What? You have faith but you lack that faith?

What? You have faith but you lack that faith? — Terrapin Station

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena.

Your question directly asked me how I could know what I saw was the tree, which was in direct conflict with what I had been saying. So, to entertain your question, which was how would I know my perception was of the tree (and it must be "would" because I never claimed it did), I told you how it could be that I might hold the tree I saw was the tree that was there.

I actually thought your question thoughtful because if I were to state there were no way possible that I could know the tree I saw was the tree, then I might be speaking tautologically, which was what I thought you were getting at, So, my response was to allow for the possibility that I could believe my perception was the tree, but it would not be based upon empirical thought or rational evaluation, but just faith.

In reality, I don't have such faith, so that's why I clarified in the second portion of my post what my position actually was.

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena. — Hanover

The reason I asked is that you wrote this: "My view is that I'm perceiving whatever has been transmitted from the tree . . ."

So for the first part of that, you believe that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you. I'm not asking you about a hypothetical. I'm asking you about something that you said is your view.

Since you've said both that you believe things like trees are unknowable and that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you, I'm asking you what your personal basis for believing that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree. Again, this isn't a hypothetical. It's a question about things you've said that you believe, things you've said are your view.

Since you've said both that you believe things like trees are unknowable and that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you — Terrapin Station

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena. — Hanover

Perceiving the tree is seeing the tree as it is, from a particular point of reference, via the mechanisms of perception--receiving sensory data via light or sound or touch, etc. where nerve signals are sent to your brain, etc. — Terrapin Station

Is it (is perceiving the tree) experiencing a mental picture of the tree?

Just wondering. Not planning any traps. Not that I could possibly hope to catch you in one. (Noble testudine.) Just curious where you stand on that question.

Hello to all philosophers,

Although one only ever experiences a model of reality in one's mind, this serves well enough for operational purposes. In general, many might think that we directly experience things, but no real harm befalls them. Nor does it matter much that only the slightly past is experienced. They may be astounded that there is light in the apparently dark brain.

Light peels information off objects for sight, and molecules bring us smell (shapes), taste (4-way vector), hearing (vibrations), and feel (forces), which elements tell us that what's 'out there' is really there.

The same mind model is used in night-dreams, but there may be inconsistencies as well as painting errors. My car is seldom to be found where I parked it, or anywhere.

My best guess as to what's really out there would be quantum fields, perhaps all even atop one another somehow (Rovelli's view).

When the tree falls in the forest unattended by us, it has no sound, no sight, and no experiential anything, but for perhaps a bug noticing something.

That you never said your perception is representative of the tree is fine. I'm asking what your personal basis is for believing that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree.

Is it (is perceiving the tree) experiencing a mental picture of the tree? — bongo fury

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree rather than perceiving the tree.

Perception of the tree is an activity of the (embodied) brain which receives the sensory stimuli, and synthesises them into judgement 'tree'. But the mistake commonly made is to regard the 'idea of the tree' as itself an object, which it never can be, as we can never get outside the act of perception in such a way as to 'objectify' it. Usually when this is described, we will make the mistake of thinking that the idea is 'in the mind', as if 'the mind' is something we can describe or get outside of. In other words, we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.'

But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.' — Wayfarer

There may or may not be "two". The question is whether there is anything there independent of the perception that gives rise to the perception. The answer would seem to be that we simply don't, and cannot, know. We don't even know what it could be for something to be there independent of any perception of it. In the everyday sense it is just something taken for granted.

When we try to imagine what extra-perceptual conditions would be necessary to produce the obvious result, which is that we all see the same objects in the same relative locations in the same world, the only two remotely plausible explanations are that there is an independent reality structured such as to give rise to the common perception of objects and world, or there is a universal mind or God we are all connected to and the objects are like thoughts in that collective mind or God or whatever you might want to call "it".

So, beyond the everyday and in the philosophical context, people just believe whatever is most plausible to them, given their own particular set of prejudices and preferences. That is why most broadly speaking people are either realists/ materialists or they are idealists/ anti-realists. Personally I sit on the fence, and look both ways, but lean towards the realist side.

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree — Terrapin Station

Having / hosting / receiving / making / storing / processing / being a mental picture of the tree?

Any of those?

