Evasive bullshit! You said that if I read the article "my responses might improve"; a veiled insult designed to divert attention from your apparent inability to address this:

That's just not true, though; they each reflect light at wavelengths closer to each other than objects of other colours do compared to them, and consequently they look more similar to each other in terms of colour than objects of other colours do compared to them. The first is a material condition of the second and the second is the reason we refer to both as being grey, for our use of the word "grey". — Janus

The literal meaning of 'subsist' is nothing like what he's trying to convey here. — Wayfarer

Russell's is a recognized usage:

subsist (səbˈsɪst)
vb (mainly intr)
1. (often foll by on) to be sustained; manage to live: to subsist on milk.
2. to continue in existence
3. (foll by in) to lie or reside by virtue (of); consist
4. (Philosophy) philosophy
a. to exist as a concept or relation rather than a fact
b. to be conceivable
5. (tr) obsolete to provide with support
[C16: from Latin subsistere to stand firm, from sub- up + sistere to make a stand]
subˈsistent adj
subˈsister n

From here

You're becoming ever more lazy and arrogant. I'm here to discuss with others, not to be insulted or pompously advised to read papers that are not even the subject of the thread. If you can make an argument of your own or rehearse the part of Austin's thesis that you think might refute what I've said, then I'll respond, otherwise you're wasting my time.

So light with a wavelength of 650nm is the same colour as light with a wavelength of 651nm because they're very similar wavelengths? — Michael

I don't believe I've said that or that it is implied by anything I've said.

Bowdlerising his argument, it simply is not the case that the grey of a cloud and the grey of this laptop have something in common - apart from our use of the word "grey". — Banno

That's just not true, though; they each reflect light at wavelengths closer to each other than objects of other colours do compared to them, and consequently they look more similar to each other in terms of colour than objects of other colours do compared to them. The first is a material condition of the second and the second is the reason we refer to both as being grey, for our use of the word "grey".

It's the other way around. Every negation holds within it its own assertion. — Harry Hindu

All you doing is stating the obvious that a negation is also an assertion; nothing to do with the point re dialectics that every idea contains (the seeds of) its own negation.

It makes no sense to say that language is in the world but separate from the world. — Harry Hindu

You are thinking too literally. Of course language use occurs within the world; but language allows for a conceptual separation between the world and ideas about the world. All we are doing here is exploring different possible ways of thinking about things.

What does it mean to be about something? Aboutness is a causal relationship. — Harry Hindu

No, aboutness is a logical relation of reference. Attempting to parse everything in terms of causation just doesn't work. That path leads to scientism, to the idea that we are nothing but chemical robots. It's an impoverished, pointless and indeed self-refuting, view of life, and especially of human life.

The idea that we are stuck and need a conceptual transformation to move forward seems quite common in the field. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quantum theory and relativity are said to be the two most successful theories ever in terms of accuracy of prediction.

In any case, a "conceptual transformation" is not contingent on the ability to visualize anything as both quantum theory and relativity demonstrate, I think. These theories came about through a combination of mathematical and experimental advancement.

Of course imagination is also needed but imagining something like the warping of spacetime does not equate to being able to visualize it, but rather on the contrary consists in being open enough to explore the idea that something we cannot visualize could nevertheless be real.

It's fairly speculative to think what Kant might think of our modern scientific world, ultimately. Especially given the diversity of opinions on Kant's thoughts on teleological judgment and how that sort of offers a way for reasonable individuals to still be, well... spiritual. Or whatever. — Moliere

Good point! We just don't know what he would think. I think much of the animus against science is based on the belief that it reduces us to biological robots and thus eliminates ideas of human freedom and spirituality. I don't see that problem myself and I think it is based on an older more Newtonian mechanistic conception of materiality.

In any case I agree with you and tend to think Kant would adapt his philosophy to modern science if he was alive today.

I think we can acknowledge that we are inevitably limited by our cognitive faculties, because they get trained in the three-dimensional;macroscopic world of perceived objects, including our own bodies, and that we have no way of visualizing wave/particle duality or the curvature of spacetime. The lack of ability to visualize these things does not seem to be holding us back.

it is one of the things that has become apparent through 20th C science itself. — Wayfarer

There is no science outside the cognition of sentient beings, so our science is no more placed to make pronouncements about what might purportedly lie "beyond" human cognition than anything else. You can't have it both ways.It seems safe to assume, given the reliable commonality of human cognition, that for every object of perception there is "something" relatively stable and invariant that explains that commonality.

It is really just a preference for different locutions that determines whether we refer to "somethings' or just use the names of the perceived objects instead. Bottom line is we don't and cannot know, so it comes down to what strikes us as plausible, or, since it is of no consequence anyway, we can just rest comfortable in our ignorance.

