they all see different things — Wayfarer
In short, anything that paints what's going on when two people 'see different things' is going to come up short of it treats them as isolated beings confronting the world on terms that are theirs individually, uniquely, and alone. — Srap Tasmaner
Three guys looking at a field. One is a real estate developer, one a cattle farmer, and one a geologist. Even though they're looking at the same scene, they all see different things, because they're looking at it from different perspectives. That's an analogy for the sense in which 'the world' is, for us, a construction, 'vorstellung' in Schopenhauer. Having insight into how we construct it is what wisdom is, according to him. — Wayfarer
None of which is too say 'the field' isn't there, or is constructed. I just to want to allow that they are, in one sense, doing the same thing, and in another, doing three different things. A veteran cattleman will also look at the field differently from someone less experienced. — Srap Tasmaner
The three guys are looking at a field, it's not that they are in the same spot and one sees a field, another a mountain and the third a river. "They're looking at the same scene"—your words. They see "different things" only in that they see different potential uses, or things to discover, or to gained, there. The field is there; we didn't "construct it". — Janus
Though of course we don't actually "see" potential uses; we consider that what we see may, in the future, be used in certain ways. — Ciceronianus
The field is there; we didn't "construct it". — Janus
We can say that ‘something’ is there to act as affordances or constraint on our accounts, but we can’t identify it as a field , since that’s already an account. — Joshs
But we can all agree, no matter what our interests might be, that it is a field. That commonality seems to be more than a mere account. — Janus
And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? — Goodman
The field is there; we didn't "construct it". — Janus
But we can all agree, no matter what our interests might be, that it is a field. That commonality seems to be more than a mere account. — Janus
There is the 'realist' view, that things just are as they are, and will always be so, whether we know them or not. (First there is...) — Wayfarer
Then there is the realisation of the conditional nature of perception, of how we bring perspective to everything we see, and things have no separate reality outside that. That is the 'realisation of emptiness' (Then there is no....) — Wayfarer
...that the natural acceptance of the reality of the objects of perception has to be modulated by critical awareness of the role of our own faculties in arriving at such judgement. — Wayfarer
But things are as they are. That's logic, not realism. — Banno
Concluding from this that we do not see things as they are is Stove's gem. You know better. — Banno
Talk of `forms of perception’, and `things in themselves’ may suggest Kant, but it is not clear that Kant was imposed on by a `Worst Argument’. Stove does pin a few small Gems on him but they are not central to Kant's argument. Well before that stage in his reasoning, Kant relied on arguments from antinomies, transcendental arguments and considerations about constructions in geometry and the activity needed in counting, none of which are Gems.
It sounds trite compressed to a few lines but I think it makes an important point regardless. The point I take from it, is that the natural acceptance of the reality of the objects of perception has to be modulated by critical awareness of the role of our own faculties in arriving at such judgement. This is something like what I believe is meant by 'critical realism'. — Wayfarer
Even the pygmy from the Congo who has never left the forest would agree that she was in a place of no trees (assuming for the sake of argument that we are talking about a treeless field). — Janus
When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core.”(Nelson Goodman) — Joshs
'First there is a field....... — Wayfarer
n English, that’s a field, and that it is a field, is a fact. For speakers of English, the fieldhood of that field is as neutral as it gets.
“In English, we call that a ‘field’, but who knows what it really is.” What could that possibly mean? **
Conventions don’t block neutrality; they create it. — Srap Tasmaner
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