How? We can just as readily imagine a scenario where no vat-concept corresponds in any way with a trans-concept. — hypericin
You're equivocating. You know that right? — TheMadFool
It's not a thesis about what we are, but about what it is to know something. — Constance
What sets philosophy apart from other disciplines is its desire to know the truth at the level of basic questions, which is why all categories of thought are inherently philosophical regardless of way they differ in content. Going through your mail and doing quantum mechanics share that same foundation of structured thought and experience taking up the world. What does it mean at all to think, to solve problems, to experience pain and pleasure or art and music. Not this art or that love affair, but At ALL, how does one analytically approach those truly basic questions that are presupposed by all the things we say and do? — Constance
Metaphysics? There is bad and good metaphysics. The former asks about, say, God's angels, actions, responses to sin, his kingdom, accessibility through prayer, God's omniscience, omnipotence, and so on, and so on. — Constance
Empirical science? This is the naturalistic attitude. Philosophy is about what is presupposed by this, what assumptions are in place for this that make it possible to think and experience at all. Otherwise, you just doing scientific speculation, not philosophy. — Constance
an object is a synthesis of overt, observable, features, and the contributions of the observer, and ponders the question as to whether there is any epistemic connection at all between out there and in here. — Constance
What they usually do is take the naturalistic world, assume there is a connection, and simply move forward with that, putting aside any presuppositional objections. — Constance
Doing philosophy is not doing science, or, when a scientist does science, if she starts wondering about underlying philosophical issues, to that extent, she breaks away from her discipline. — Constance
There is my cat, and I know it, but how does, and this is the question of all questions, this opaque brain thing internalize epistemically that over there that is not a brain thing or any of its interior manifestations? — Constance
Yes but there is a distinction between the world they present and the real world. This distinction is what the word "reality" delineates, without it the word has no meaning. — hypericin
Are simulations observer dependent? That is to say, is it possible for a simulation to exist in a universe with no minds? — RogueAI
From our perspective imagining we are the BIVs, 'simulation' would be a silly choice of word, it doesn't distinguish anything useful yet. — Isaac
If we are participating in the thought experiment and imagining we are BIVs, then we must be imagining the world outside the vats. — hypericin
The 'external state' is just now an electrode — Isaac
In both the latter two cases our model of the object of our perception is that of a software construct, which is an aspect of software hosted on a physical computer. So in both cases it is linguistically meaningful and useful to designate the objects of perception as "simulations", as opposed to the rest of the physical world which hosts these simulations. — hypericin
I strongly suspect this is not an epistemic act at all, but rather a distinction brains are hardwired to make. — hypericin
Even in the last two, does it not really go; — Isaac
But these are models of a single perceptual event of a single object. — hypericin
But then what is your model of where these perceptions come from? Do you simply not have one? — hypericin
Dewey as I understand him thought of knowledge as the result of inquiry. He thought it was an error to characterize each of our encounters with the rest of the world as a "knowledge" relationship or event, or as the result of a process by which we "know" something. When we see something we've seen thousands of times before we don't engage in reasoning in order to say we've seen it, or to see it. We recognize it. When we believe we undergo or engage in a process to "know" each time we perceive something, we misunderstand what we are and what the rest of the world is, and how we interact with it.
It's clear to me that Dewey thought ignoring context was a fundamental problem of philosophy. Reasoning, experimenting, is something we do to know something we don't already know--that's how we learn things about the world around us. But we don't do that all the time, because we don't have to. And the fact we do so or don't do so has nothing to do with the existence of the rest of the world.
