As I said, it is as I expected it would be. So, the expectations were neither flawed nor optimistic.

:up:

I didn't say that we don't have reliable knowledge. I said that we don't have direct knowledge. — Michael

How could we have reliable knowledge of objects if they were not experienced by us?

This is all just hand-waving and insinuation. When you present an actual argument I'll address it.

While I didn't skip over the line before this one, this strikes me as giving up. It's all that matters for every-day consideration, but within this thread that is wholly inadequate, I think. — AmadeusD

The point is that attempting to frame what we (reliably?) know about perception in a way that undermines the very assumption of reliability we are relying upon is a self-defeating exercise. And attempting to frame things in absolute terms, as though there is a real fact of the matter, rather than merely competing or alternative interpretations and their attendant ways of speaking is a lost cause in any case.

Our thinking is inevitably dualistic, and we have no reason to think reality is dualistic, so we have to accept our limitations and uncertainty if we want to be intellectually honest. So, we have every reason to reject the whole debate as being wrongheaded from the get-go.

This seems to betray the idea that we have some 'direct' relationship with those objects, no? — AmadeusD

No it just shows how inadequate the 'direct/ indirect' parlance is, and how pointless it is to be arguing over what amount to merely different ways of talking in different contexts.

We have a reliable relationship with those objects, and with the world, and that is all that matters.

Veridical experiences are caused by some appropriate proximal stimulus, e.g. seeing the colour red when light with a wavelength of 700nm interacts with the eyes, or feeling pain when putting one’s hand in a fire. — Michael

What you're missing is the fact that light carries a great deal of information about distal objects, from which it follows that, contrary to your claims, we do have reliable knowledge of distal objects. Perhaps you're trading on the absurd demand for certainty. We have reliable, certain in the relative but not certain in the artificial "absolute" sense, knowledge of external objects.

Unfortunately, this thread has degenerated into a wankfest. It was to be expected, though.

Not quite. All kinds of sciences deal with 'different kinds of entities'. Ontology strictly speaking is about kinds of beings. It might be considered obsolete by some. I'm not appealing to Schumacher as an authority, simply as an example of what I consider a valid ontological schema. — Wayfarer

What's the difference between "kinds of entities" and "kinds of beings"?

Why do you consider this obviously anthropocentric 'great chain of being" idea a valid ontological schema? I mean on what logical, conceptual or empirical grounds apart from simply preferring it because it accords with how you would like things to be.

In more traditional terms, ontology is usually associated with metaphysics and questions about the meaning of being. — Wayfarer

As I understand it ontology is concerned with the nature of being and with the different kinds of entities.

In this case, I think the differences between humans and other animals are manifold. Apart from language and rational ability, there's also abstract skills like mathematical reasoning, art and science. — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you would say that abstract skills, mathematical reasoning, art and science are not abilities attendant upon symbolic language, or why rational ability is not just a part of what is enabled by symbolic language.

We're also existential animals - we have a grasp of our own mortality that is generally absent in other creatures (although mention might be made of elephants who seem to have quite a vivid awareness of death.) — Wayfarer

I don't know what you mean by "existential animals". If it means that we exist, well so do all the other animals. We are aware of our own mortality, perhaps due to langauge, or perhaps it would be possible anyway due to viusal memory and the automatic assumption that what happens to others will also happen to me. If the latter is the case, other animals may also be aware of their mortality. Since they can't tell us, how would we know?

Plainly humans are biological phenomena, but I argue, and I think Schumacher would argue, we're under-determined by biology in a sense that other animals cannot be. Of course, I also think that is the original intuition behind philosophical dualism, such as that of the Phaedo, and whilst I don't agree that such dualisms are literal descriptions, nevertheless they convey something symbolically real about human nature. — Wayfarer

You are yet to present an argument as to why you think we are underdetermined by biology in a sense that other animals are not or cannot be, and absent such an argument Schumacher's agreement is either irrelevant or an appeal to authority.

Why do you think that philosophical dualism conveys anything more about human nature than its being due to our linguistically enabled capacity for binary thinking?

Please explain what you mean by "ontological gap", and why you think our existence is of a different kind to the other animals, as opposed to merely our perceptions and experience being different.

I acknowledge that due to the acquisition of symbolic language that humans are capable of a kind of linguistically mediated memory and self-reflection that animals would presumably not be. But how would that amount to an ontological difference rather than just a different mode of consciousness?

