Ah, but the demanded condition for being able to see the world as it is, is to be able to see it free from all perspectives; — Janus

Who demanded this? We haven't discussed this, you and me, so I'll repeat. I don't think it's binary. My example earlier is of someone running through a field, with holes and cow poop and tussocks of grass. That person must be, it seems to me, seeing the world as it is.....to a degree. Or they could not do that over and over. Sure, it's a perspective. We are time bound, localized creatures with limited senses. Senses that see the world, to some degree. And any evidence that we make mistakes or have filters will be based on observations that are trusted by the scientists, for example, as being accurate observations of the world as it is.

@Janus and @Marchesk are playing at philosophy. It's a word game that they drop as soon a they stand up from their armchair and start doing the things.

Ah, but the demanded condition for being able to see the world as it is, is to be able to see it free from all perspectives; — Janus


Rubbish. One does not have to "see the world from all perspectives" to see that the cup is on the table. — Banno

I didn't write " see the world from all perspectives" I wrote " see the world free from all perspectives". That is the criterion being used for being able to see the world "as it is", by those who claim we cannot see the world as it is. If you read all my comments in context, you's see that I think this is an absurd criterion.

But then it isn't saying much to say that we cannot see the world as it is if there is no world as it is. That would be like saying that we cannot see a colour that does not exist. — Janus

Then we cannot be perceiving it as it is! — Marchesk

Jeez, you didn't even quote the end of the sentence. I cannot imagine a more openly evasive response.
I am going to ignore you from here on out.

Janus and Marchesk are playing at philosophy. It's a word game that they drop as soon a they stand up form their armchair and start doing the things. — Banno

I am not clear yet what Janus is doing, but one has to wonder why Marchesk thinks his posts relate to anything we say. I mean, if he doesn't see the world as it is art all, he isn't seeing our posts free from perspectives or with infallible perception. I mean, how does he know he's not milking a cow when he thinks he's responding to what we wrote?

As it is means exactly that, not a world filtered, incomplete and filled in with sensations.

Yes, we do perceive something about the world as we're running through the field. That which we evolved to see to avoid those sort of obstacles. No, it's not as it is.

Maybe a clarification is in order. We do not perceive the world exactly as it is. We perceive it as hominids. But that's so far from the complete picture that there's no need to explicitly state "exactly".

Jeez, you didn't even quote the end of the sentence. I cannot imagine a more openly evasive response. — Coben

Maybe I was waiting at a bank teller on my phone and couldn't finish responding to the post.

I am going to ignore you from here on out. — Coben

If you can't stand the heat, get out of he damn kitchen.

Who demanded this? We haven't discussed this, you and me, so I'll repeat. I don't think it's binary. — Coben

Janus and Marchesk are playing at philosophy. It's a word game that they drop as soon a they stand up from their armchair and start doing the things. — Banno

Why don't you read what I write? I'm characterizing the position of those who claim we cannot see the world as it is, not my own position: I don't claim we cannot see the world as it is, because I don't apply such absurd criteria as the proponents of that claim do.

Do I have to quote myself again?

But then it isn't saying much to say that we cannot see the world as it is if there is no world as it is. That would be like saying that we cannot see a colour that does not exist. — Janus

I didn't write " see the world from all perspectives" I wrote " see the world free from all perspectives". — Janus

Fair call. Still rubbish.

I can see form here that the cup is still on the... damn, I put it in the sink.

This perspective will do. From some other perspective, it would be concluded that from my perspective the cup is in the sink; or that perspective would be wrong.

That is we adopt the Principle of Relativity; what is true from my perspective will be true for you, given a suitable translation.

Why don't you read what I write? — Janus

Irony never works out well on a forum.

Fair call. Still rubbish. — Banno

As I already pointed out if you care to look at the quote from myself directly above your post.

Janus and Marchesk are playing at philosophy. It's a word game that they drop as soon a they stand up from their armchair and start doing the things. — Banno

Uh-huh. We made this shit up. Not like Hume, Kant, Locke, Pyrro, Schopenhauer, Rorty, Meillassoux or a hundred other philosophers haven't made or discussed similar argument in the entire history of philosophical inquiry.

The trouble is you left out Austin and Wittgenstein who put this silliness to bed.

That person must be, it seems to me, seeing the world as it is.....to a degree. Or they could not do that over and over. Sure, it's a perspective. We are time bound, localized creatures with limited senses. Senses that see the world, to some degree. — Coben

To a degree. I'm not espousing skepticism, except to dogmatic claims. I think we know a lot, just not with certainty. But much of that knowledge came with a lot of work, and the invention of various tools to get beyond our senses.

