I think I see what you mean. Looks like a troll to me. Like dark green moss eyes, and the white bark patch for the nose. I also see a sweet adorable dragon thing that is super obvious looking. It's just up and right of center, that stick with the moss on it that is running right and slightly upward.

The white bit is just to the right of his long nose, like a dogs nose and two slightly darker bits are his ears sticking up above his head. Yes I know the super obvious looking one, but to me it's a pixie face, on the end of that branch which goes up to the right corner. Have you noticed ther a re a few ghoulish faces to the right of him?

Oh, I see it now. Yeah, those were the first couple that I noticed. Do you see that like flamey ghost bottom halfway left abouts, with one extra firey eye? That one's cool too.

There is a light brown tabby cat looking out towards you — Punshhh

Well, I can't see it. Mind you I had something similar occur years ago when someone showed me a book of 'magic eye' images, that you're supposed to look past, and then they click into place. Never did see any of them either.

What colour's the flames eye, I can't quite make it out?
It's getting late here, I need to crash now. Feel I'm going to have some vivid dreams;)

Yes, I have noticed that some people don't see them so easily. I might have to draw one, zooming in is just to blurred.

Orange yellow fire color. Looks in a small little square like spot, like bottom two thirds to left, looks like flames under, a greyish ghoulish ghost thing, which has orangey yellow eyes, and our right his left eye is like all black rock shooter extra flamey with a trail going up and to the right slightly.

I agree that it is easily with the smaller rather than the enlarged image.

Yes I think I see it now, I think I couldn't see it, because I had already seen that as a cat. Right on the bottom two tenths in from the left.

If you squint at it, the image has the kind of 'fractal' structure that Pollock's paintings do. I have often seen all kinds of faces and figures emerging when I look at reproductions of Pollock's paintings. I think he exploited this emergence of subconscious (collective unconscious?) imagery in his earlier more surrealist paintings, and suppressed it, probably under the influence of Clement Greenberg, in his later, more formal works.

This tendency for faces and figures and other scenes to emerge from the fractal structures of natural forms, like clouds, rock formations and lichen on walls, and so on, apparently fascinated Leonardo da Vinci, by the way.

I have seen faces and figures in some of my own works hung on the walls of the living room, especially when viewed in lower light conditions and when I have smoked something.

This is false. Wittgenstein disproved global skepticism by his analysis of hinge beliefs. Global skepticism is self-defeating. — darthbarracuda

I don't think he quite succeeded. Consider a possible hinge belief. My left arm belongs to me. I can't doubt that. I can wave my left hand in front of my face. Seems like this a great candidate for a hinge belief.

Except it turns out there is a rare brain condition where people come to believe that a certain part of their body doesn't belong to them. There is even a brain condition where people ignore an entire side of their body as if it doesn't exist.

Let's try another hinge belief. I'm alive. I can't doubt that, right? I breathe, I pinch myself and feel pain, I experience hunger, thirst, I interact with objects and others, etc.

But then again, there is yet another brain condition where people feel like they're ghosts. Everything seems hollowed out to them.

One more. I can't really doubt that my partner or family member is someone else that looks like them in disguise, right? You can't live closely with someone over time and actually believe they are some kind of doppelganger. Another hinge beliefs.

But yet again, there is a brain condition where people come to believe that someone close to them has been replaced by a double. This has to do with losing access to the feelings they used to have for that person.

So in all those rather strong looking hinge cases, it is possible to have brain trauma so that you actually do doubt what seems to be undoubtable, in a real, every day lived sense.

Beyond that, we have the Truman Show, The Matrix, Brains in a Vat, being stuck inside a Holodeck program indistinguishable from the real world, etc. that all show at least the possibility of global beliefs being radically mistaken. And if our current computing technology continues to advance, some of those scenarios could become possible. The latest VR is quite a bit better than the VR of the 90s. We can only imagine VR or total immersion in the 2050s, or the possibility of whole brain emulation.

Nick Bostrom has even written about the death of realism given future technologies, where we lose the ability to distinguish generated experiences from real ones.

there's a difference between philosophy and science fiction although it's sometimes a hard thing to explain.

