Probably some could say the same of idealism. But if the realist and idealist live the same kind of sane life in terms of action (avoiding crimes, maintaining relationships), what then is the weight of such positions? — ff0
Begging the question is a statement where the conclusion is presumed to some extent in the premise. I haven't provided you with my premise, just my conclusion. — Inter Alia
And I though we were talking about religion here, not science, how can anyone possibly 'know' what they're talking about, there's nothing to 'know' it is entirely made up. — Inter Alia
Dawkins simply makes arguments from his observation of the way religions act in the world. — Inter Alia
As to the issue around contraception, you still haven't answered the question of what a Skeptic would actually do. — Inter Alia
If the lives of the Idealist and the Realist are identical in behaviour then they are not functionally different and the distinction is pointless — Inter Alia
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htmFor the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means.
...
The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.
...
Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the empiricist temper regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth.
— James
Your premise was implicit in your conclusion, therefore you’re begging the question. — Wayfarer
Dawkins never acknowledges the work done by religious charities in amelioration of poverty etc. He only sees and talks about what he thinks is evil in them. — Wayfarer
Right. But my point is that this way of talking about things ('exists unperceived') is (to my mind) something like an artificial game that rests on 'pragmatic' foundations. Why not doubt this theoretical framework itself? What is this framework parasitic upon? Do you assume some kind of Newtonian space? With time as a separate dimension running continuously? What does it mean that something is there, apart from all human purpose? Is it some kind of 'matter' that just endures there in 3-space? And maybe it blinks out when we turn our eyes away? But this assumes the correctness, meaningfulness, and stability of this 3-space and a certain mathematical notion of time.
In a way I'm being skeptical myself here, but about the framework rather than about the objects. I'm skeptical about the usual version of the epistemological game. For me it's as artificial as chess. What's wrong with being artificial? Nothing, really. But I have 'aesthetic' reasons for wanting to get closer to the lived situation, which you may or may not share. I want to be 'objective' in a non-theoretical sense, which is to say that I want theory to be closer to non-philosophical life. — ff0
Quite right. The justification for the assumptions built into the model is the empirical adequacy of the model as a whole. This is a pragmatic rather than a foundationalist approach to justification. Remember, we're just looking for "good reasons", not "deductive proof". — Aaron R
For instance, classical models predict that if the planet Jupiter ceased to exist every time that no one was looking at it, then the earth would be displaced from its current orbit with catastrophic consequences for its inhabitants. This obviously doesn't happen. — Aaron R
I think its clear enough that your use of the word is idiosyncratic, and atypical. — charleton
Simple, such a belief has been entirely harmless for the (more than I'd care to mention) years of my life so far. Can anyone say the same of Idealism? — Inter Alia
When we see the bent stick, or any other illusion we recognise that we can't trust our initial sense data, but where do we look for an alternative explanation? Do we leap to the conclusion that it must be magic because we're standing in a fairy grove? No, we look back to other, more complicated sense data from experiments with light, we see how this thing we sense as light gets refracted and we presume that's what's happened to the stick, not because it's infallibly right but because we have no better explanation than the one we somehow seem to have entered adulthood with. — Inter Alia
no one has yet provided any evidence that materialism causes any harm or can be proven logically impossible. Those two things make it an equally valid choice of world view in my opinion. — Inter Alia
I am using the word the way it is used in contemporary academic philosophy. I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of the word 'scepticism' outside of philosophy. Indeed I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of most interesting words. — PossibleAaran
Your view is angst followed by apathy. — charleton
Pyrrhonian school practiced suspension — PossibleAaran
I think we have reached an impasse. From where you see it, my characterization of the issue is just an odd way of talking which creates problems. For me, you are just insisting that things exist unperceived by definition. I will try once more to try to make you see it my way. — PossibleAaran
Look at your computer. What do you see, literally? — PossibleAaran
Describe every property of the thing you are looking at, without adding any property which you can't see. You might say things like 'a black, rectangular, three dimensional thing with letters on it'. — PossibleAaran
No matter how careful and detailed is your description, you will never say 'which exists when I am not perceiving it'. — PossibleAaran
If you did say this, you would no longer be describing, literally, what you can see. You would just be adding a property which you believe the object to have, — PossibleAaran
but which you can't see that it is, rather like the amateur artist who draws the human eye as a perfect oval, because that's the shape he believes it has (artists have to work quite hard to learn only to draw what they see and nothing more). — PossibleAaran
If you have never seen the property of unperceived existence, how do you know the object you are looking at has this property? — PossibleAaran
Can you infer that property from what you do see? If you can't, then how can you possibly know it? 'Know' is being used here merely in the weak sense of reliably produced true belief. How can you reliably believe it? — PossibleAaran
You have said that if you take a picture with a camera then that will prove that things exist unperceived. But how? Since you cannot literally see that things exist unperceived, I took it that you meant to offer an argument for it here, but I think that argument is fallacious. Here is something we ordinarily believe about cameras: you can put a camera up in a room when no one is in it and the camera can get you a picture of the things which exist in that room when no one is there. Equally, you could close your eyes and take a picture of your computer, and the camera would show you what the computer was doing when you weren't looking.
