Yes. We might use the metaphor of a distorting lens. — plaque flag

I've called it the worldly fingerprint placed upon each of us by virtue of natural language acquisition/adoption. That's another matter in its own right, and would be too far tangent to be considered on topic.

Yeah, I should probably not continue here. My own position rejects both direct and indirect realism as it's currently defined. That is due to the stark ontological differences in what constitutes thought and belief, and subsequently... a mind.

Is that directed at me, in response to my last reply???

A group of people can watch the same set of events unfolding in real time and walk away with completely different opinions about what happened.

One reason why and/or how is because each person brings their own worldview along. They each have their own sets of thoughts and beliefs about themselves and/or the world around them. It is through these respective worldviews that people 'see' the world. One's pre-existing belief system largely mediates how one comes to terms with the world and what happens in it(and in them). There are all sorts of preconceived notions at work in each of them, and these preconceived notions can and do influence the way the events are taken into account while being witnessed. Thus, any differences in testimony about what happened is often due to the differences in worldviews.

Eye-witness testimony has also been proven to be quite unreliable at times. It does not follow from the fact that different people have different accounts of what happened that they did not all watch the same set of events unfolding in real time.

if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact. — RussellA

Could you rephrase this question by dropping "facts" and "external world" out of it?

For the Direct Realist, the world we see around us is the real world itself. — RussellA

Is there no distinction to be drawn and maintained between a direct realist and a naive one?

:yikes:

:grin:

How does phantom limb syndrome work? — Michael

Reactivated neural pathways in spite of no longer being complete. A consequence of the largely autonomous central nervous system simply doing it's thing in spite of its having lost most of the input mechanisms of those pathways.

Neural pathways are not just in the brain.

May have something to do with neuroplasticity as well(the biological machinery repairing itself by virtue of using different structures than before to perform some task/function that was once performed by the missing structures).

Severely damaged nerves can do weird things. I nearly cut off the end of my thumb once. Dr said that I was very unikely to recover much feeling in the part beyond the laceration due to the nerves being completely severed. Years later, for a brief time, I experienced odd pains in that area, despite there not having been anything external to me playing a role.

There are a multitude of places where philosophy 'went wrong'! Many have been pointed out by later philosophers throughout history.

Here's one that has yet to have been adequately addressed and/or corrected in academia...

Philosophy went wrong, and still goes wrong whenever taking account of thought and belief, both human and non-human.

In fact we're trying to do exactly that to enable the blind to see. — Michael

Good luck in the absence of red things outside the head to play a role.

"Electromagnetic radiation stimulating the photoreceptors can cause someone to see red for the first time" is a gross oversimplification.

You used "activation". I think it's better put as a "reactivation". The difference is one of evolutionary explanation of seeing red. There's no way to check, but I think it's much safer to claim that we could not induce seeing red for the first time with someone who was in the complete dark, had never seen red before, using only the means you're suggesting are required.

The evolution of seeing red...

Okay. Then seeing red does require things outside the head.

The position you're arguing for seems to completely neglect all the events that lead up to the ability to reactivate the biological machinery.

I'm just baffled by the claim that seeing colours and shapes does not require anything outside the head.
— creativesoul

Does feeling pain require something outside the head? — Michael

Of course it does. Phantom limb pain requires once having had a limb. The limb is outside the head. As is any prior object that caused injury to the limb.

Does it require having seen red before?
— creativesoul

And really it can only be reports of having seen red, I'd think, which is the application of a concept requiring language. — plaque flag

Well, I do not think that seeing red requires language. Our discussion of it does. I'm just baffled by the claim that seeing colours and shapes does not require anything outside the head. That makes no sense. Or better yet, it leads to saying that everything is inside the head.

Seems to me that the activation is better called reactivation...

So, the very first time someone sees red, it does not require anything not in the head?

A red colour occurs when the appropriate areas of the occipital lobe are activated. — Michael

Does it require having seen red before?

I understand that.

Are there trees inside the blind person's head that they can see only after activating the biological machinery? If so, then all that is required for seeing trees is activating the biological machinery.

Just look at perception from a purely biological perspective. Electromagnetic radiation stimulates the rods and cones in the eyes. This sends signals to the occipital lobe which processes visual information, which is then sent to the temporal lobe where the visual information is processed into memory and to the frontal lobe where the visual information is processed into intellectual reasoning and decision-making.

