This "nothing" was brought to attention so that we could call it a nothing, though. Were you not just 'handling' this "it" as an intelligible if ambiguous entity as you questioned its existence? — t0m
To me that deferment of meaning is noteworthy. There is "something that it is like" for you to read this, a 'voice' in your head. This is invisible. It's not a public object any more than seeing redness is a public object. — t0m
I find this so very hard to understand. Antigonish. — Banno
It's not a public object and yet it is something. Antigonish. Words summon phantoms into conversation, like what it is like to be a bat, or what it is like to read this thread. — Banno
In what way is the something that it is like different from the perfectly public exercise of reading the post? — Banno
Now there's a topic that can generate a whole 'nother discussion. I considered 'discover' and discarded it in favour of 'invented', knowing full well that most people, and philosophical 'realists' in particular, are likely to prefer 'discover'.Discover, not invented. — Banno
No, I think we neither see 'directly' nor 'indirectly'. We simply see the trees: which is not to say we see them 'directly' because it's not even in principle possible for 'seeing' to take place 'indirectly': the qualifier 'direct/indirect' is a defunct one that has no place in talking about perception, it's a distinction without an intelligible difference. — StreetlightX
I'm not going to read the whole thread - but thanks for pointing this out to me. I don't see anything objectionable in it. — Banno
I also find it reassuring that we regularly navigate the world with considerable success, and even modify it in ways which indicate, to a reasonable degree of probability, that we're interacting with something which is very close to what we think it is and perceive it to be, and that, e.g. the roads we see and build and cars we drive on them are very close to what we think them to be and won't suddenly prove to be something else. — Ciceronianus the White
What you're arguing is that naive realism cannot be true, because the act of perception generates an appearance for us. The tree we see is an appearance. — Marchesk
That we see the tree's appearance does not mean that the tree 'is' an appearance. It simply means we see what can be seen of the tree, itself. — StreetlightX
In what sense would our sensations be exhaustive of the tree? — apokrisis
I'm going to avoid "direct realism" or "access" because there lies rabbit holes.
For example, when I see a tree while wide awake using my eyes, am I conscious of a mental tree, or the tree itself?
In anticipation of objections concerning seeing mental trees, it's uncontroversial that we experience seeing trees in our dreams, which must be mental, on pain of being a dream content realist. And it's uncontroversial that we can call to waking mind a memory or visualization of a tree, which is also mental. And there's hallucinating a tree.
But is the tree mental when we actually perceive one (see, smell, touch, hear it fall in the woods, etc)? — Marchesk
But you are stressing the subjective tree - the one that appears to us even in our dreams. It is tree-ness in all the ways we could possibly imagine. — apokrisis
And the concern here is with the objective tree, the mind-independent tree, the Kantian tree-in-itself. — apokrisis
This is where those peddling Wittgensteinian quietism are being disingenuous. — apokrisis
The language game tree is the social tree, the one that appears to a community of minds connected by a web of linguistic relations. There is a right way of speaking about trees because there is a social level of subjectivity or semiosis. — apokrisis
But then the Witti-ites smuggle in their realist claims under the language game smokescreen. Scratch them and you find they believe that makes perception direct. The language game tree is the objective tree - being now defined in terms of the limit of the speakable. — apokrisis
So conceding the epistemic argument that perception is not direct, does not mean we can’t turn around and have directness as our epistemic ambition. Not all subjectivism has to be equal. — apokrisis
The experience of seeing a tree in a virtual reality that is so realistic that it is indistinguishable from reality is mental. I think that everyone will agree on this point. — Magnus Anderson
Seems overly complicated. — Banno
the multiplicity of trees is implicit in the question raised by the OP. — Banno
But is the tree mental when we actually perceive one (see, smell, touch, hear it fall in the woods, etc)? — Marchesk
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.