I think once I lay out this ordinary understanding of a camera in this way, you can see immediately that nobody who wasn't already convinced of Realism would accept without further question that any of it is true. Someone who does not believe Realism to be true would not accept that you can put a camera up and leave it to take a picture of what exists unperceived. — PossibleAaran
'To all appearances seem like normal physical things' is tantamount to 'to all appearances seem like things which exist unperceived', but as I have pointed out, you never see that something exists unperceived and so, literally, it never seems that way. — PossibleAaran
You have asked me to address you argument, but I'm not sure exactly which argument you mean. — PossibleAaran
Well many people have been Idealists and lived perfectly decent lives. — PossibleAaran
are those really sufficient conditions for a viable choice of worldview? — PossibleAaran
Yeah, but there's nobody who actually believes that. People who say they don't believe in Realism don't really disbelieve Realism, they just disbelieve Realism in toy examples where they're hypnotizing themselves into artificially shrinking their experience of the world down to the experience of sensory qualities in abstraction. It's a rakish pose. — gurugeorge
I understand what you're saying: the camera is on a level with the laptop, and if the laptop's unperceived existence is dubious, so is the camera's, so one can't be used to prove the other. But neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras. — gurugeorge
Similarly, this tangle you're getting yourself into is the result of you abstracting away what you know of the thing you're experiencing, so that "literally" to you really means a detached, truncated description of some sensory experiences in abstraction. — gurugeorge
In these examples, the properties (respectively, having a motherboard and CPU, existing unperceived) aren't being directly perceived in sensory experience, nor are they inferred from sensory experience, they're inferred from the things' being what they are, supposing that they truly are those things. — gurugeorge
you are after all painting yourself into the corner of a phenomenalist/idealist stance. — gurugeorge
You have to accept this, unless you're going the phenomenalist/idealist route you deny. It's completely incoherent to say, "This is a physical object, but I can't be sure, from inspection, whether it exists unperceived." — gurugeorge
Present inspection isn't the sort of thing you could logically expect to reveal that particular property. What you could logically expect to reveal that property would be things like the camera test. — gurugeorge
Now, you might say something like this:- "Ha! You think you are perceiving physical objects, but for all you know you might be perceiving something that to all appearances look and behave like physical objects, but lack the property of existing unperceived."
In that case we'd do the camera test. If the camera showed nothing there when I took the picture, that would be a verified example of something blinking out of existence when unpercieved. BUT THEN IT WOULDN'T BE A PHYSICAL OBJECT AS WE UNDERSTAND PHYSICAL OBJECTS It would be something new, something mysterious and interesting, that shares some properties with physical objects, but lacks the property physical objects have, of existing unperceived. — gurugeorge
Sorry, I mean the following;
1. We enter adult life as Realists for whatever reason (evolution or indoctrination). My test with the laptop the if proves this.
2. We have been given no good reason to replace this belief with any other, at the very least they are all equally good, but none is arguably better.