You're just talking out of your comfortable assumed realism. Science suggests otherwise. Anyway - duty calls, I have a commercial assignment to start, so I'll bow out for now. Cheers. — Wayfarer

You're misunderstanding me. All I'm saying is that for the purposes of human experience and understanding there are publicly accessible objects and that physics and all of science, and really everything about human life, relies on that fact for their coherence and even for their very existence.

I'm not making any claim as to their ultimate reality, because such "ultimate" claims based on our everyday experience, which as I said includes all of science, cannot be shown to be justified or even shown to be coherent. Anyway happy working on your publicly accessible commercial assignment... :wink:

Kastrup (a different idealist thinker) simply argues that all we experience is real - it just isn't physical. So signs and fossils and DNA and an oncoming bus - are all important readings on a dashboard that hold real consequences. They are mind when observed from a different perspective. But this stuff is very elusive and cannot be demonstrated other than undermining materialist ontologies. — Tom Storm

I agree that we can kind of coherently imagine the world of publicly accessible objects being ultimately, fundamentally either mind or matter, or neither, but some kind of hybrid. But we don't even know if our ideas about mind and matter, which are conceptions derived from ordinary everyday experience are relevant beyond that everyday experience. This is the notorious "language on holiday" phenomenon that Wittgenstein says we are bewitched by.

So, we can make up our stories about mind independently existent physical objects or ideas in the mind of God or collective unconscious or whatever, but they are all just stories we tell ourselves, some of us preferring one and others preferring others. For all intents and purposes we know there are publicly accessible objects, whatever their "ultimate constitutions" might be; and we don't even know if that idea of ultimate constitution is coherent.

They're not, though. That is the whole point of the 'observer problem'. That is why Einstein had to ask his friend Michael Besso, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' — Wayfarer

That's a separate question, and as a metaphysical question ultimately unanswerable (obviously) question. We're are talking about objects that are being looked at such as the instruments of measurement used in physics experiments. If physicists did not absolutely reliably discover the same readings, no physics would be possible. Same goes for the whole of science.

Reality is not 'just an experience'. It's a constructive activity which synthesises elements of sensory data with the categories of the understanding to generate the phenomenal experience. — Wayfarer

That doesn't answer the question, though. All we know is experience, and we can argue that how we experience things is mediated by our physical constitutions, our sensory apparatuses, and to some extent by cultural conditioning. But that whole story is derived from our experience of a world full of objects of sense and people who agree on what they sense. Same goes for physics. All the experiments its theory is based on are done with "publicly accessible objects"; we rely on the measurements and results they show to derive the theory in the first place.

He's not saying that. I don't think you've taken in what he's saying. — Wayfarer

What do you think he's saying?

The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it’s relevantly similar to mine. That’s an assumption that could be false, but that’s the source of my communication, and that’s the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science. — Donald Hoffman

So, if it were true that your apple is nothing like mine. leaving aside the fact that we can both reliably point to the apple and agree that it is an apple, we can also agree about it's colour and unique features. Say it's a red apple with three yellow spots and I point to where I see the yellow spots and ask you what you see there. I would wager my house that you would say you see three yellow spots. How would Hoffmann explain that, if the apple you see and the apple I see were not "relevantly similar"?

Through reason and experimental observation. — Wayfarer

But if reality were nothing like what we experience, no kind of observation would be telling us anything that we could justifiably base any theory on. For example the idea of evolution is based on the fossil record; and observation of plants and animals and their similarities and differences, and also on studying DNA profiles but according to his theory all that could tell us nothing about how species evolved, and indeed the very idea of species evolving and sharing traits and DNA would be groundless.How do you think he could address this problem?

The problem I find with Hoffmann's theory is that if reality were nothing like what we experience, then how could he justifiably arrive at the conclusion that reality is nothing like what we experience?

He has studied evolution, game theory, brains and so on to arrive at his theory; but then according to his theory evolution, game theory and brains cannot be anything like what and how we think they are, which, if accepted, seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that his theory is completely without ground.

Let’s begin with perception. I experience the physical world though my five senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. I do not possess a special “tree-sensing” sense. So how can I experience a tree? The answer is I do not directly experience the tree. Rather, my eyes see patches of brown and green; my fingers tell me the brown patches are rough and the green patches are smooth. My mind retrieves the idea “tree” to explain what my senses are telling me. Tree is a mental representation which describes what I experience. (We may suppose a newborn infant only sees patches of light. Over time, the infant deduces the ideas of object, object permanence, and eventually tree.) — Art48

I think this is too simplistic; it might stand out against the sky, I see many others like it and many others very different, you can climb the tree and gain another view on the landscape, you can smack into it bodily, pluck leaves and cut limbs off, you can move around it and view it from all sides, you can find shade or shelter from the rain under it or if it is large enough, even build a house in it, It is not merely a matter of "brown patches and green", although that might be part of it, it is questionable whether that will be the first thing we notice, and everyone is different, anyway.

