Simply seeing a tree with your own eyes is not enough for the tree to be considered non-mental. What if you're inside some sort of virtual reality, for example? You need context. — Magnus Anderson
ut I've yet to see anything that suggests there is any difference between 'being conscious of a mental tree' and 'being conscious of a tree itself', beyond the differences in the strings of letters that make up the two phrases. — andrewk
How do you square it? — apokrisis
I agree that this is an attractive position to take, But it is fundamentally inconsistent. — apokrisis
Does the act of perceiving a tree make us aware of the same sort of thing as it would while dreaming, hallucinating, visualizing? — Marchesk
So is perception of a tree... phenomenological given and therefore we play a passive role or is the tree a representation which we actively construct, and are responsible for? — Cavacava
This is because whether something is mental or not depends on context. — Magnus Anderson
The worry is that if see a mental image while perceiving a tree, then how do we know there is a tree at all? It could be just like a dream tree. That naturally lends itself to skepticism, where the context is undermined by holding all of perception in doubt. — Marchesk
One is the real tree, the other it’s double image — apokrisis
But you're wondering how perception can involve awareness of both mental and non-mental properties of an object. That is a good question. — Marchesk
Words are just other sounds and visuals. How is it that words aren't just something that we then classify as words? Are we not aware of words until we engage in categorizing them?There is a claim, "it's something", and then the classification "its a green tree". The claim is sensuously given, the statement is a mental construction, without which there is no awareness of a tree. — Cavacava
and organized his observations into a consistent world-view - all without classifying his observations with words
My point was that he could make distinctions between objects without language. You seem to imply that The Man With No Words wouldn't be aware of anything, but he obviously was. He was obviously aware of food as something to eat, not to wear, without language. Was he just manipulating concepts in his mind, or was he really getting at the differences that exist in reality - outside his mind? Is it food that he was eating, or just a concept?What we perceive is tainted by our concepts, we may not be even able to be aware of an object unless it is among our concepts. — Cavacava
I still don't get what you're talking about. Are you saying that without the concept of what a tree is in here, there is no tree out there? Is it our minds that make construct our perception of reality, or our minds a reflection of reality, or maybe a bit of both? What is it that governs how we make concepts? How is it that so many different human beings, not to mention other animals, react the same way to the same thing (when in water, we either swim or drown, and animals do the same thing)?I stated that without the concept or idea of what a tree is, there is/may be no tree. What is observed has to fit into person's conceptual structure in order for us to recognize it, in order for reality to be coherent. What we are sensuously aware of is always classified by us in some manner. This all happens in less than 500 milliseconds.
Have you ever tried to figure out what something is in the dark. — Cavacava
So you see no difference in meaning between dreaming of a tree, remembering a tree, visualizing a tree, hallucinating a tree, and perceiving a tree? — Marchesk
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