So in all those rather strong looking hinge cases, it is possible to have brain trauma so that you actually do doubt what seems to be undoubtable, in a real, every day lived sense. — Marchesk

I agree Marchesk these are interesting cases relating to the issue of doubt. My feeling is though that they do not contradict what Wittgenstein was saying, though I haven't gone back to 'On Certainty' to check. I think the fundamental point remains that doubt can only rest on some certainties. The certainties these people with brain trauma accept are by 'objective' standards wrong, but those people still act on them. (Mostly: in some cases they seem to act on knowledge they avow that they don't consciously have)

In a sense each of us, existentially, is in the same position: I accept that some things I am certain of may be objectively wrong. There are moments when I was sure something was the case, and then a few moments later - as in a card game, say, when I was convinced all the hearts had been played except mine, then one turns up in an opponent's hand - I realise I was mistaken. The trauma-sufferers have, in the specific respect for which they have a trauma, lost the ability to realise they were mistaken.

Well, it's not as if I can just will it to make sense to me because it seems like a good distinction to you. I have no problem with there being different sorts of utility or practicality; I just can't (yet) grasp a distinction between utility/use(fulness) and practicality.

there's a difference between philosophy and science fiction although it's sometimes a hard thing to explain. — Wayfarer

Brain trauma and the sometimes odd disorders which result aren't science fiction. The rest is, for now, but notice how nobody has shown that it's technologically impossible to create a simulacra indistinguishable to our senses from the real thing. The most I've seen anyone try to refute it is Dennett, who claims that the combinatorial explosion of providing a brain in a vat with all the inputs every moment dwarfs any future computing capacity. But there are computer scientists who dispute that claim.

So you don't think any distinction between things which merely entertain us, things which imbue our lives with a sense of meaning or beauty and things which have direct practical applications is meaningful? You don't take there to be any genuine logic at all behind any such distinction? In short, you simply don't understand any such distinction? For you all those kinds of things mentioned are simply practically useful, and that's it; end of analysis?

But there are computer scientists who dispute that claim. — Marchesk

But again, they're not philosophers. Existence is more than, and other than, 'an array of information' or even 'a set of beliefs'. What is the organising principle that draws together and synthesises all the information, beliefs, ideas, into a unitary experience? Science doesn't know that, it's a very subtle matter and only known first-person.

The hinge beliefs Wittgenstein primarily focused on were those required for reason itself. Skepticism and doubt are inherently rational. They depend upon the ability to reason. You can't have global skepticism because that would entail doubt of reason itself. We can doubt the fruits of reason, sure, but reason itself cannot be doubted on pain of contradiction. It is always a given.

Yes, I visited the Abstract Expressionist exhibition at th Royal Academy a couple of weeks ago. There were lots of nice Pollocks there, not to mention Rothko's, also Barnett Newman who I was particularly taken by.

As you say art explores and exploits these ideas.

The reason why I posted my photo is that it is unusual in that it has a number of clear two and three dimensional imaginary beings in it. Along with that peculiar phenomena of not being able to see it and them when you do, not being able to not see it, as a way of examining the human psyche. I will draw a couple of the faces, which might draw them out of the picture.

So you don't think any distinction between things which merely entertain us, things which imbue our lives with a sense of meaning or beauty and things which have direct practical applications is meaningful? You don't take there to be any genuine logic at all behind any such distinction? In short, you simply don't understand any such distinction? For you all those kinds of things mentioned are simply practically useful, and that's it; end of analysis? — John

It seems like either you didn't read what I wrote or you didn't understand it. I said, "I have no problem with there being different sorts of utility or practicality; I just can't (yet) grasp a distinction between utility/use(fulness) and practicality." So for example something that entertains you is one sort of utility/practicality, and something that doesn't entertain you but that accomplishes something that you're required to accomplish (to meet some goal you have) is another sort of utility/practicality.

The hinge beliefs Wittgenstein primarily focused on were those required for reason itself. Skepticism and doubt are inherently rational. They depend upon the ability to reason. You can't have global skepticism because that would entail doubt of reason itself. We can doubt the fruits of reason, sure, but reason itself cannot be doubted on pain of contradiction. It is always a given. — darthbarracuda

I think you may be mistaken here. Why do you think that we cannot doubt reason itself? You describe a distinction between reason and "the fruits of reason". Your claim that to doubt reason itself would be contradictory is a fruit of reason, and can be doubted. So your claim that reason itself cannot be doubted appears to be baseless. I see no reason to believe that this would be contradictory, it's just a matter of one doubting one's own ability to do something, and this we do all the time.

To put it another way, then, you can't criticize language without using language. You can't argue against argument without using argument. You can't fully disprove or withdraw from reason without using reason in the process of doubt.

