How would you know this? (Note that I'm not suggesting an answer either way--that either they do or do not see the world "the same." I'm simply asking how we know such things. Our answer to whether they see the world the same and whether and how we know this has a bearing on whether the method via which we're claiming to know it is even workable) — Terrapin Station
The irony in Herg's anti-idealism is that s/he takes a model (the idea of hydrogen) for the thing itself. — macrosoft
At some point there is always some grounding in the obvious --and this itself is obvious upon even a brief consideration. We are already in a shared language before we can even start to question one another about these things. — macrosoft
I get the sense that anti-idealism identifies with toughness of mind. It opposes itself to silliness, wishful thinking, exotic language. In the name of truth, right? — macrosoft
pre-theoretical sense of sharing meaning with others. — macrosoft
I don't drive without my contact lenses in. I'd be breaking the law. Or are the blurry signs not the same as the less blurry signs? — macrosoft
To me this is a good description of the atomic approach to meaning. It ignores the fluidity and complexity of actual life and gets caught up in differences that make no difference. — macrosoft
It wants proofs of the same truths — macrosoft
It models its interactions with others (even the others most trusted and familiar) in terms of meanings trapped in skulls — macrosoft
The irony in Herg's anti-idealism is that s/he takes a model (the idea of hydrogen) for the thing itself. — macrosoft
In a certain sense all philosophy has been (shades of) idealism. — macrosoft
It questions common sense and superstition by considering the subject's distortion of the object. — macrosoft
The 'pure object' is itself an idea/ideal — macrosoft
A naive theory of reference — macrosoft
forgets that it can't give its elusive 'pure object' content that isn't 'stolen' from the impure object — macrosoft
Language is something like the primary human phenomenon. — macrosoft
Humans are radically social — macrosoft
If we build things up from the isolated subject — macrosoft
"organ-ism" — macrosoft
An isolated human being is not fully human in some sense. — macrosoft
For me this is the blind-spot of an analytic or atomic approach. It needs a atomic meanings, atomic subjects in skulls. — macrosoft
It needs categories that are artificial — macrosoft
In short, it tries to model existence after mechanism as opposed to organism. — macrosoft
I think the driving image is that of certainty — macrosoft
the primary goal of describing — macrosoft
What would you give as an example of a shared meaning? — Terrapin Station
And perhaps you should prove why you disagree with Aristotle on The Prime Mover and with Aquinas on The First Cause etc.! — hks
When you typed this out to ask me the question, you expected with no genuine doubt that I could understand you and answer. — macrosoft
Another example would be the symbol on restrooms for men or women. Or road-signs as we drive. Or someone flipping the bird or the peace sign. — macrosoft
Yes. And my account of meaning, understanding, communication etc. does not at all have shared meaning, yet it very easily accounts for this. So that's not an example of shared meaning. — Terrapin Station
Heidegger argues that we ordinarily encounter entities as (what he calls) equipment, that is, as being for certain sorts of tasks (cooking, writing, hair-care, and so on). Indeed we achieve our most primordial (closest) relationship with equipment not by looking at the entity in question, or by some detached intellectual or theoretical study of it, but rather by skillfully manipulating it in a hitch-free manner. Entities so encountered have their own distinctive kind of Being that Heidegger famously calls readiness-to-hand. Thus:
The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’. (Being and Time 15: 98)
Readiness-to-hand has a distinctive phenomenological signature. While engaged in hitch-free skilled activity, Dasein has no conscious experience of the items of equipment in use as independent objects (i.e., as the bearers of determinate properties that exist independently of the Dasein-centred context of action in which the equipmental entity is involved). Thus, while engaged in trouble-free hammering, the skilled carpenter has no conscious recognition of the hammer, the nails, or the work-bench, in the way that one would if one simply stood back and thought about them.
