I don't think constant joy and happiness would necessarily be boring either.

There seems to be no logical imperative that continuous happiness and joy be static and dead.

So it should...unless you can convince yourself that you, being up and the night...all do not exist.

:rofl: Maybe your head doesn't exist...I knew a guy once who could put his head between his legs and disappear up his arse.

But Hume would say, no mate, when you close your eyes, you don't see the world.
Do you still believe that the world exists? If yes, what is the reason that you believe in it when you are not perceiving it? — Corvus

Because no matter how many times I do the experiment things are always there when I open my eyes again just as I left them when I closed my eyes. If I have something in front of me, I can close my eyes, yet still feel it when I touch it.

I don't know what you are looking for: there is no logical or any other kind of proof that the world exists. In fact, there are no proofs other than logical or mathematical proofs, there are only inferences to the most plausible explanations. It seems to me that the most plausible explanation for the invariances we see everywhere in nature is that they have their own existence independently of perception.

What more are you looking for? What is the point of this wild goose chase?

Should there be a licence to have children? Short answer: yes. Will such a legislation ever be established in a nontotalitarian regime? No.

The point is that we are talking about a logical ground to believe in the world when not perceiving the world.  Please ask yourself, what is your logical ground for believing in the world when not perceiving the world.  Please don't say the world exists even when you are not perceiving it, because it is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the basis for scepticim regarding the external world. — Corvus

As Hume showed in relation to inductive reasoning, there is no purely logical justification for believing that any of the observed natural regularities will continue to hold. That is because it is not logically contradictory that they may not hold.

However, we have good inductive (not deductive, mind) reason to believe they will hold, since they have never reliably been observed to fail. Hume might say this is merely thinking based on habit, but nonetheless we have good pragmatic reasons to believe that the plethora of observed natural invariances will not suddenly cease to exist. This belief is consistent with the whole coherent and consistent body of scientific knowledge and everyday experience and observations.

The same goes for the belief that things persist when unperceived: that they do persist is merely the inference to the best explanation for why things generally will be found where they were last seen, absent them having been moved in the interim.

Of course, it is not logically contradictory that things should cease to exist and then come back into existence again, but considered against the whole body of science and everyday observations it is highly implausible.

It is obvious that we cannot cut a tree with just words, but we can't cut it if we don't understand the act of 'cutting' either. — javi2541997

This is true, but it is also true that we don't need language in order to understand the act of cutting. Think beavers, for example, or leaf-cutter ants.

“We should not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts”. -C S Peirce

The point, way back, is that we do things with our utterances. — Banno

In the sense that we may act on other people (and some animals) with our utterances, such as to cause, or at least influence, them to do things, I agree.

I cut the tree down by giving an order. — Banno

That seems nonsensical to me; words do not cut downs trees, people do. You influenced someone by words to cut down the tree, you did not cut down the tree, even though, by convention, you may be held responsible for the other's act of cutting down the tree.

Can you change the tree with words? Ordering it cut down will certainly change it. — Banno

You can't cut down a tree, or influence it in any way, with words. You can of course influence other language users with words, you can induce them to cut down the tree. So, it is of course true that we are influenced by our own words and the words of others, that is we are influenced by our understandings of the meanings of those words, and not by the words themselves as mere physical phemomena, whether they come in the form of visual symbols or sounds.

The conversation above with Corvus has me wondering how much this topic depends on an understanding that language is not purely descriptive. — Banno

Who doesn't understand that words are not merely descriptive? Someone who has not given the matter any thought would likely not even explicitly think of words as descriptive, let alone as merely descriptive. This seems like a simplistic strawman to me.

Well, for a start, the word "real" in "nothing is really as it seems" should bring on some hesitancy. What's it doing there? We might take it out, and see what happens. Consider "nothing is as it seems". Well, that doesn't seem right. It seems I am writing this, and you are now reading it, to the extent that one could not make sense of "It seems I am not writing this, and you are not reading it". — Banno

The way I see it the word "real" is just for emphasis. If QM is taken to show us something about the fundamental nature of things, then from that perspective things are not as they seem; that is not solid and static with well-defined boundaries.

