If a poorly constructed building fails to meet certain criteria, we call it bad. We decide for ourselves what those criteria are depending upon the utility we seek from the building. There are no objectively good or bad buildings. It's just a matter of preference. On the other hand, the building itself exists regardless of my preference or opinion. — Hanover

I don't think we're going to make headway here. There's a sense where you are correct, viz., we do use the concept bad in a subjective sense, but we also use it to refer to objective reality, as I pointed out. Moreover, the statement that, "There are no objectively good or bad buildings" is or is not true depending on how we are using the concept (bad being of poor quality). There are obviously buildings, and from a structurally sound point of view, it can be said that they are poorly built, it's not a matter of opinion. On the other hand, one can use the word bad (obviously, not morally bad) in a subjective way, which would take into account its use as an opinion.

My point in bringing in the building example is to show the use of the word bad in reference to something objective, gives it an objective connection, which removes it from being purely subjective.

As to morality, are you claiming that bad buildings are akin to bad acts, and saying that rape (for example) is bad if it meets our criteria for badness based upon whatever social objectives we might have,? Or, do you subscribe to the position that rape is bad regardless of what I think, much like the building exists regardless of my opinion? — Hanover

No, I'm not saying that bad buildings are akin to bad acts. As I said above, I'm saying that the use of the word bad is not always subjective, it depends on what our point of reference is.

I do, believe rape is bad or morally wrong because of the objective nature of the harm done. It's just as objective, in my view, as the existence of the building. And ya, rape is bad regardless of what anyone thinks.

Check out the "suffers" link in my previous post, it doesn't bite.

As Davidson suggested, the world is always, already interpreted. I would add that the interpretation is put in place by our use of language. — Banno

One day you might have to say what you think Davidson means by that.

I'd also like to hear something about what you think our use of language does exactly. Psychologists test how infralinguistic children model the world, and how crows do for that matter. Why language?

I'd also like to hear something about what you think our use of language does exactly. Psychologists test how infralinguistic children model the world, and how crows do for that matter. Why language? — Srap Tasmaner

I think this is important, so I'll put my two cents worth into the mix. I believe there is something important to say about reality prior to language; and how children and animals model reality. This modeling (I talk about it in terms of pre-linguistic beliefs or states) is essential, and prior to the formation of language. In fact, it's hard to imagine how language would gain any kind of grounding without such a model (using your terminology). Language, it seems to me, builds a linguistic structure that allows us to structure reality in social ways, i.e., we can talk with others about epistemology, psychology, science, etc, which allows us to go beyond our pre-linguistic modeling.

One day you might have to say what you think Davidson means by that. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, I have, repeatedly. It's from his critique of this idea:

That whether a statement is factual depends on the framework within which the statement is made. — Srap Tasmaner

We need to put aside the notion of an uninterpreted reality - there is no alternative to imposing an interpretation. In admitting this we deny the dualism of framework versus reality. There are no alternate frameworks. That's a direct consequence of our living in the same world. What look like an alternate frameworks needs must be interpreted in such a way as to merge.

I believe there is something important to say about reality prior to language; and how children and animals model reality. — Sam26

Animals participate in reality - they use it, in Wittgenstein's terms. Calling this a belief is surely a retrojection.

In fact, it's hard to imagine how language would gain any kind of grounding without such a model — Sam26

It can "gain a grounding" by building on that use - the same process as we see in showing rather than stating. After all, there is a way of understanding a rule that is not an interpretation - not a belief - but which consists in enacting the rule: §201

:up:

Animals participate in reality - they use it, in Wittgenstein's terms. Calling this a belief is surely a retrojection. — Banno

All of us participate in reality. However, what that participation amounts to is where the disagreement occurs. My use of belief is no more a retrojection than your use of participate. All talk of pre-linguistic persons or animals is a retrojection, but this doesn't mean we can't describe what's happening in linguistic terms. All acts, whether pre-linguistic or not can be talked about. Why? Because of the acts themselves, be it non-linguistic or linguistic. Therefore, a belief for me is not just expressed in language, but is expressed in the way we act within the world. My beliefs are internal to me, just as my sensations are internal to me, so just as an expression of pain, which is something internal (the sensation) is expressed via ouch or a cry (external), so too, are our or my beliefs (internal) expressed via acts in the world (external), whether linguistic or not. So, just as we can have sensations apart from language, so too, can we have beliefs apart from language.

It can "gain a grounding" by building on that use - the same process as we see in showing rather than stating. After all, there is a way of understanding a rule that is not an interpretation - not a belief - but which is found in enacting the rule: §201 — Banno

Reality has to be a certain way, i.e., objects, persons, thoughts, etc., in order for there to be a language at all. The foundation, viz., reality (where we act), gives us the grounding. These are the arational beliefs that arise quite apart from language. It's not just that these beliefs are pre-linguistic, we (the linguistic we) also show that we have such beliefs, i.e., we open the door, we sit down, we do a myriad of things that show that we believe certain things. Things which are not expressed in language, but nonetheless, demonstrate what we believe.