As for Rorty, I think he departed from Pragmatism because he never accepted the respect both Peirce and Dewey had in method, specifically the scientific method and intelligent inquiry, as a means to resolve problems and questions, to understand and act. That's something I believe is essential to Pragmatism. No absolute truth, but "warranted assertibility" based on the best evidence available. This is what I think "saves" pragmatism from claims of relativism. Also, while Rorty thought Dewey was right to criticize metaphysics and metaphysicians, he also thought his effort at metaphysics was misguided. — Ciceronianus the White
I don't believe the object is out there in the 'real world' in the first place. I believe we construct the objects of our perception, so for me, the means by which the data we use for this construction arrives is of fairly minor importance. — Isaac
So perception isn't veridical, rather its a hallucination controlled by the world based on the brain estimating what's out there, which is updated from the stream of sensory information? — Marchesk
Also we're a social species, we invest quite a lot in making sure your model matches my model to a good degree of similarity. — Isaac
But we want to minimise surprise, so a good match between the probability function of the model and the distribution of the hidden state is something we evolve toward, purely by energy efficiency. — Isaac
Essentially your perceptual 'world', which includes your own body, and other people, functions as a sort of internally generated self/world model, which is theorized to be caused by the brain/nervous system of something unknowable ("hidden state"). Its a kind of solipsism. — Inyenzi
I would imagine a "good match" (I don't even know how a good match would even be possible between hallucination and the unknowable..) is irrelevant in terms of our evolution, and the content of our 'hallucinations' would evolve towards what is useful in an evolutionary context (survival, gene replication, etc). — Inyenzi
If philosophy is nothing more than our everyday experience and actions, then it is really nothing at all. At least nothing worth mentioning. You talk about philosophy consisting of analytic approaches to truly basic questions. Much, most, almost all of our daily experience is non-analytical, and good thing. It seems to me, without being able to point to specific evidence, that the only presuppositions to most of our daily experiences are more related to the structure of the mind than to analytic propositions. — T Clark
I don't share your... prejudice against religion, but it has always bothered me that the existence of God is considered a metaphysical question. That's because the existence of a monotheistic God present as a conscious entity is a matter of fact, true or false. That takes it out of the realm of metaphysics to me. I think other aspects of Gods and religions are appropriate subjects for metaphysical discussion. — T Clark
Agreed, except I think that science has presuppositions beyond those for other modes of thinking and experience. If not, you've diluted the idea of metaphysics, including epistemology, to insignificance. — T Clark
This is a metaphysical position. I think very few scientists have this kind of abstract understanding of what they do. Maybe I'm wrong. — T Clark
I've enjoyed this discussion. I am skeptical of the role you give phenomenology in your philosophy, but my understanding is based on reading summaries rather than primary sources. — T Clark
I strongly suspect this is not an epistemic act at all, but rather a distinction brains are hardwired to make. Witness organic brain disorders like schizophrenia where this distinction breaks down.
Instead of discarding as "bad metaphysics" what is called naïve realism here, why not instead bracket it with the disclaimer that this is not absolutely certain, but rather our best guess at the state of affairs. And describe why this qualifies as the best available guess (i.e. why brain in a vat can be cut away with Occam's Razor).
After all, whether or not we are envatted (love this coinage) is an empirical fact of the world, and empirical facts cannot, in principle, be proven with absolute certainty. All we can ever do is construct models which explain what we experience at the phenomenological level.
Absolute certainty is one of the great chimeras of philosophy. — hypericin
If one’s identity is expanded to include the entire body, beyond the surface of the brain and nervous system to the surface of one’s skin, observation of the external world is direct. There is no longer some medium or veil between perceiver and perceived. — NOS4A2
Pls proceed to explain how it is that my cat gets "in" the brain thing. — Constance
I see, but don't you see the difference? It would be as if explaining how food get in the stomach included an explanatory dead zone, and so there would be nothing to say. Explaining how the cat gets into a brain, BEGINS with a brain phenomenon, not with some affirmation of something that is not a phenomenon. The cat out there the knowledge of which you are trying to explain is not a phenomenon, but is supposed to have an existence beyond phenomena, something there that is discoverable to which you knowledge has found access. But how can this discoverable thing every make its way into that which makes it into a phenomenon, when to affirm this would require you to affirm what-is-not-a-phenomenon? How can a phenomenal system affirm what is not a phenomenon? Or even make sense out of such a thing? All thinking, causality, anything posited at all, is a brain event, so even when you start talking about electromagnetic waves being absorbed or reflected by the cats fur, you are stopped right there: How does light and its properties ever make it into the explanatory matrix of a brain? to be used to explain how the cat gets "in there"?Viewing humans as living organisms in an environment (which is what we are, I believe), I can't help but think this is tantamount to asking someone to explain how our food gets into our stomachs. — Ciceronianus the White
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