It's not that when we perceive a tree we perceive a concept but that when we perceive a tree we are "perceiving treely", which is a mental state. — Michael
I'm asking if "There are Cypress trees lining the bank" states the way things are if and when there are Cypress trees lining the banks?..............I'd like to read your answer to the question above — creativesoul
Being conscious of perceiving requires language use. Otherwise, one merely perceives. One can be conscious of what they're perceiving, but one cannot be conscious of the fact that they are perceiving until and unless they have language use as a means to talk about that as a subject matter in its own right. — creativesoul
You need not know that your belief is true in that case in order for it to be so. — creativesoul
A capable creature need not know that they're seeing a Cypress tree in order to see one......................I'm making the point that to see the green apple as "a green apple" requires language use, whereas seeing the green apple does not. — creativesoul
We do not perceive mental concepts. — creativesoul
That looks like special pleading for elementary particles. What makes them different from Cypress trees? — creativesoul
If "direct knowledge" is aphenomenal knowledge, it wouldn't seem to make sense as a concept. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So, humoncular regress concerns aside, — Count Timothy von Icarus
If brains and sense organs perceive, and they are part of the world, wherein lies the separation that makes the relationship between brains and the world indirect? — Count Timothy von Icarus
If knowledge only exists phenomenally, calling phenomenal knowledge indirect would be like saying we only experience indirect pain, — Count Timothy von Icarus
The idea is that there is some alternative vantage point which is more fundamental than phenomenal experience, and which makes inferences based on the phenomenal experience. — Leontiskos
But of course the noumenal isn't actually said to to only act/exist in-itself, it's said to act on us, to cause. So we know it through its acts, but then this is said to not be true knowledge. How so? — Count Timothy von Icarus
There has to be a way to distinguish between fantasy and fiction, between Narnia and Canada. So, to simply say that dragons and gorillas both come from mind is to miss something that differentiates them. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Is the claim that something only has "ontological existence" if it is "mind independent?" Wouldn't everything that exists have ontological existence? — Count Timothy von Icarus
So the concept cat only has to do with humans and nothing outside them? I just don't find this plausible. This would seem to lead to an all encompassing anti-realism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In anti-realism, the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.
It is true that, in the case of translation too, we have the problem of underdetermination since the translation of the native’s sentences is underdetermined by all possible observations of the native’s verbal behaviour so that there will always remain rival translations which are compatible with such a set of evidence.
Wittgenstein pointed out that if language is defined as something used to communicate between two or more people, then, by that definition, you can't have a language that is, in principle, impossible to communicate to other people. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In §243 of his book Philosophical Investigations explained it thus: “The words of this language are to refer to what only the speaker can know — to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language.” ............Wittgenstein goes on to argue that there cannot be such a language.
I find that mereological nihilism (i.e. the denial that wholes like trees and cats really exist) tends to have two problems. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is plenty of work in the philosophy of physics and physics proper that claims to demonstrate that "particles" are just another of those things that don't really exist "independently of humans." They are a contrivance to help us think of things in the terms we are used to. — Count Timothy von Icarus
mathematized conceptions of the universe, ontic structural realism, tends to propose that the universe as a whole is a single sort of mathematical object......................Everything seems to interact with everything else — Count Timothy von Icarus
How do we resolve the apparent multiplicity of being with its equally apparent unity? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Where exactly do you see the trees, cats, and thunderstorms as coming from? — Count Timothy von Icarus
But this presents a puzzle for me. If the experience of trees is caused by this unity, then it would seem like the tree has to, in some way, prexist the experience. Where does it prexist the experience? — Count Timothy von Icarus
1. It doesn't really make sense to declare that "human independent" being is more or less real. — Count Timothy von Icarus
2. Notions like tree, cat, tornado, etc. would seem to unfold throughout the history of being and life, having an etiology that transcends to mind/world boundary — Count Timothy von Icarus
3. Self-conscious reflection on notions, knowing how a notion is known, and how it has developed, would be the full elucidation of that notion, rather than a view where the notion is somehow located solely in a "mind-independent" realm, which as you note, has serious plausibility problems — Count Timothy von Icarus
Seeing the color green as "green" is what we do after talking about it. — creativesoul
Would you say something of the object makes it appear green, or makes you perceive it as being green, or makes it reflect that wavelength, for instance chlorophyll? — NOS4A2
You can contrast the object with other objects of similar or dissimilar colors. So it’s clear to me that something of that object makes it green. What makes it not green, in your view? — NOS4A2
We know the object is green because that’s what it looks like. — NOS4A2
Collections of atoms exist independently of us, but that this collection of atoms is a car is not independent of us. — Michael
Some philosophers are wary of admitting relations because they are difficult to locate. Glasgow is west of Edinburgh. This tells us something about the locations of these two cities. But where is the relation that holds between them in virtue of which Glasgow is west of Edinburgh? The relation can’t be in one city at the expense of the other, nor in each of them taken separately, since then we lose sight of the fact that the relation holds between them (McTaggart 1920: §80). Rather the relation must somehow share the divided locations of Glasgow and Edinburgh without itself being divided.
