You seem intent on making me do your work for you. My comment was an attempt to persuade you to go read Berkeley himself and examine his arguments, as I myself don't have the time, or really the interest, to do so at present. I just don't recall that God is "invoked" or assumed to exist, as you suggest. — Thorongil
Well, Schopenhauer regarded Berkeley's idealism as more or less capable of standing on its own, while dispensing with God. — Thorongil
Yes, but I in turn can expect that philosophers one hasn't read won't be rejected. — Thorongil
Or you could just give me a brief summary of Berkeley's arguments for God. — Marchesk
1) All ideas must be perceived.
2) Sensible objects are collections of ideas.
3) Objects continue to exist even when they are not perceived by any finite minds. 4) Therefore, there is a nonfinite spirit or mind which perceives objects. — Bishop Berkeley
a) Our ideas of sense must have a cause — Bishop Berkeley
1) All ideas must be perceived. — Bishop Berkeley
Name me another major philosopher who advances the ontological primacy of will over intellect. — Thorongil
Hume said the intellect is slave to the passions — Janus
Anyway I'm not really interested in arguing over the respective greatness of philosophers; I acknowledge that it is a matter of taste, just as it is with artworks; so I was only expressing my own opinion of Schopenhauer's place in and importance to, the pantheon. — Janus
Oh come on, they were hardly positing the same thing. — Thorongil
Are you saying that there is no understanding of 'perception' which doesn't entail that the thing perceived exists unperceived? — PossibleAaran
Moreover, if it were so, then there would never be a need for me to check whether something I saw earlier is still there now. It would make no sense, for example, to see a sand castle at T1 and then wonder later about whether it exists when you are in the coffee shop, or whether it has blown away in the wind. I can just say "well, it follows from the meaning of the word 'perceived' that the sand castle I perceived earlier must still exist". — PossibleAaran
It is plain as day to me that my own ordinary understanding of the word 'perceived' entails only that the thing perceived must exist at the moment I am perceiving it. It says nothing about any other moment. — PossibleAaran
Another point to make is that your view about the ordinary meaning of "perceived" is an empirical hypothesis. It says that ordinary members of the population use the word "perceived" such that perceiving X entails that X exists unperceived. Recent experimental philosophy has made it clear that ordinary language users don't always agree with philosophers about what a word means and made even more clear that the best way to figure out what ordinary words mean isn't just to take a guess from the armchair, or even to talk with other philosophers about what it is 'intuitive to say'. The best way to find out is to actually go out and ask questions to ordinary folk which indicate the meanings of their words (you could see, for example, any study by Stich, Machery or Weinberg). Hence, my suggestion is that we cannot really tell whether the ordinary meaning of 'perceived' is what you say it is, or even that there is a ordinary meaning. — PossibleAaran
Even if the ordinary meaning of 'perceived' were as odd as you suppose it to be, I don't think that is of any importance at all. I would simply reformulate in new terms. I held previously that humans have two reliable sources of belief about the present and future (memory has to be included for the past, but this can be omitted for now): perception and inference from sense perception. If perceiving X entails that X exists unperceived then I shall reformulate my view. Instead, I say that humans have two reliable sources of belief, Schmerception and inference from schmerception. Schmerception is what is happening when various properties and/or objects are brought before your conscious awareness. We could say that Schmerception 'gives' items to you in awareness. Schmerception doesn't entail that what is schmercieved exists when unschmercieved, since being consciously aware of some object or property at T does not entail that the object exists at any time T1, when it is not something you are consciously aware of. Perception is not, although I thought it was, a reliable way to learn about the world, since "perception" turns out to mean this odd and mysterious thing where perceiving something at one time entails that it must exist at other times. Perception, so understood, has nothing to do with my conscious awareness of the world, since that conscious awareness doesn't entail that the things I am aware of exist unperceived. I am not really sure that perception is, if that's what it means. Perhaps perception is just Schmerception of things which also exist when unschmercieved. Perhaps, but then the fundamental method of finding out about the world is schmerception, and perception is a thing I can do only if there are things which exist unschmercieved. — PossibleAaran
I understand the attempt which you are trying to make. You are trying the ever popular method of building our ordinary worldview into the meaning of our ordinary words. Doing this is supposed to make us feel better about those views. It is supposed to somehow prevent sceptical challenges to those views, since the sceptic will be unable to meaningfully state any challenge to those views using ordinary language. — PossibleAaran
Thus, I can't meaningfully ask whether there is any reliable way to determine that things exist unperceived while using the ordinary notion of 'perceived'. The problem is, if I am really sceptical about ordinary views because those views don't meet a standard which I deem important (reliability), I won't be impressed by the thought that those views are built into my language. — PossibleAaran
So what if they are built into my language? Other cultures use other languages and their language might not be such as to have my ordinary views build into it. If so, how can we reliably establish which culture is right? The appeal to language obviously won't do. This was made very clear in a paper by Stich entitled Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology and The Problem of Cognitive Diversity. — PossibleAaran
What you are doing is asking for a justification for your belief, and following each suggestion with "But I am still not convinced".
