Reflections on Realism

Dfpolis

Experience is the data we have to work with. One can either work with experience, or one can simply cease thinking. The scientific method does not get one past this, as all it does is compare hypotheses to experience. Whatever you think reality is, experience is how we humans relate to it -- and we can only deal with it as we relate to it.

We do not and cannot have omniscience, so it is a trap to make omniscience the paradigm case of knowing. "Knowing" names a human activity. So as soon as you say "we do not know," you're abusing the foundations of language. "Reality" first means what we encounter in experience. So, if you say "we do not experience reality," you are again abusing language.

When you make "reality" mean more than, or something other than, what we encounter in experience, you're creating a mental construct. If you create that construct, and then claim that what you have constructed is inaccessible, you have said absolutely nothing about what we encounter in experience.

Doubt is an act of will. I can will to doubt anything, including my own consciousness, as eliminative materialists such as Dennett have chosen to do. What one cannot do is eliminate what we experience. We experience ourselves as subjects and everything else as objects. I know what I experience and no act of will, no doubt, can make me not know it.

Of course, I may misinterpret what I experience. I may think the elephant I experience is in nature rather than the result of intoxication. Still, if I did not have experiences I know to be veridical, I could not judge others to be errant.

Terrapin Station

You're using "experience" in the sense of "I'm a conscious entity, aware of x."

The first thing I'd wonder is if that's really the way all phenomena are to you. For example, it's never for you just that there's a tree, say. It's always that you have something like "I'm a conscious entity, aware of a tree" present?

For me, there's often just a tree (or whatever).

Galuchat

"Reality" first means what we encounter in experience...
When you make "reality" mean more than, or something other than, what we encounter in experience, you're creating a mental construct. — Dfpolis

If I make:
1) Reality synonymous with actuality,
2) Experience an awareness event, and
3) Awareness a perceptive and/or cognisant condition,

have we made similar assertions?

Mww

One minor consideration, if I may.

Experience is the data we have to work with. One can either work with experience, or one can simply cease thinking. — Dfpolis

All else being equal, it is impossible to cease thinking and remain a rational agent. If thinking is necessary, and if thinking is the means with experience its ends, then experience is equally necessary, which implies data is contingent, in as much as not all data is experience. If that is reasonable, then I submit a reformation of the quote to: data we have to work with is experience.

Terrapin Station

If one is positing that one has a body and is perceiving things via one's senses, etc., then one is already assuming realism, by the way.

This is one reason the question of whether it's always the case of not just "tree" but "I'm conscious of a tree" (see my post above) is important.

Dfpolis

For example, it's never for you just that there's a tree, say. It's always that you have something like "I'm a conscious entity, aware of a tree" present? — Terrapin Station

Yes, trees are often just present. Often they are not even identified. It is only when we fix on this or that aspect of experience that we distinguish trees and even ourselves as subjects. We are aware of the whole complex, but that does not mean that we have focused on any aspect of it so as to conceptualize/categorize it.

Marchesk

If one is positing that one has a body and is perceiving things via one's senses, etc., then one is already assuming realism, by the way. — Terrapin Station

Right, but this can be rephrased to one has an experience of a body perceiving things with senses, which provides us an experience of a world that we bodily inhabit.

In this phrasing, it's experience all the way down, which leaves up the question of whether there is something behind the experience, like a vat, demon or material world.

Dfpolis

If I make:
1) Reality synonymous with actuality,
2) Experience an awareness event, and
3) Awareness a perceptive and/or cognisant condition,

have we made similar assertions? — Galuchat

It depends on how you explicate your terms.
1) What does "actuality" mean to you? Is it accessible, or quarantined?
2) Are you thinking of "events" as disjoint, or simply points in a continuum we happen to be fixed upon? And, how do you conceive awareness?
3) By "Awareness" i mean what makes intelligibility known. So, it rises above sensory perception in that we can perceive and respond in complex ways without being aware in the sense required to know.

If I've over analyzed what you said, forgive me.