“Bradley’s Regress” is an umbrella term for a family of arguments that lie at the heart of the ontological debate concerning properties and relations. The original arguments were articulated by the British idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley, who, in his work Appearance and Reality (1893), outlined three distinct regress arguments against the relational unity of properties. Bradley argued that a particular thing (a lump of sugar) is nothing more than a bundle of qualities (whiteness, sweetness, and hardness) unified into a cohesive whole via a relation of some sort. But relations, for Bradley, were deeply problematic. Conceived as “independent” from their relata, they would themselves need further relations to relate them to the original relata, and so on ad infinitum. Conceived as “internal” to their relata, they would not relate qualities at all, and would also need further relations to relate them to qualities. From this, Bradley concluded that a relational unity of qualities is unattainable and, more generally, that relations are incoherent and should not be thought of as real.
You cannot believe that the Cypress trees along the banks of Mississippi delta backwaters only exist within your mind. — creativesoul
The question is whether or not - during the all times when we are looking at Cypress trees lining the banks - if we are directly perceiving the world as it is — creativesoul
You figure the tree stops being a directly perceptible entity that has existed long before you ever came across it simply because you've never seen one? — creativesoul
You cannot believe that the Cypress trees along the banks of Mississippi delta backwaters only exist within your mind. — creativesoul
I'm asking if "There are Cypress trees lining the bank" states the way things are if and when there are Cypress trees lining the banks? — creativesoul
You and I are most certainly working from very different notions of "mind" and "perception". — creativesoul
You've always held false belief then. It is sometimes possible — creativesoul
We need not know the meaning of "trees lining the banks" in order to see trees lining the banks. — creativesoul
Many millennia of being embedded in the world have granted sapiens in particular, and biological sight in general, the ability to receive information from their surroundings, including color. It is because organisms have been in the world and directly interacted with it this whole time that has allowed them to do so. I wager that had perception been at any time indirect, the evolution of perception would not have occurred at all and we’d still possess the perceptual abilities of some Cambrian worm. — NOS4A2
One of the central flaws in Kant’s theory of knowledge is that he has blown up the bridge of action by which real beings manifest their natures to our cognitive receiving sets. He admits that things in themselves act on us, on our senses; but he insists that such action reveals nothing intelligible about these beings, nothing about their natures in themselves, only an unordered, unstructured sense manifold that we have to order and structure from within ourselves. But action that is completely indeterminate, that reveals nothing meaningful about the agent from which it comes, is incoherent, not really action at all. (W. Norris Clarke) — Count Timothy von Icarus
Are the trees lining the banks not bald cypress? — creativesoul
Are the trees lining the banks not bald cypress?... Are those things in our mind? I would not think a direct realist would arrive at that. — creativesoul
I think the implication is that if you can take a thought and ferry it through the air to cause a thought in the other person, this constitutes telepathy. — AmadeusD
Whence the need for omniscience? — creativesoul
I’m not sure how something can in fact be orange but appears blue, so I cannot suppose it. — NOS4A2
Colour vision deficiency (colour blindness) is where you see colours differently to most people, and have difficulty telling colours apart. There's no treatment for colour vision deficiency that runs in families, but people usually adapt to living with it. (www.nhs.uk/)
How do you know that it is in fact orange if you never see the orange? — jkop
A recurring theme is that one can never experience a thing as it is due to this distance and the things in between one and the other...To say we do not perceive light, for instance, which is of the world, cannot be maintained, especially given how intimate this relationship is — NOS4A2
That'll be the article which ends: The question, now, is not so much whether to be a direct realist, but how to be one. — Banno
Whilst the debate between sense-datum theorists and adverbialists (and between these and other theories) is not as prominent as it once was, the debate between intentionalists and naive realist disjunctivists is a significant ongoing debate in the philosophy of perception: a legacy of the Problem of Perception that is arguably “the greatest chasm” in the philosophy of perception (Crane (2006)). The question, now, is not so much whether to be a direct realist, but how to be one.
Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.
Why in the world do you think direct realists think that? — flannel jesus
How are we to know which parts of our experience provide us with “raw” information about the external world? — Michael
a billiard ball's path contains information about the cue ball that struck it — Count Timothy von Icarus
I take Luke to be saying that indirect realists think perception would have to be “untainted by representation” for it to be direct. — Jamal
This is why many naive realists describe the relation at the heart of their view as a non-representational relation.
A factual statement about the contents of your sense organs and thoughts, not the facts of the objectivity of the world. — Corvus
Here you must realise that photons of light is also an abstraction — Corvus
The cat cannot see the mouse without its eyes. — Corvus
I knew you were engaging in some sort of language games. — Corvus
I really don't care to argue what someone means, or should mean, by "I see x". — flannel jesus
I'm concerned primarily with the experience of it all - if a direct realist says "I see things as they really are", I don't see that as some opportunity for a semantic argument, to me it looks like an unambiguous statement about their visual experience — flannel jesus
Your distinction seems to me to be one without a difference because photons are of the external world, and if so, one is immediately and directly perceiving the external world — NOS4A2
This sounds like you are being pedantically sceptic here. — Corvus
This point proves that the categorisation of indirect and direct realist is a myth. — Corvus
It would be unreasonable to conclude that Mars doesn't exist just because it takes time for the photons of light to arrive at one's eyes. — Corvus
This is something that no one can verify, unless he could have a discussion with the cat about it. — Corvus
If there was no reasoning applied to the shapes and colour, you would have no idea what it is — Corvus
There is still the body of the dead mouse in the external world where it died. — Corvus
In perception, the most critical factor is the subjectivity, then objectivity. — Corvus
You say "I see Mars", because you applied (with or without knowing) your reasoning onto the shapes and colours hitting your eyes. — Corvus
I am saying that the cat sees the mouse, not the photons of light. — Corvus
For the cat, photons of light is a fantasy invention by RussellA — Corvus
You see a bright dot, and first you don't know what it is. — Corvus
How does cat know photons of light is the mouse? — Corvus
The cat sees the mouse. The cat doesn't care about the photons of light, does he? — Corvus
Are dogs and cats indirect realists or direct realists? — Corvus
“Sense data”, or “sense datum” in the singular, is a technical term in philosophy that means “what is given to sense”. Sense data constitute what we, as perceiving subjects, are directly aware of in perceptual experience, prior to cognitive acts such as inferring, judging, or affirming that such-and-such objects or properties are present. In vision, sense data are typically described as patches exhibiting colours and shapes.
I don't need anybody to jump through hoops to know what I'm saying when I say "I can see my house from here". — flannel jesus
The direct realist would say "I see what appears to be a bent stick, but I know it's really pretty straight, because I took it out of the water". — Janus