Therefore, logically we should continue with this belief until a better one is presented to us. — Inter Alia
Though if you gloss the Pyrrhonian school as having 'given up' and as full of 'angst' and 'apathy' — PossibleAaran
I understand your preference for Evidentialism, I just don't see how it applies here. Neither Idealism nor Realism have any more reliable source for the belief than the other. The same is true of Theism and Solopsism, they're all just ways of thinking about the world that only make sense if you accept their axioms. You've cited Plantagina, as your example source for Theism, but have ignored Putnam's 'no miracles' argument for Realism. You've cited Plato, but ignored the Corroboration Argument. There are plenty of sources for the belief in Realism as there are for most other metaphysical views, but each has its counterargument, that's why Evidentialism let's us down. — Inter Alia
I'm not saying that. I am saying that you are saying that about their attitude to skepticism, which is about enquiry or it is about nothing.
What seems to be happening is that Pyrrhonianism is declaring enquiry useless. That is a political position, and one that few who had not given up on could ever aspire to. I assume they are supposed to reject all reason and enquiry and substitute Faith? — charleton
How come ataraxia? — charleton
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never —”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on. — Stephen Crane
I'd be happy to discuss them if someone wants to sketch their interpretation of them as a starting point — PossibleAaran
I am not sure what you mean by 'Evidentialism let's us down'. How does it do that? Just because it doesn't tell us what to believe when there are both arguments and counter arguments? — PossibleAaran
Let us begin by distinguishing between perceiving something and perceiving that something is the case. I say that, though you might perceive a laptop - where this is by definition something which exists unperceived - you can never perceive that it is a laptop, since the property of unperceived existence is not something which you can possibly perceive. You agree with this in Quote 4 and Quote 7. But you worry in Quote 3, Quote 5 and Quote 6 that my characterization of sense experience is already committed to Phenomenalism or even that it is incoherent. It isn't. All I am saying is you never perceive that something exists unperceived, since that property is not one which you could perceive. Similarly, I say that if 'laptop' means partly 'a thing which exists unperceived', you can never perceive that something is a laptop, even though you might be perceiving a laptop. Perhaps I did not make this clear before. — PossibleAaran
I say that if you cannot perceive that something exists unperceived then, if you are to have any reliable means of establishing it, you need to infer it from the properties that you can perceive (perceive that). — PossibleAaran
This was what I thought you were offering by offering the camera test. I thought you were trying to give an inferential argument that things exist unperceived. Understood that way, the camera test is fallacious. Nobody who did not already accept Realism would accept the ordinary understanding of what the camera can do, even if it is part of the concept 'camera', and that ordinary understanding of what the camera can do is just presupposed by your camera test. You admit this of your camera test in Quote 2, but insist that there is no problem here, because 'neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras'. I struggle to understand why you have said this. If we are genuinely open about whether Realism or Phenomenalism is true, you have admitted that the camera test won't sensibly convince us of Realism. What use is an argument which can only convince someone who already believes the conclusion? I think such an argument is worthless, which is why I called it fallacious, and using arguments of that sort is not at all truth conductive. — PossibleAaran
Inferring that the thing which I perceive exists unperceived from the premise that what I perceive is a camera and cameras, by definition, exist unperceived is just as fallacious as arguing that the thing which I mystically perceived must exist because what I mystically perceived was God and God exists by definition. Nobody who doesn't accept the conclusion will accept the premises. — PossibleAaran
But then, perhaps you weren't offering the camera test as a kind of inference. Perhaps you were saying that the camera test is a reliable method of establishing that things exist unperceived, distinct from sense perception and inference. If that were your suggestion, you would be doing just what I asked various others to do: locate a reliable source for the belief that things exist unperceived even if there is no way to prove that the source is reliable to anyone who didn't believe that it was. That would certainly make a lot of sense of your insistence that 'if the camera is a camera, then it can verify that things exist unperceived'. Before I discuss this suggestion. Is this what you meant to do? If it is, I apologize for having missed it for so long. — PossibleAaran
People have been doing so, though just not by name. gurugeorge's argument about the camera is the corroboration argument, no matter what device we use recording whatever phenomenon (light, sound, radiowaves, time, sonar, radioactive decay) they will all record the laptop as existing when our eyes are shut. They can all be explained away, it's just an argument after all, not proof, but that's basically it. — Inter Alia
