But then Romanticism is just as much a socialising technology. We become self-actualising supermen to the degree that we employ a diet of Marvel comics and other romantic imagery to fabricate "a self" for ourselves. — apokrisis

I agree that we fabricate selves. "Marvel comics" involve a less sophisticated version of this, but how are you and I exempt from having to fabricate ourselves? I still contend both of our basic "metaphysical" positions are intimately related to our own notions of the virtuous individual. The "true" scientist or philosopher is every bit as heroic as Wolverine. Your demystification of individuality is (in other words) an expression of individuality. We are "selling" ourselves, one might say, asserting implicitly the potential value of our words for others.

Our broad choices are to behave like machines or behave like spirits. Cartesian dualism wins both ways. — apokrisis

For what it's worth, I'm against this dualism. The Cartesian subject and object paradigm is one of the pre-interpretations that I find questionable.

The Barbie doll and the Glock pistol are both coming from the damaging extremes of social self-construction. The philosophical critique only becomes interesting once it gets both the mechanistic scientific view and its "other" of romantic irrationalism firmly in its analytical sights. — apokrisis

I would maybe contrast quantitative mechanism to "artistic"/metaphorical/interpretative thinking. Both seem essential and always already in operation. The autonomous spirit (pure "Satanic" incarnate freedom) is one abstraction at the end of the continuum and the utter dissolution of the individual into its background or source is just as questionable on the other end.

But then what does a dream tree represent? — Marchesk

Consider the possibility that we don't perceive a tree, or mental construct, or anything else when we dream. We're simply dreaming. Dreaming isn't something we do in which we encounter or interact with any other part of the world. It's something that happens when we sleep. I don't know whether anyone has figured out just why we dream, but I think it's clear that when we dream we're doing something different from what we do when awake. If we wonder whether a tree we dream about is a thing of some kind, like a tree we encounter while awake and walking, we're treating it as if it's not a dream.

Or we can be pragmatic while we do philosophy, as the American Pragmatists, amongst others, did. — andrewk

I understand that. But how does philosophical pragmatism help with concerns raised by noting that dream or hallucination experiences can be like perceptual ones?

If pragmatism deals with those concerns by dismissing them on pragmatic grounds that we can distinguish between experiences, then that's no different from what we do in everyday normal life. It's basically a shrug at the philosophical question being raised.

The problem is that my experience of a dream tree is similar to an experience of perceiving a tree. So while you can say we don't see or hear when we dream, we do have experiences of seeing and hearing.

The same thing happens when you daydream, except that it's under conscious control. The question that arises is if I can experience seeing when not using my eyes, then what is that I experience when using my eyes?

That's why hallucination is one of the things trotted out against direct realism, because it demonstrates that sometimes we do behold a mental construct, so how do we know that it's not always the case that we're experiencing a mental construct?

I still contend both of our basic "metaphysical" positions are intimately related to our own notions of the virtuous individual. The "true" scientist or philosopher is every bit as heroic as Wolverine. Your demystification of individuality is (in other words) an expression of individuality. We are "selling" ourselves, one might say, asserting implicitly the potential value of our words for others. — t0m

That may be right. But is it a paradox for my position or rather its useful feature?

I could sum up my approach as pragmatic. It is the attempt to stand on the middle-ground, having discovered the limiting extremes.

So dialectics is a problem when it constructs irresolvable rival perspectives. That is the recipe for a schizoid life. Now I take that dialectic and offer its resolution. The schism is turned into the anchoring co-ordinates by which I can actually measure where I am at any time. I can decide if that is the best place to be in terms of the two possibilities that always frame that circumstance.

So yes, the scientist can play the virtuous hero. But am I blindly compelled to do that? Or is that a mode that I can switch on, switch off, by virtue of being able to stand back and see the shaping polarity in play?

Post-modernism was suppose to be about the self-consciousness that life is all a grand pose. But then, there still remains, well how should one actually be? Becoming an absurdist, nihilist, anarchist, and the other typical responses, are just another kind of great big dialectical reaction. It seems the logical next step, but few people really seem to find it a happy place to land up in. A non-belief in anything is not a way to fill a naturally-discovered gap.

