If it's orange but it appears to you as red then you're seeing it wrong. — Michael
Seeing it directly means that it couldn't appear red when it is orange. Only appearance as representation could be wrong, but naive realism denies that perception would be representational. So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism. — jkop
So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism.
1. There exists a world of material objects.
2. Statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience.
3. These objects exist not only when they are being perceived but also when they are not perceived. The objects of perception are largely, we might want to say, perception-independent.
4. These objects are also able to retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent.
5. By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is. In the main, our claims to have knowledge of it are justified.
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience. — jkop
and would completely miss the point that Putnam was making, which is that if the causal constraint on reference is correct then the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by an envatted person wouldn't refer to real brains and vats but to these virtual-reality brains and vats, and given that we're not virtual brains in vats, our claim "we could be brains in vats" must be false. — Michael
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience. — jkop
All perception is veridical, unlike hallucinations, in which nothing is perceived, only experienced. It would be unnecessarily ambiguous to speak of 'non-veridical' cases of visual perception, for example, when there is no vision, only experience of vision. In veridical cases something is both seen and experienced.
But, it's really the same point. If there were real brains and vats in the real world inhabited by the simualtors, that the virtual reality brains and vats were simulations of, then the words would be causally connected to the real brains and vats insofar as the simulators would have made the simulated brains and vats to look the same and caused us to name them the same. — John
Reference is initially fixed with a dubbing, usually by perception, though also on occasion by description. Reference is fixed via perception when a speaker says, in effect, of a perceived object: "You're to be called 'N'."
I like "direct realism" as an opening move in the metaphysical chess game. But doesn't anyone else see (to some degree) that it's largely just a debate about how we should use words? — Hoo
If we are brains in vats that have been programmed to experience a virtual world with brains and vats, and programmed to call them 'brains' and 'vats' respectively, because that is the name the programmer chose for us virtual 'people' to use, and in fact programmed our en-vatted brains to use — John
I agree. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa. One person says "I see a woman", another says "I see a painting of a woman", and a third says "I see paint". They're all correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing. Similarly, one person says "I see an apple", another says "I see a mental representation of an apple", and a third says "I see qualia". They could all be correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing. — Michael
We could also reframe the question in terms of action. Do we and should we act as if the apple we left on the kitchen table will still be red and delicious (for us, satisfying us) if we bother to walk downstairs? Can we emit strings of marks and noises that will allow us to work toward common goals successfully? I wouldn't exclude the fun of a metaphysical discussion from the set of such goals. It's actually pretty amusing to switch from the woman to the painting to the paint.This is why I think the substance of the issue – the thing that actually addresses the epistemological question – lies with point 4 above. Do objects retain the properties we perceive them to have even when they're not being perceived? — Michael
If that's the way you want to stipulate it, then does the name really matter anyway? The programmers would have chosen brains and vats as perceptible objects in the program, whatever thye might end up being called. — John
What you are saying doesn't seem to take account of the fact that the same object has different names in different languages. — John
if the virtual person were somehow to be able to see a real vat he would still recognize it and refer to it with the same word
1. There exists a world of material objects.
2. Statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience.
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience. — jkop
This is circular. I asked what it means to see a thing directly and you said it's to see a mind-independent thing as it is. I asked you what it means to see a mind-independent thing as it is and you say it's to see a thing directly. So, currently, the very notion of seeing a thing directly – of seeing a mind-independent thing as it is – is vacuous. — Michael
I'm asking you what makes it correct and to support that it's correct factually. What makes it correct wouldn't simply be that that's how you (and only you) think about naive realism, would it? I would think some sort of empirical evidence would be what would make it correct factually, no?I thought that you were saying that my characterisation of naive realism was incorrect, and asked me to defend it. — Michael
Aren't we talking about a stance that individuals have? Or in your view are we talking about something that somehow exists aside from that? In other words, can most naive realists believe something (that they're calling "naive realism") that turns out to not be naive realism after all?Seems ridiculous to ask someone for empirical evidence to support the correctness of their characterization of a metaphysical standpoint.Thinking about metaphysical standpoints is done best by testing their coherence and consistency by teasing out what they logically entail. — John
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