Now what happens if we ignore the eyes entirely and find some other means to activate the occipital lobe, such as with cortical implants or the ordinary case of dreaming? I would say that the subject undergoes a conscious experience. And I would say that their conscious experience is one of visual imagery, such as shapes and colours. Seeing shapes and colours does not require electromagnetic radiation stimulating the rods and cones in the eyes (or an apple to reflect said light). Seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex.

Given that seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex, regardless of what triggers it, it's understandable why one would argue that the shapes and colours we see are "in the head" and not properties of apples. Seeing shapes and colours is no different in principle to feeling pain or hot or cold. — Michael

I think there's something to be said about the claim that seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex. That is false. It's akin to claiming that phantom limb pain does not require having once had a limb.

If we ignore the eyes(or previous limb) we're also ignoring everything that led up to the ability to 'activate' the biological machinery. Much of what's being ignored is not located in the head.

Very nice. The best yet, and he will not have financial motivation to be here as most of the others have had. One need only read through the previous guests' responses to see that they were trying to sell a book. That was quite disappointing to me.

Kudos... MAJOR kudos to whoever set this up!

Great job!

Disappointing ending to the Fox News trial. Yes, Murdoch has to shell out $700 million and eat a certain amount of crow, but the cast of clowns that spew lies and pollute the electorate don’t have to own up to their bullshit on their own stations or in the witness box. Still, it’s something. — Wayfarer

It's something alright..

A tremendous public disservice!

You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. — frank

That pretty much says it all.

In order to know that A is not equal to B, one must have access to both. By definition, an indirect realist stipulates that we cannot have direct access to the world. Kant's distinction between Noumenal and phenomenal suffers the same fatal flaw. Arguments outright denying objectivity based upon the idea that everything ever believed, known, and/or stated come through a subject do as well.

Untenability by virtue of being strung up by one's own hamstrings.

The result renders the distinctions/dichotomies themselves meaningless/useless in that they cannot be used as a means to draw and maintain the distinctions of their own namesake.

It's the situations when someone holds false belief unbeknownst to themselves that the practice is found lacking, because it is during these times that the person cannot even tell you what they believe. It is impossible to knowingly hold false belief, and/or be mistaken.
— creativesoul

Yes, quite so. I think that these cases are one kind of embedded belief, in that we (but not everyone) think that beliefs are also appropriately attributed to animals that don't have language. For the record, my belief (!) is that beliefs are reasons for doing something, and are essential to the language practice of attributing rationale to certain actions. One art of this is that we find that sometimes people act as if p were true when it isn't. So if a rational agent acts as if that piece of cloth were a cow, I believe that agent believes it is a cow. Another part is that sometimes they act without taking into account some p that is clearly relevant, and it can be the best explanation that they do not believe that p. I think that "know" does the same job, with the addition that p is true. This contributes to the language practice of passing on information. It may all sound a bit wacky, but I find it very satisfying. — Ludwig V

I'm very sympathetic to the idea that thought and belief are efficacious. The explanation sketched out above makes sense. Given that all knowledge that p consists of belief that p, what you say here sounds about right in that regard.

Although...

We may be talking past one another in a specific way. I'm often making ontological arguments, and I'm not sure if you've been aware of that. For example, my argument against convention is ontological. The conflation of propositions and belief is the charge I've made, and subsequently supported throughout this thread. So, while I agree with saying that beliefs are reasons for doing something(Witt sets this out nicely in a manner that you've continued here), I do not think that beliefs are equivalent to reasons for doing something, and you've said much the same thing a few replies ago.

The definition of terms is an interesting case. Kant differentiates between a priori concepts and arbitrary ones, which I take him to mean: technical terms (set aside by Jamal; referred to as “stipulated” by @Banno). He says they are ones (conceptions) that we create, which (unlike the other kinds of concepts) we can define; he says: however we choose, as we created them (which Kant excelled at). — Antony Nickles

I'm sympathetic to Kant(given his time), but much as Banno hinted at earlier, he's far too confused/confusing and - I think anyway - overcomplicated things by unnecessarily multiplying entities. I think that Kant's taxonomy could not perform the task of drawing and maintaining the distinction between that which exists in its entirety prior to our taking note of it(prior to our naming and describing), and that which does not.

Hey Ludwig! So, I've been partaking in an international move. Sorry for the delay! I'm curious if you are still interested in continuing this discussion? I'd love to!