I think you get this. I'm just emphasising that to the degree I have a theory about the right recipe for life, it would be of this nature. I understand that I do in fact stand for an extreme of individualism and self-actualisation. Looking back, I can see when this was just a blind drivenness. And now that it is a self-aware thing - informed by the science, the social understanding - the irony is that to speak of this as the actual human condition is as about way off the socially accepted map as it gets.

And I am not bigging up myself in saying that. I am always very careful to stress that I don't need to invent any wisdom here. There are towering intellectual figures like Peirce or Vygotsky who you can turn to for their penetrating insights ... towering figures who also wind up being off the general map because they did rise above the engrained dualism of the Western mindset.

It's funny. The more I accept the truth of my socially-constructed nature, the more "individualistic" a way of living that will be within the general culture in which I live.

It is not that most people don't learn this at the level of everyday commonsense. People generally have a functional relationship with their social locality. Families, friends, careers, small set-backs, small triumphs, are plenty enough to knit a good life from. It is only on philosophy sites that you get such a congregation of the socially displaced, the eternally questioning. The nihilists, the absurdists, the fanatics. :)

I would maybe contrast quantitative mechanism to "artistic"/metaphorical/interpretative thinking. Both seem essential and always already in operation. — t0m

The dichotomy of quantity and quality. And then you have that divided by the dichotomy of the subjective and the objective.

Good art is a rationally creative process just like good science. Both aim to tell a "truth" about reality - reality as it can best be experienced.

So I get that you want to make both extremes fully part of your life to make it a life with real felt breadth. You don't need to sell me on that.

Well, for me, I think what happens in dreams isn't at all like what happens when I'm not dreaming. I feel quite capable of distinguishing being awake from dreaming. As for daydreaming, I don't think that's like dreaming. When I daydream, I don't think I'm dreaming; it isn't like dreaming at all.

"Hallucinations have certain identifiable causes. They're abnormal, which I think makes their use in formulating any theory of reality or perception suspect, and can be explained. That we can hallucinate is clear, but the fact that we may do so in certain instances for certain reasons tells us nothing about what a tree or anything else is; it just tells us we've ingested drugs, or something has happened which causes us to hallucinate, to be mistaken. Something happens to us when we hallucinate, but I don't think it is or is similar to what happens when we're not hallucinating.

Memories are emotionally tagged, so that when one remembers something, it is divided into qualitative and quantitative aspects, and one then may remember them independently of one and other.

I understand that. But how does philosophical pragmatism help with concerns raised by noting that dream or hallucination experiences can be like perceptual ones?

I expect it can help with the concerns, but first we need to understand the nature of those concerns, and that has not been made clear.

Dream experiences of a tree differ from perceptual experiences of a tree in that we subsequently realise that the experience was in a dream, whereas for perceptual ones we do not. I expect there are other differences as well, but that one is the least controversial and the easiest to point to, and it suffices to distinguish the two. Of course, we cannot distinguish that a dream experience of a tree is a dream experience at the time. If we could then we would not be dreaming that we were experiencing a tree - unless we were lucid dreaming, which is something I have (sadly) never experienced and hence cannot comment on.

Similarly, hallucination experiences can be distinguished from perceptual ones after the event, when the LSD or psychotic state has worn off.

This seems straightforward to me, so I can't see where the concern lies. If the above doesn't alleviate your concern, could you please elaborate on what you are concerned about?

I'm not advocating for dream skepticism, and I recognize that we can differentiate our kinds of experiences, such that we know when we have a perception.

The issue for direct realism is that we do have visual (and other sensory) experiences independent of perception. This raises the spectre that perception involves a mental intermediary instead of being direct.

I bring up dreams, imagination, etc for that reason, but usually it's just hallucinations.

This seems straightforward to me, so I can't see where the concern lies. If the above doesn't alleviate your concern, could you please elaborate on what you are concerned about? — andrewk

Whether perception is direct or indirect via a mental intermediary. Dreams, hallucinations, etc bring up the possibility that perception involves an idea in the mind that we experience instead of the public tree.

