Turns out the atomists were basically correct, at least regarding ordinary matter. So the discussion was meaningful. Even the part about atoms "swerving" randomly has its parallel in quantum indeterminism. — Marchesk
We cannot say what the wave function "really is" any more than we can say what a tree "really is" above and beyond our experience of, and thoughts about, it. — Janus
So given all that, what is your response to the Wittgenstein approach that metaphysics is an abuse of language? That the Greeks used nouns for everything and we have a tendency to view concepts as things? — Marchesk
The temptation here might be to say there is no "how it is", only how things appear to be. But that raises problems. For one, it means we can't say whether the stick is bent by the water or the light is refracted. For another, we can't explain why there are discrepancies in appearance.
If there is no "how it is", then there should never have been a question of appearance versus reality. — Marchesk
For these reasons the normal logic of relations cannot accommodate the presumed relation between an intentional state and its intentional object or objects, but it has also not proven comfortable for theorists to deny, on these grounds, that there are such things as intentional relations--to hold that mental states, for instance, are only apparently relational. This, then, is the unsolved problem of intentionality.
Faced with this problem, the Anglo-American tradition, characteristically, has tended to favor a tactical retreat, to a logical analysis of the language we use to talk about intentional states, events and other items. This move, from the direct analysis of the phenomena to the analysis of our ways of talking about the phenomena, has been aptly called "semantic ascent" by Quine, and its immediate advantages are twofold. First, we set aside epistemological and metaphysical distractions such as: "How can we ever know another person's mental state anyway?" and "Are mental states a variety of physical state, or are they somehow immaterial or spiritual?" The things people say about mental states are in any event out in the public world where we can get at them and study them directly. Second, switching to language puts at our disposal a number of sophisticated techniques and theories developed by philosophers, logicians, and linguists. Semantic ascent is not guaranteed to solve any problems, of course, but it may permit them to be reformulated in ways more accessible to ultimate solution. — Daniel Dennett
Is any thing some way independently of any view? The category error seems to consist in thinking that it could be. I think the best that can be said about this would be that a thing is such as to appear such and such a way to such and such a viewer. — Janus
To say that there are no independent things is to say there are no distinctions, then why is my mind full of distinctions? — Harry Hindu
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