Putman's 'no miracles' argument is basically what I've been saying about harm. If Realism was wrong, gave us the wrong impression of something about the 'real' world, it's pretty remarkable that no-one has yet come to any harm as a result. If we've all been presuming the laptop is there when we shut our eyes and actually it isn't, it's quite astounding that this error has has no effect on us whatsoever despite being perpetrated in every single interaction of every person in the world thousands of time a day. Putnam goes on to defend scientific realism in the same way with the simple incredulity that our scientific prediction could be so reliable if the world was not as they presumed it to be — Inter Alia
Again, not foolproof, but certainly as much a contender for reliable source as Plantagina is for Theism. — Inter Alia
Yes, that's exactly it. Sometimes you have to decide something, contraception, abortion, faith schools, segregation halal meat, the approaching car, catching a ball, the laptop thief, we have to decide one way or another. If Evidentialism isn't going to help, what is? — Inter Alia
One doesn't specify the nature of the thing one is perceiving from the qualities of present sensation, as you keep wanting to do; one specifies a logically possible object apriori and one tests whether the thing one is perceiving answers to those properties, has that identity. — gurugeorge
But that's a process that takes place in a world that's already accepted as public, already acceptd as physical, already accepted as taking place in time and space, and often involves instruments and other people, it's not a sheer beholding of present sensation. — gurugeorge
But it's from that world that the very concept of "exists unperceived" (and the standards for resolving it) comes; philosophers aren't originating that concept, as if it were some kind of special armchair discovery, they're merely pinching it, detaching it from its normal moorings and making an odd game out of it. — gurugeorge
Suppose the world were like that and we mistakenly thought things existed even unperceived. What harm might that cause? Could you give an example? — PossibleAaran
I don't understand what you mean when you say that the whole thing is 'artificial'. All of us have a clear idea of what it is for something to exist, since, as Descartes pointed out, one has a first hand awareness of one's own existence. — PossibleAaran
You say that this whole language of 'existence' and 'perception' is artificial, but I don't think it is at all. I'm immediately aware both of my existence and my perceiving, so in what sense is it artificial? Without an answer to that, I can't see what you mean in saying that you desire theory closer to 'non-philosophical life', since it seems to me that the concepts 'existence' and 'perception' can be understood merely by reflection on your own mental life and so they are, as it were, as close to your life as could be! — PossibleAaran
Suppose I do that. Suppose I specify apriori that I want to figure out whether there exists anything which is black, rectangular, has a motherboard and exists even when unperceived- in a word, a laptop. I then look to my perceptions. I perceive that the thing is black and rectangular. I look inside and perceive that it has a motherboard. But I don't perceive that it exists unperceived. I can't. — PossibleAaran
So I find this thing, a camera, and I take a photo with my eyes closed and get a print out. The picture is a picture which looks just like the thing I was earlier looking at. What does this show? That the laptop existed unperceived while I took the picture? Well if the thing I used really was a camera then yes, it shows that. But unless I already believe that things exist unperceived I won't believe that it really was a camera - that is, I won't believe that the picture it took is one of a thing which existed unperceived. And this you already admitted. — PossibleAaran
I am not sure about that first part. I'm not even sure what is meant by saying that the concept of unperceived existence 'comes from the world of public physical objects'. What do you mean 'comes from'? Are you saying that I couldn't possibly have that concept unless there were physical objects? Surely I could gain the concept of unperceived existence just by reflection on myself and my experience. The concept of existence I can derive from knowledge of my own existence. The concept of experience I can derive from awareness of my own experience. — PossibleAaran
I can negate the concept of experience to create 'unexperienced' and then put the two ideas together to create 'unperceived existence', and then it is just a matter of imagining a thing which has that property. Why does the concept need to 'come from' the world of physical objects, whatever 'comes from' means here? — PossibleAaran
Incidentally, I thought originally that you were defending Realism. But now it turns out that you think Realism is just as non-sensical as Phenomenalism. Is that right? — PossibleAaran
At any rate, I think you will agree that a proof of the existence of God which only works if we assume that God exists is absolutely worthless if we are trying to establish God's existence for the first time, without merely assuming it to be true. I think you will agree that it is of no consolation whatsoever to be told that the concept of 'God's existence' is a concept which 'comes from the world in which God exists' and to do anything like question that idea is to take the concept 'God's existence' and make an odd game of it. Is there some difference between your argument and this one? What is it?