That we can distinguish dreams, hallucinations, etc from perception is of no pragmatic help here.

Dream experiences of a tree differ from perceptual experiences of a tree in that we subsequently realise that the experience was in a dream, whereas for perceptual ones we do not. — andrewk

You are missing the point that dreams are real perceptual states. Sure we can decide later that they weren't perceptions of real things. But we can't dismiss the fact that they were perceptual states. We actually had an experience. And the fact we later realise it couldn't have been of the world is the issue.

Similarly, hallucination experiences can be distinguished from perceptual ones after the event, when the LSD or psychotic state has worn off. — andrewk

Interestingly, I saw my cat wandering across the lawn out of the corner of my eye a short while ago. I clearly saw it. Then I turned to focus properly and saw it was just the motion of a dark leaf blowing past. If I had never double-checked, I would only have known I "really saw the cat".

So these kinds of perceptual errors happen a lot and we just don't pay them much heed. We get used to projecting our sensory expectations on the world.

However if you are serious about the issues at a philosophical level - if you want to sustain some grand claim about direct realism - then you need to do more than just make dismissive "it never bothers me" noises.

We can all agree that the best explanation is there really is a world out there, and that when we are awake and alert and really paying close attention, there is some kind of very effective relationship at work. Our mental integration into the physical world is pretty effortless. Or indeed, even an effort couldn't change what we must perceive.

But in fact some people can really imagine a world for themselves that vividly. Ten per cent of the population are highly hypnotisable as they can project suggested imagery that strongly. From memory (I'd have to dig that out) there are some experiments where they can experience colour contrast after-effects after being asked to imagine a red or yellow field as vividly as they can for a few seconds.

So all these confident assertions about direct realism sound very hollow when set against a vast amount of accepted psychological science.

the possibility that perception involves an idea in the mind that we experience instead of the public tree.

That returns us to where we started, which is that the only difference I can see between those two is the non-philosophical difference of the words used to describe them. It is a problem of grammar or vocabulary, rather than philosophy.

When I face the tree I see the tree. the fact that I can dream or imagine I am facing and seeing a tree would not seem to have any bearing on how we understand seeing a tree. the latter is secondary to and derivative of the former.

"Seeing mental images" is indeed a "spectre"; we never see any such thing. We see real or imagined trees.

The whole dichotomy of direct vs indirect realism is fatally flawed. When I see a tree I am affected by the interaction between it and the light reflected off it in complex ways, this is an affection, a process, that results in seeing the tree.

Is this affection or process direct or indirect? I would say the question could be answered either way depending on how I think about it; there is no inherent contradiction between these two ways of answering . the contradiction only arises if I demand that one of then must be right. must be absolute; whereas both are only interpretive ways of thinking about experience.

It is a problem of grammar or vocabulary, rather than philosophy. — andrewk

Nah, if the problem of perception were trivially a misuse of words, it wouldn't have persisted for several millennia. Someone back in Ancient Greece, China or India would have pointed it out, and that would be the end of that.

Also, it wouldn't have survived the linguistic and cultural transitions from then until now, since different ways of expressing the problem would have shown that it was a mere grammar mistake.

At least, I don't think it would have taken all the way to Wittgenstein to notice the problem. If it's that hard to figure out, then something else is going on.

"Seeing mental images" is indeed a "spectre"; we never see any such thing. We see real or imagined trees. — Janus

I expressed it as "experiencing seeing mental images", which does happen in dreams, imagination, memory and hallucination. In a dream in particular, the experience is as if wee saw a tree with our eyes. It might not be so vivid in imagination, depending on one's capacity for visualization, but I can certainly imagine myself looking at a tree.

Is this affection or process direct or indirect? I would say the question could be answered either way depending on how I think about it; there is no inherent contradiction between these two ways of answering . the contradiction only arises if I demand that one of then must be right. must be absolute; whereas both are only interpretive ways of thinking about experience. — Janus

That might be so, but the long standing concern is ancient skepticism, where we're cut off from knowing about the actual objects that caused the perception. Can interpreting experience in different ways alleviate this concern?

So, when looking at a tree, are you aware of the tree or your mental representation of it. — Harry Hindu


I'm aware of the tree.