Language is not separate from the world. What makes language so special as to have a special meeting with the world while everything else in the world lacks this kind of meeting with the world? I have to learn to understand language just like I have to learn to ride a bike, or how babies are made. The world and our perceptions of it precedes any use of language as language must be perceived in the world to make any use of it. — Harry Hindu

Language is about the world, and I would include mathematical and visual representation in that characterization. So, it is via language that a kind of separation appears between the world and what is about it. Of course from one perspective that which is about the world is within the world, but from another perspective the world appears only within that which is about the world. Remember the nature of the dialectic; every idea holds within it its own negation.

Fulfilling what you imagine are virtual expectations re your persona?

:up:

Not the best thread, this one. — Banno

Not the best comment, this, o pompous one.

Truth is where the world and language meet. Some of our beliefs are true, some not. Not just anything will do. — Banno

This is too abstract: I think it would be far better to say that it is in actuality and significance that the world and language meet. Some of our ideas are workable, some not. Some of our ideas are insightful and inspiring, others not. Who gives a shit if the cat is on the mat or the cup is in the cupboard?

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes. — Joshs

:up: I see you are making a similar point.

We don't, for instance, consider the dirt the tree is on to be part of the tree, but nothing in nature should prevent us from doing this. — Manuel

That's true maybe on the electronic level, but could we not say the dirt is not part of the living growing tissue of the tree, or not part of the self-organizing organism?

:up: The other point is that, even if there are other big bangs, universes and thus instances of spacetime, how could we know about them, and even if we could know about them, if time relations as we understand them are coherent only within our own spacetime, how could any putative big bangs, universes and instances of spacetime be counted as being "before" or "after" anything in our spacetime bubble?

:up:

I agree that in a way such categorization is primordial, but I think it is arguable that it is greatly augmented and refined by scientific investigation. The idea that things are identifiable, stable and invariant is essential to the practice of science, it seems.

And I don't think there is an unbridgeable gap between human identity and the natural world. Human identity is something we have to deal with, it's a phenomenon of nature, realized in human beings, of which science can say very little about. — Manuel

Science also relies on the imputation of identities to natural particulars and kinds; for example a particular tree or species is itself distinguishable from all others.

Cheers, I'll take another look.

It's thus true that there's milk in the fridge and no-one knows there is.

That true statement is unknowable. Why? Because anyone coming to know that there's milk in the fridge (say, by looking) would render the statement false (since the second conjunct would be false). The statement doesn't change from an unknown truth to a known truth. It changes from an unknown truth to a known falsity. — Andrew M

You seem to be saying that the truth of the statement "It's true that there's milk in the fridge and no-one knows there is" is unknowable, which seems reasonable, since I don't know there's milk in the fridge unless I open it but then if I do that someone knows there is milk in the fridge. But when I open the fridge I know (excluding weirdness like the milk coming to be there only when I looked) that the statement was true before I looked. So, again, there seems to be a time element involved.

If I go down the 'weirdness' rabbit hole and say that when I look and see the milk I still don't know that the milk had been there prior to my looking, then all bets are off.

Possibly. What's your reasoning? — Luke

Actually, it doesn't follow. All knowable truths could be known with only unknowable truths left. But then surely new truths are arising every moment, so it seems absurd to think that there could be no unknown truths; we (collectively) would have to be constantly up to the minute.

The move from unknown to unknowable is given in the "independent result" in lines 4-9 of the SEP proof. The logic of that reductio argument is beyond my understanding, and I would welcome someone to explain it. However, I don't dispute its conclusion. — Luke

Yeah, I don't comprehend it either, as I said, but I also accept the conclusion (although not on account of the "paradox") that there must be unknowable truths.

But if there were no unknown truths, wouldn't it then follow that there would be no unknowable truths? In any case, that is not how the argument gets from unknown to unknowable is it?

But how does it follow that an unknown truth leads to the conclusion that there is an unknowable truth. I don't know, may I'm just not bright enough for this argument...

I still cannot get the move from unknown truth to unknowable truth in the argument.

In any case:

Second, if we didn't have that proof (or others that I may not be aware of), then we wouldn't know whether there were unknowable truths or not. — Andrew M

That may be true, but if it is unknowable as to whether there are unknowable truths, which seems easy enough to show, then we know there is an unknowable truth, no?

The reason is that knowing "p & ~Kp" would entail knowing p and also not knowing p which is impossible.. — Andrew M

That still seems wrong to me. The proposition is an assumption or stipulation: let's assume or stipulate that p and that we don't know p. There doesn't seem to be any problem with that until what seems like the absurd idea of "knowing" (the truth of, presumably) that proposition is introduced.