See this post of mine from a different thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/297414

As I explain there (specifically with respect to representationalism), the idea from the opposition (opposed to direct realists like me) is that you're only aware of (or only "perceiving," though I wouldn't say we're talking about perception in this case, hence the quotation marks) something created by your mind, where it's not possible to know how that mental content is really connected to anything else (assuming that the opposition is proposing something else in the first place--if they're representationalists, they are proposing something else; if they're idealists or solipsists, they may not be).

So the difference is between perceiving (or "perceiving")--so we're talking about on the phenomenal/awareness end of things--something that was created by/something that originates in our minds, so that we're literally "perceiving" mental content in this first case, versus something that wasn't created by/didn't originate in our minds, but that's rather external to us/external to our minds.

Another way to think of it is another analogy. We have a camera. The question about the photographs we produce with our cameras is this: is the content of the photographs that we produce solely the camera itself (is your supposed picture of a tree in your yard really just a picture of the camera?), where there's no way to know how the content of the photographs is correlated with a real, external tree, assuming that we're positing such a thing, or is the content of the photographs we produce something external to the camera? (Note that we're not asking if the photograph of a tree is literally/identical to a tree, we're asking if it's "directly" a photograph of an external tree, rather than a photograph of the (internal workings of the) camera.)

Perception of the tree is an activity of the (embodied) brain which receives the sensory stimuli, and synthesises them into judgement 'tree'. — Wayfarer

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.)

You're confusing different ideas, seemingly based on a weird "literal" reading of "seeing things as they are."

No one is saying that we see "everything about everything," from every perspective. The very idea of that is incoherent. First off, any observation (in the scientific sense of that term, where it's simply referring to interactions of things) is going to be from a particular perspective or "reference point" and not from other perspectives (reference points). There are no perspective-free or reference-point-free perspectives/reference points.

The perceptions and thoughts of others are like perceptions and thoughts from the reference point of being the particular brain in question. If you're not that brain, you're not going to observe it from that reference point. — Terrapin Station

It seems to me you're the one confusing things. There are some who seem to believe they have a "view from nowhere" about reality, a perspective-free idea of reality, but I'm not even restricting my discussion to them, my point applies more generally to all who think they see things as they are from a given perspective.

For instance you think that you see a rock as it is from your perspective, and then if you move around it or take it in your hand you're perceiving it from other perspectives, and presumably you think that if you perceived this rock from every possible reference point then you would see everything about this rock.

Now replace rock with brain. If you perceive a brain from various perspectives, if you measure its temperature, density, electrical conductivity, electrical activity, nothing tells you there that this thing perceives or thinks anything at all, even if you somehow observed it from all reference points.

So we're not seeing the perceptions and thoughts of others from a perspective, we're not seeing them at all, at least not with our eyes. Yet our perceptions and thoughts make up our whole existence, so we're missing something huge if we say that we see things as they are from a perspective.

Now you could say that a brain is how perceptions and thoughts of others appear to us from our perspective, but then our perspective shows us a tiny part of what's there, and looking at a thing from all possible reference points is still showing only a tiny part of what it is.

If by "reference point" we mean a particular location at a particular time, then if you looked at a thing from all possible reference points, you still wouldn't see all of it. And if you consider that the brain itself is a reference point, then "reference point" is not characterized by location and time alone but also by the brain present at that particular location and time.

And then if we make a model of reality where we see things as only depending on space and time, we're missing one dimension of reality, the brain, the mind, or however we call it. If we don't take into account the brain dimension, we're only modeling reality from the reference point of a particular brain, or from a set of brains that agree with each other.

And if we treat the brain as a dimension that makes up a reference point, then other brains have perspectives we don't have or can't have. And then it seems quite premature to classify a particular reported experience as some hallucination or delusion, rather than as an observation from a reference point we don't have.

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. And that brain dimension is missing in physics and in the minds of those who think they see things as they are from a particular location and time.

But we can communicate with one another to some extent, so let's make use of that ability to learn about what others see from their reference point, rather than dismiss everything they say that doesn't fit our own perspective, which is sadly what most people seem to do, and which in my opinion is responsible for a lot of the wrongs in this world.

