If reality is within us, and reality and interpretation are different aspects of reality, then reality and interpretation are within us, and yet others are a part of reality, and yet others are not within us...

Cannot make sense of any of it.

Making use of "some", "all", "not all", would go a long way...

That is a tree." What does "that" refer to? Do you begin to see the difficulty? If it's another interpretation, then you never escape from an endless chain of interpretation. On the other hand, if there is something about the tree that is not merely interpreted by you, then you have a grasp of reality not interpreted. — timw

It is interpretation all the way down. But also, part of what we then experience is the recalcitrant nature of our experiences. So every time we open our eyes, the tree is still there. That is extra information we can interpret - especially if we happen to wake up and realise we were dreaming. Reality becomes defined by having the particular further property of seeming to be unquestionable.

Another commonsense point is that interpretation also bottoms out of its own accord. Eventually we lose interest as we feel that further inquiry doesn't matter. That tree could be a fake, a phantom, something other than what it presents. But if it is just part of the scenery, we weren't planning to turn it into a boat or throw it on the fire, then who cares?

So while we might never know the world in some direct and complete sense, it doesn't matter. Our habits of interpretation only need to be good enough for the purposes we have. Our lack of real concern about the nature of reality will take over long before we get that far down a chain of increasingly refined interpretance.

The answer is: both given, and interpreted. it's not one or the other. We're embedded in a 'web of meaning' which we can't be extricated from as it is an aspect of thought and speech. But I don't buy solipsism or the idea that the world is 'all in the mind'.

What I would say is that reality is irreducibly subjective - that the subject of experience is a pole or aspect of anything whatever we can say exists. But this subject is never fully disclosed for the obvious reason that it's never an object of experience; it is the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the un-experienced experiencer, to paraphrase the Upanisad. (I also think this is the subject of Descartes' 'cogito', although I don't agree with the way he developed the idea.)

But this doesn't deny the efficacy of science. Science after all rests on observation, measurement and prediction. As Galileo emphasised, the mathematical attributes of nature were uniform and the same for all observers - well, until relativity came along, although Galileo's method still holds good across an enormous range of phenomena ('medium-sized dry goods' was how my professor of metaphysics of matter described it.)

If reality is all interpretation, then we should be able to change reality by changing our interpretation of it.

We can't

Therefore, reality isn't all intrepretation

We live immersed in language and thought, there is no path to the great outdoors.

Interpretations are not all equal. Some are more probability than others. All we can know is what we as a species agree can be known or knowable, and what is known or knowable is in terms of probabilities, not absolutes. The noumenal can't be known., some say it can't even be thought..

There is something out there. We are entangled within it, just as TV set is entangled within TV transmissions.

Our minds reveal what is out there, as a holographic reconstruction wave reveals a light pattern which becomes memory. Our life is constructed out of memory. The memory is described by by us and others via discourse and education, and we agree to give it a name. Do we all see exactly the same thing? No. Everyone perceives something different (but close enough in most cases) because the reconstructive wave is different and memories are different, but via new perception and new discourse those memories evolve and via acts of will new things out there evolve.

There is something real, there are memories (interpretations) being formed, there is a constant evolution occurring, and yes, new creations are being formed all of the time out there in memory field of the universe.

It is interpretation all the way down. But also, part of what we then experience is the recalcitrant nature of our experiences. So every time we open our eyes, the tree is still there. — apokrisis

If it's all interpretation, how do you know? There can be neither access nor appeal to the tree itself - there is no tree itself! And while we're at it, isn't interpretation interpreted? The persistence of "the interpretation"? If it's all interpretation, what does that even mean?

Even in the cave, people had shadows....

If it's all interpretation, how do you know? — tim wood

You have to begin by dropping the ideas that the brain is some sort of computer that is magically coming up with all of this stuff and you have to drop the idea that it is all emerging from the brain. If you don't, you'll be perpetually asking the same questions. This is precisely the process of understanding that I went through. The scientific explanation leads you down a dead end path.

One has to begin by looking at life as one holistic, entangled process with mind as a creative, learning force.

You can't know. But it is a hypothesis you can adopt and test.