The alternative I proposed:

Is the truth of the proposition that there are unknowable propositions itself unknowable? We might want to say that it is, because if there are unknowable propositions then we could never know there are, just because they are unknowable.

But then it would follow that there is at least one unknowable truth, that it is unknowable as to whether there are unknowable truths; and that is a contradiction, because it would also follow that we know that there is at least one unknowable truth. — Janus

Does seem to show that we do know that there is at least one unknowable truth; that it is unknowable as to whether there are unknowable truths, although I was wrong above to say that is a contradiction, because we are not knowing an unknowable truth but the knowable truth that there is at least one unknowable truth.

:cool:

1) Heidegger: we cannot talk about objective things, because we are always immersed in the objectivity we talk about. — Angelo Cannata

As I understand Heidegger the "objective" would be the "vorhanden" or "present at hand"; objects as we examine and analyze then. You seem to be suggesting that this is not "true" or absolute objectivity, because the examining and analysis is always from a subjective point of view. There can be determinable agreement and this is what I think is usually referred to as "inter-subjective". Since we obviously cannot place ourselves "outside" of our experience "pure" objectivity is impossible, even an incoherent idea.

Subjectivity needs to be conceived as something subject to change, becoming, so, we cannot give any stable definition of it. — Angelo Cannata

I agree; since subjectivity consists in us being subjects of, even subjected to, experience, and experience is ever-changing, insofar as we are transformed by experience we are also subject to change.

The perspective is, then, experience; the difference is whether or not there is any.

Ahhhh....but the technicalities. That’s where the fun is, ne c’est pas? When does “something” become cup? Somewhere in that theoretical exposition, will reside the possible misgivings. — Mww

I don't think there is any difference when it comes to our day to day experience. Might it make a difference as to what we allow ourselves to experience beyond that? Could be; I think it's quite possible to truncate our imaginations. Any theoretical exposition is just going to be a conjecture based on certain starting assumptions. The scientific account of perception, if not taken as an absolute, at least has the advantage of being based on observable processes...up to a point,,,I guess it depends on what we are aiming to do.

just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why. — Isaac

The main reason I would see is that intrinsic properties are conceptual and there is a difficulty involved in trying to understand how something brutely physical, as that seems to be commonly understood, could possess conceptual attributes. McDowell and Brandom and perhaps Davidson get around this by saying that reality is always already conceptually shaped in some sense. The issue here is that if the effects on the senses were initially completely non-conceptual then nothing we say about anything could be justified by them because all justification is in conceptual form and there seems to be no way to create a logical relation of entailment between something pre-conceptually physical and any deductive or inductive inference.

The proposition "it is raining" is true if and only if it is raining
If the proposition "it is raining" is true then the proposition "it is raining" exists
If it is raining then the proposition "it is raining" exists
If the proposition "it is raining" does not exist then it is not raining — Michael

What about if it is not raining? Again the idea of temporality seems to be missing in the above. I could agree with the idea that if it were the case that it never rained; if there were no such thing as rain then the proposition "it is raining" would not exist, and it would follow from that that if the said proposition did not exist then it could not be raining. Beyond that I'm not getting the sense.

No worries. Any misgivings at all?

All I was looking for was your idea of why we can say we are modeling a cup, or from different perspective, we can say we are modeling “something”. — Mww

OK, I'll take a stab. We can say we are modeling a cup because others also see a cup and have their own perceptions (models) of it. We can say we are modeling "something" because no one knows, apart from their models, what the cup is, or what produces the perception of the cup, and the very idea of a cup is meaningless outside the context of our perceptions and ideas.

I said "Kantianism" because it seems analogous to his idea that all we perceive are representations (models).

Some food for thought:

T(x) ≔ x is true

T("p") ↔ p
T("p") → ∃"p"
p → ∃"p" — Michael

It's indigestible without some secret sauce.

I agree. Do you have an idea of what that different perspective might be? — Mww

Kantianism?

I think there is a sense in which we can say we see the cup and another sense in which we can say that we see a model of the cup. — Janus


But for that second sense, I can't see what process you'd be using. Modelling the cup is part of the process of seeing, so to see the model, do you model the model? — Isaac

No, I'm not saying we model the model. The point is that the perception itself is understood as a model, or more accurately a process of modelling, and the end result is seeing what has been modeled. Now we can say that what has been modeled is the cup, or we can equally, from a different perspective, say that what is being modeled is "something" that results in seeing a cup which is a model of that "something". Either way we are stipulating what the thing being modeled is from a certain perspective; so it reduces to two different ways of talking, neither of which is "the one true perspective".

True, but even if it is the brain that generates the VR it still works. Of course our perception of brains would then VRs generated by what we perceive as the brain. Perhaps a bit confusing but not incoherent.