As to your charge that I am biased by naturalist presuppositions, that is not true. I have come to naturalist conclusions because I see no good reason to posit anything other than nature and culture at work in humans. Do you have good reasons that you can clearly lay out for thinking that something beyond nature is needed to explain human life and experience?

Agree that humans and other species are on a biological continuum, but I also believe that humans crossed a threshold with the advent of language, tool use, and so on, and that it is a highly signficant difference, that though we're related to other animals, we're more than 'just animals'. — Wayfarer

That's your favored way of thinking about it because your Buddhist presuppositions require humans to be "more" than other animals. We can equally say that humans are, in respect of language and tool use, merely unique among, rather than "more than", the animals, which I think is a more balanced and modest assessment, and which eschews the dangers of hubris inherent in notions of human exceptionalism.

Just to be clear I feel no certainty except in the most mundane of matters. Beyond that I find it better to accept uncertainty and even cultivate it.

But I find little value in trying to parse the chaos and complexity of human life in terms of simplified concepts like fear, anger and desire. And of all delusions I think free will the most persistent and pernicious, based on the fear-based illusion of autonomy as it seems to me to be.

The irony is that in trying to neatly encapsulate and work it all out in terms of the enneagram typologies and fear, anger, desire and free will, you are behaving exactly as you would characterize a fear type who cannot cope with uncertainty. You apparently need your tidy little system to cope with the messiness of life.

No I just don't think speaking about experience being located anywhere makes sense.

I don't agree that experience is located in the brainbody, so where does that leave us?

If, "already interpreted" is a prerequisite of there being such a thing as "the world", and minds do the job of interpreting, how would you dismiss the proposition that the mind also creates the world, being prior in time to the world? — Metaphysician Undercover

The bodymind interprets what is given to it precognitively. It doesn't create what is given, at least I find it most plausible to think that it doesn't. There are two senses of 'world' here.

Experience exists within the brain. Distal objects exist outside the body. Therefore distal objects (and their properties) do not exist within experience.

The first premise is supported by neuroscience. The second premise is true by definition. The conclusion follows. — Michael

The first premise is not unequivocally supported by neuroscience, it is one interpretation of neuroscientific results.

If all you mean by saying that distal objects are not in the body or brain, well so what? Every child knows that...that's just what is meant by "distal objects".

The way I see it the world is always already interpreted, so we are not going to agree about this.

Our interpetations are constrained by the nature of the world including ourselves, so it's not right to say that we create the world.

No, representing the world to ourselves just is interpreting it. It's a precognitive process, though, not a deliberate act.

:up:

Makes sense.

If I removed the thinking subject then the whole corporeal world would have to go away, since this world is nothing but the appearance in sensibility of, and a kind of presentations of, ourselves as subject. — Critique of Pure Reason, A383

I read that as making the point, since the empirical world appears to us, that without us it would not appear (that is it would not appear to us but it would to other animals). It is not to say that that which appears to us, as distinct from its appearances to us, would not exist without us.

s usual, you, an order-apologist demand certainty or 'determinable' right and wrong. Too bad that that is not the way reality works. You are allowed to demand these things but you will never be realized in that demand. You have to take truth in part on faith. — Chet Hawkins

I don't demand determinable, metaphysical rights and wrongs, I observe that such are impossible.

There are determinable rights and wrong in the everyday empirical context, and that's all I've been pointing out.

You have descended into posturing rhetoric, have offered absolutely no cogent arguments or explanations of your beliefs, and I'm not interested in trying to engage with that kind of approach, so I think we are done here.

I meant that the transcendental can only ever be discursively "known" via ideas (the provenances or aptness of which are indeterminable). And those ideas being essentially dualistic, do not really constitute a knowing, but merely a conceiving, and a blind conceiving at that.

"I" references "self", which makes no sense if there isn't "not self". You cannot identify what is you and what is not, if there isn't anything besides you. It can't be done. Distinctions can only be made with space and time. — Bob Ross

I agree with you and just want to add something about the "it" in 'I don't understand it': it must be something separate from I, and separation is incoherent without reference to either space or time, as others have noted.

My point was crystal clear. — Corvus

And very clearly wrong.

And I maintain that this is basically in conformity with Kant's philosophy, insofar as Kant maintained that empirical realism and transcendental idealism are not in conflict (per these excerpts.) — Wayfarer

So, do you believe that if there were no minds in existence there would be no reality or actuality? I don't think Kant believed that— I think he would say the in itself would nonetheless be.

