chair in the world that we interact with, but does this world of chairs exist in our minds or outside our minds? — RussellA

I think this is a question only if we assume that we or our "minds" are separate from (outside) of the world. That's not an assumption I think we should make.

We are a part of the world, not outside it. The chair is a part of the world as well. The chair isn't part of us. We aren't a part of the chair. We are a part of the world. The world isn't inside us, as we're a part of it.

We have certain characteristics as human beings. We interact with the world as human beings do. We see as human beings do, hear as they do, etc. There's nothing surprising about this, and it doesn't establish in itself that we can't know what it is we encounter or interact with. And, if we can't know what "things in themselves" really are, what possible difference would it make?

It is authoritative for Jews and Christians. — BitconnectCarlos

I would suppose it is, when it suits them at least, but am not certain that's the case as far as any claim of Jews to Palestine. I know the wackier Christians are great fans of Israel as they hope its existence indicates the Second Coming is nigh, and Jesus will soon return to send the great majority of us to eternal punishment, which they will delight in watching from Heaven. But I don't know that's a common view, and Christians haven't been especially keen on the idea that the country belongs to the Jews over the years.

It is not just the time spent ruling. The Torah, the meat and potatoes of Jewish religious canon, details the connection between the Hebrew people and the land of Israel. The events described in the Torah occur before this period. When the land changed hands away from the Israelites it was explained as loss of divine favor, often due to the Israelites own misbehavior. A common biblical motif. — BitconnectCarlos

Quite common, I know. How else explain why one's God-given homeland hasn't been home for thousands of years? But I assume you're aware that many people don't consider the Bible or the Torah to be determinative, especially when it comes to ownership of land.

The Jews continued to live in the region after the Babylonian Captivity, restablishing a Second Temple (Books of Ezra and Nehemiah) under Persian rule. They later won their independence from Alexander's Persian successors, the Selucids (Books of the Maccabees). Hence the existence of Judea at the time of Rome's arrival in the region. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Then Rome destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus (have you ever seen the Arch of Titus? Men of the legions are shown carrying the treasures of the Temple as part of Titus' triumph in one of the reliefs). The Romans finished the job under Hadrian.

But you're quite right. The idea that land belongs to or was given to a certain people merely because they were there many years ago doesn't work.

Though I can't help thinking that something so clearly absurd (in this telling of the story) would have been noticed long before Wittgenstein — J

Well, there's the "common sense philosophy" of Thomas Reid and others, in reaction to the balderdash of Hume's skepticism and Berkeley's subjectivism (I tend to exaggerate on this issue, I know).

I think (but don't read enough to know) that modern efforts in metaphysics benefit from the therapeutic philosophy of Wittgenstein, Austin, Ryle and others, and may be of more worth as a result.

We both have the concept of a "thing" in our minds. — RussellA

Neither you nor I have minds lurking within us, separate from the rest of us. We think as part of our interaction with the rest of the world. Language as well is a result of that interaction, as are the definitions arrived at in the use of language.

It seems that your position is that of Idealism. — RussellA

More that of Deweyian Pragmatism than anything else, I think.

Our Bible details centuries of Israelite kings ruling in Israel in antiquity (from around 1000 BC-600 BC). — BitconnectCarlos

Who's this "our" I wonder?

If one is inclined to think time spent ruling land identifies a people with it, I would think the fact no Israeli kings, or Jews in general, ruled in Israel since around 600 B.C.E., suggests there is no connection between Judaism and Palestine. As for the promise made by God in "our" Bible, it would seem God changed his mind when he allowed Babylon to conquer Israel, as so many others did.

In your opinion, then, what accounts for the fact that thousands of first-rate philosophers have taken D & K seriously, devoted enormous scholarship and brainpower to investigating the pluses and minuses of the Cartesian/Kantian tradition, built upon this tradition to explore many modern philosophical questions, etc.? — J

It's astonishing, I know. I don't know if it can be attributed to only one or even a few causes. I think we find some of the answers in the Analytic and Ordinary Language philosophy that developed in the 20th century--that is to say, the fact that the intelligence of philosophers was bewitched by means of language, as Wittgenstein said. That bewitchment may result from reification of concepts, for example. Another factor may be an adherence to a correspondence or spectator view of reality, criticized by Dewey and others, or the dualism resulting from the claimed mind-body distinction. There may have been a tendency to distinguish "ordinary" or "common sense" knowledge from "pure" or "absolute" knowledge, a kind of aristocratic view, drawing a distinction between practical knowledge (requiring consideration of probabilities and exercise of judgment) and knowledge of unchanging truth, available only to the wise.

