If you really do exist as a 'experience-orb' there's just no way of knowing if there really is a tree (or more importantly, other orbs) out there beyond your experience. — antinatalautist
But is the tree mental when we actually perceive one (see, smell, touch, hear it fall in the woods, etc)? — Marchesk
But then what does a dream tree represent? — Marchesk
But if perceive a tree looking like it might fall on my house, then I will take action. — Marchesk
he reason the language game answer doesn't work for this is because the difference between a dream tree and a perceived tree matters a great deal. If I dream of a tree falling on my house, but upon wakening, realize there is no tree near the house, then I forget about it. — Marchesk
But direct realists would make an exception for veridical perception and say that it's one way information flow from the senses to the brain. — Marchesk
No. Most statements in philosophy arguments that start with 'So you' (or with 'Obviously') are wrong, and this one is no exception.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
What does it mean to say that "we behold a mental construct"? — t0m
How is this "cashed out" in action? If we somehow knew that is was true, then how would we behave differently?
I'm suggesting that we trace fuzzy distinctions back to the practical concern that employs them. (In short: pragmatism.) — t0m
Isn't this just Heidegger? Sorry for what may be a digression. But I think we can work this into my response to the OP by understanding distinctions like mental-versus-nonmental as more tools that we learn to use as children. Then metaphysicians rip these tools out of context and try to do eternal super-science with them...During childhood development, a child learns to perceive not only the affordances for the self, but also how those same objects furnish similar affordances to another. A child can be introduced to the conventional meaning of an object by manipulating which objects command attention and demonstrating how to use the object through performing its central function[6] By learning how to use an artifact, a child “enters into the shared practices of society” as when they learn to use a toilet or brush their teeth.[6] And so, by learning the affordances, or conventional meaning of an artifact, children learn the artifact's social world and further, become a member of that world. — wiki
It means that perception is experienced inside our minds, just like the case with dreams. — Marchesk
If we don't have access to external objects, then only our bodily sensations matter, and thus, pleasure is the only good. — Marchesk
But metaphysical questions aren't concerned with being pragmatic. If you want to be pragmatic, then everyday common sense and science are enough. But some human beings like to ask questions about the nature of our existence, what we can know, etc. — Marchesk
Did these questions originate with metaphysicians, or are they ones that naturally occur to human beings upon reflection? — Marchesk
I think they naturally occur. But then a sophisticated tradition emerges. Would you agree that metaphysics can become a clever game? — t0m
If I may rewind: let's say your OP is 'really' about what is good or virtuous. — t0m
Accuracy is reimagined as successful adaptation. Truths are word-tools that work. What is it to work? There we move into the realm of feeling and ineffability. — t0m
Are there any cognitive neuroscientists or psychologists who could be direct realists? The only one that springs to mind is James Gibson. — apokrisis
That has to be taken with a grain of salt, because it depends on how familiar a scientist is with the philosophical arguments. Sometimes a scientist will publicly articulate a philosophical position that's not terribly sophisticated, but they act as if the science backs it, because they don't know the depth of the philosophical discussion on the matter. — Marchesk
Computer scientists can be a very different matter. To the degree they haven't studied biological science, they are liable to claim just about anything of their toy machines. — apokrisis
Isn't this just Heidegger? — t0m
That's interesting. But that it can't answer why the word-tools work means that philosophical questions remain. Maybe Witty relegated that to the mystical. I understand the appeal of that. — Marchesk
Last night it dreamed it was a butterfly, and then awoke, wondering if it was a butterfly dreaming. — Marchesk
It will be pissed when it wakes up from that dream in turn and discovers it is a figment of the Matrix. All it sees is magnetic 1s and 0s. And now the Google lab guys are reaching for the reset button to .... argh! — apokrisis
You have "freewill" as that is how you get trained - particular in modern Western society with its huge concern to produce self-actualising individuals. — apokrisis
It's just that this notion of the shared world in terms of tool-use is at least as old as Being and Time. — t0m
So it's odd to see it presented as some new idea in a 1979 book. — t0m
But what I quoted reminds me of the emergence or generation of "one" or they-self or "everyday Dasein" as the foundation on which the individual self is built. This is the 'operating system' that makes theory and individuation possible. — t0m
But is the tree mental when we actually perceive one (see, smell, touch, hear it fall in the woods, etc)? — Marchesk
Or we can be pragmatic while we do philosophy, as the American Pragmatists, amongst others, did. In my experience, that approach leads to a more meaningful engagement with philosophy, and more helpful outcomes.The pragmatic differences is what led to the philosophical questions. We can all be pragmatic and ignore philosophy if we want. — Marchesk
Vygotsky and Mead were contemporaries. So we are talking about many people making the same "discovery" once the social sciences became actually a thing.
You had biological science and evolutionary theory emphasising how much the human mind is the product of hereditary and anatomical machinery. That was the big theme of Victorian science. Then followed the sociological correction as that became an established field of inquiry with its own professors and journals. — apokrisis
Internalization can be understood in one respect as "knowing how". For example, the practices of riding a bicycle or pouring a cup of milk are initially outside and beyond the child. The mastery of the skills needed for performing these practices occurs through the activity of the child within society. A further aspect of internalization is appropriation, in which the child takes a tool and makes it his own, perhaps using it in a way unique to himself. Internalizing the use of a pencil allows the child to use it very much for his own ends rather than drawing exactly what others in society have drawn previously. — Wiki
Everything has to start with phenomenology or the givenness of experience. And that is quite anti-science in a general way. It is always shades of idealism.
But then that is why I like Peirce. He was already there with a much more powerful scheme than Heidegger ever managed.
Not to say that Heidegger is thus wrong. I'm just unsure that he adds anything. — apokrisis
The bicycle is "ready-to-hand" in the knowing-style of "know-how." This is largely the way that things exist for us, not as entities for disengaged theory but rather as tools that become invisible the more successfully we use them to pursue the goal we are conscious of while using them. Do you agree? — t0m
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