Seems to me that the question presupposes sensations and minds are completely distinct things. I think that that is entirely mistaken.

Is “define your terms!” always or often or ever a legitimate imperative? — Jamal

Seems extremely helpful for readers... to me anyway. I mean, when there are terms that have more than one commonly accepted use, it's certainly helpful for mutual understanding.

Consciousness is meaningful experience.
— creativesoul

Meaning is neither physical nor non physical, internal nor external, etc.
— creativesoul

Consciousness is neither physical nor nonphysical? Are you saying ontology doesn't apply to consciousness? — frank

Not at all. To quite the contrary, I'm saying that attempting to parse meaningful experience into either/or dichotomous language is a fatal flaw when that something consists of and is existentially dependent upon both. Thus, if I'm to be taken as saying anything at all about ontology, I'm saying that the historical and conventional ontological frameworks are fatally flawed in that they are inherently inadequate as a result of being incapable of taking meaningful experience into account.

I feel that there's an ontological idea going on that there must be some object that is believed, just as there's a feeling that there must be some object that is true or false. It seems pure assumption to me and I find it annoying. But I don't pretend that I'm clear about it. — Ludwig V

Not too certain how clear I am about it either, but in fairness to convention...

Historically speaking, it became increasingly necessary for humans to be able to discriminate between contradictory assertions. It is my suspicion that epistemology was born thereof, and is where and when belief as p gained a foothold. It's worth mentioning here that I do not find it's entirely wrong. I mean, there are all sorts of situations when someone would assent to some proposition/statement or another. There are all sorts of situations when someone asserts something or another, makes a knowledge claim, etc. In such situations, the belief that approach works perfectly well enough as an accounting practice.

It's the situations when someone holds false belief unbeknownst to themselves that the practice is found lacking, because it is during these times that the person cannot even tell you what they believe. It is impossible to knowingly hold false belief, and/or be mistaken.

I'm not fond of speaking in terms of 'objects'. It's fraught with archaic baggage. That's a big part of the underlying problem... the inherently inadequate linguistic frameworks being used to talk about that which existed in its entirety prior to our talking about it. Language less but meaningful nonetheless human thought and belief are precisely such things.

I find that the very language we use to talk about stuff effects/affects the way we look at the world as well as the way we feel about it while looking. The degree to which this is the case cannot be overstated, but that is a subject matter in its own right.

I don't have a list of the interesting words. I seldom get much beyond know, believe, think, say, assert, but I would include suppose, imagine, fear, hope, wonder (both that.. and whether... and why... ). I'm sure you could go on. — Ludwig V

I find our exchange a bit odd, because unless I've taken you the wrong way, you've repeatedly dismissed several different aspects of the conversation, citing these yet to have been disclosed verbs as what interests you in lieu of whatever aspect was being discussed at the time. In addition to that, I'm reminded of the blanket theory that you mentioned as a preference to piecemeal answers to Gettier, after saying you weren't interested in a theory.

The oddity, I suppose, is that it looks like a performative contradiction.

I suppose this could very well be a direct result of my own continual critical thinking. If it is, my apologies. I've no way to turn it off. Thus, I attempt to direct it towards more practically beneficial subjects. "An eye for detail" barely scratches the surface of that personality 'trait'. But that's already too much about me. Just wanted to soften the critique above. I could be very wrong. You would be the one to know that, if I were.

Would you argue that it isn't possible to reduce our theories of consciousness to physics? — frank

Well, I'm not familiar enough with our theories of consciousness to say. However, I tend towards the fundamentally basic objection that meaning can be reduced to neither physics nor physical processes. Consciousness is meaningful experience. Therefore, consciousness can be reduced to neither physics nor physical processes.

My position is that all meaning is a biproduct of thought and belief formation(drawing correlations/associations/connections between different things), and that that is a process which is existentially dependent upon and/or consists of physical and non-physical things. Therefore, thought and belief cannot be reduced to merely physics or physical things. Although, I do hold that meaning emerges from physical things, and as such it is existentially dependent upon physical things. I reject many if not most commonly employed conventional dichotomies used to talk about the subject matter.

Meaning is neither physical nor non physical, internal nor external, etc.

We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics. — frank

It seems clear enough to me that meaningful thought and belief(experience or consciousness, if you like) are reducible to neither physical events nor physics, similar to Davidson's anomalous monism(without 'mental' events).