Tools-in-use become phenomenologically transparent. Moreover, Heidegger claims, not only are the hammer, nails, and work-bench in this way not part of the engaged carpenter's phenomenal world, neither, in a sense, is the carpenter. The carpenter becomes absorbed in his activity in such a way that he has no awareness of himself as a subject over and against a world of objects. Crucially, it does not follow from this analysis that Dasein's behaviour in such contexts is automatic, in the sense of there being no awareness present at all, but rather that the awareness that is present (what Heidegger calls circumspection) is non-subject-object in form. Phenomenologically speaking, then, there are no subjects and no objects; there is only the experience of the ongoing task (e.g., hammering).
— SEP
Your support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object" is that you don't drive without your contact lenses in? How is that a support for "Our cognition mediates or distorts the object"? — Terrapin Station
I've stressed many times that it's important not to conflate to ideas and what they're ideas of. Just like it's important to not conflate a painting and what it's a painting of. Ideas, concepts, etc. are like paintings. They're not identical to what they're a painting of. And visual artists can only make paintings, but it's not the case that they can only experience or know-by-acquaintance paintings. You should probably ask them if they're confusing their painting for the thing that they're painting. — Terrapin Station
'In philosophy, an aporia is a philosophical puzzle or a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry, often arising as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises (i.e. a paradox).'
...
In Pyrrhonism aporia is intentionally induced as a means of producing ataraxia. — wiki
I'm very confused about how you're using the term "atomic," too. I wouldn't say that I'm talking about "atomic" anything. You'd have to explain what you're reading that way/how you're using that term. — Terrapin Station
If we're talking about building models per se, it would just depend on what one is modeling. For example, if you're modeling the sun, you're not going to be concerned with modeling organisms, because there are no organisms on/in the sun. If you're modeling bacteria, most of your model is going to be focused on organisms. It's probably best to model what you're modeling, and not what you're not modeling. — Terrapin Station
Okay, but I'm saying that the idea of shared meaning is wrong. It gets wrong what meaning is, and if the observable phenomena are posited as shared meaning, then it follows that when we set up, say, computer systems to mimic the observables, or set up robots to do something like the Chinese Room, we have to say that they are doing meaning. There's a problem with that, however. We're clearly doing things that computers and robots are not doing--which also goes into why they're not persons, why they're not due the same moral considerations as persons, and so on. — Terrapin Station
For instance, meaning holism seems to result from radical use-theories[4] that attempt to identify meaning with some aspects of our use. Examples of this could be:
Theories that identify a sentence's meaning with its method of verification. Verificationism, combined with some plausible assumptions about the holism of confirmation (Hempel 1950; Quine 1951), would seem to lead to meaning holism.
Theories that identify a word's meaning with its inferential role. Which inferences one endorses with a word depends on what one means by one's other words, and so (when combined with a rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction—see below) the web quickly spreads to the entire language. (Block 1986, 1995; Brandom 1994; Field 1977; Harman 1973, 1993; Sellars 1954, 1974)
Theories that take what a person means by a word to be a functional property of that person, and assume that functional properties are individuated holistically. (Block 1998; Churchland 1979, 1986)
Theories that identify what a person means by a word with all of the beliefs that they would express using that word. (Bilgrami 1992, 1998)
Identifying meaning with the beliefs associated with a word or its inferential/functional role leads quickly to a type of meaning holism because of the way that the connections between such beliefs and inferences spread through a language. For instance, a word like “squirrel” might be inferentially connected to, say, “animal” which is in turn connected to “Koala” which is connected to “Australia”, and through similar chains, every word will be related inferentially to (and thus semantically entangled with) every other term in the language (especially when one considers connections like that between, say, “is a squirrel” and “is not a building” or any other thing we take squirrels not to be). Changing the meaning of one word thus changes the content of at least some of the inferences and beliefs that constitute the meaning of other terms in the language, and so a change in the meaning of one term quickly leads to a change in the meaning of the rest. — SEP
Semantic holism, simply put, is the idea that words have no meaning apart from the context, or sentences, in which they are used. This can, perhaps, be better understood by looking at the meaning of holism, and contrasting it with another view of meaning, atomism.