The aspects of the body are the body, at least when I look. What distinguishes them beyond the words used to describe it? — NOS4A2

Even without words I see the aspects, movements or activities of the body not as the whole body. I suppose you could say that the totality of all the aspects, movements and activities of the body just is the body, but I never see any totality of aspects, whereas I do see bodies.

That said it is also true that I don't see the totality of any body. but when I look at a body from the front, back or side I still think I am looking at the body. and not necessarily focusing on any specific aspects of it.

I’m not so sure. I cannot see the difference between the body and a bodily process. When I point to either, or both, I am pointing at the same thing. I don’t know how to distinguish between the thing that moves and the movements it makes, as if I was distinguishing between the morning and the evening star. — NOS4A2

The way I understand it, the movements of the body are not separate from the body, but are just aspects of it; so, I don't know how not to distinguish between the two.

That doesn't mean that there is no way of determining which theory is more right, or less wrong. — Ludwig V

I know how to determine which philosophical theories seem more or less right and wrong to me, but not how they seem to other. I can't but think that we all have our own methods and criteria for determining that, and that those methods and criteria are based on our most fundamental presuppositions..

You have put your finger on the way to determine which theory is more right or less wrong. Now, how does one establish whether a theory has any intellectual appeal? By argument, perhaps? — Ludwig V

I know which theories have intellectual appeal to me, and I have to go on what others tell me about what seems to be most appealing to them. By argument or discussion, I might find out what others are convinced by, and i may or may not agree with them. There is a possibility that I or others may change their mind if a convincing counterargument is presented, but my experience on these forums leads me to think that that is relatively rare.

So we parse "Quantum physics say nothing is real" as something like "According to quantum physics, it's not a real thing, it's a..."; and ask what we are to put here - fake, forgery, illusion... — Banno

I interpret the QM claim that nothing is real as meaning something like 'nothing is really as it seems'. Not saying I agree with this as such. but it might be said that in the context, and from the point of view of what QM tells us about the microphysical constitution of ordinary objects, what they are is not what they appear to be.

:up: Information informs only by virtue of being interpreted.

Your critique is apt and well-appreciated...some claims deserve castration lest they reproduce and add to the general confusion...

Gnonsense — wonderer1

:smirk: Gnice...like a gnife to the gnuts...

The question arises, as it invariably does: what mediates perceptions — NOS4A2

All processes are mediated or mediate. Perception can be validly understood as a process.

It is possible that more than one way of thinking about things is valid, in one way or another. But surely some sort of selection will be needed sooner or later. — Ludwig V

Different ways of thinking may be selected as valid depending on context.

Philosophy allows us to keep going beyond the limits of our knowledge, and it is one of the main disciplines of humankind. Yet, there will be big debates amongst all the philosophers and their theories to discern who is more right than the other. — javi2541997

The problem I see is that there is no clear wsy of determining which philosphical theory is more right.

But that doesn't mean anything goes, does it? — Ludwig V

Anything that has no intelectual appeal to virtually anyone will not "go" to be sure. I don't see the 'sense data' theory of perception as being in that category. So I see it as being misleading to say, for example, that Austin has definitively refuted the afore-mentioned theory.

But it still treats perceptions as if they were objects and as if those processes produced a final result, thus allowing Dennett to claim that consciousness is an illusion. What if perception is an activity? What if perceptions are no more objects than a magnetic field or a rainbow or an orbit or heat? BTW, none of those things are events, either. — Ludwig V

I agree that perception is not an object, but it can be understood as a process or, phenomenologically, as an immediate presencing.
Magnetic fields, rainbows etc., can be understood as phenomena if not as objects, as processes if not events.

Perception could also be thought of as an activity, but is that not just another word for 'process' with perhaps an implication of agency thrown in?

You agree that a screen in a flat surface. What is the difference between seeing a portrait of a person in an art gallery and seeing a portrait of a person on a screen. Don't both these appear the same in our visual field, ie, as two-dimensional images? — RussellA

I think we've already covered this: of course, we refer to some images as two-dimensional and I have pointed out that they are not really two-dimensional, although for all intents and purposes the elements in such images all appear to be on the same plane. That was not the salient point though: you had claimed that our visual field itself is two dimensional and that is what I took issue with, and I asked you to support that assertion with argument, which you have so far failed to provide.

