"'Real or not?' does not always come up, can't always be raised. We do raise this question only when, to speak rather roughly, suspicion assails us--in some way or other things may be not what they seem; and we can raise this question only if there is a way, or ways, in which things may be not what they seem. — Austin p.69 (my emphasis in bold)
You'd have to give me some reason how this is not claiming evidence of how things are or are not done, or when they can be. — Antony Nickles
What metaphysical truth do you see in that? — frank
People do seem to have picked up the puzzle about why, if Austin wants to deny reality, he doesn't just come out with it. He seems to dance around the question with marginal and trivial comments on how the word "real" is used, and so forth. I think someone should at least try to explain why. — Ludwig V
marginal and trivial comments on how the word "real" is used — Ludwig V
I really didn't see him as doing that at all. Interesting how differently two people can read the same paragraphs, huh? — frank
'Real or not?' does not always come up, can't always be raised. We do raise this question only when, to speak rather roughly, suspicion assails us--in some way or other things may be not what they seem; and we can raise this question only if there is a way, or ways, in which things may be not what they seem. — Austin p.69 (my emphasis in bold)
Do you mean if everyone believed in God, that would make him real? — frank
I just disagree that there are metaphysical truths we can pull out of the way we speak. It's frequently difficult to even pin point how our speech refers, much less discover great truths in grammar. — frank
So if everyone says "God created the world in six days", would that reflect the mechanics of how the world actually works? — frank
I can't avoid the suspicion that... the arc expressed here is not as explicit as you make it seem. — Banno
Method, more specifically, I think (the method of "inquiry"). — Ciceronianus
I don't think there are much in the way of metaphysical implications from Austin, do you? He's just pointing out the way we speak. — frank
There is an additional aspect to this desire for certainty. It is the tendency to universalize. Admittedly not everything is certain (sometimes our sense deceive us), but equally not everything is uncertain (sometimes our senses do not deceive us). — Ludwig V
You keep reminding me of Dewey. That's a good thing for me, but perhaps not for others. See his The Quest for Certainty. Analytic and OLP philosophers weren't the only ones seeking to cure philosophy of its various ills. — Ciceronianus
That's what I disagreed with, that math is regarded by philosophers as the ultimate paradigm — Metaphysician Undercover
The idea that it is just a matter of just looking, or collecting data, is far too simple. — Ludwig V
How does the fact that you and I agree that the answer to 2+2 is 4 say anything about reality. — Metaphysician Undercover
If math is just a different way of using language, how does it possibly obtain this status of "objective"? — Metaphysician Undercover
But Malcolm is saying that this idea that dreaming is an experience where we question, reason, perceive, imagine is an incoherent one, so there is no sense to say we are comparing experiences to determine they are qualitatively similar or not. — Richard B
happy for others to move on, if you want to do VII. — Banno
It also looks to me that you might have been reading Cavell? — Ludwig V
I'm only gesturing at the point that what's in question is not "ordinary", contingent falsity, but something more radical, in that Ayer uses "direct" and "indirect" in an incoherent way. — Ludwig V
To attempt to clear up the direct/indirect issue,
— Antony Nickles
I'm thinking that there is an argument in the background that is confusing people. It relates to Corvus' question
You still have not answered whether Austin was a direct realist or not.
— Corvus — Ludwig V
If you accept Austin's ordinary language definition of direct and indirect perception, then he does accept that some perceptions are direct and others are not. — Ludwig V
The understanding of Ayer's position that I've come to in this discussion is that there is such a thing as direct perception - perception of sense-data - and the objects of this kind of perception are always real, in the sense that they are what they seem to be, but always unreal in that they are not what we would like to think they are - perceptions of "external" "objective" reality. Austin rejects that idea, not on the ground that it is false, but on the ground that it is incoherent. — Ludwig V
Of course, there needs to be evidence under the scrutiny of judgment. I mean, it’s not like we can just make up anything.
— Antony Nickles
"Evidence" needs to be interpreted here. — Ludwig V
”There are recognized ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking… deciding whether a thing is stuffed or live” — Richard B, quoting Austin
However, this thread is about Austin's answer to Ayer's and thus it is about that notion of perception. That would be the correct one in this situation. "Correct" in the sense that that is the one under consideration, so the others are irrelevant here. — creativesoul
It could be argued that we cannot expect "ordinary language" to be adapted to cater for this (relatively) new kind of knowledge - yet — Ludwig V
I'm inclined to attribute Ayer's approach to Cartesian scepticism, rather than to any ethical question. — Ludwig V
Ayer seems to back off the radical implications of his theory by denying them — Ludwig V
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. — Janus
[With a blue imagine and blue wall, or bent pencil in water or just a bent pencil] we may say the same things ('It looks blue', 'It looks bent', &c.), but this is no reason at all for denying the obvious fact that the 'experiences' are different. — Austin, p. 50
Perhaps I should have noticed the difference if I had been more careful or attentive; perhaps I am just bad at things of this sort (e.g. vintages); perhaps, again, I have never learned to discriminate between them, or haven't had much practice at it. — Austin, p. 51
Is he dismantling anything or merely presenting a different way of thinking about it. — Janus
...I still feel the classic account of indirect perception which has been around from the time of Plato is more reasonable. — Corvus
...where he discusses difference in usage of the words "looks" "seems" and "appears" ...was more like English semantic chapter rather than Philosophy... — Corvus
It is not a different interest. It was just part of the explanation why perceptions are indirect. Austin's first page of the book is about direct and indirect perceptions. — Corvus
(emphasis added)Anyway, pointing out the eyes as a medium for visual perception is not such a nonsensical statement. — Corvus
I think he accepts that perception involves a fair amount of interpretation. — frank
[Eyes as a medium for visual perception] could be actually a legitimate scientific statement. — Corvus
obviously there are objects and the perceiver in this issue — Corvus
When you are asked how a car works, could you explain the workings of cars without going into the explanations on how the engine, steering and gear works? — Corvus
Part of the difficulty is understanding the significance of what he says. It is too easy to trivialize "ordinary language". — Ludwig V
But I think that is a reaction to the difficulty of seeing what one might do next in philosophy. So much is being dismantled that the landscape can seem to be a desert. Bringing the nonsense in philosophy to an end is one thing. But bringing philosophy to an end is something else. Whatever motivates philosophy has certainly not gone away. — Ludwig V