It's like asking, "Are you aware of the word, or what the word refers to?" They are both separate things that are linked together by representation. Because it is a representation, you could say that by being aware of one as a representation, then you are aware of what it represents. — Harry Hindu


But then what does a dream tree represent? — Marchesk

Maybe it represents nothing, just as some words can be generated in the mind that don't refer to anything. Or maybe we could say that it represents the neural firings of the sleeping brain. We could also say that you being aware of the real tree is also being aware of your own neural processes, as the appearance of the tree in the mind provides information about all processes along the causal link, from the tree, to the light, to the eyes and the brain's visual system. Your experience of the tree informs you of the state of all those things, as it is the effect of that entire causal chain. Seeing a tree informs you of the state of the tree, the wavelength of the light, the state of your eyes and visual system, not just the tree. That's why eye doctor's ask you to describe your visual experience to them, because it can inform them of the state of your eyes (you have cataracts, etc.)

I expressed it as "experiencing seeing mental images", which does happen in dreams, imagination, memory and hallucination. — Marchesk

What does a mental image look like? As I already said we don't experience imagining, dreaming, remembering or hallucinating as "seeing mental images", but as seeing whatever it is we are dreaming about, remembering and so on.

That might be so, but the long standing concern is ancient skepticism, where we're cut off from knowing about the actual objects that caused the perception. Can interpreting experience in different ways alleviate this concern? — Marchesk

Perceiving objects is knowing them I would say, although it is obviously not knowing everything about them. Is the concern simply that we cannot know exhaustively and thus with ansolute certainty what is causing us to perceive objects? How will thinking about it change this situation we find ourselves in? Once you let the concern in there can be no end to it, no? Better to acknowledge the limitations of discursive thought.

Thanks, that's right, the post does not exist as a 'post' to them, and they tend ignore it, they don't see the meaning in it because they have not learn't the concepts that would enable them to understand it. — Cavacava

So then the post does exist prior to someone understanding it. To say that it doesn't exist is a bit incoherent. It exists, it just isn't understood.

To put this another way. Suppose you did not have the concept of a rabbit.

Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg

What would you see? — Cavacava

An animal.

Someone back in Ancient Greece, China or India would have pointed it out, and that would be the end of that.

Interesting. I wasn't aware that this was a significant topic of discussion back then. The closest I can think of is Zhuangzi's musings over his dream of a butterfly, but even that is focused on transformation rather than perception. Then there's Plato's cave, but again that seems to be focused on transformation.

Other than that, I can't think of anything earlier than Descartes and his evil demon. And it was Berkeley that really seemed to set this issue rolling in any widespread way.

What writings from ancient times are you thinking of, that treat this as a serious issue for consideration?

What writings from ancient times are you thinking of, that treat this as a serious issue for consideration? — andrewk

The Cyrenaics on perceptual relativity, which they took to mean that we can only have knowledge of our perceptual awareness, and not what caused it. Also, the bent stick in the water and other optical illusions were pointed out by Greek skeptics.

And Indian philosophical tradition has been influenced by meditative states and the idea that the world we perceive is an illusion generated by mistakenly thinking we are separate beings.

Other than that, I can't think of anything earlier than Descartes and his evil demon. And it was Berkeley that really seemed to set this issue rolling in any widespread way. — andrewk

Wasn't Berkley responding to Locke & Hume?

Also, discrepancies in perception are probably part of what motivated humans to start asking philosophical questions in the first place. At least Simon Blackburn and Daniel Dennett seemed to think the distinction between appearance and reality was a primary motivator.

I wasn't aware that this was a significant topic of discussion back then. — andrewk

There is quite a bit of it in Ancient Greece.

The way that a galley away on the horizon looks tiny, and yet we don't see it as anything but a regular ship far away.

Another one was the jars of hot and cold oil. Dip a hand in each, then put both hands into a third jar that is room temperature. Your hands will be telling you different things about whether the third jar is hot or cold now.

Pushing the eye for double images was I think another example used.