e all have the concept of a chair in our minds, and we only know what a chair is because in our minds is the concept of a chair. — RussellA

I would say there is no "thing" called a concept floating about in a thing called a "mind." Concepts and minds all exist in the same world as chairs. What we call "concepts" are a consequence of our interaction with the world of which we're a part. We'd have no concept of a chair but for the fact that, as living organisms of a particular kind in an environment, we found it useful and desirable to sit on something different from the ground or a natural object, and we call what results from that a "chair."

it is not a contention with transcendental idealism; as it is a necessary and perfectly anticipated consequence of it. — Bob Ross

Anticipated by whom? Not by Kant, I think, or whatever Kant-in-himself may have been.

For my part, I blame Descartes for this adventure in the preposterous, and much else for that matter. He started the ball rolling, and doomed otherwise fine minds to the remarkably silly task of determining whether they and all they regularly and continually interact with every moment really exist and are what they are shown to be while we interact with them. To Kant, though, is reserved the claim that there is, e.g., some thing which I call a chair and sit on all the time, which although it is in all respects a chair as I understand a chair to be and I use it as such, cannot be known.

You'd be the life of any party.

Whatever the things are in-themselves is entirely impossible to know. — Bob Ross

In which case, they should be of no concern to us. Not exactly a contention, I know, but an entirely reasonable judgment.

Not a big Jung fan, I'm afraid, although I admit the thought of God defecating on his creation has a certain charm. Perhaps defecation represented the act of creation; I can't recall how he or others interpreted this vision.

It's odd how different the monotheism, if we can call it that, of the Abrahamic religions, led to an interpretation of God which differed so from the interpretation of the pagan philosophers who acknowledged that there was but one God and considered the many gods of traditional religion to be aspects of the one God. I tend to agree that those of the pre-Christian West were largely unconcerned with the notions that have bothered and worried us since, some of which you enumerate, and think they were better off for it.

I confess I'm perplexed by the outrage against Harvard's leadership for, it seems, not being sufficiently anti-Hamas and not identifying students so they can be blacklisted by certain corporations. It seems particularly ill-advised to criticize others because they've been insufficiently fervent in their condemnation of Hamas or because they've failed to cooperate in efforts of leaders or corporations to take vengeance against students who are anti-Israel.

That's because they kicked ass. — frank

That they did. Especially after they took Constantinople in 1453.

When was the last time the region was at peace? — frank

My guess would be around the time before 1914. It was Ottoman territory for about 400 years before then, and I think Ottoman rule was relatively undisrupted before WWI.

The other position is that they needn't justify their right to exist any more than any other nation. — Hanover

Say that's true. It's creation would nonetheless remain an injustice.

When never knows where one stands with Perfidious Albion, it's true. But there was the Balfour Resolution, announcing support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and I think that's when the existing mess began to take shaper. Certainly, the British shifted support between Jewish and Arab organizations as it felt was in its interests after 1917 and through WWII, but the Resolution was never revoked; it became a question of who got what, and when.

An injustice in a long line of injustices. It's not like the British mandate that preceded it was any more just. The region was regularly engulfed by war even before there were Muslims or Christians. — Echarmion

Yes, as indeed was most of the world. But nobody has ever claimed the creation of Israel was history's only injustice, and resulted in the only wars ever fought in the region, or anywhere else.

have any of Israel's neighbors ever offered peace or reversed their desire to annihilate the Israeli state and the people in it? — tim wood

If you reject the views that (1) Israel has a religious right to possess and govern the areas at issue; and/or that (2) the Jewish people have a non-religious right to possess and govern the areas at issue because it is their "homeland," then the creation of Israel was an injustice. That those who were displaced as a result, and that those who must live as its subjects though unwilling to do so, resent its creation and hope for its dissolution is unsurprising. Nor is it clear that its continued existence, from the perspective of the Palestinians, will be of any benefit to them, especially given the relentless "settling" of aggressive Jewish communities and the fact that Israel considers itself a place where Jews are to live.