I'm not saying there isn't a kind of grounding that takes place in language, via what Wittgenstein is referring to in PI 201, but I'm not talking about a linguistic grounding, I'm talking about what necessarily comes before what Wittgenstein is talking about. Wittgenstein alludes to what I'm talking about in several places. Again (as I've mentioned in other posts), though, I'm not pretending this is a Wittgensteinian idea.

You seem to be confusing modality and temporality; not everything that is possible occurs in the future, but that is what is implied by your post. So I don't see what you propose hee as clarifying, so much as misleading. — Banno

You are conflating two distinct forms of possibility, and misleading yourself.

I'm not arguing for incommensurability; I'm just saying that between data and questions of fact there's theory.

How many planets are in our solar system?

My inclination here too is to say that my brain's model of the world, and I'm guessing everyone's, pretty clearly treats apples as objects, paradigmatic objects, if apples aren't objects then nothing is. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, that's the way I see it. That why I opened my contribution here with an argument against idealism. We all assume there are external objects. Unless there is a serious group of language users who genuinely don't do that, then there's absolutely no need for any philosophical talk about how all reality is 'in our minds' It's a pointless and daft diversion.

It's a matter of accepting that the models in our heads are how we understand the world and knowing that they're models doesn't change that. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't agree with this. Knowing they're models can change things massively. It's having a huge impact on the science of perception, understanding of schizophrenia, right through to political sciences and questions about the formation of beliefs. Maybe too academic... At a personal level, there's things like the real psychological changes that a realisation of the social construction of emotions can yield. It's been used therapeutically with some success. I think it's quite possible to alter your world view for the better by realising that 'its all models'. Which I guess is what you're getting at with...

The theories we work through consciously, we get a bit more say in, including how we theorize the models in our heads. — Srap Tasmaner

...but the thing is, which theories we work through consciously is not a fixed parameter. We can learn to work through models consciously that were previously managed sub-consciously. The way we do this is by changing our concepts about how these models work, about the veracity of the results they produce. I think there's a strong effect on the way we think about our beliefs between "the table is real" and "the table isn't real". I don't think it's such a large step from "the table is real because it seems that way to me and mine and that's what 'real' is" to "foreigners are bad because it seems that way to me and mine and that's what 'bad' is". Calling thing to be exactly just how they seem to us to be has dangers which I don't think are worth the resolution of little philosophical muddle.

I do get the problem. Tables are our reality, if we say they're not what they seem to be we're just going to replace them with some atomic entity which will be no less a model and so no real improvement in ontology. But the process is the value, not the result. I'd rather err on the side of being too aware of the fallibility of the 'way things seem' than err on the side of overconfidence in it.

A language community in part imposes its language on the world. We talk in terms of balls and stuff that is not balls. Like Anscombe's shopping list, we use the words to pick out things in the world, or we use it to to list the things we have. Both are equally legitimate, and each relies on the other. — Banno

Yes, I think that's right. But as I said to Srap above (in other words), there's more to consider than either the shopping list or the grocery basket. They're just two results. They're not the process of making either.

I've previously characterised my own view as realist. I've argued against typical examples of anti-realism such as pragmatic theory, logical positivism, transcendental idealism and Berkeley's form of idealism. I have however also defended a constructivist view of mathematics, an anti-realist position; and off-handedly rejected realism in ethics and aesthetics. — Banno

This is an interesting take and well deserving of a mention.

I noticed that those you rejected, as a realist, are either abstract (mathematical stuff), or highly intangible (values and morality). And the one you embrace, as a realist, is reality itself -- which to me is a concrete stuff. Were in it.. We can't separate our selves or musings from reality. But somehow, morality and mathematics can be talked about as if they have a separate, permanent space somewhere that can be called into action at a moment's notice.

If a self-described realist claims to be making a metaphysical assertion founded upon reason, and if he accepts that the tribunal of reason are his experiences, then at the very least he is describable as being a methodological solipsist, even if he believes to have obtained conclusions that aren't reducible to personal experiential verification...


How should the claims of the realist be understood ? are realists really asserting metaphysical claims in spite of whatever they say, or are they at best making epistemological claims that every solipsist can agree with?

I expect that a realist might play down the importance of his personal experiences, saying that he accepts as a matter of pragmatism the judgements and reports he receives by trustworthy or authoritative third-parties, assuming the they cohere with his personal understanding of the world. But then the question remains; for isn't the realist still founding his claims upon[ i]his[/i] experiences, even if such experiences are "second-hand", so to speak?