Irony never works out well on a forum. — Banno

just not with certainty. — Marchesk

That is just your inability to commit. Which disappears when you stand up from your armchair.

Why don't you read what I write? — Janus


Irony never works out well on a forum. — Banno

If you are suggesting I don't read what you write, then you are wrong. As far as I can tell I'm agreeing with you in this argument. There's no irony, unless you can indicate some point of disagreement.

Is it,

[1] Can we see the whole world as it is?

Or is it,

[2] Can we see a suitable portion of the world as it is?

Assuming the latter, is this short for,

[3] Can we see a suitable portion of the world as it is described truly?

Or does it have to be,

[4] Can we see a suitable portion of the world as it is described truly and completely?

Or,

[5] Can we see a suitable portion of the world as it is described truly and definitively?

Or is it short for something else? Or is "as it is" perfectly clear as it is?

Answer:

Now I'll point out yet another issue with the idea... it's untenability.

In order to know that we cannot see the world as it is, we must know the world as it is, the world as we see it, and the differences between the two. — creativesoul

My thought was that we can tell from the robin and the tetrachromats that there are aspects of the world that are inaccessible to us.

My thought was that we can tell from the robin and the tetrachromats that there are aspects of the world that are inaccessible to us. — Daemon

But we know they are inaccessible...? Think on that.

Which is to say that "the way things are" is "the way they seem to us" (creature specific standard). — khaled

So if there aren't any creatures about, there isn't a way things are?

But we know they are inaccessible...? Think on that. — Banno

There are also the unknown unknowns.

I'm saying I misread your ironic intent.

There are things we don't know that we don't know, therefore we don't know anything.

How did Austin deal with it?

There are aspects of the world that are inaccessible, but none of those are non-relational. It's just that we don't possess the right properties to enter into relation with those inaccessible aspects. There are no non-relational aspects in other words; if something were entirely non-relational it would be nothing at all.

Oh OK, sorry, it looks like I misread your ironic intent also.

I conclude that nobody can see the world as it is.
— Daemon

That's not the interesting question though. The interesting question is, if no-one can see it, is there a world as it is? — Echarmion

This seems to me to be a reasonable question: can we see the world as it is? The question is not is it real? Is the cup on the table? But can we see it without our discriminatory ideas and thoughts, without our cultural biases, without our ego. Not very often. But it’s there as “a thing”.

“ We can interpret Zen’s nondualistic experience epistemologically as that experience which arises from a nondiscriminatory state of meditational awareness. ... It may also be characterized as nondiscriminatory discrimination, in order to capture a sense of how things appear in meditational awareness. In such awareness no ego is posited either as an active or a passive agent in constituting the things of experience, as this awareness renders useless the active-passive scheme as an explanatory model. This awareness lets a thing announce itself as a thing.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/

A concrete object is what any human being knows. If you take a billionaire from New York and a priest from New Guinea, they have the same understanding of concrete objects that everyone else has! What we call reality is what presents itself to human beings.

So the reality is not there and we that do not perceive it, no, the reality is exactly what we perceive. “Ah, but it is always incomplete”, so tell me the idea of ​​a complete reality that can be presentable to anyone. You cannot. That is, showing itself only in certain aspects is proper to all reality, that is the structure of reality. For example, you take the cube; how many sides does the cube have? There are six, you only see three! Is this a limitation of our perception? No, it is a limitation of the cube, and so on.

Things that present themselves in all their aspects at the same time only exist ideally. For example, the ideal cube that you draw on the paper shows six sides, but this is a cube of descriptive geometry. It is a business that if you cut and assemble you can create the cube but on paper it is not. So only this non-existent cube has six sides at the same time.

This is one of Kant’s mistakes, he thinks that all of these are limitations of our knowledge, that we cannot know things in themselves, however, I assert that what I’m talking about is things in themselves! That aspect of the cube that I perceive is the aspect that the cube can show me. It cannot show that same aspect of itself to an earthworm. Only a human being can see this. Another animal will see it in yet another way. But we can understand how the bear sees itself, how the cat sees the bear, how the worm sees the bear and so on. All of these aspects are articulated, they are not separate, but distinct.

Ah, but the demanded condition for being able to see the world as it is, is to be able to see it free from all perspectives; which would mean being able to make absolutely true, that is completely context independent, statements about it. The true statements we are able to make are all relative to various contexts, which just isn't good enough, dammit! :rofl: — Janus

:100:

I notice that not everyone saw your comment as it really was...