I hold neither of those views, and tend to think of Israel as a creation of Western powers, primarily the U.K., which was bound to create hostility and has continued to result in violence since it was formed.

That said, Israel exists and is unlikely to go away. So, efforts to annihilate it are futile. I frankly feel a two-state solution is the only viable option, but doubt that is something Israel will accept.

Io capisco, I think, but I also think that using metaphors, while apposite in poetry, isn't useful in philosophy--nor is it necessary. In poetry metaphors may be witty or evocative but in philosophy they merely invite misunderstanding and, worse, reification. Minds, ideas, concepts may not be considered
things literally, but are treated as if they were things. Why resort to metaphor in philosophy?

Culture -- including philosophy -- is not a material object, is it? — Gnomon

No, nor is it a thing. Material objects may be constituents of a culture, though, like works of art or structures, and books. Culture may include dances and religions as well.

In philosophical Cosmology, the system of interest is the universe as a whole -- as seen from the outside -- including such immaterial elements as Minds, Ideas, Theories, Symbols, etc -- that are excluded from the Immanentist world. Such non-physical things are meta-physical, in the sense that they transcend the physical boundaries of material objects, and of proximate reality --- which Immanentism believes to be the only reality. — Gnomon

Sorry, but nobody sees the Universe from outside it. Someone may imagine something "beyond it", or speculate regarding something "beyond it" but that, of course, doesn't indicate there is any such thing. Thinking is something we do. It takes place in the Universe because we're there. It doesn't take place outside the Universe, because we're not outside of it. We think by virtue of our interaction with the rest of the Universe; thinking is something we do as active living organisms which are part of an environment.

Your reference to "non-physical things" which "transcend the physical boundaries of material objects" suggests you treat mind, theories, symbols or ideas as equivalent to "things," immaterial but nonetheless existing, like objects, and therefore existing somewhere; but somewhere else (outside the Universe). That's one of the peculiarities of philosophical positions that Analytic and OL philosophy has tried to address (e.g. Gilbert Ryle regarding "mind", addressing Cartesian dualism ).

I'm sorry if my personal philosophical vocabulary has caused you to be "confused" or "uncertain". Yet the problem may be, not the literal meaning of the words, but the polarized belief system (or worldview) associated with certain taboo words*1. It's certainly not my intention to "promote" confusion. — Gnomon

I haven't been referring to you, but to what I believe is the goal of Analytic and OL philosophers like Austin and others--Gilbert Ryle, for example--and the motivation behind their work. And I certainly don't think you're trying to deceive.

Let me try to explain my views regarding metaphysics. I'm not necessarily adverse to it, and have a respect for what has been called the "naturalistic metaphysics" of Dewey and other Pragmatists. But I think that there are limits to what philosophy and philosophers can achieve. There are certain matters which cannot be explained but must be shown, or felt, or evoked, or experienced.

Artists are good at evoking and showing, and in making us feel, through painting, or poetry, or music. Philosophers, in my opinion, are very, very bad at doing so. They become bewildered by our language to paraphrase Wittgenstein, and problems result.

For example, I'm a lapsed Christian of the Catholic variety. The reasons I left Holy Mother Church are many, but in part I did so because felt its doctrines to be inadequate reflections of the divine and contrary to our nature. That's difficult to explain in words, but I found it expressed wonderfully in art, specifically in the poem Sunday Morning written by Wallace Stevens.

I think this may have been the view of Carnap as expressed in the quote from him I noted earlier in this thread. He said that metaphysicians are like musicians without musical ability. They seek to achieve what art can achieve, if anything can, but fail because they're terrible artists.

Given that any such search is only possible for us in media res (not from the "outside" or "beyond"), assuming some transcendent "outside, beyond", like searching "up" on a 2D plane, is both nonsense and imaginary — 180 Proof

Maybe this is included in what you state, but it also presumes that what is beyond the Universe or transcends it is similar enough to what is in it that we're capable of knowing it or making inferences regarding it, in some limited sense. Sometimes it's claimed that perfect versions of what we experience within the Universe are beyond it, or God (who is endowed with characteristics we recognize as existing, if only dimly or in a diminished form, in the Universe). But why should that be the case?

We immanentists agree on that much at least – i.e. Epicureans & Stoics, Kynics & Spinozists, Nietzscheans & Peircean-Deweyans!
an hour ago — 180 Proof

Yes. And so we should. How justify a search for "the real" outside of Nature, beyond the Universe?