Your failure to be convinced is not our problem. — Banno
So, what difference does that qualification make? — Janus
I'm asking whether you regard seeing something as perceiving it, but do not regard hearing something as perceiving it. That seems to be implied by your statement (at the top of this post: ↪PossibleAaran) that we do not perceive a motor that we hear, but that we do perceive a table that we see.
If that is your position, do you think it stands up to scrutiny? I wonder what a blind person would think about the suggestion that they don't perceive anything.
If that is not your position then which side would you alter? Would you agree that we do perceive things that we hear, or that we don't perceive things that we see. I can see no other way out of the difficulty, than one of those two options, although I am open to suggestions. — andrewk
The paper in my hand could very well be a dream paper, after all, which doesn't exist. But it can seem very real. The possibility of error -- the probability -- is close enough to the same (I'm not sure how we could even come up with an actual number here, but just by judgment on my part) that there isn't a difference. — Moliere
what kind of certainty would actually make the existence of the perceived any more certain that the existence of objects after they have been perceived? — Moliere
Not sure how you can accept chemistry as scientifically valid without conceding the existence of the atomic world which makes the periodic table what it is. Same with the germ theory of disease, cell biology or neuroscience.
Sure, we have equipment that can make those things perceivable to us, but most of the time atoms, microbes and cells are unperceived. The molecules science says you are made might never have been perceived by anyone. — Marchesk
Or maybe, just maybe, classical physics works so well precisely because its assumptions about macroscopic objects are accurate! — Aaron R
You seem to be haunted by the the prospect that you might be wrong. Get used to it. Such is life! — Aaron R
It is though, as I explained in this post (which was on page 2 of 9, so it's understandable that it has been forgotten).The paper in my drawer is not heard. — PossibleAaran
What is the difference between a merely dreamt tree and a real tree? I think the answer is two-fold. First, a real tree is a tree which can be perceived by other people, and second, a real tree is a tree which exists even when I am not aware of it. The tree that I see when dreaming cannot be seen by other people and exists only when I am seeing it. When I wake up, the dream tree no longer exists. — PossibleAaran
While an object is being perceived I am directly aware of it. When I am directly aware of P I am - to say the very least - in a good position to tell that P exists. When I am no longer perceiving P, how can I reliably tell that P is still there?
Perhaps. That sounds like quite a strong argument to me. One issue which I am thinking of is this. Classical Physics can be interpreted in an Idealist fashion, so as not to posit anything which exists unperceived. Doing so would not conflict with any of the available evidence. Presumably then, the Idealist interpretation of classical physics would work just as well as the Realist one would. It is just a contingent truth that we happen to use the Realist interpretation. But then, couldn't this argument of yours be made in favour of Idealism? The fact that the Idealist interpretation works so well is best explained by the hypothesis that it is correct - that things do not exist unperceived. — PossibleAaran
So, what difference does that qualification make? — Janus
Induction, deduction and inference to the best explanation vastly increase our knowledge beyond mere perception. — PossibleAaran
The resonance of your footsteps on the floor, and even the micro-audible vibration of the desk as air moves over it, will differ according to how many pieces of paper are in the desk drawer.
In order to talk about things that may have no effect at all on your sensory organs, you need to at the minimum change the focus to objects outside your past light cone, which means objects in distant outer space. There are difficulties there as well, but they are different difficulties. — andrewk
So the dream-tree does not exist, even when I am seeing it. It is a dream. It doesn't pop in and out of existence. It never existed ever. Yet, upon my perception of it, I certainly believed it to be real.
So our perception of things is not infallible, at least, when it comes to determining if something exists or does not exist.
If you insist on the dream being real, then consider hallucinations, mirages, delusions, and so forth. Our perceptions are surely not infallible when it comes to determining if something is real or not. — Moliere
This raises an interesting question about what we mean by 'detect', or 'perceive'. Specifically, do we want 'perceive' to mean the same thing as 'notice'?My sensory faculties just aren't refined enough to detect them. Does the paper exist when I'm not observing the resonances? A further inference still seems to be needed.
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