Most of what we know about everything we know because we've been told or shown by others. — T Clark
There's your problem: "out there" vs "in here". — Banno
I agree with this. The idea of objective reality can be really useful, but it's not true. Or false for that matter. That's how metaphysics works. — T Clark
Not sure what "epistemically opaque" means. How is that different from our brains? — T Clark
This doesn't seem right to me. What's the big mystery about getting stuff from out there in here? We are wired to the outside. Signals come down the wires. Our nervous and other systems process the signals. That processing is called "the mind." We send signals back. — T Clark
The pain itself probably is not guessing since we seem to experience it. The guessing seems to come into it when we are trying to explain how contact with the sharp glass translates itself into the sensation of pain, who or what it is that perceives and interprets it and why, etc.
As the way we perceive things tends to change from one individual to another, and from situation to situation, at least some of it seems to be subjective. — Apollodorus
Well, you have a point but the error in judgment you commit is that now you've swung to the other extreme - to believing in subjectivity. This is not the intent/aim/goal of skepticism (Cartesian & Harmanian). What Descartes and Harman want to accomplish is to only, I repeat only, sow the seed of doubt in the garden of epistemology. This seed of uncertainty has germinated and is now a healthy (dose of skepticism) plant in full bloom but...it in no way diminshes the value of the other flowers (knowledge) that it grows alongside. If it does anything, it makes us unsure as to whether the flowers present are real or fake. That's not a bad thing if you take the time to realize artificial flowers are so well-made that it's impossible to distinguish them from real ones. If so, does it matter subjective or objective? They're identical insofar as our ability to tell which. — TheMadFool
So that's what Pragmatists think!
I was under the impression that Dewey generally wasn't inclined to accept that there's an "out there" and an "in here." So, I think it's inappropriate even to refer to an "external world" in his view. We (including our minds) are parts of the same world, and our experience the result of our existing as a living organism in an environment and interacting with it. He's neither a realist nor an anti-realist as I understand him. I don't think he ever denied the existence of other components of the world. The "out there" and the "in here" merge as part of the manner in which we live in the same world, to put it very simply. There's no question of not knowing what's "out there" as a general proposition, i.e. it doesn't arise in general, though it may in particular.
That is in any case my interpretation of Dewey.
We interact with the rest of the world as we all do and have always done regardless of metaphysical concerns we claim to have. — Ciceronianus the White
Well, planting seeds of doubt is a far cry from what is being defended here. Look, if it were a seed of doubt "merely" then you would have recourse to to defend both sides with some margin of credibility. But there is none here — Constance
Phenomenology is the only wheel that rolls. — Constance
sensible and nonsensible propositions — Constance
Just look at those absurd Gettier problems: they care nothing for P being a nonsense term — Constance
:100: Global skepticism refutes itself. Thank you.if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. And it would not be a vat as I understand a vat because I only know illusory vats. So I would not be a brain in a vat. I would be something and I would not be able to say what that thing is because all I seem to perceive now is some kind of psychological trickery and I have no experience of reality. So it turns out that I cannot coherently state the situation that I am supposing to be possible. And that makes me pause to think whether it is a coherent supposition at all. — Cuthbert
:smirk:Then the sun goes round the earth. That's how it seems and if what seems is all there is then that's how it is. It's a revolution - or perhaps a counter-revolution. — Cuthbert
Such is the world of familiar perceptual events, no? — Constance
Skepticism is not contradictory - "...defend both sides..." All it states is given a proposition p, it can't be known whether p or ~p. In other words, the doubt (p/~p) can't be cleared. It definitely doesn't claim p and ~p which would be to "...defend both sides..." I can't stress this enough. — TheMadFool
That's only true if you're certain that there's no objective reality. That is a luxury we can't afford. — TheMadFool
I believe that some philosophers were of the opinion that sensible propositions are those that can be verified by which I suppose they meant the proposition should be amenable to testing. — TheMadFool
As I said, once a proposition is formulated, it's either true/false. Not nonsense! — TheMadFool
No. Familiar perceptions do not reveal the world as it is. "Perceiving the world as it is" is a contradiction in terms. But, they do reveal mappings from the real world onto perceptual planes. — hypericin