If an exploration robot trained by machine learning, whose engineering was understood, started speaking about the it's discovery of a mind-independent reality, are there any conditions in which we would take it's claims seriously? I think definitely not. Under no circumstances would we interpret its stimulus-responses as being anything more than the result of it's internal state and present environmental interactions.

But apples are not the raw perceptual data they cause us to have. — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe. That would make you an anti-realist about apples. But you admit the independent existence of something other than yourself, namely, the raw perceptual data that we interpret as apples. That makes you a realist about raw perceptual data.

But there's no coherent way to talk as if we're not modeling — Srap Tasmaner

I agree. Some people seem to not think so. Namely, some realists about apples will say that we're not modeling when we talk about apples, we're directly reflecting reality. Best you'll get out of them is "we are modelling but our model is a direct copy of the way things actually are and this is known... somehow".

And yet the stuff "out there" does enter into the conversation. — Banno

What we think is out there is what enters the conversation. Unless you're saying they're the same thing?

The direction of fit here is reversed, in that we intend these words to be about whatever it is that is "out there". — Banno

Agreed, that is the intention. But we don't know when we have succeeded. All we know is that some models about what's out there work better than others.

We only know when our models have failed, not when they have exactly matched what's out there.

It's not luck, it's a process of eradicating versions that are dysfunctional. — Banno

Who said it's luck?

We can learn to work through models consciously that were previously managed sub-consciously. The way we do this is by changing our concepts about how these models work, about the veracity of the results they produce. — Isaac

I'm obviously on-board with this to some degree, but I'm not sure that what we clumsily call the "belief" that there are "external objects" is up to us, no matter how much physicists futz with the definition of "object". Ditto for space, time, who knows what else.

I can do a crappy version of this. Suppose, as we might be doing in this thread, we want to talk about which classes of objects are instantiated (or non-empty, if you think of sets) and which are not. Maybe there are some classes that are invalid and cannot be instantiated. If they're all empty or invalid, because there are no objects, we can go up a level and say the class of instantiated classes is not instantiated (or empty). (And if we want, we can make this "object classes" or something, classes for which the instance would be an object, not another class .)

What interests me about this is not that we might be able to generate a contradiction or a paradox by constructing some peculiar class, something you'd only think of when doing this kind of analysis; what interests me is that even if we agree that the whole idea of a class turns out to be kind of useless, since there aren't any objects for them to be classes of, we can keep talking in terms of classes, and apparently keep making sense. Whether we could give up classes -- I doubt that can be made sense of, but maybe there's a sort of Funes-the-Memorius way of individualizing absolutely everything. At any rate, it looks like no matter how we undermine them, classes will still hang around cheerfully offering their services. ("Won't be needing you today, or ever -- you're not real, you're just a manner of speaking." "I'll just wait over here, then, shall I? In case you change your mind.")

And it's no use worrying about the ascent, making a rule against treating classes as objects. The only one I made was another empty one. You could reasonably claim that I'm implicitly talking about the class of classes, and it's not empty, but that just puts them back to work, and the whole idea was to see if we could get rid of them. It looks like we can't.

All of that to say that there seem to be features of our modeling that are not up to us. We know what it's like to be looking at data without realizing it's been filtered, then remove the filter and see what we'd been leaving out. We have no idea what it's like not to think in terms of objects and classes. (And probably space, time, causality, all the usual Kantian business.)

Here's what bothers me about the "something" business. You're still classifying, but refusing to name the classes you're using. Making them anonymous is pointless, and a maybe little disingenuous. (You can kind of kid yourself that you're keeping the model you're using at arm's length.) On the one hand, it's as if it's only the name, not the classifying, that we're worried about; on the other, the name plays a role, and we ought to look at that.

I'm not sure that what we clumsily call the "belief" that there are "external objects" is up to us, no matter how much physicists futz with the definition of "object". Ditto for space, time, who knows what else. — Srap Tasmaner

Actually there's been some very interesting work by Susan Hespos on exactly what else. She's been trying to work out what laws of physics babies take to be innate and what they don't. Long story short, it's all about what fits in what... anyway, yes, I agree some models are probably out of reach. My objection to naïve realism is the spilling over into dogmatism about mattters over which there's insufficient ground for it.