How does one reduce meaningful correlations drawn between different things to physics?

The issue with knowledge is that we cannot always check to see for ourselves if something or another is true. Hence, our becoming aware of that and our own fallibility can and ought lead to a bit of skepticism. However, it does not follow from the fact that we cannot know everything that we cannot know anything. It also does not follow from the fact that we are sometimes mistaken that we are always mistaken. Hence, radical skepticism seems to me to be an emotionally based overreaction.


You're absolutely right in pointing out that the nature of human progress requires us to stand on the shoulders of many before us, and it's worth mentioning that there is a significant amount of trusting the truthfulness of the source material inherent to our daily lives. In a society where no one trusts institutions and/or each other, it's only a matter of time before it collapses. Such is and was the danger inherently within American government over the past fifty years such that the legislations passed throughout the last five decades cultivated a society of people that led the up to the likes of Trump.

A real life tragedy of the commons on steroids. Ah, but I digress...

You're right. I'm sorry. — Ludwig V

No worries. No need for apologies, it's not like I'm offended or anything. I figured the fact that you copied my reply to Michael and treated it as if it were addressed to you was something you did unbeknownst to yourself while doing it. I hope you did not take the shortness for terseness. It wasn't. I'm just quite busy, and I will be for the next few months.

All that being said, it is very interesting that that has happened here, in this context though. Serendipitous even. If I may: You believed that my reply to Michael was meant for you. Yet I do not think that you would have believed that "my reply to Michael was meant for you" was true at the time. This all points to a curious failure of current convention to be able to properly account for the fact that it is humanly impossible to knowingly hold false belief and/or knowingly be mistaken.

It is for that reason and that reason alone that there are often situations when and where someone would not agree and/or assent to a rendering of their belief at the time they were forming, having, and/or holding it, if it were put into either belief statement or propositional form. <-------That's very problematic for current conventional notions of belief as well as current belief attribution practices. Belief as propositional attitude(which includes belief that approaches) simply cannot take this into account.

For instance, Russell's clock is a perfect example of the aforementioned situation, as is the cottage case regarding the farmer. The person looking at the clock would not agree with and/or assent to the statement "that broken clock is working" although they most certainly believed that that broken clock was working at that particular time. Likewise, the farmer would not agree with and/or assent to the statement "a piece of cloth is a cow" while believing that a piece of cloth is a cow. Now, circling back to the serendipitous mistake you made earlier: I'm relatively certain that the same holds true for your earlier belief that my reply to Michael was meant for you.

It's curious because current conventional notions of belief as well as the belief attribution practices based upon those notions are fatally flawed in their inherent inability to properly take account of such belief in such situations.

As Moore skirted around, we can coherently say something about another's false beliefs and/or mistakes at the time, yet we cannot say the same things about ourselves.

Why?

Because the conventional notion of belief as propositional attitude, the conventional practice of treating propositions as though they are equivalent to belief, and the belief that approach are all inherently incapable of properly taking these situations into account. The inherently inadequate linguistic frameworks, schemes, conceptions still being practiced in current convention are exactly what gave rise to Russell's clock, Moore's paradox, and Gettier. Convention has gotten human thought and/or belief historically wrong. Those paradoxes and more are simply logical consequences of the conventional notion of belief that has been at work for centuries.

First, I don't understand what you mean by "accounting practice" or "malpractice" in this context. You seem to think that philosophy is a kind of accountancy. Perhaps it is, in some ways, but it seems clearly different in other ways. — Ludwig V

Well, each and every time that we are talking about that which existed in its entirety prior to our talking about it, we are indeed taking account of it. The belief that approach works from the notion of belief as an attitude/disposition towards some proposition/statement such that the person who believes the statement believes it to be true. So, it is held that when we say someone believes "X", we are saying that they have an attitude/disposition such that they hold "X" to be true.

That's most certainly an accounting practice at work.

Second, after our exchange, I decided that it was simpler not to talk about propositions in this context, but simply about beliefs. That way, the amount of confusion in the discussion might be reduced. — Ludwig V

I like the attempts to reduce confusion and add clarity whenever possible. For whatever it's worth, the position I argue for/from began with and still has a very strong methodological naturalist bent.