Well, what's wrong with "we have a faculty which reliably produces a belief in Realism"? — Inter Alia
We mistakenly think the bridge is there even though we can't see it. We mistakenly presume electricity is not in the 240volt wire because we can't see it. It's too easy to come up with thousands of these, I presume I'm missing something? — Inter Alia
The laptop thief - what I meant was someone could steal your laptop whilst you've got your eyes shut. You have to decide do I need to protect my property when I can't see it (because it's really there) or can I continue to have this lovely daydream with my eyes closed (because the laptop isn't really there whilst my eyes are closed and so no-one can steal it)
The approaching car - again not quite what I mean, I meant a car is definitely approaching, you establish that with your own eyes, but the (let's say due to panic, or flying debris) you go both blind and deaf. Is the car still coming? You've got no reason (apart from conservatism) to think it is, there's no longer any evidence of it, do you get out of the way?
The moral cases you seem to have some sympathy with anyway, I'm basically saying that most of life is like that. One moral or necessary decision after another.
Skepticism is only possible when one does not need to decide one way or the other, and in such cases it is basically redundant. — Inter Alia
What it means for you to exist, what it means for you to experience, each of these concepts only has meaning in the context of a public world. — gurugeorge
Suppose you do restrict yourself to the consideration of present experience without presuppositions, then in that case the "you" that's experiencing isn't a human being with a body, it's something like Descartes' "thinking thing," or the "pure experiencing" of the non-dual mystic, and its object is something like a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing. So in that scenario, concepts like me and experience, or sensation - their grammar, as ordinarily used, doesn't have any purchase. Those concepts are "built for" (have criteria in terms of) the physical world, and then only secondarily are introjected by the philosopher in course of the peculiar exercise of Cartesian bracketing; but they only have verifiability conditions in a physical world, they have no verifiability conditions in that queer, truncated realm. — gurugeorge
So in essence what you are doing in the course of the Cartesian exercise is re-defining "experience" to mean something like, "a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing," which is the newly discovered object of your ("you" now as a pure point of perception) exercise in Cartesian bracketing. — gurugeorge
If you depart from the criteria for concepts as used in the ordinary sense, then you've lost the ability to apply those concepts in the presuppositionless stance too. But then what are you talking about after all? You don't know, you don't know what it is, you don't know the first thing about it. But if you don't know the first thing about it, how can you draw usable criteria from it? — gurugeorge
Bracketing presuppositions is an important tool of philosophy, for sure, but bracketing all presuppositions is not definitive of philosophical reflection, and actually doesn't lead anywhere, can't lead anywhere. It's a Chinese finger puzzle for the mind (or Wittgenstein's "fly bottle"). — gurugeorge
Yes. It's a non-problem, because the Realist and the Phenomenalist take in each others' washing. Each actually allows some grain of truth in the other's position. The grain of truth that the Realist has to accept from the Phenomenalist is something we already know and are familiar with - that perception can't be "direct" in the Naive Realist sense (although that doesn't mean it can't be direct in other senses - the actual directness is in the fact that there are no such things as mistakes in a casual chain from object to brain). — gurugeorge
But then if it's not sensation, if it's being thought of truly "without presuppositions," as the 3-d cinema show hovering in nothing, then no conclusion can be drawn from its existence or form whatsoever. It's already a foregone conclusion that it's not going to be able to connect to anything external to it, it's not an interesting discovery that it can't connect to anything external to it. — gurugeorge
As I said, no one's claiming that physical cameras and laptops are such things as exist necessarily and couldn't possibly not exist, like God is supposed to be. — gurugeorge
I find the critics of the Cartesian approach pretty convincing. — ff0
The theoretical epistemology-obsessed approach has nothing to do with this kind of living. — ff0
We 'know' that we are in a shared situation or world in a pre-rational way. — ff0
He need not postulate a car which exists unperceived; just a car which approaches and a car which hits him. — PossibleAaran
If the Idealist has the concept of these two cars and the idea that the one leads to the other, then he is in no meaningful way any different to a Realist — Inter Alia
We too postulate a perceived car and an impacting car. We then come up with a theory as to why these two cars seem to be so inextricably linked, that theory is that they are the same car. Its a damn good theory too, it does exactly what a theory is meant to do in that it provides us with virtually 100% successful predictions, now why would we change that process in favour of one which gives no explanation as to why the two cars are inextricably linked. — Inter Alia