What interests me about this is not that we might be able to generate a contradiction or a paradox by constructing some peculiar class, something you'd only think of when doing this kind of analysis; what interests me is that even if we agree that the whole idea of a class turns out to be kind of useless, since there aren't any objects for them to be classes of, we can keep talking in terms of classes, and apparently keep making sense. Whether we could give up classes -- I doubt that can be made sense of, but maybe there's a sort of Funes-the-Memorius way of individualizing absolutely everything. At any rate, it looks like no matter how we undermine them, classes will still hang around cheerfully offering their services. ("Won't be needing you today, or ever -- you're not real, you're just a manner of speaking." "I'll just wait over here, then, shall I? In case you change your mind.") — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, I think there's all sorts of mental furniture we can't function without, mainly because the mental furniture came first and the function after. Rather like if we set up a double pendulum paint drip, it may be chaotic, but it's nit going to paint the Mona Lisa. Our brains are set up to function a certain way, and that way requires objects, classes...it's just efficiency. If each exchange with our environment is with a new unique entity we're going to be constantly surprised, and surprise is the enemy of Bayesian inference.

Narratives (there, I used that word again, sorry) are likewise indispensable surprise reduction bits of mental furniture.

But there's a difference between accepting the class, and accepting the instantiation. We can accept that we will have classes without reifying what any of them currently happen to be.

You're still classifying, but refusing to name the classes you're using. Making them anonymous is pointless, and a maybe little disingenuous. (You can kind of kid yourself that you're keeping the model you're using at arm's length.) On the one hand, it's as if it's only the name, not the classifying, that we're worried about; on the other, the name plays a role, and we ought to look at that. — Srap Tasmaner

I see what you mean, but doesn't the distinction between objects and causes subsume this. I can still name the class 'causes of my representations' within my model, but I've distinguished it still from the naive realist's class 'objects of reality'.

We can accept that we will have classes without reifying what any of them currently happen to be. — Isaac

One thing I'm sure we agree about is that it's helpful in any number of ways to recognize that you can classify objects in different ways. (I don't know that refusing to reclassify is reifying, but it's at least ossifying.)

I think a lot of the talk about realism and anti-realism gets stuck on this, but unhelpfully so. There's little point in getting hung up on that problem because it cannot be surmounted. The solution is to accept that state of affairs and move on. We're talking about the way things seem to us to be.
/.../
So the issue really is in what things seem to have an external cause and why they seem that way. — Isaac

A person's socio-economic efforts would be thwarted if a person would consistently believe that one can never see outside of the mind-created world within which all the objects of perception exist.

In order to succeed in the world, or at the very least, in order to get by in the world, one has to believe "there is a real world out there" and "there is only one true, accurate, correct way to perceive this world".

What I'm saying is that you never see outside of the mind-created world within which all the objects of perception exist. — Wayfarer

Which is a view that can be held without negative consequences only by a Buddhist monk.

In order to succeed in the world, or at the very least, in order to get by in the world, one has to believe "there is a real world out there" and "there is only one true, accurate, correct way to perceive this world". — baker

Yes, we (even the most implacable idealist) have no choice but to behave as though the real world is real. If we want to live. What we believe however is separate, isn't it?

Yes, we (even the most implacable idealist) have no choice but to behave as though the real world is real.

If we want to live. What we believe however is separate, isn't it? — Tom Storm

How schizoid can one handle to be?

I'd say simply that we are ontological realists by default because it is intuitively obvious the stair we just tripped on is actually there independent of us. Only through (too) much thought will we question that.

As to why morality isn't the same, I'd say because we don't trip over good and evil and we realize we create all sorts of social norms. If the morally real is out there, where is it? — Hanover

It seems to me that to most people, good and bad are as plainly obvious as tables and chairs. People typically don't lose sleep over right and wrong, good and bad, but are as certain of them as they are of the chair they're sitting on.

Here, and wherever some one/thing suffers. — 180 Proof

Morality is objective because all suffering persons depend on one another to keep the implicit (eusocial) promise both to not harm one another and to help reduce each other's suffering whenever possible (Spinoza). — 180 Proof

Which is a morally vacant view as it does not address the cause of suffering and does not uproot the cause of suffering.

Which is a view that can be held without negative consequences only by a Buddhist monk. — baker

Says who?

I'm obviously on-board with this to some degree, but I'm not sure that what we clumsily call the "belief" that there are "external objects" is up to us, no matter how much physicists futz with the definition of "object". Ditto for space, time, who knows what else. — Srap Tasmaner

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." C S Peirce

Which is a morally vacant view as it does not address the cause of suffering and does not uproot the cause of suffering. — baker

It's not "a morally vacant view": the problem is that (some? many? most?) people do not embrace the view and act on it.

It seems to me that to most people, good and bad are as plainly obvious as tables and chairs. People typically don't lose sleep over right and wrong, good and bad, but are as certain of them as they are of the chair they're sitting on. — baker

On this we agree.

It's not "a morally vacant view": the problem is that people do not embrace the view and act on it. — Janus

Really? The final solution to the problem of suffering is widely known and readily available, it's just that people "do not embrace it and act on it"?