Dfpolis

↪Mww

Excuse me for not quite seeing your point. I was not suggesting we really stop thinking, only that all the content we think about is experiential. So, if we were not thinking of content traceable to experience, we would have nothing to think about.

"Data" means what is given, and it is given exclusively in experience. I do not see any other way for there to be data. We even find out about our innate capabilities/propensities in the experience of using them. If, for example, I had an innate fear of 8-legged things, I would find out in experiencing my response to one -- and not as a priori content independent of experience.

I don't think that reflective thinking is the means of experience. I think that reflective thought is how we seek to integrate experience into a comprehensible whole.

Please forgive me if I missed your point.

Dfpolis

If one is positing that one has a body and is perceiving things via one's senses, etc., then one is already assuming realism, by the way. — Terrapin Station

I don't think we start by positing that. Rather we seek to organize our experience by classifying it, and in doing so we come to concepts that include our body. We come to understand things in terms of objects (ostensible unities) that persist and learn the conditions under which we can and cannot encounter them. It is out of such considerations that we develop notions of body, senses and sensible objects.

This is one reason the question of whether it's always the case of not just "tree" but "I'm conscious of a tree" (see my post above) is important. — Terrapin Station

You will need to expand on this, as I don't see your point. The center of our subjectivity is not given as material and so not as a body.

Galuchat

It depends on how you explicate your terms.
1) What does "actuality" mean to you? Is it accessible, or quarantined?
2) Are you thinking of "events" as disjoint, or simply points in a continuum we happen to be fixed upon? And, how do you conceive awareness?
3) By "Awareness" i mean what makes intelligibility known. So, it rises above sensory perception in that we can perceive and respond in complex ways without being aware in the sense required to know. — Dfpolis

1) Actuality is accessible through perception (sensation effect).

2a) Events as points in a continuum we happen to be fixed upon.

2b) Awareness consists of perception and cognisance (automatic and/or controlled acknowledgement).

3) Automatic cognisance is recognition (identification based on association with tacit knowledge)), controlled cognisance is cognitive appraisal (evaluation of context involving slow brain pathway processing through frontal lobes)), and automatic and controlled cognisance is appraisal (Two-Process Model per Smith & Kirby, 2009; or Multilevel Sequential Check Model per Scherer, 2001).

Dfpolis

↪Galuchat

So far we seem to share similar views, though I would not mix modes of neural response with modes of intentional response. (Not that I think that intentional response is independent of neural processing. I don't. Rather, they depend on different kinds of analysis, and if we are dealing with the question of realism, we have a lot of ground to cover before we can justify neuroscience.)

Terrapin Station

Yes, trees are often just present — Dfpolis

Sure. So going from that to "this is something I'm perceiving" etc. is theoretical, isn't it? That is, it's literally invoking a theory about what's going on.

Mww

↪Dfpolis

I agree experience is all we have to work with empirically, but I wouldn’t call experience “data”. I understand you to mean the thinking subject draws on extant experience for his subsequent judgements, so experience does serve as a database. Of sorts. I guess.

Nevertheless, when you say

I do not see any other way for there to be data. — Dfpolis

and if “data is given exclusively in experience”, implies there can be no data outside our experience. If there is no data outside our experience we are presented with two absurdities, 1.) we should know everything because all the experience we have is all the data there is, or 2.) data and experience are congruent which would force the impossibility of misunderstandings.

Be that as it may, I accept the gist of what you’re saying in the OP, so my little foray into the sublime can be disregarded without offense.

Dfpolis

es, trees are often just present — Dfpolis

Sure. So going from that to "this is something I'm perceiving" etc. is theoretical, isn't it? That is, it's literally invoking a theory about what's going on. — Terrapin Station

It depends on how you define "theory." If you mean a hypothetical structure, then, no, it is not a theory. If you mean a way of organizing experience, then yes, noting that certain things (trees) are equally capable of evoking the concept <tree> does organize our experience.