As I understand the reason that empirical reality and transcendental ideality are compatible is because the transcendental can never be more than ideal, that is can never be more than ideas, for us.

The very idea that the empirical is real, and thus more than merely mental or ideal, speaks against the notion that reality is mind-constructed, rather than merely brain/body-interpreted.

I took it to mean that when you are interacting with the room then that is what you are. I don't want to speak for @Banno, but I have no problem with that ever-changing notion of the self—why should we think there is an unchanging self over and above that?

Do you really believe that the question of whether or not we're hallucinating(whether or not the tree is really there) comes before belief?

All doubt concerning the veracity of our vision is belief based. — creativesoul

Yes, I do believe that the existence of the tree I see is not in question. If I decide to question it and then accept an answer, then, and only then, has belief come into play. In other words, of course all doubt concerning the veracity of our vision is belief based, but I am speaking about the situation prior to any doubt about the veracity of our vision.

The way I read it, Kastrup is not saying to 'mistrust our own senses', but to recognise, as I say in the OP, the way in which the mind creates (or generates, or manifests) the world, which is then accorded an intrinsic reality which it doesn't possess (thereby overlooking the role of the subject in the process). — Wayfarer

This is going too far. It is true that the way we perceive the world is conditioned by the ways in which our sentient bodies and brains are constituted. The suggestion that the mind creates the world, rather than merely interprets it seems absurd and wrong.

This is not to say it is not a logical possibility, but just that all our experience speaks against it. It is a logical possibility, a mere logical possibility with nothing cogent to support it as far as i can tell. Why should we believe something simply on the basis that it an imaginable possibility? That we should believe things just because they seem intuitively right to us is exactly the mindset of conspiracy theorists.

My point being however that I don't think removing the words know and knowledge is either necessary or effective. — Bylaw

I agree. Confusion results when knowing and believing are conflated. We might not always in practice know the difference, that is we may not always know which we are doing, but they remain conceptually distinct, and losing that distinction is not going to help.

Abuse is acceptable as a risk and then must be confronted by challenge.

Just because abuse exists is no reason to crawl under a rock and pretend to half-truths (your little t truth).

The big T truth is the only thing in life that really matters. — Chet Hawkins

Abuse might be acceptable as a risk according to your personal belief—but there is nothing in the fact that you believe that that gives me any warrant or motivation for believing it.

Little-t truths are not half-truths, they are truths relative to contexts, not absolute truths. There are no absolute truths, or at least none that are determinable by us.

The idea that big T-truth is all that matters is a dangerous idea—the very foundation of fundamentalism.

So, I reject your beliefs on ethical grounds, apart from the fact that there is no empirical or logical support for them. They cannot even be cited as inferences to any kind of best explanation. To me they are nothing more than rhetoric.

Yes, well, what we call reality is not reality. Physical reality is a shortsighted version of the actual reality, the capital T True reality.

We are embedded within the capital T reality. Its awareness and union is the only real goal of existence.

So metaphysics is a greater effort, and thus more worthy than physics is or could ever be. This truth does not diminish physics in any way. It shows it proper placement in actual value. — Chet Hawkins

I get that you believe that. I have some sympathy for those ideas, but I am not confident that it is anything more than a fantasy.

So, let's say you believe those things, and I don't. If you don't know anything more than I do, or if I don't know anything more than you do—if it is all just different beliefs then there is nothing to argue about, and no being right or wrong about it.

That there is no determinable right or wrong when it comes to metaphysics is the situation as I see it. No amount of high-falutin' talk is going to change that.

All assertion and no argument. I'll wait until you present an argument to address—responding to mere assertions being a waste of time.

Well yes, there are many different usages and contexts of usage of the word.

Adding to what you say we could equally fail to cosmetically remove the word 'know' from our lexicon while continuing to tread the spiritual path @Chet Hawkins seems primarily concerned with.

To me the main area the word know, in its propositional sense at least, seems inappropriate is the metaphysical.

I get it. I understand the (your) position, Thank you for starting this thread as, to me, it has been fun and good work and clearly something people are willing to engage on. That's what such a forum is about! — Chet Hawkins

I agree that exchange of and argument about the different ideas we may have are fun and also worthwhile for the endless task of clarification. I don't share your notion of "capital T Truth" because I think the idea has been egregiously abused throughout history, and also, I think that if we have no knowledge we cannot even begin to approach 'small-t truth" let alone the Capital-T chimera.