Unfortunately, such a bureaucratic conceit would stifle the most creative philosophers. For example, I tried to read Whitehead's Process and Reality --- in which he conceived of a new school of Process Philosophy --- but found its novel technical terminology hard to follow. That's one reason I provide an extensive glossary & footnotes in my thesis and blog*1. — Gnomon

Creating new words is not an issue so much as misusing or redefining words commonly used, thereby promoting confusion and uncertainty. Words such as "real" for example. Or, like Heidegger, manufacturing "the Nothing" which, it appears, is something of a sort, but can only be known if one is "suspended in dread."

Austin in Sense and Sensibilia addressed the case of the pencil in a jar or glass of water. The example was used by some philosophers to support the existence of sense-data and the fact that our senses fail us and cannot be relied upon and, therefore, we can't see what's "real." That's because our senses indicate that the pencil appears "crooked" to us when placed in water--but, behold, it actually doesn't change shape. Austin points our that, first, the pencil doesn't appear "crooked" to us; that we aren't looking at a pencil which suddenly and inexplicably looks crooked, but in fact at a pencil in a glass or water. looking exactly as we expect it to look. We would think and be justified in thinking our senses were deceiving us only if the pencil appeared straight while in a glass of water, in fact. Other traditional examples of our senses deceiving us and preventing us from knowing what is truly the case or what is "real" are the one involving color-blindness and the fact objects appear differently when seen from different locations and perspectives.

These examples are persuasive, though, only if we define what is "real" in an extraordinary and unusual
way. We have to define it as something which cannot be known by humans or experienced by humans. In fact, it must be something which cannot be experienced by any living creature, because living creatures are limited by their characteristics (flies see what flies see; people see what people see; but no creature sees what really is). Presumably, for a believer, God can perceive what's real, but nobody else. And that's a position which has all kinds of implications.

To the contrary, I was distinguishing between Nature and Culture, not Nature and Reality. Nature got along for eons without Culture or Language, until artificial "human nature" -- in the last few ticks of Time -- began dominating natural Nature. Do you think humans are nothing-but Nature? In what sense is Culture or Language Real? Certainly not in the sense of this thread's topic, implying that Real is the opposite of Ideal, which is the exclusive purview of human thought, language & philosophy. :smile: — Gnomon

I would equate Nature with the Universe. We are parts of Nature. Our interactions with the rest of the world (including other humans and animals and objects) are parts of Nature--they take place in the Universe. What we create become parts of the Universe when they're created (just as anthills are parts of Nature/the Universe). It happens our interactions with the rest of the Universe encompass language and culture; they're not separate from the Universe; they take place in it.

T.L. Austin — Gnomon

J. L. Austin, you mean. Not to be confused with John Austin, the esteemed (by me) legal positivist.

has decreed that “a philosopher doesn't get to decide the meaning of a word”. Instead, he insists that we must deal with words as they are found in the wild, so to speak -- uncontaminated by philosophical sophistry. Since when does he have that authority? — Gnomon

Who has the authority to change the (commonly accepted) meaning of a word to accommodate their speculations and musings? It strikes me that if we're going to accuse philosophers of conceit, that accusation is more properly brought against those who disregard the meaning of a word, creating their own meaning for self-serving purposes.

I suppose it was when the Linguistic Turn*1 began to transform Philosophy into a passive observer of the world as it seems to be, instead of an active participant in interpreting the world of “appearances”, that Kant said was a mask over the unknowable ideal “ding an sich”. — Gnomon

Kant, schmant. That old mountebank was the most passive of observers, actually drawing a distinction between us and the world, rendering us incapable of knowing it (not that this makes any difference to us and our interactions with the rest of the world). We and our language are parts of the world. The problems arise when we think of ourselves as apart from it, as you do here:

But Language is the essence of human Culture, and hardly Real, in the sense of Natural*3. — Gnomon

You don't think we're part of nature? Or you think we're not real? Or perhaps you distinguish between humans and their language, one being parts of nature one and the other not? Perhaps you're using words like "nature" and "real" in a peculiar manner, though.

What Austin and others were doing (including Wittgenstein) was pointing out that the misuse of language--the contrived use of it--leads us to make unwarranted conclusions and sends us on expeditions without purpose.