Dfpolis

If there is no data outside our experience we are presented with two absurdities, 1.) we should know everything because all the experience we have is all the data there is, or 2.) data and experience are congruent which would force the impossibility of misunderstandings. — Mww

1. I have not assumed or implied that our experience exhausts being. I have only said that our concept of reality begins with what we experience. ("'Reality' first means what we encounter in experience.") We say "seeing is believing," not because seeing is exhaustive, or even inerrant, but because our concept of reality begins with things that can act on us in experience. I left out that we expand the extension of our concept of reality (being) far beyond this humble beginning because I was discussing the relation between experience and reality.

I think the problem is that we are not defining "data" in the same way. I am defining it as what is experienced, not things that could be experienced or known indirectly. You seem to be defining it as what we could know. I agree that\ much more is intelligible than we actually know, than our actual data.

2. I agree that being is not fully congruent with human understanding, but I think every experience is caused by an existent adequate to cause it. Our errors of understanding are due to misjudging/interpreting/classifying what we experience -- not to mis-experiencing. The adequate cause of my experience might be a neurological disorder -- and in time I might learn to recognize it for what it is. (As John Forbes Nash did.) Usually, the cause of my experience is just what I judge it to be.rly.

Be that as it may, I accept the gist of what you’re saying in the OP, so my little foray into the sublime can be disregarded without offense. — Mww

Even misunderstandings are opportunities for both parties to learn to communicate more clearly.

RegularGuy

I don't think that reflective thinking is the means of experience. I think that reflective thought is how we seek to integrate experience into a comprehensible whole. — Dfpolis

My question is: is this empiricism, rationalism, or neither (such as in Kant’s view)?

Dfpolis

My question is: is this empiricism, rationalism, or neither (such as in Kant’s view)? — Noah Te Stroete

The argument is mine. I'm a moderate, Aristotelian-Thomistic realist, who thinks that we can have different projections of reality, which is to say that we can represent the same reality using different conceptual spaces.

RegularGuy

The argument is mine. I'm a moderate, Aristotelian-Thomistic realist, who thinks that we can have different projections of reality, which is to say that we can represent the same reality using different conceptual spaces. — Dfpolis

I understand the gist. My question specifically is: is there knowledge that can come from something other than sense data, or that doesn’t have as its foundation, sense experience?

RegularGuy

↪Dfpolis

My other question is: in the case of JF Nash, he had insight into his illness. Someone else may not have this insight. Does someone who hallucinates and doesn’t recognize it not have useful knowledge of reality?

RegularGuy

↪Dfpolis

For example, how does a baby know how to suck on a bottle? Isn’t this an example of innate knowledge? If not, why? Don’t we already know things coming into this world that aren’t derived from sense experience?

RegularGuy

↪Dfpolis

I’m sorry to bombard you. This is just very interesting to me. I’m sure you’ve heard of the neuroscience experiment involving “the God helmet.” It’s a helmet that electrically stimulates a part of the brain that when stimulated causes people to report having “spiritual experiences,” or seeing “God.” Since this is hardwired in our brains, what does this tell us about reality?

Dfpolis

is there knowledge that can come from something other than sense data, or that doesn’t have as its foundation, sense experience? — Noah Te Stroete

After reading W. T. Stace, I started taking mystical experience seriously. I now think it is veridical, but not (usually) informative. It is veridical in that it is exactly what one would expect from an experience of God, but not informative because God is unlimited and information is the reduction of possibility. I think that a few mystics, such as John of the Cross, have grasped empirical reality via their awareness of God, but that this is extremely rare.

My other question is: in the case of JF Nash, he had insight into his illness. Someone else may not have this insight. Does someone who hallucinates and doesn’t recognize it not have useful knowledge of reality? — Noah Te Stroete

I don't know that "useful" is a relevant criterion for knowledge. I would say that if you don't know you are hallucinating, you could learn to recognize it, as Nash did, but in the meantime, you will be holding false views.

For example, how does a baby know how to suck on a bottle? Isn’t this an example of innate knowledge? — Noah Te Stroete

It is an example of instinctive behavior. If the child were old enough, it could know that had such instincts. I do not think that we should confuse behavioral propensities/desires with knowledge. For example adolescents have a sex drive, but not an innate knowledge of the mechanics of intercourse. It is rather that the things they want to do will get them there.