You can't know. But it is a hypothesis you can adopt and test. — apokrisis

Keeping in mind you rule out everything but interpretation, and have no access to anything but interpretation, I'm not sure what a hypothesis would be. What does "hypothesis" mean subject to these constraints? What would any test look like? Clearly I'm going to look in your answer for any signs of reality: see if you can answer without any.

'Life is like a movie, but with real pain.'

...and have no access to anything but interpretation... — tim wood

My point is that you in fact have access to two things - your general theory and your particular acts of measurement. So this allows for a process of triangulation.

You have this general idea that there is a reality out there, of which a tree is one of its material objects. Such a theory of your experience then has natural consequences that can be deduced and tested. Real objects should endure in our experience even if we might wish their facts to be otherwise. And so I can test this theory about the reality of the tree by trying to walk through it, or whatever. The extent to which my beliefs are unchanged as the result of such actions rightfully goes to the certainty of my original interpretation. I have evidence of an internal model consistency even if I don't have direct experience of the world.

I dare say the question about the reality of the objects of the senses is an artificial latecomer. There is really no sense in which it can be definitively answered, which rather seems to make asking it a waste of time and energy.

Our brains are locked up in our skull; there is no way for the brain to directly access anything outside the skull, except chemical signals that are delivered by blood from elsewhere in the body. There are the senses, nerves plugged into the brain. But the senses are limited to picking up vibrations of various kinds, which gets interpreted by the brain. The nerves in the fingers don't actually touch the tree -- they come very close, but not quite.

Maybe the closest we come to direct experience is smell. Open a bottle of carbon tetrachloride and the chemical is up one's nose and into the brain, or so it seems. Smell enough carbon tetrachloride and the stuff will be in your brain, doing you no good.

If this is reality, and it seems to be, then it is appalling that we never actually come in contact with reality. I mean, reality just seems so real... And it's all a construction (but not a one-off construction -- the brain revises the construction all the time.)

We (our brains) are always at least 2 steps away from reality. (Vibration stimulates nerve impulse transmissions to the brain, and then the brain interprets the impulses.) Mustn't forget proprioception -- it's an import sense too, telling the brain how the body is positioned with respect to constructed objects.

I definitely don't like this, but I don't see any way around it.

Our brains are locked up in our skull; there is no way for the brain to directly access anything outside the skull, except chemical signals that are delivered by blood from elsewhere in the body. — Bitter Crank

It seems odd to think of the body as being discontinuous, separate, from the environment. You seem to be thinking of "direct access" in terms of some kind of 'prime-itive' intuition of it as being analogical to touching objects with the skin.

And it's all a construction (but not a one-off construction -- the brain revises the construction all the time.) — Bitter Crank

I don't think of "reality" as being constructed by the brain, I don't think of it as "construction" at all, but as a collaboration involving the environment and the body (the brain being merely a part of the latter). The collaboration is ever changing, just as the environment and the body are constantly changing.

Comment and discussion welcome. — tim wood

If you brought up a group of infants to always wear a virtual reality headset, I wonder how they would understand reality. (There might be a Mary's room question lurking in here: what happens when little Ocula and Oculus first have the headset removed?)

I don't think of "reality" as being constructed by the brain, I don't think of it as "construction" at all, but as a collaboration involving the environment and the body (the brain being merely a part of the latter). The collaboration is ever changing, just as the environment and the body are constantly changing. — Janus

Agreed. Duration that we live in it's a process, and in this process we are constantly interacting with all that is around us and in this process creating memories which are equally fluid. Memories define who we are and are the source of future actions/choices.

It is an ongoing process. This is the real time that we experience and call it life.

My point is that you in fact have access to two things - your general theory and your particular acts of measurement. So this allows for a process of triangulation. — apokrisis

Well, on your account these are realities - which you have ruled out. In particular, you (apparently) think they persist across time, but what makes you think so?

I dare say the question about the reality of the objects of the senses is an artificial latecomer. There is really no sense in which it can be definitively answered, which rather seems to make asking it a waste of time and energy. — Janus

Well. Kant took a shot at it. Maybe he's why you can write a phrase like "objects of the senses" and think you understand it.

My point here is simply that to insist there's no access to reality is to be entangled with a set of arcane presuppositions that predate Kant. On your account, your and my agreement as to a tree is simply a coinciding of interpretations and nothing more (and how would we know?!). My position is that your account is an incomplete account, and at the least fails to account for the tree or how we can agree?

Nor is that the only problem. You have to settle on the status of your interpretations. And it would seem that the only status possible is that they're interpretations. But because there is no reality, what does it mean to say they are interpretations? Someone noted that it's interpretations all the way down. If interpretations is all you have, then it must be them, all the way down. But you have denied the world including interpretations. And ideas and measurements? What are these?

I agree that so far any account of perception is a problem, but denying reality is radical, and untenable. Anybody here ever read Kant? .

By the way, why avoid the word perception? Is it because perception has to be perception-of something and interpretation doesn't?

I'd like to sharpen this a bit: my position is that there is a reality that we perceive, that grounds our perception, such that we can know the reality and make true statements about it.

You position, as I understand it, denies reality (if you think there's a middle ground between affirming and denying, please explain how it works).

It seems odd to think of the body as being discontinuous, separate, from the environment. You seem to be thinking of "direct access" in terms of some kind of 'prime-itive' intuition of it as being analogical to touching objects with the skin. — Janus

A body IS part of the environment, quite right, and visa versa. But, the activity of the brain which we are talking about is not part of the environment, which is why we are having this discussion. If the energetic physical world were directly accessible to the brain we wouldn't talk about a representation of the real world.

Some parts of the brain are in contact with the real world -- smoke some weed, drink a gin and tonic, eat a piece of cake -- and the THC, alcohol, and sugar end up in neurons. On the other hand, some parts of the environment don't end up in the brain. One of the problems of medicine is that some drugs don't cross the blood-brain barrier. The anti-vital medicines for HIV can't cross the B-B barrier.

I don't think of "reality" as being constructed by the brain, I don't think of it as "construction" at all, but as a collaboration involving the environment and the body (the brain being merely a part of the latter). The collaboration is ever changing, just as the environment and the body are constantly changing. — Janus

The brain collaborates with the body (of which it is a part) to interact with other brains, bodies, and the energetic physical environment around us. But it doesn't seem that brain can have direct access to the reality of other bodies, warmth, cold, soil, rivers, etc. Of course, the CNS and the brain (and the body) are all one. But the interpretive function of the brain -- the making sense of everything -- is inside the skull. From infancy forward, it has to take the heavy flow of meaningless data and make it meaningful. Why does it do that? Because evolution primed brains to do that. It has to 'construct' a consistent reality into which information fits.

And it does fit -- 999 times out of a thousand. Fairly often we come across information that doesn't fit (optical illusions for instance, or a cow walking down Madison Avenue in New York) and we stop and stare at it. "What is a holstein doing here!" we exclaim, seeing it's wide black and white body cow-walking along.

I believe that the reality "out there" matches (more or less) the reality my brain, your brain, everybody's brain, has constructed. I believe it because the body's interaction with the environment is very consistent. I sincerely hope my faith in reality is well founded. IF not -- well, let's not even go there.

Well, on your account these are realities - which you have ruled out. In particular, you (apparently) think they persist across time, but what makes you think so? — tim wood

Again, I've ruled reality in by making it a testable belief. The recalcitrant nature of some of my experience is the evidence supporting that interpretation. And by the same token, the existence of "my self" as the perceiver/experiencer/interpreter arises as that part of experience which is other to this "real world".

So I am speaking as a pragmatist and not an idealist. The practical psychological and epistemic question I am answering is how we can rightfully put limits on doubt and so have grounds to believe.

My point here is simply that to insist there's no access to reality is to be entangled with a set of arcane presuppositions that predate Kant.

I'd like to sharpen this a bit: my position is that there is a reality that we perceive, that grounds our perception, such that we can know the reality and make true statements about it. — tim wood

The big question is how the mind - as a model of reality - can have access to reality. And the answer is indirectly.

Your position seems to be that somewhere along the line, there needs to be actual direct contact with something. So it can't be interpretation all the way down. Knowledge has to be founded on actual nakedly apprehended fact.

Hence you have adopted the position of insisting that look closely enough and we will find ourselves able to see those elements of reality upon which a whole edifice of subsequent interpretation then depends.