Philosophers... always finding problems where there are none. — javi2541997

I think it's more a matter of philosophers finding new and novel ways to imagine things; the "problem" only arises when the demand that there be just one "correct" way of viewing things is made.

It makes more sense to me to think that there are a great many facts of the matter, only some of which we know, but some of those facts can be fairly well understood. — wonderer1

I agree there are many facts about perception, including scientific observations about how it works, but that wasn't my point: the point was that whether it is 'direct' or 'indirect' is a matter of looking at it from different perspectives, using different definitions of 'direct' and 'indirect'. Perhaps the terms 'mediate' and 'immediate' would be better alternatives. Phenomenologically speaking our perceptions certainly seem immediate. On the other hand. scientific analysis show perceptions to be highly mediated processes. Which is right? Well, they both are in their own ways.

The book is attached above in one of my posts if you care to discuss. — Antony Nickles

I was the one who found the PDF for Banno. However, I don't have time to read and discuss the book at the moment.

My point was that, in thinking about perception in different ways, using different criteria for what would count as 'direct' and 'indirect', perception can be considered to be either direct or indirect.So my question is, given there is no fact of the matter regarding which is the case. what is the problem?

He is not presenting a different way of thinking (another answer or theory) about this (manufactured) problem of direct or indirect access (and all the related philosophical manifestations). — Antony Nickles

As I see it, the problem is only "manufactured" if we buy into the idea that there is only one correct way to think about it. Otherwise, you just have different ways of thinking and talking about perception.

Is he dismantling anything or merely presenting a different way of thinking about it.

The only cups I own are used for holding pencils and paint brushes. I drink tea out of a metal tumbler that comes with a lid. — frank

You filthy degenerate! :razz:

The cups exist independently of me, it's just that all I see is patches and blobs from which I infer(?) the existence of a cup.

Austin is pointing out flaws in some arguments for that scenario, particularly in the wording of the argument, which appears to be misusing common words. — frank

We don't just see cups, we pick them up, hold them, drink from them, wash them and store them in the cupboard.

Your relativism is showing again. Have you no faith in science :brow: ? — Wayfarer

This is basic Kant. The observational part of science shows us how phenomena manifest and quantifies, measures and explicates its qualities. The abductive phase creatively imagines hypotheses which either can or cannot be tested. The constants may tell us what is required for matter and life as we understand it (as it appears to us) to exist. That is all it tells us, it doesn't tell us that nothing at all beyond plasma could possibility exist outside of those parameters. How much faith do you have in science? You can't have it both ways.

It's that naturalism doesn't go 'all the way down'. Naturalism starts with the empirical facts, and discerns causal relationships that give rise to them. But when it comes to such questions as the origin of the cosmic constraints, naturalism can't make such assumptions, because at the point of the singularity all laws break down. What that is taken to mean is then up for debate - natural theology is inclined to argue that the laws are pre-ordained by God. But then Martin Rees, in his book Just Six Numbers, never would make such an argument. He says elsewhere:

I was brought up as a member of the Church of England and simply follow the customs of my tribe. The church is part of my culture; I like the rituals and the music. If I had grown up in Iraq, I would go to a mosque… It seems to me that people who attack religion don’t really understand it. Science and religion can coexist peacefully — although I don’t think they have much to say to each other. What I would like best would be for scientists not even to use the word “God.” … Fundamental physics shows how hard it is for us to grasp even the simplest things in the world. That makes you quite skeptical whenever someone declares he has the key to some deeper reality… I know that we don’t yet even understand the hydrogen atom — so how could I believe in dogmas? I’m a practicing Christian, but not a believing one. — Wayfarer

Causal relationships are not discerned but inferred as I understand it. To my way of thinking the (hypothetical) breakdown of physical laws at the (hypothetical) singularity is an inference, a theory, not a fact, and given that we accept it there is no way to even begin to decide what that means, so I don't see it as a matter of debate at all. If we want to believe in some speculatively imagined "pre-singularity" scenario, then it becomes entirely a matter of faith. The closest thing we have that is mathematically supported at least is the 'many worlds' or 'many universes' theory. God is another theory which is not mathematically supported. Can you think of any others?

Rees comes across to me as a Christian apologist who wants to make his claims seem stronger by pretending that, although he practices Christianity, he doesn't really believe in it. Smells fishy to me! If we don't even understand even the hydrogen atom, then how could we know that no existence absent the constants would be possible?