The "God's Helmet" experiments could not be replicated and are now considered debunked (by researchers in Holland, if memory serves -- I wrote about it in my book). The "results" were explained by suggestion.

But, supposing we had such a propensity, we would learn of it when we experienced its activation -- just as male transsexuals learn that they are "girls." Many people see religious behavior as a reflection of such a propensity.

RegularGuy

It is an example of instinctive behavior. If the child were old enough, it could know that had such instincts. I do not think that we should confuse behavioral propensities/desires with knowledge. For example adolescents have a sex drive, but not an innate knowledge of the mechanics of intercourse. It is rather that the things they want to do will get them there. — Dfpolis

I don’t know. Perhaps two teenagers without knowledge of intercourse were marooned on a desert island. Certainly they would figure out what to do. Calling it “instinct” or “innate knowledge” is splitting hairs in my view.

Mww

I'm a moderate, Aristotelian-Thomistic realist, who thinks that we can have different projections of reality — Dfpolis

Well......there ya go. I’m a transcendental idealist, who must be an empirical realist by inclusion. I support different projections of reality, but adhere to the thesis that because there is some general empirical data, re: experience and therefore knowledge, potentially common to all rational humans, reality in and of itself is most probably one iteration of all those various and sundry individual projections.

Yes, we think of data differently, but herein I think we are both right with respect to what we each are saying.

Yes, we cannot mis-experience. Odd, isn’t it? We can easily misunderstand, misjudge, and even if those have philosophical explanations, we never characterize our experiences, in and of themselves, as missed. That bell cannot be un-rung.

RegularGuy

It is rather that the things they want to do will get them there. — Dfpolis

I suppose I agree with this.

RegularGuy

Well......there ya go. I’m a transcendental idealist, who must be an empirical realist by inclusion. I support different projections of reality, but adhere to the thesis that because there is some general empirical data, re: experience and therefore knowledge, potentially common to all rational humans, reality in and of itself is most probably one iteration of all those various and sundry individual projections.

Yes, we think of data differently, but herein I think we are both right with respect to what we each are saying.

Yes, we cannot mis-experience. Odd, isn’t it? We can easily misunderstand, misjudge, and even if those have philosophical explanations, we never characterize our experiences, in and of themselves, as missed. That bell cannot be un-rung. — Mww

I am in agreement with both of you. I understand the Critique of Pure Reason and see what it says as the best model of reality that I’ve encountered. What @Dfpolis describes seems in line with it except for his caveat in the “Foundations of Mathematics” thread regarding the “radiance of objects” or however he put it. Df is quite the philosopher! For someone with his knowledge base, he is very skilled at putting things into easily digestible chunks. Thank you, both.

Dfpolis

Calling it “instinct” or “innate knowledge” is splitting hairs in my view. — Noah Te Stroete

What are they aware of? Not some intellectual content, but a desire. In a sense it is knowledge, but not in the same sense that awareness of intelligibility is.

RegularGuy

Calling it “instinct” or “innate knowledge” is splitting hairs in my view.
— Noah Te Stroete

What are they aware of? Not some intellectual content, but a desire? — Dfpolis

It is rather that the things they want to do will get them there.
— Dfpolis

I suppose I agree with this. — Noah Te Stroete

I thought about it. Then I agreed with you.

Dfpolis

I support different projections of reality, but adhere to the thesis that because there is some general empirical data, re: experience and therefore knowledge, potentially common to all rational humans, reality in and of itself is most probably one iteration of all those various and sundry individual projections. — Mww

I am not sure I understand this. Are you saying, that as a projection, reality is a construct? That seems odd for an empiricist, for to be an empiricist, one must stand ready to be surprised by reality, and our own constructs have a hard time surprising us.

I would say that we try to model reality, and the more projections we incorporate into our model, the more adequate to reality it will be.

Dfpolis

Thank you, both. — Noah Te Stroete

You are welcome. The term was "radiance of action."

Reflections on Realism

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