Anyway, we definitely interact with trees as if they are really 'out there', as if our eyes are windows upon a public world that we happen to be located in a particular part of. — antinatalautist

That's true. But we do the same when we're dreaming. When we fall asleep and start dreaming we forget that we fell asleep and started dreaming. Instead, we think that the contents of our dreams are real. We do so until we wake up and unforget what has been forgotten. What this shows is that what we think is real is not necessarily real. Our judgments are fallible. We are clearly wrong about dreams being real and we could be wrong about our wakeful consciousness being real. The only thing that stops us from doubting that wakeful consciousness is real is lack of evidence. There is no evidence that our wakeful consciousness is merely a dream.

I mean it's extremely hard to get in conversation with someone, touch someone, kick a ball back and forwards, etc, and seriously consider that their body, and your entire experience of the interaction, the world around you, and your body are entirely relativized to just your own conscious experience. Other people sort of impose their otherness on you. Consider being in a room alone, and somebody bursts in. Suddenly there's a distinct sense that you (your body) is being seen and you can't rationalize this self-consciousness away in the moment, it just imposes itself upon you. Or when you are on a train, and you accidentally meet someone's gaze, then both of you quickly look away and pretend you didn't just basically stare into each others soul lol. — antinatalautist

Well, dreams can be very convincing, and yet, when we wake up, we always look upon them as being unreal. It is therefore not that hard to see wakeful consciousness as being unreal. It's just that we don't think that it is unreal, naturally, since there is no evidence for it.

The dichotomy of quantity and quality. And then you have that divided by the dichotomy of the subjective and the objective.

Good art is a rationally creative process just like good science. Both aim to tell a "truth" about reality - reality as it can best be experienced.

So I get that you want to make both extremes fully part of your life to make it a life with real felt breadth. You don't need to sell me on that. — apokrisis

I don't exactly know how I'd arrange the quantity-quality and subjective-objective dichotomies with respect to one another, but otherwise you get where I'm coming from.

But to be clear it's not just a matter of how I want to live my life as an individual but (especially in this context) how I build a truly "objective" picture of reality. The "biggest" picture of reality might involve billions of individual narrative-approached "life-worlds," perspectives if you like on the shared "physical kernel." The "scientific image" is a reduced, ideal overlap. The theme that I aim my "objective" thinking in terms of is way individuals explain themselves to themselves. Granted, I am biased in the sense that I focus my theorizing on what interests me, what my background is, etc. But I don't think I'm an exception.

That may be right. But is it a paradox for my position or rather its useful feature? — apokrisis

I don't think it's a paradox. I'm just trying to squeeze a little acknowledgement from you with respect to what I like to theorize about. Your position is pretty likable. I'm not "against" it.

I could sum up my approach as pragmatic. It is the attempt to stand on the middle-ground, having discovered the limiting extremes. — apokrisis

I relate to that quite a bit. There are certain limits, though. For instance, I'm not a parent. I probably won't have that experience. But then parents don't know what it's like to age without children. Our lives have a particular shape. We can't simultaneously pursue extremes of irresponsibility and responsibility. We can't see from two gender or racial perspectives at the same time. Or if we somehow do, this itself is a particular shape. Ideally we can ignore what is idiosyncratic about the shapes of our lives. Certainly the physicists and the mathematician can do so in their work. But can the most general kind philosophy be truly independent of this particularity? I can try to do this in my own case when I focus on the general structures of worldviews. I can point out examples. But even this detachment already requires a certain "existential" position. It requires a "negative" or "freefloating" worldview, something like an ironism or nihilism. One has to (perhaps) identify with disidentifiation itself.

So yes, the scientist can play the virtuous hero. But am I blindly compelled to do that? Or is that a mode that I can switch on, switch off, by virtue of being able to stand back and see the shaping polarity in play? — apokrisis

That's a good question. I think we can attain some distance from our "heroic" investment, especially if this distance is already part of that heroic investment. The heroic scientist is less heroic the more ignorant he is of the condition of his own possibility. The extreme case would be in Kojeve, where his "wise man" is explicitly and for himself a hero of self-consciousness. That wise man is one who can give an exhaustive account of the reality that must include him as its self-consciousness.

