But what is the status of this 'only'? Only, as opposed to what, exactly? A thing's appearance is not... nonsense? — StreetlightX
Make up your mind: does science 'extract properties which aren't creature dependant' or is science 'creature dependent'. You can't have you cake and eat it. — StreetlightX
But that's not a sensical claim. It is not even wrong. It's a grammatically correct word salad. — StreetlightX
And what does this have to do with perception? Jesus. — StreetlightX
Then you have a poor grasp of the English language. — StreetlightX
Correct. — StreetlightX
But that's not a sensical claim. — StreetlightX
And what would 'objective' here mean? After all, there is an objectivity to looking itself, which is what studies of illusion show us. — StreetlightX
Well if you can make sense of what a thing looks like when there is no looking involved, then be my guest. — StreetlightX
And what would 'objective' here mean? After all, there is an objectivity to looking itself, which is what studies of illusion show us. — StreetlightX
On the direct realist account, perceived objects would have the same properties when nobody is perceiving them — Marchesk
On the direct realist account, perceived objects would have the same properties when nobody is perceiving them. — Marchesk
But we're not taking about 'properties' in the abstract. We're talking about perceptual properties, which, by definition, are related to a perceiver. Again, you're confusing the one with the other. — StreetlightX
What does it mean for the sky to be blue when you're not looking at it? — Magnus Anderson
Phenomenalists such as Ernst Mach call this "potential experience". That's what is meant when people say that things exist or have certain properties when we're not looking at them. It does not mean anything more than that. Unfortunately, many people, I am pretty sure you among them, are not willing to accept this description. Why is this so? — Magnus Anderson
Because I find it extremely lacking, and it makes science into a fiction. — Marchesk
It means under certain lighting conditions (it's sunny out), the air molecules scatter light at a wavelength that we see as blue. — Marchesk
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. — Marchesk
I don't want to pretend that I've kept up with the direct realism debate, but I think this would be an issue only if it's assumed that what happens when we hallucinate or dream is exactly what happens when we're not hallucinating or dreaming--if it's assumed, in other words, that when we dream of a tree we're seeing a tree just as we would when wide awake and looking out of a window at a tree. I don't think there's any basis for such an assumption. — Ciceronianus the White
I would say that both when awake and when dreaming the immediate cause of the experience is brain activity (or maybe the experience just is brain activity). The difference is that when awake the brain activity is stimulated by some external stimulus and when dreaming the brain activity is stimulated by some internal stimulus. So the nature of the experience is the same even if the cause is different. — Michael
I find it difficult to accept that we're having the same experience when hallucinating or dreaming that we have when we're not. — Ciceronianus the White
I don't think we distinguish them solely by their causes. — Ciceronianus the White
I find it difficult to accept that we're having the same experience when hallucinating or dreaming that we have when we're not. If that's the case, why would we even speak of hallucinations or dreams? There would be no reason to distinguish them from other experience, and we do. I don't think we distinguish them solely by their causes. — Ciceronianus the White
agree with Michael. Even if the two experiences, the experience of seeing a tree with your own eyes and the experience of hallucinating a tree, were equally vivid they would still be different because of the context. Letters 'A' and 'A' are equal in the sense that they are both the letter 'A' but they are different in that their position in the sequence of letters that is this sentence is different. Context is extremely important. — Magnus Anderson
How else do we distinguish them? Certainly there's a qualitative difference; experiences caused by external stimuli tend to be far more vivid and regular than experiences caused by internal stimuli (although I've never hallucinated, so I'm not sure what it's like to see things when on drugs or when suffering from some mental illness; my only reference is dreaming). — Michael
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.