Where is the "you" that perceives? — Harry Hindu

Consciousness is a general term for mentality, including awareness. Perception is one set of mental "modes." So is the notion of a self or "you." The location of all of this is your brain. — Terrapin Station

So "you" are just a perception in your brain? When you use the word, "I" you are referring to a perception in your brain? When "you" aren't being perceived in the brain but something else is, then what is doing the perceiving and where is that thing that is doing the perceiving?

These aren't trick questions. I really want to know what you think.

, , ,

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.) — Terrapin Station

Exactly. Not to mention it undermines language use as we use objects in the world as the medium to communicate. If we can't get at the computer screen, how can I hope to get at the words on the computer screen, or the words in the ink on the paper?

What many here fail to talk about is the aboutness of the mind - which is a defining feature of the mind. It is talked about in other philosophy forums, but I don't know why it's not talked about here. Aboutness is what makes it feel like a perceiver and objects being perceived (the Cartesian Theatre) in the mind. There is no perceiver in the mind. The perceiver would be the whole body, or at least the entire nervous system which includes the senses.

How is it that we can get at the object that isn't a perception via a perception? How is it that we can talk about our perceptions as if they were objects? When we use words to refer states of affairs like objects and events, are we referring to the perception or the object? If the perception is already about the object in some way, can't we talk about the object by talking about the perception?

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree
— Terrapin Station

Having / hosting / receiving / making / storing / processing / being a mental picture of the tree?

Any of those? — bongo fury

All of those, then? But, like a photograph, it (the perception/mental picture) is a more or less direct trace of physical events, and the opposition are claiming otherwise? They are claiming it's less realistic, like a painting?

If so, then I have to be quite annoyingly arrogant and say "you're both wrong!" (like Homer Simpson, tragic I know.)

But yes. I say: "none of those". Mental pictures are a myth. One as old as real pictures, and probably responsible for all the mutual incomprehension in this kind of discussion. (I did warn you.)

and presumably you think that if you perceived this rock from every possible reference point then you would see everything about this rock. — leo

No, exactly NOT that. It's not possible to see "everything" about anything. There are a number of simple reasons for this, including that (a) at any given moment, you can only experience one perspective, and all perspectives are different at different points of time, (b) you can't experience any perspective that's not your own, and most are not your own. This includes that you can't observe the rock from the surface of the rock, you can't observe it from inside the rock, etc. (and each point on the surface, the inside, etc. is different anyway). You can obviously observe the surface and the inside, but you're not doing so from the perspective of being the surface or the inside. It's always from a perspective that's in an extensional relation to it instead.

Now replace rock with brain. If you perceive a brain from various perspectives, if you measure its temperature, density, electrical conductivity, electrical activity, nothing tells you there that this thing perceives or thinks anything at all, even if you somehow observed it from all reference points. — leo

This is wrong in that if you observe it from the perspective of being that brain, you experience the mental properties. If you're not the brain in question, you can't observe it from that perspective. If you are the brain in question, you can.

Just the same thing goes for the rock. You can't observe it from the point of reference of being the rock. Because you're not the rock.

Now you could say that a brain is how perceptions and thoughts of others appear to us from our perspective, but then our perspective shows us a tiny part of what's there, and looking at a thing from all possible reference points is still showing only a tiny part of what it is. — leo

Yes, you're always experiencing things from a very limited number of reference points. This does not at all imply anything like idealism however.

other brains have perspectives we don't have or can't have. — leo

Yes, obviously.

And then it seems quite premature to classify a particular reported experience as some hallucination or delusion, rather than as an observation from a reference point we don't have. — leo

It just depends on what is being claimed and the support for the claim.

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. — leo

There's no difference there. "A particular location at a particular time" is always some location, some thing which is the point of reference. A brain is as good as anything there.

So "you" are just a perception in your brain? — Harry Hindu

No. The idea wasn't that "you" is a subset of perception. Perception was an example of a mental "mode."

The notion of one's self is an example of another mental "mode."

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. And that brain dimension is missing in physics and in the minds of those who think they see things as they are from a particular location and time. — leo

The way I see it, there are two additional dimensions: one relates to value, and the other to meaning. We experience the world not just from a particular perspective in spacetime, but also from a particular evaluative perspective. This perspective comes from the unique sum of our past interactions across spacetime. So too, we experience the world from a particular perspective that positions each of us uniquely in terms of how all our evaluations of experience interact to construct meaning.