I understand that I do in fact stand for an extreme of individualism and self-actualisation. Looking back, I can see when this was just a blind drivenness. And now that it is a self-aware thing - informed by the science, the social understanding - the irony is that to speak of this as the actual human condition is as about way off the socially accepted map as it gets.
...
It's funny. The more I accept the truth of my socially-constructed nature, the more "individualistic" a way of living that will be within the general culture in which I live. — apokrisis

I relate to this to, in my own way. The self becomes more impressive, more substantially individual, only by "falling out of love with" its petty idiosyncrasies and "taking the impersonal personally." I've always been able to relate to you on that level (your "highmindedness") even if I bang my own vision against yours as an experiment. I also think in terms of a blind driveness. Schopenhauer mentioned "irritability" as the raw material of a philosopher. I do think a certain "aggression" or will-to-master is in play. We beat the ambiguity into a nice shape. Since language is always already social/iterable, this beating-into-shape is not just personal for those whose personalities are already passionately impersonal.

It is not that most people don't learn this at the level of everyday commonsense. People generally have a functional relationship with their social locality. Families, friends, careers, small set-backs, small triumphs, are plenty enough to knit a good life from. It is only on philosophy sites that you get such a congregation of the socially displaced, the eternally questioning. The nihilists, the absurdists, the fanatics. — apokrisis

I've definitely noticed the nihilists, absurdists, and fanatics. I'm not sure that either of us is completely free of what's questionable in forum types. I understand myself to be a sublimation of some of the greener "nihilists" and "mystics" here. I don't know about you, but I use this forum for "self-overhearing" as I much as I do for hearing. It's more fun to work out my ideas in conversation, against resistance. Of course sometimes I just learn from others. Finally, I really am interested in the zoo of self-elaborating personality. I can watch from a safe distance here.

Is this affection or process direct or indirect? I would say the question could be answered either way depending on how I think about it; there is no inherent contradiction between these two ways of answering . the contradiction only arises if I demand that one of then must be right. must be absolute; whereas both are only interpretive ways of thinking about experience. — Janus

It is a problem of grammar or vocabulary, rather than philosophy. — andrewk

I agree with this. I think it's analogous to the difference between saying "I'm reading words" and saying "I'm reading about World War II". When the indirect realist says that we see mental phenomena he is saying something like "I'm reading words" and when the direct realists says that we see the tree he is saying something like "I'm reading about World War II".

They're just different ways to talk about the same thing.

At least, I don't think it would have taken all the way to Wittgenstein to notice the problem. If it's that hard to figure out, then something else is going on. — Marchesk

I'm not trying to gang up on you here, but I wanted to respond to this. As I see it, only philosophers ever bother with the issue in the first place. Is it possible that we philosophers like to argue? What's nice about certain issues (like this one) is how impersonal they are. They also can't be answered by science. They are elusive, linguistic. We can play these games forever, even name various openings as if we were studying chess.

One might say that most people indicate a figuring-out that it's merely a verbal issue by just turning away from (this aspect of) philosophy as 'silly' talk. Bertrand Russell's people teased him with "no matter, never mind" when he said he wanted to be a philosopher. Heidegger wrote something about philosophy being the kind of talk that makes the maids giggle (something like that.) Diogenes and other "lifestyle" philosophers insisted that philosophy was a virtuous way of living and not primarily an endless dialectic about epistemological niceties. (Have you read Eminent Lives by Diogenes Laertes? A great little book!) I personally admire Epictetus for his absolute focus on ethics.

In short, it didn't take "all the way to Wittgenstein to notice the problem." It's just that some people kept on playing the game anyway, 'cause they enjoyed it or were compelled to run the loop, having ignored boring common sense and not yet having been persuaded from within the game by a witty Wittgenstein, jovial James, or naughty Nietzsche. (Couldn't resist.)

They're just different ways to talk about the same thing. — Michael

But they're not. One is talking about a simulation running inside your head by which you're indirectly aware of an external world.

The other is talking about there being no simulation, just direct access to the external world.

The difference is meaningful and huge, because the first one allows skepticism and idealism a foot in the door, while the other closes the door. That's why Berkeley went after direct realism first.