I don't share the optimism that changing the words will make much difference. And people assert things as if they are certain all the time without using the verb know or the noun knowledge. — Bylaw

Sorry I missed your comment earlier. I think this is an important point: leaving aside faux-skepticism or global skepticism, which profess that we cannot be certain of anything at all, I think it is true that there are many things of which we can be certain. The distinction you seem to point to is that many people feel certain about things they obviously cannot be certain about.

"Redundant" is n interesting choice of terms. So, do we agree that belief is necessary for seeing the tree in the front yard?? It goes without saying that seeing a tree in the yard includes believing that something is there, doesn't it? That necessary presupposition is what makes the terminological use redundant, right? — creativesoul

I don't think believing the tree is there is necessary for seeing it. I see the tree there, and the question of whether or not it is really there (answering that question being the point where belief enters into the picture) doesn't arise, certainly doesn't have to arise.

You can say that seeing the tree presupposes believing it, (like the old adage "seeing is believing") and that is one way of speaking about what is happening; I just happen to see that way of speaking as redundant. I think believing comes into play when there is doubt and we decide to go with one possibility or another.

Yes, it seems easier to realize that touch, taste and smell give us immediate access to the qualities of things than it is in the case of sight or, especially. hearing.

Thanks Pierre, I hadn't before seen evidence that this exact debate had been going on that long. :up:

When I look at something I can see its qualities: height, width, shape, colours, textures; I don't need to infer those properties.

Do you have an argument to support the idea that I need to infer the properties of objects, rather than simply see, hear, feel, touch and taste them? You are the one making the extraordinary claim here.

And you haven't even attempted to address your performative contradiction. What does 'direct' mean if not 'reliable', and what does 'indirect' mean if not 'unreliable'? Surely that is the only salient issue: whether our perceptions afford us reliable information about distal objects, and everything points to the fact that they do. How would we survive if they didn't? How would science work so well if they didn't?

Firstly, if direct realism is true then scientific realism is true, and if scientific realism is true then direct realism is false. Therefore direct realism is false given that it entails a contradiction. — Michael

And you haven't presented your argument as to why sciietific realism being true entails direct realism (in the sense I'm taking it, namely that its central claim is that we have reliable information from and about distal obkects) being false.

Again not true: perceptible properties of distal objects are directly observed, no need for inference. Of course, these observable properties, being perceptible properties, involve us as well as the objects, so they don't necessarily tell us anything about what the objects are in themselves (or whether the idea of objects in themselves is anything more than a dialectical opposition).

Again not true: perceptible properties of distal objects are directly observed, no need for inference. Of course, these observable properties, being perceptible properties, involve us as well as the objects, so they don't necessarily tell us anything about what the objects are in themselves (or whether the idea of objects in themselves is anything more than a dialectical opposition).

I didn't say that we don't have reliable knowledge, only that we don't have direct perceptual knowledge. — Michael

What could direct perceptual knowledge be but reliable knowledge of its objects, as opposed to (presumably) indirect (because subject to intermediate distortions) unreliable perceptual appearances? And I'm talking about the vast amount of observational data in botany, zoology, geology, chemistry and so on, not about inferred, unobservable entities and events like electrons and the Big Bang.

If direct realism is true then scientific realism is true, and if scientific realism is true then direct realism is false. Therefore, direct realism is false. — Michael

That's not correct, it's an interpretation, and one which comprises a performative contradiction to boot. In other words, there is nothing in scientific realism from which it necessarily follows that direct realism is false, in fact indirect realism cannot support its conclusions on the basis of something which it rejects from the start: namely reliable knowledge of distal objects.

And as I've said I think the whole 'direct/ indirect' parlance is flawed anyway. What is really at stake is whether or not perception yields reliable knowledge of distal objects, end of story.

The idea that we have scientific knowledge relies on the assumption that we have reliable knowledge of distal onjects. Attempting to use purportedly reliable scientific knowledge to support a claim that we have no reliable knowledge of distal objects is a performative contradiction.

There is no fact of the matter as to whether perception is direct or indirect, they are just different ways of talking and neither of them particularly interesting or useful. I'm astounded that this thread has continued so long with what amounts to "yes it is" and "no it isn't".