All of those, then? — bongo fury

In my opinion the questions were kind of a mess in context and every term there would have to be sorted out, which would be a ridiculous amount of work that's not necessary if you're not clear on the idea. Hence why I referred to something else and explained it to you in another way instead.

But, like a photograph, it (the perception/mental picture) is a more or less direct trace of physical events, and the opposition are claiming otherwise? They are claiming it's less realistic, like a painting? — bongo fury

They're claiming that literally you're not perceiving something external to you, but instead, you're "perceiving" (that is, your mental awareness is of) something that's exclusively mental. Something that was created by (your) mind. And they're claiming that you have no way to be aware of anything other than things created by your mind, so you have no way at all of not only determining those mental creations' relationships to something external to you, but that you'd have no way of even establishing that there is anything external to you.

If so, then I have to be quite annoyingly arrogant and say "you're both wrong!" (like Homer Simpson, tragic I know.)

But yes. I say: "none of those". Mental pictures are a myth. One as old as real pictures, and probably responsible for all the mutual incomprehension in this kind of discussion. (I did warn you.) — bongo fury

My view is that there's no good way to reason to the idea that one is only experiencing something that's a mental creation (a "mental picture"), so there's no reason to believe that that's the case.

I wouldn't say that "mental pictures" are a myth with respect to imagining things, remembering them, etc.

But if you don't think that either some form of idealism or representationalism OR something like direct realism is how things work, then what would you say is going on/how would you say that perception (or whatever you figure it is) works?

The way I see it, there are two additional dimensions: one relates to value, and the other to meaning. We experience the world not just from a particular perspective in spacetime, but also from a particular evaluative perspective. This perspective comes from the unique sum of our past interactions across spacetime. So too, we experience the world from a particular perspective that positions each of us uniquely in terms of how all our evaluations of experience interact to construct meaning. — Possibility

Just to make it clear (I know you're not commenting on this, but I could see things going off track easily), when I use "perspective" in this context, I'm not talking about the conscious perspective of a person. I'm using the term in more of a "point of reference" fashion, which is why I often try to substitute that phrase instead.

So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. — Terrapin Station

Well, it will certainly undermine the very basis of realist arguments. Realism assumes a great deal, and then forget what it has assumed.

Well, it will certainly undermine the very basis of realist arguments. — Wayfarer

How would it undermine a realist argument? If we're going to claim things about how brains etc. work, we need to be able to observe brains, other people, etc.

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.) — Terrapin Station

This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we observe all those things; that has never been the point at issue. The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those things are always inextricably relative to our experience and tell us and say nothing definitively decidable about any supposed 'reality' beyond that. I say "definitively decidable" because obviously we can, individually, decide what we want to think about it, but that is, and can be, no more and no less than a preference-driven individual decision.

Both realists and idealists often act as though they think that the opposing or alternative view is simply, given the facts, mistaken or even incoherent. For me, this is myopic. one-sided thinking.

In other words, we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.' — Wayfarer

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain.

While we don't see a brain or anything as it really is, this doesn't undermine investigation, for we can be sure that the mind paints a useful face on the reality out there, else we wouldn't have lasted very long.

This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we observe all those things; that has never been the point at issue. The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those things are always inextricably relative to our experience and tell us and say nothing definitively decidable about any supposed 'reality' beyond that. I say "definitively decidable" because obviously we can, individually, decide what we want to think about it, but that is, and can be, no more and no less than a preference-driven individual decision. — Janus

I'm surprised that you're commenting authoritatively despite not actually understanding the comment.

Not really, though.

If you're just claiming something about stuff you're making up/imagining, it has little weight, little bearing on anything except for the fact that you're also imagining people who think you're consistently harebrained.

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain. — Marchesk

All of this is true of our situation as we perceive it but says nothing about any purported "reality" above and beyond our perceptions. You can go around in circles about this issue forever, but you are never going to know anything which is beyond our capacity to know, and the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate. let alone find an answer to.

I'm surprised that you're commenting authoritatively despite not actually understanding the comment. — Terrapin Station

What precisely have I said that leads you to think I don't understand the comment?

I think it's more the case that you are resorting to innuendo and insult because you have nothing cogent to counter my criticism of your comment.