Me, I'm inclined to a traditionalist view of the 'harmony of the Cosmos'. Call me a romantic but I think it's part of my cultural heritage, and one that I'm not at all wanting to be rid of. — Wayfarer

Fair enough, but that is a matter of faith, says more about you than the cosmos and is not something that can be coherently argued for. We know only the order that we interpret as such.

But that’s where the cosmological constants and fine-tuned universe arguments come into play - Martin Rees' 'six numbers'. They themselves might not amount to laws, but they're constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist (see also 'naturalness problem'). — Wayfarer

However unlikely it might seem that all the cosmological constants just happen to line up such as to allow things to exist. looking at it from the other way around, we would not be here to talk about it if they had not lined up.

The other point is that those constants and their estimated statistical likelihood may just represent human understanding and may not correspond to anything real beyond that. How can we assess the statistical likelihood of things from within the very system that purportedly depends on those very things?

What is your favoured implication; that these constants were somehow established from "outside" of the universe prior to its existence? How could we ever establish that, and even if we could, what implications could it have for life, for our lives?

Were any of the six fundamental constraints different in very small ways, matter would not form, 'the universe' would comprise plasma or something. Review here — Wayfarer

It also pays to remember that this is inference or conjecture, not established fact.

'Pretend you are happy when you are not, it is not so hard to do — javi2541997

"Lookin' good, but feelin' bad is mighty hard to do" Fats Waller

I suppose, from a philosophical perspective, a critique of reductionism needs to be much simpler than trying to prove a kind of ‘law of increasing complexity’ operating throughout the Universe. — Wayfarer

If the formation of galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets results from small fluctuations or irregularities in the very simple CMB, and the formation of more complex elements subsequently results from supernovae, should we not expect an increase of complexity over time?

Not as a result of pre-existing "laws" but from the unfolding of the potential inherent in the simple elements that is enabled by the chance evolutionary inception of suitable conditions. This would seem to be in keeping with Peirce's "tychism".

I'll have to try to find the time to read the paper...but I agree with unenlightened in highly recommending Bateson.

Yes, there is a kind of paradox there, because we find that ordered phenomena have much more significant information to impart to us than random phenomena. (I believe @unenlightened already made this point). It is more meaningful to us because we are part of the ordered phenomena. Total randomness or noise is useless to us. And it is only highly ordered phenomena like the higher animals who can "decode" complex information. I find this relationship between entropy, negentropy and information is the most fascinating area to investigate. Not that I've gotten far yet...

Right it is a difficult thing to grasp and I certainly cannot claim anything more than a very basic understanding of entropy.

It might help to make it clearer if you substitute 'arrangement' or 'configuration' for 'pattern'. The amount of information required to specify the positions of and relations between an ordered arrangement is obviously less than the information required to specify a random arrangement.

In cosmology the idea is that the microwave background state, which is believed to have been almost entirely uniform can be described much more simply than the subsequent states of galaxy and star formation.

So, the information has obviously increased in the latter case due to the initially minor variations becoming magnified over time. It is only energy that allows the formation of "islands" of relative order or negentropy, such as galaxies, stars, solar systems, planets and, of course, organisms. The theory is that disorder will increase as energy is dissipated and the entire universe has pulled apart and reached thermal equilibrium, a state in which particles will be scattered in a disorderly way everywhere.

Yes, you are right, and @Wayfarer is wrong here: it has to do with how much information would be needed to specify the positions of all the particles in a completely random arrangement of particles as opposed to a strictly geometric configuration.

:up:

We could throw caution to the wind and call a "flat" three-dimensional image a two-dimensional image. :smile: — RussellA

Indeed we could. which indicates that much comes down to differences of parlance. I think, as I said, there is really no such thing as a two-dimensional image or existent of any kind, and that that realization ought to be reflected in how we speak about these things when we are giving them serious consideration.

In any case, talk of screens and other flat surfaces aside, the original point of contention was the idea that our visual field is a two-dimensional image, and I see nothing whatever to support that assertion.

I suppose that tells us something of its effectiveness. — Banno

Apparently the text it appears in is called Metaphysics and Commonsense but I couldn't find a PDF of that, so perhaps it is not considered all that citable these days.

:cool: