the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate. — Janus

If you think you can't coherently formulate it then you can't make claims about not being able to know it.

Start with this:

. Of course we observe all those things; — Janus

Of course we observe what things?

How could you answer a question that cannot be coherently formulated?

Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independently, apart from the obvious "It's there when no one is around". We know what it means to say an object we perceive is there; we can see it. touch it and so on. We don't know what it means for an unperceived object to be there: the best we can say is that if we were there we would be able to see it, touch and so on. But that really amounts to saying nothing at all outside of the context of perception.

Of course we observe what things? — Terrapin Station

You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so? It should be obvious I was referring to to what Marchesky said:

there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside — Marchesk

Who's the "harebrain"?

Actually I thought the comment was to Marchseky but I checked I saw it was to you. So I was referring to:

"external things like trees... things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc.

You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so? It should be obvious I was referring to to what Marchesky said: — Janus

Geez. You passed that test of your understanding with flying colors. Exactly as I expected, lol.

You're an incorrigible yet ridiculously arrogant moron.

More insult? Is that all you've got?

Should I follow your example instead? (Or maybe you'd prefer I be dishonest?)

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. — Marchesk

Brain or mind? It makes a difference.

Physically there is a causal chain between brain and object. The separation of one from the other is somewhat arbitrary.

If you mean follow the example of actually attempting to provide cogent arguments, then yes, obviously. But I don't expect you to do that; I have seen over and over how when confronted with arguments too difficult for you to counter, you resort to changing the subject or to insult. So I see you as far more incorrigible than I am, since I am prepared to consider both sides of the argument; whereas you are indeed to quote yourself "a ridiculously arrogant moron".

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

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. — Terrapin Station

Thank you both for missing the point so thoroughly, and yet concisely. :wink:

If you mean follow the example of actually attempting to provide cogent arguments — Janus

Sure. So let's start with this: This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we attempt to provide cogent arguments. That has never been the point at issue. You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so?

Is that how you mean?

It truly amazes me when people are apparently incapable of at least understanding both sides of the argument.

Thank you both for missing the point so thoroughly, and yet concisely — Wayfarer

No problem. Thank you for making the point so well. Good discussion.

No I mean attending to what I have actually argued against your claims:

"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."

If you disagree with any of that then say so, and defend your saying so.

Again, you didn't at all understand the comment I made.

You won't accept that it's possible that you didn't understand it. When I started steps of demonstrating that you didn't understand it, you responded with insults rather than confronting the possibility.

• To be mistaken requires that what you have in mind is distinct from what is out there. If the external world is not independent of your mind, how is it that you can be mistaken as to what is the case?
• You on occasions come upon a novelty. If the external world is not independent of your mind, where is it that something previously unknown comes from?
• There are some things you are prevented from doing. If the external world is not independent of your mind, why can't you do as you choose?
• If the external world is not independent of your mind, what place is there for other minds? How will you avoid solipsism?

I submit that the simplest explanation for these observations is that there is a world that is (in a sense) independent of the mind.

I think it might be worth considering if it could be the case that there is an independent world; and that one's dealing with that world are mediated. There is a world that is, as Davidson suggests, always, already interpreted.

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. — Janus

This would seem to put us into the same position as a brain in the vat. Meillassoux's anti-correlationist argument is similar to Putnam's argument that a brain that's always been envatted could not truthfully say it was envatted, because it couldn't mean that in the way the brain would actually be envatted.

Correlationism locks us in from truthfully saying dinosuars existed. We can say both, but we can't mean them truthfully. We can only mean them in a correlationist or envatted sense, which would be false.

Thus correlationism denies the truth of evolution. It can appear that we evolved, and it can be pragmatic to say we did, but it cannot be true.

No I mean attending to what I have actually argued against your claims: — Janus

Janus, perhaps you need to be clearer in your writing.

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 — Terrapin Station

I was just curious to know whether you wanted mental pictures in the picture, at all. Evidently you did.

But if you don't think that either some form of idealism or representationalism OR something like direct realism is how things work, — Terrapin Station

It would be great not to get pigeonholed... for a few more milliseconds. But I guess you'll see where I'm getting it all from.

... then what would you say is going on/how would you say that perception (or whatever you figure it is) works? — Terrapin Station

That slash is significant? On one hand what's going on... what perception actually looks like and what's generally happening, i.e. the psychology / and on the other hand how it works... affords knowledge of the outside i.e. the epistemology. I didn't want to do any of the latter, just point out that IMO it was hopeless carried out against the background of a largely mythical psychology. But I bet a lot of the disputes in this thread could benefit from a separation according to this slash. I notice that a lot of it could be conducted well away from any brains. That is, I'd like to know what the two sides do claim about the forensic / evidential / epistemic reach of actual photos, paintings etc.

However, what's going on in perception if not mental pictures? Fair question. Thanks for asking. We should say instead that we get skillful in responding appropriately to stimuli, or on a more attenuated level, refining our readiness to select (appropriately) from repertoires of responses. For humans in particular, that involves playing with sub-vocal and sub-visual reactions that refine our readiness to select appropriate (real) words and pictures to point at things, and to establish agreement with each other regarding which words and pictures are pointing at which things.

Our excellence in this area outstrips, not surprisingly, our intellectual understanding of the skill, and it was natural to spread the myth of inner words and pictures, even before camera and early (pre-connectionist) computer technology showed us examples of actual inner words and pictures (in the form of retrievable film and text files), and tended to reinforce the myth. Maybe the myth helps us master the skill, in ways that make it even harder to unpick, objectively. But what's really going on is playing of a complex social game with symbols that are outside not in.

You may disagree. Stick an electrode in someone's cortex (or a madeleine under their nose), you say, and chances are the person accesses just the stored files, the pictures or other sensory images, that I presume to deny. Not necessarily. Think of the brain as a complex coil of coiled springs or elastic bands, disposed (by innate constitution and its history of environmental tweaking and prodding) to respond to stimulation (not least an electrode) with symbolic behavior. We can see in this way that recall isn't access to a more or less corrupted file, but a more or less convincing symbolic reaction. Perception likewise... kinda.

Anyway, why worry about the straw man of some literal inner woodland, which the opposition will rightly deny they ever implied, and will put down to misunderstanding and rhetoric, when we have this more urgent matter of, er, an iron man of error?? If you see what I mean. A man to whom all sides seem in thrall.

Searle is a student of J.L. Austin, in whom I am well pleased.

The book on this topic is his Sense and Sensibilia

What have you found unclear?

When I started steps of demonstrating that you didn't understand it, you responded with insults rather than confronting the possibility. — Terrapin Station

What "steps" were those?

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. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I’m with you there. You can substitute ‘perspective’ with ‘point of reference’, and what I’ve written still makes sense to me. But you’re reducing ‘perspective’ to 3D physical space because this is where we commonly talk about seeing things ‘as they are’. It’s a static snapshot of the universe as it is, sure - but is that what we mean by ‘seeing things as they are’? Is our use of language restricting our capacity to understand ‘reality’?

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. — Terrapin Station

At any given moment, you can only experience one point of reference in 3D space. But unlike the rock, animals have the capacity to interact in 4D spacetime, to experience a temporal aspect of the world. Over time, and with the help of memory, most animals can develop a point of reference that enables them to ‘perceive’ and interact with the rock as a three dimensional ‘object’ in spacetime.

We only know that ‘all 3D perspectives are different at different points of time’ because we can perceive the world in 4D spacetime - we can make sense of the world regardless of our position in space. As we map space in relation to these different reference points of time and interact with everything in relation to how we experience time, we realise that our experience of the universe in relation to time is not universal - we interact with the universe in time from a particular reference point that determines our perspective of everything regardless of our position in spacetime. This reference point relates to how we evaluate each 4D event or interaction.

Science enables us to ‘observe’ or measure aspects of the rock from the surface of the rock or from inside it - to gain a perspective of what the rock looks like from the inside - because we have the capacity to perceive this evaluative aspect of the world. This is the aspect of hierarchy, of numbers and mathematics. This is how we can relate two events occurring at different times, giving us a broader understanding of the structure of the universe in spacetime.

So the question becomes: is 3D space really ‘as things are’, and everything else is in our minds, OR does the universe consist not of 3D things as they are, but of 4D events as they occur? Or does it in fact consist of 5D subjective interactions as they are observed/measured?

Is 3D space considered reality because everything else we can physically observe in time interacts with it in roughly the same way, thus verifying our perspective?

Are you a philosophical zombie? Because you argue as if you have no conscious experiences. If I ask whether you experience pain, are you going to give me some functional/physiological response?

Correlationism locks us in from truthfully saying dinosuars existed. — Marchesk

I can't see that it does. We can say that conditions back then were such that, if we had been there we would have perceived dinosaurs. It's the same as saying that current conditions are such that we experience a world of objects and events. We know that we experience a world of objects and events, but we cannot say what constitutes the transcendental conditions that produce that experience, or even whether our concepts are apt outside the context of perception.

How could we ever know whether they are or not?. So, we could be "brains in a vat" but if that were so then there would be another external world where there are scientists and vats, so the problem is just pushed back one step. Are those scientists brains in vats in yet another external world? Infinite regress?

According to our best understanding, h. Sapiens is the product of billions of years of evolution. These thousands of millions of years, our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through billions of lifetimes in various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate and so on - in such a way as to eventually give rise to the mental capacities that we have today.

Meanwhile other scientific disciplines such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of ‘conscious thought’ (and perhaps beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science.)

Consciousness plays a central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ - and also the apparent coherence and reality of the 'external world'. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, the bulk of which are unknown to us.

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ an object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will (hopefully) recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc).

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not a passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them (as per Locke’s tabula rasa). Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality your lived experience partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on. And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science. (There’s an interesting scholar who writes about Kantian cognitive science, although I’ve never really delved into it.)

I was with you up to:

And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science. — Wayfarer

Eggs are consistent with capitalism.

The sentence before the one you quoted gives the grounds for the argument. Perhaps you can point out to me how it fails to do that.

:up:

Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality your lived experience partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on. And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science. — Wayfarer

I get what you're saying, but I don't think it is right to say that consciousness "constructs your lived experience (reality?)". I think it would be more correct to say that it is constructed by the mind, the body or the body/ mind, because its construction is certainly not something we are conscious of.

Idealism cannot explain how it is that we experience the same things unless it posits a collective or universal mind of some kind, which we are all connected to, unbeknownst to ourselves, so I don't think it is right to say that idealism appears to be consistent with science, since science has, and really can have, no truck with notions like universal mind.

Idealism cannot explain how it is that we experience the same things... — Janus

Sure it can. We all belong to the same species, and for that matter culture and language group. So the collective nature of mind can be explained in those terms, from a naturalistic perspective. And I'm sure as you and I have discussed previously, that sense of the collective nature of consciousness is found in Hegel (although thar be dragons, or rather, the opaque verbosity of Hegel.)*

There is a point I want to make from before in the thread:

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

So, the realist response to this is invariably, 'me, subject, here', and 'tree, object, there'. That's because the realist view is natural to us. We're accustomed to breaking reality/experience down into singular objects and then interrogating each of them, as you see here:

there is a brain here and an object over there. — Marchesk

If we're going to claim things about how brains etc. work, we need to be able to observe brains, other people, etc. — Terrapin Station

But I'm not talking science. Science assumes nature, or rather, it has a worldview in which the reality of empirical experience is already given, and is the basis on which all other explanations are sought.

Whereas critical philosophy seeks to deconstruct that sense of certainty by viewing it from another perspective - but that perspective is difficult to attain, it is something like a gestalt shift (in fact I'm sure those who worked out gestalt theory were indebted to this kind of thinking.)

To be mistaken requires that what you have in mind is distinct from what is out there. If the external world is not independent of your mind, how is it that you can be mistaken as to what is the case? — Banno

In Berkeley's dialogues, Hylas tries to argue on the basis of the 'bent stick' and Philonous has the answer:

Say we see an oar in water, Hylas says, and it appears bent to us. We then lift it out and see that it is really straight; the bent appearance was an illusion caused by the water's refraction. On Philonous' view, though, we cannot say that we were wrong about the initial judgement; if we perceived the stick as bent then the stick really must be bent. Similarly, since we see the moon's surface as smooth we cannot really say that the moon's surface is not smooth; the way that it appears to us has to be the way it is.

Philonous has an answer to this worry as well. While we cannot be wrong about the particular idea, he explains, we can still be wrong in our judgement. Ideas occur in regular patterns, and it is these coherent and regular sensations that make up real things, not just the independent ideas of each isolated sensation. The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

The other point I would make is that it's a mistake to believe that idealist philosophy can be understood in terms of what is in an individual mind, because again that assumes the perspective of treating the mind as an object, in terms of which other objects must then be understood. In other words, seeing mind from a point outside of it; but we're never outside of it, and it's never an object to us. (That last is not Berkeley, but Wayfarer, derived from Buddhist logic.)

-----

* 'according to Hegel, tension always exists between an individual’s unique knowledge of things and the need for universal concepts—two movements that represent the first and second of the three so-called modes of consciousness. The first mode of consciousness—meaning, or “sense certainty”—is the mind’s initial attempt to grasp the nature of a thing. This primary impulse runs up against the requirement that concepts have a “universal” quality, which means that different people must also be able to comprehend these concepts. This requirement leads to the second mode of consciousness, perception. With perception, consciousness, in its search for certainty, appeals to categories of thought worked out between individuals through some kind of communicative process at the level of common language. Expressed more simply, the ideas we have of the world around us are shaped by the language we speak, so that the names and meanings that other people have worked out before us (throughout the history of language) shape our perceptions.' Spark Notes.

The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

But that raises the question of why there would be sensations of illusion if there are just experiences. We can give a good material explanation for the bent stick appearance, but the idealist one just has an appearance of refracted light for some reason.

The bent stick isn't the best example though as the idealist would probably say those optical experiences are what's need to construct a visual world. So what about disease and microbes? If our body is just a series of experiences, why should be getting sick from invisible microbes or cancers, that we've only learned to see in past couple centuries?

Why is it necessary that we should have bodily experiences of sickness and aging?