Yet psychological science has put awareness under the microscope like this and shown that it can't be the case. The modelling of reality only kicks in once an epistemic cut (cf: Howard Pattee) has formed to allow the translation (or interpretation) of physical energies into informational inputs.

There cannot be a model of the world until there is a definite epistemic separation from the world being modelled. So the indirectness is built in as the necessary starting point of perception and cognition. The mind arises where the world is no longer in control of activity by the directness of its physical energies. Instead, the mind - as a modelling relation - is able to start to choose how it reads those physical energies as the sign of something. The sign of a "reality" as usefully conceived.

Psychological science tells us this. Red and green are vivid signals - understood as the very opposite of each other - yet the wavelengths they represent are fractionally different in energy. Sounds are only air pressure variations, but we hear noise. Molecules are shapes that can chemically bind, yet we smell an odour.

Every time we look at sensory processes, there is a translation of physical energies into meaningful signals by a framework of interpretance. And what we experience is nothing like how - as now discovered through scientific models - we imagine the real world to physically be.

So sensation itself is as indirect as everything that follows. The foundation of awareness is in fact the trick of disconnection that allows a process of world-modelling mediated by its own system of signs.

Your position looks to depend on some "proper connection" between our signs of reality and reality as the thing in itself. Somehow, we must read reality directly down there at the foundational level. Our signs, our bits of information, must be "true" and not merely learnt and developed convention - habits of interpretance.

Again, my pragmatic modelling relations approach - which is simple psychological science - makes the point that modelling can't even start unless there is a cut off imposed on the real physical energy of the world. The only way mind can arise is by shutting out the world so it can form its own regulated system of sign which permits it to insert its own self-interested point of view into the energetic flows of that reality.

As usual, what you look to be making out to be a bug is the feature. We can only be in control of reality to the extent we have constrained it as a habit of interpretation. What is foundational is the epistemic cut that puts us on the informational side of a modelling relationship with a "real" flux of material dynamics or physical energies.

But the interpretive function of the brain -- the making sense of everything -- is inside the skull. — Bitter Crank

I think this is highly questionable. I'm not convinced the notion of interpretation being in the brain even makes sense. There may be neuronal activities in the brain that are correlated with interpretative activities, but I don't see how those activities can be artificially cordoned off, so to speak, from the activities (cellular, muscular, electrochemical, and so on) of the whole body, nor how the activities of the whole body can coherently be separated from the energetic environmental processes that they are responses to. Sure these "cordoning-offs" and "separations" are fine for conceptual modeling purposes, but I doubt they have any real provenance beyond that.

Well. Kant took a shot at it. Maybe he's why you can write a phrase like "objects of the senses" and think you understand it. — tim wood

Kant did have a shot at it, and I have studied Kant quite a bit. Kant was not the first to notice that we know objects via the senses, so I'm not sure what you are driving at with that comment.

My point here is simply that to insist there's no access to reality is to be entangled with a set of arcane presuppositions that predate Kant.

The only philosophers I can think of that you might be referring to here are Leibniz and Wolff. And I haven't claimed that "there's no access to reality". I would want to claim precisely the opposite; that there is no access to anything else, and that the very idea that there could be is incoherent.

On your account, your and my agreement as to a tree is simply a coinciding of interpretations and nothing more (and how would we know?!). My position is that your account is an incomplete account, and at the least fails to account for the tree or how we can agree?

That's not in accordance with my account at all. Our agreement about the tree is on account of the characteristics of the tree and the similar structures of our human senses. The question that cannot be answered is the one as to the ultimate metaphysical status of the tree, which is really the same as the question as to what are the absolute conditions that give rise to human experience of a world of discernible objects. I think such questions are fine insofar as they focus us on the realization that we are the center of a profound mystery, but are fool's errands if we deceive ourselves into thinking they can ever be definitively answered. It is precisely on account of the fact that they can never be answered that life has any value at all.

Agreed. Duration that we live in it's a process, and in this process we are constantly interacting with all that is around us and in this process creating memories which are equally fluid. Memories define who we are and are the source of future actions/choices.