It seems to me that he is meaningfully different and that you recognize this. — PossibleAaran
Why Is Realism a better explanation of the two perceived cars than the evil demon hypothesis? Perhaps an evil demon brings these cars in and out of existence to trick you into thinking that Realism is true. — PossibleAaran
What do you mean 'a public world'? What's a 'public world', and why does the concept 'experience' only have meaning 'in that context'? — PossibleAaran
There is a lot here to discuss. The characterization '3-d cinema show hanging in nothing' is both uncharitable and difficult to understand. — PossibleAaran
What is meant by 'hanging in nothing'. If you mean here that experience is the presentation of images which are pictures of the world, and the phrase 'hanging in nothing' is supposed to indicate that we are bracketing the issue of whether the pictures really are of the world, that is not at all what I meant to do. That obviously presupposes a veil of perception, which I reject. What I mean to restrict us to at the outset is simply what can be seen. Now, in one sense, when I look in front of me at the moment, what I can see is a laptop, and as you said, the laptop exists unperceived. But in another sense, that isn't what I see at all. What is available or given to my consciousness at this moment? Not the property of existing unperceived. Only certain patches of colour of a certain size and shape. — PossibleAaran
Now, I am not saying that all I experience, in the ordinary sense of experience, is patches of colour. What I am saying is that that is the only part of my present experience which is indisputable; it is the only part of my experience for which there is a clear answer why I should believe it to be there. — PossibleAaran
On the basis of this experience alone, there is no answer as to why I should believe that anything exists unperceived. You are right that this is a non-ordinary concept of experience. It is one tailored for the purpose of building an indisputable system of philosophy - not one which is certain, just one where there is a sensible answer as to why each part should be accepted. You don't even have to call this concept experience if you don't want. Call it schmexperience for all it matters. What I schmexperience is only certain colour patches of a certain size and shape. These things are given to me in such a way that it is simply indisputable that they are there. I cannot sensibly doubt that there are these patches of colour before me at this moment. There is an obvious reason why I should believe it. With that said, I am happy to concede that the ordinary concept of 'experience' cannot be meaningfully applied here. — PossibleAaran
As I said, the concept of 'experience' implicit in my remarks is the concept of 'what is indisputably before my consciousness'. — PossibleAaran
I don't want to 're-define' anything. I am happy not to use the word 'experience' if it is so troubling, although to drop that word represents a departure from traditional ways of discussing the issue. — PossibleAaran
Does the concept which I have explicated above have no meaning? It seems to me that I understand it perfectly well. — PossibleAaran
Perhaps you are worried because the concept is not 'ordinary', but I don't see any reason to think that if a concept is 'not ordinary' then it must be meaningless. What is so magical about 'ordinary concepts' that they get to have meaning but 'non-ordinary' concepts don't. — PossibleAaran
This is just the suggestion that it is impossible to build an indisputable system of philosophy, which is just what ancient scepticism was. I've always thought that Wittgenstein was a Pyrrhonian. — PossibleAaran
I know some Realists and Phenomenalists made a lot of this issue of the 'directness' of perception. Russell did, for example. I don't think that's important at all. — PossibleAaran
All that matters is that certain elements of experience are unproblematically available to consciousness in such a way as to make them indisputable, and some aren't. The property of unperceived existence, isn't. It is painfully easy to produce a story, compatible with all of the indisputable 'given' elements of experience such that nothing exists unperceived. I have no way to prove to you, I suppose that the property of unperceived existence isn't given to my conscious awareness like the property of blueness is. I take this to be patently obvious to anyone who has the faculty of sense perception. — PossibleAaran
I don't think its foregone at all. Why is it so obvious that no conclusion can be drawn from the given? I certainly can't tell, a priori, that this is so. The discovery, if it were one, would be that almost nothing that I believe is indisputable, and that sounds to me like an interesting philosophical discovery. I can't stop global warming with it, but all the same. — PossibleAaran
I didn't use the concept of necessary existence in my reducio about God. I used the concept of existence, and you did claim that laptops are such things as exist - which was the premise of the reducio. So it still seems to me that that argument is parallel to the one which you gave. — PossibleAaran
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