That is the difference between brain-in-a-skull and brain-in-a-vat. BiaS can still count on its perceptual machinery being functions on reality of some sort: given the output of these functions, things about the input can be deduced. But with BiaV that link is severed completely: perception tells us nothing about reality whatsoever, where reality is the world beyond the vat. — hypericin
This may seem innocuous enough, but then, consider: when you leave a room, and take all possible experience generating faculties with you, what is left behind is by no means a room, or anything else you think of. Most find such thinking impossible. — Constance
And I think it would be safe to surmise that the same is true of most people. — Apollodorus
What does this mean if not agreement, and what gives itself to agreement better than the immediacy of what is directly apprehended. — Constance
Let us now say the sun is best defined as a phenomenological aggregate of predicatively formed affairs (Husserl) which are witnessed, at the very basic level, as phenomena, — Constance
how opaque or transparent is the brain as a receiver of the object as it is, unmodified, undistorted; how epistemically transparent of opaque is this brain? — Constance
he big mystery is this: outside?? Talk about an outside implies one has the means to affirm what is not inside. — Constance
I think the relationship between the organism (a human, in this case) and the environment it which it lives is far too close and interrelated to come to such a conclusion. The "boundary" between the two is far more permeable than this conclusion would require--it would require it to be fixed and impermeable. We have no reason to believe that the rest of the world is so different from what we interact with every moment of our lives as to be inconceivable. — Ciceronianus the White
This may seem innocuous enough, but then, consider: when you leave a room, and take all possible experience generating faculties with you, what is left behind is by no means a room, or anything else you think of. Most find such thinking impossible. — Constance
That is the difference between brain-in-a-skull and brain-in-a-vat. BiaS can still count on its perceptual machinery being functions on reality of some sort: given the output of these functions, things about the input can be deduced. But with BiaV that link is severed completely: perception tells us nothing about reality whatsoever, where reality is the world beyond the vat. — hypericin
(you can argue that they tell you about persistent constructs in the simulation program which is feeding your brain, and that these constructs for all intents and purposes is your reality, etc) — hypericin
Witnessing and apprehending are not immediate or at the very basic level. They are up the ladder of mental processing from the place where objective reality is encountered. Unless there is something more basic, which makes sense to me. — T Clark
Not at all transparent, but how is that different from a brain in a skull-vat rather than a glass-vat? — T Clark
I imagine a baby "thinking" to itself as it holds it toes - "Hey, when I hold these things, I can feel something. Hey...wait a minute - I think they are part of me." So, anyway, I guess that means we learn inside from outside the same way we learn everything else. Why is that a mystery? It seems plausible to me. — T Clark
Whether or not what we've left behind is a room is another, or rather the same, metaphysical question. People may find it "impossible" because it's hard to see beyond language. As long as "room" is hanging around, it's hard to conceive that the room itself may not be. — T Clark
One cannot say anything to oneself when one has not developed the ability to think. the word "I" has to be modelled, contextualized, assimilated, and so on.
No mystery when you put it like this, in a very familiar way of referring to things. But assume, if you like, that there is such a dialog going on inside the infant's head. Toe? How does this term, this recognition "KNOW" that digital extension? It takes in the sensation of the presence which is done in TIme: first there is the sensation, THEN there is the, oh my; what is this? This association between speech and phenomenon is what is in question. — Constance
Then we put aside what is hard to conceive, acknowledge the argument at hand, and admit: once the room is vacated of perceptual presence, the matter turns to metaphysics. — Constance
for we are in phenomenology's world now, and things are not grounded at all. In my view one has to yield to this conclusion: our finitude is really eternity. "Truth" is really eternal.
Very controversial, of course. I would only go into it if you are disposed to to do so. — Constance
Oh, they've been given far more than their due, I would think. For good or ill, we're part of the world just like everything else--even that little homunculus in our head some people assume exists. — Ciceronianus the White
We interact with the rest of the world as we all do and have always done regardless of metaphysical concerns we claim to have. — Ciceronianus the White
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