It is an ongoing process. This is the real time that we experience and call it life. — Rich

I agree with this except perhaps that the idea that "memories define who we are and are the source of future actions/ choices". I think this is certainly true in part, but I don't believe it can be the whole story. I think we are also influenced by what we don't remember, and were perhaps never even aware of.

I'm not convinced the notion of interpretation being in the brain even makes sense. There may be neuronal activities in the brain that are correlated with interpretative activities, but I don't see how those activities can be artificially cordoned off, so to speak, from the activities (cellular, muscular, electrochemical, and so on) of the whole body — Janus

If interpretation doesn't go on in the brain, pray tell, where does it go on?

I'm not suggesting any sort of mind/body dualism. The brain is part of the body and they are coordinated through the CNS and blood stream. What comes and goes through the CNS are very specifically channeled, and what comes and goes through the blood are diffused. But, as it happens, the brain is in charge. Not breathing enough? Feeling too hot or too cold? Fall asleep at the table? Wake up too early? Not sweating enough? Hungry? Scared spitless by a big snake? Avoiding spiders? Chatting up the UPS driver? Screwing your brains out? Addicted to cigarettes? Write great poetry? Doing groundbreaking research into String Theory? All that stuff, from not breathing enough to String Theory is all BRAIN.

nor how the activities of the whole body can coherently be separated from the energetic environmental processes that they are responses to. — Janus

I don't know about you, but I seem to exist pretty much inside my skin. Not that the buzzing, blooming world doesn't impinge on me all the time, but I am enough me and not everything else to notice when I am getting rained on, getting burned by the sun, froze, and everything else.

I think bodies are cordoned off from everything else, whether the body be a tree, a squirrel, a carp, or a human. The wind is very general, but trees are very specific. The environment is very general, but you and I are very specific.

I think this is certainly true in part, but I don't believe it can be the whole story. I think we are also influenced by what we don't remember, and were perhaps never even aware of. — Janus

In the context I am using memory, I am referring to all memory including that which is recalled and that which might be have been perceived at one time and may be recalled in the order may not. There is also cellular memory in our bodies as well as memory of the 10s of millions of microbes. But since it is all life then it is all memory. Much of memory reveals itself as habit.

The fabric of this memory I've talked about in other threads.

But, as it happens, the brain is in charge. — Bitter Crank

Not really.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

"A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body."

Again, I've ruled reality in by making it a testable belief. — apokrisis

You can "rule" whatever you want, in any way you want, so what? Or why should anyone pay any attention? Ruling doesn't make something so. So you've interpreted and now you've ruled. What do you have against the notion that perception both is and is of something. What have you got against the something, that I'm calling reality?

i'm not arguing that the perception of the tree means you have a tree in your head; indeed that solves nothing. I'm offering no account at all for how, for example, variations in air pressure caused by instruments become music, or incident light waves become an image of a tree. The point between us is simply, and irreducibly, that I say there's something that corresponds to the tree, and you say there is not. If this isn't your position. maybe best to clarify here.

That is, reality, yes or no.

I am familiar with the enteric nervous system, or brain in the belly. Familiar with the concept, not the details. Yes, it plays a large role in our lives, like the upstairs brain does. My guess is that the enteric nervous system is a survival of the tubular organization of creatures, sponges on up. Something has to look after all that stuff going on in there. The upstairs brain has it's own evolutionary history -- the gut brain isn't an offspring of the head brain, or visa versa. My guess.

But still, "You" are upstairs, aren't you?

I'm all over. Everything is learning and everything is evolving. Lots of this I experience while developing skills in the arts and sports as well as my own health practices. It's all about body memory and intelligence.

Our agreement about the tree is on account of the characteristics of the tree and the similar structures of our human senses. The question that cannot be answered is the one as to the ultimate metaphysical status of the tree, — Janus

What does "ultimate metaphysical status of the tree" mean? If you mean that there is something that corresponds to the tree and grounds our perceptions and knowledge of it, then we agree. If you mean that all that we can know about the tree is both conditioned and limited by our senses and whatever tests we can perform on the tree whether directly or indirectly, then we agree. If, however, you will not or cannot go so far as to affirm the reality of the tree - that it or whatever it is that corresponds to our perception of it is real - and thus argue that it is not the case that the tree is real and eo ipso there is no reality, then we do not agree at all.