Holism is the idea that something can be more than the sum of its parts; more specifically holism usually refers to reality. It contends that one must understand reality as a whole; that one can't start by examining the parts of reality and end up with an accurate picture. This is more easily seen if we look at biological holism. For example, a duck is more than simply a collection of "duck parts", and thus we can not break a duck down into "duck parts" and end up with an accurate picture of a duck.
Holism can be contrasted with atomism, which is the idea that everything can be broken down into smaller parts. Applied to biology one would argue that one can obtain an accurate picture of a duck by breaking down the duck into fundamental "duck parts".
Apply holism to language and we get semantic holism. The idea behind semantic holism is that every word has meaning only in relation to other words, sentences, or the language (as a whole) in which it is used. For example, semantic holists would argue that the word "tree" does not always refer to the same object for everyone. More specifically, if I say "All trees have green leaves" and you say "No trees have green leaves", there is not necessarily a disagreement. Both of us could simply be referring to different concepts of a tree. Atomism, on the other hand, would claim that one of us is wrong. Either my statement "all trees have green leaves" is false, or your statement "No trees have green leaves" is false.
There are a few criticisms of holism, which may help shed light on exactly what it is. The first one being that there is no sentence which can be thrown out as incomprehensible or irrational, unless you are the speaker. This is a consequence of semantic holism because you, as a listener, most likely don't subscribe to every assumption that the speaker is making. This leads to a second criticisim; that is, since our concepts are in a constant state of flux, and since the meaning of every word is determined by its relation to every other belief you have, you can't "translate" what you meant by a previous statement. (See indeterminacy of translation). — internet...accidentally closed the window
but the working hypothesis that there is a world of objects that broadly matches our model of it is justified by the fact that it is by far the most economical explanation for our perceptions. — Herg
In short, your 'reality' is just the virtual entities that are economical. And that also suggests (seems to me) some kind of Platonism. — macrosoft
AFIK, numbers are just part of human cognition. They aren't 'out there.' — macrosoft
My gripe is that we don't have a non-controversial grasp on what numbers even are. — macrosoft
I can't read the road-signs without my corrective lenses. When I put them in, I can. Did the signs change? Or just my mediation? (I was trying to give you a break from my longwindedness.) — macrosoft
From your comments about this, we have to conclude that you believe that there are things external to yourself such as road signs, glasses, and so on. You believe that you can observe them, that you can know something about them, something about what they're really like, how they really "behave," where that can be contra to your experience of them. Why would you believe this, how could you possibly know any of it if you can't observe the world as it is, if you can only observe your own mind per se? — Terrapin Station
This old subject-object realist-idealist game is a dead end. — macrosoft
If you're claiming that everything is mentally mediated, it's a game you're playing, isn't it? — Terrapin Station
It makes the functioning, actual ground imperfectly but sufficiently visible to make a nit-picking theory of knowledge look like the construction of tiny ships in a bottle that will never sail.
I said that that's what idealists have really meant.
You are missing the big picture. This game is endless and artificial. The pragmatist critique put it to bed long ago. I was arguing that everyone knows very well in a mostly inexplicit way that we live in a shared world which is mediated by our body and personality. Because we don't really doubt this and because those with 'different' theories live the same way, this approach reduces philosophy to a shallow game, a sport of arguing about trivialities that grasps itself as a science of science.
Removed from the context of practice (or a world that resists and others who can literally bomb us into 'agreement') the whole endeavor has an unworldly pallor. I've been trying to unmask 'realist' talk as every bit as 'theological' and 'silly' as 'idealism.' The game itself is dust. This is why looking at ordinary and pre-theoretical life/consciousness is valuable. It makes the functioning, actual ground imperfectly but sufficiently visible to make a nit-picking theory of knowledge look like the construction of tiny ships in a bottle that will never sail. — macrosoft
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