However, it's impossible to address current conventional issues such as Gettier without addressing propositions and how they've been used to represent and/or as equivalent to belief. That said, I've no issue with agreeing, if you do - and I think you do - to no longer focus upon the issues involving propositions and/or propositional attitudes. I think we largely agree there, so we can close that part off and focus our attention elsewhere if you like.

This involved accepting that "propositional attitude" was not a helpful way of describing the group of verbs that I was interested in. — Ludwig V

Okay, we've yet to have broached that aspect in its own right. I'm curious, which group of verbs are you interested in and how exactly are they relevant to Gettier?

Oh, and I just realized that I earlier confused Gettier's Case I, once again, regarding who got the job and who Smith believed would get the job, but I'm hoping you overlooked that due to the earlier clarification I offered after doing the same thing.

Does that help? — Ludwig V

No, because you neglected to respond to my reply to you, and instead replied to my response to Michael.

It’s not unusual to say “we both believe that John shouldn’t marry Jane, but for different reasons.”

Max believes that John shouldn’t marry Jane because he believes that Jane is a horrible person.

Jessica believes that John shouldn’t marry Jane because she believes that marriage is a terrible practice.

They both believe that John shouldn’t marry Jane.

It’s perfectly appropriate to distinguish beliefs from the reasons for having them. It’s absurd to respond to the above by saying that neither Max nor Jessica believe that John shouldn’t marry Jane. — Michael

What I'm saying is that Max's and Jessica's beliefs are equivalent to neither the proposition "John should not marry Jane", nor their attitude towards that particular proposition.

What I'm saying is that they have different beliefs about whether or not John should marry Jane, clearly as you yourself have stipulated. You seem to want to call part of their belief about whether or not John should marry Jane "reasons", as though part of their belief about whether or not John should marry Jane are somehow different than their belief about whether or not John should marry Jane.

In addition, you seem to place far more importance and justificatory weight than I do upon common speech patterns/practices. It does not follow from the fact that it is common to say that they both believe that John should not marry Jane, but for different reasons, that their belief is equivalent to the proposition "John should not marry Jane", or that the distinction you're drawing between their belief and their reasons somehow reflects that there is a difference between reasons and beliefs such that reasons are not beliefs.

What is clear is that they hold completely different beliefs about whether or not John should marry Jane, and yet the notion of belief you're using along with the belief attribution methods you've been practicing, inevitably leads you to say otherwise.

Their beliefs about whether or not John should marry Jane are far more complex than your accounting practices are capable of admitting. The same fatal flaw underwrites the earlier example you gave of belief about your birthplace.

I'm a bit puzzled. On the one hand, you've expressed the desire to have an all-encompassing solution. On the other hand, you've expressed several times that you're not interested in theory. In addition, you've expressed agreement that what I've proposed dissolves the Gettier problem in both cases. It also dissolves all the cottage cases discussed here as well, then you mentioned qualifications...

Which of the 'qualification cases' are you not satisfied with my answer to?

What stops you from agreeing with the accounting malpractice charges I've levied against the historical and current conventional practices of belief attribution(including believe that approaches), belief as propositional attitude, and treating naked propositions as if they are equivalent to belief?

Not only are these practices inherently responsible for the inability to make sense of language less belief, they are also responsible for the inability to defend Gettier's cases as well as understanding the lessons of Russell(the clock) and Moore's paradox. In other words, understanding the accounting malpractice results in dissolving all three issues.

This problem was devised by Jonathan Vogel.

1. Someone (call him Al) has parked his car on Avenue A (out of sight now) half an hour ago. Everything is normal, the car is still there, Al has a good memory. Does he know where his car is?

2. Every day, a certain percentage of cars gets stolen. Does Al know, right now, that his car has not been stolen and driven away since he parked it?

3. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe with a similar crime rate, Betty has parked her car on Avenue B half an hour ago. Betty is cognitively very similar to Al (just as good a memory, just as much confidence about the location of her car). Her car, unfortunately, was stolen and driven away. Does Betty, who believes that her car is on Avenue B where she parked it, know that her car is on Avenue B?

4. Having answered all three questions, would you like to revise your answer to any of them?

5. Why? — Ludwig V

1. Yes, Al believes his car is where it is.
2. If he believes it has not been stolen, and it has not been stolen, then yes, he knows it has not been stolen.
3. No, because her belief is not true.
4. No
5. There is no issue I see.

I second what and both say as well.