What does pragmatism have to say about two competing theories of equal plausibility and appeal? You say you are a realist about an external world if I remember correctly, whereas I am actually leaning towards straight-up idealism. Both are able to capture the same things. They are empirically equivalent. Realism, in my view, could be seen as a historical and biased prejudice.

To put it another way, then, you can't criticize language without using language. You can't argue against argument without using argument. You can't fully disprove or withdraw from reason without using reason in the process of doubt. — darthbarracuda

But we're talking about skepticism, and doubt, here. Why do you need language to doubt? Why do you need to "argue against" in order to doubt? And most of all, why would you think that you need to "fully disprove" something in order to doubt it? That is clearly contradictory. Fully disproving is to rid oneself of doubt. So all these things which may come about as the result of doubt, it appears like you want to equate them with doubt. But that's a mistake if these things are cause by doubt, then doubt is prior to them.

What does pragmatism have to say about two competing theories of equal plausibility and appeal? — darthbarracuda

If that is the case, then of course it doesn't matter which theory you employ. But is that a realistic scenario? How often would you get such perfect symmetry?

Of course, in arriving at theories, you almost always need two such rival approaches that capture the research communities imagination. Any well organised academic field always organises itself in this dialectical fashion. If it seems possible to be a lumper on some issue, then there will be a matching camp of splitters. This dichotomisation of the possibilities is the most efficient way of ensuring the whole of the explanation space is being canvased.

But then eventually, the aim is to find the optimal theory - usually the one that most efficiently connects a purpose to an outcome.

You say you are a realist about an external world if I remember correctly, whereas I am actually leaning towards straight-up idealism. Both are able to capture the same things. They are empirically equivalent. Realism, in my view, could be seen as a historical and biased prejudice. — darthbarracuda

Well, given that I'm a pragmatist, I'm neither a realist, nor an idealist.

Realism vs idealism is an expression of the dialectical dynamic in academia that I just spoke about. It is natural that these two extremes would be pushed in intellectual history so as to discover the most complete opposites of what might be the case.

But then the successful theory can't be some simplistic belief in one or the other - the reduction to a monism. Pragmatism is instead the acceptance that there is an irreducible triadism at work - a modelling relation. The world actually is divided not into world and mind, but world and sign. And that is the theory that best accounts for the empirical facts of human psychology.

IF, Skepticism requires unassailable provable justification to support a claim as fact....This skepticism is a process which doesn't allow its own exercise, logically speaking , though, it's 'supposed to be' a logical process.
What we call proof , is an assertion of fact. They are requiring an assertion of fact to support that something else is fact .,, a circular requirement.
I'm thinking that skepticism requires one to entertain that there may or may not be demons screwing with us. I don't see that as helpful.

But , If I am Not a skeptic, I accept some things as axiomatically true in and of themselves , I don't have to entertain that other idea, because I can rely on my logic from axiomatic truth onward. (I think therefore I exist ,so something exists , if something exists, then everything that exists is factually true.) and so, I can require that someone must prove those demons exist, in a universe that does exist.

The skeptics position, is then to try to prove me wrong , in a situation in which they can take nothing as factually true. So they are wrong, I can call them wrong , and all they can correctly do, is just sulk about it. :)

Five pages of what in a generous mood I will call 'philosophy' seem to demonstrate what is intuitively and by definition the case, that one cannot disprove scepticism without starting philosophy. Indeed, since scepticism is a philosophical position, one cannot even articulate it without starting philosophy.

Can you start philosophy without disproving scepticism?

It follows from the above, that either one can start philosophy without disproving scepticism or one cannot start philosophy. But we have started, and therefore the question can be answered in the affirmative.

And they say philosophy never makes progress.

one cannot disprove scepticism without starting philosophy. Indeed, since scepticism is a philosophical position, one cannot even articulate it without starting philosophy. — unenlightened

Great point

" You can read something such as Rene Descartes, with his 'I think, therefore I am' and I realised it was based on logic. So couldn't an Evil Demon fool you into believing in Logic?"

The point is not that the demon is tricking us, but at that point we cannot deny that we exist. It is the unmovable point; a point that cannot be doubted because the act of doubting creates it. Whether the demon is involved in shaping that reasoning is moot, as those are the rules of reason we are bound by. Descartes' demon is just another word for reality, just as the word subjective is as well. The question is not what is reality made of, but rather it is: how can we interact with reality?

Skepticism arises from the dubious assumption that we'd never see the real world, only our own impressions, ideas, or sensed "data". Too many thinkers have been taking that assumption for granted.