I think there is a sense in which we can say we see the cup and another sense in which we can say that we see a model of the cup. — Janus

But for that second sense, I can't see what process you'd be using. Modelling the cup is part of the process of seeing, so to see the model, do you model the model?

Is that what I'm doing if I look at a fMRI of someone looking at a cup? Modelling the model?

These are basically assumptions - but that is the very point at issue! Do constructed artifacts have an intrinstic or inherent nature - or is that imposed on them by their makers, in line with a specific purpose? — Wayfarer

Then you come across @Tom Storm's problem of explaining the consistency between us. If there's no intrinsic property which causes us to treat an object a certain way, then why do we so consistently do so?

As @Janus puts it...

Commonality of experience shows that the gestalts or meaningful wholes do not arise arbitrarily, not merely on account of the individual perceiver, taken in isolation. So the possibilities are that either real existents, including the objects perceived, the environmental conditions and the constitutions of the perceives all work together to determine the forms of perceptions. or else there is a universal or collective mind which determines the perceptions and their commonality. — Janus

I accept that all of this is possible, I'm not trying to deny it, but for the second option we're having to invoke a whole load of speculated realms and mechanisms, just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why.

Nice work. — Banno

Cheers, I wasn't sure if it even got us anywhere so, good to know it at least made sense.

the end point is where the account the antirealists present begins to look so much like realism that it is difficult to see the distinction. Let's see that happens here. — Banno

Yep. Here we go...

scientific measurement only takes into account the measurable attributes. — Wayfarer

So there are attributes...

What am I referring to when I say "pass me the cup" when dreaming? — Michael

I don't think you're referring to anything. Referring is a social activity, when dreaming you're just rehearsing words. This is why I brought up Wittgenstein's ideas on private rules and rule following earlier. I think there's no sense in the whole idea of 'referring' without another person around, and in that case it's the cup, not the model of it, we're trying to collectively act upon. That's why we put so much effort into keeping your model of it so closely similar to my model of it, so that we can collaborate in acting on it.

Does a painting of a unicorn necessarily imply that there's a unicorn? — Michael

Yes, in a sense. It comes down to what 'real' is. To paint a Unicorn (if we're to take a painting as a kind of model) there has to be a Unicorn for you to paint (model). The question is then what kind of thing that Unicorn is. In this case, it's a figment of our collective imaginations. If you painted it with three horns, you'd have modelled it wrong.

Or simply...

A painting of a unicorn is not a model of a unicorn. The "models" here are weightings in neural networks. — Banno

...works too. We could limit the discussion to models of reality, not models of models.

I don't think you're referring to anything. — Isaac

A third possibility. Yes, it might not refer to anything. I'd just ask what do you want it to refer to? Reference appears alarmingly flexible - inscrutable, as Quine and Davidson put it. There simply might not be any fact of the matter.

But this is a side issue, I'm just flagging it because it might become relevant is someone ( ?) wanted to follow through on Putnam's model- theoretical argument for anti-realism, mentioned previously.

Yes, I agree. Here is an example:

We agree that the cup is on the table
The only way we could agree that the cup is on the table is if there is a cup, and there is a table, and the cup is on the table.
There is a cup, and there is a table, and the cup is on the table.

Compare:
We agree that the cup is on the table
The only way we could agree that the cup is on the table is if something like Q can be an externality in relation to mind only to the extent that it have its own internality, a subsistence , a being into itself that can be clearly separated from what causes or influences it. A thing can persist as itself , and external to another thing, for so many milliseconds, for instance. This notion of how things exist in time rests on a particular kind of metaphysical thinking, or something like that.
hence... you get the point — Banno

This is gold.

I had a laugh. @Isaac made the same point with

I'm not trying to deny it, but for the second option we're having to invoke a whole load of speculated realms and mechanisms, just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why. — Isaac

Then you come across Tom Storm's problem of explaining the consistency between us. If there's no intrinsic property which causes us to treat an object a certain way, then why do we so consistently do so? — Isaac

Because we’re all part of the same species/culture/language group etc. - as Janus put it. But you can find many counter-examples. One of those I remember from undergrad years was the anecdote of a African forest tribesman taken to a mountain lookout by anthropologists. There were clear views across a sweeping plain in the distance with herds of animals on them. He knelt down and started reaching in front of him and after some conversation with the translator, it was established he was trying to pick up these animals, as he had no sense of this kind of scale, having always dwelt in thickly forested areas.

If you think about it, there are countless examples of this - different people interpreting the same scenario differently due to their background beliefs. Which is the ‘one right way’?

There is no one “correct” way of carving up a scene. What is important for us may be of no interest in the life of a tiger or a fly, so every species has its own scheme for carving up the world according to its interests. In technical language, we say that every animal has its species-specific segmentation of reality, linked to its world-model. We are hard-wired to believe that our scheme for dividing the world into objects is the real one, because such a belief is necessary for existence. Though our segmentation of reality is partly bound to physical facts, much of it is arbitrary. However, there is one aspect of any segmentation which is non-negotiable: It must be self-consistent. What this means is that regardless of how information is received from the environment—whether visually, by sound or by touch—there can be no conflict: All the items of information must support one another. Also, when the organism undertakes actions, its plan of action must be fully aligned with its scheme of segmentation, so no discrepancy is ever encountered. So long as its segmentation is self-consistent, the animal cannot ever become aware of a difference between its world-model and reality.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 14). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Although here is where I detect a shortcoming in Pinter's argument - which is that h. sapiens, being a rationally-aware sentient being, is able to become reflexively aware of the sense in which existence is a mental construct - as we're doing. In fact, arguably, this is what philosophy comprises. Although in his defense, he doesn't claim his book is philosophy as such.

So there are attributes... — Isaac

Of course. I'm not saying that ‘the world is all in the mind’ - that the physical world is literally in your or my head.

Pinter again:

One of the most important insights of contemporary brain science is that the visual world is a constructed reality. When we look, what we hold in awareness is not an optical array but a mental construct, built from information in the array, which presents us with all that is of value to us in a scene.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 17). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We're not dreaming it up, but the sense in which it exists 'outside of' or 'apart from' that constructed reality is unknown to us. We can't 'compare' the proverbial 'cup' with 'the real cup' because the real cup is just an temporary collection of atoms.

for the second option we're having to invoke a whole load of speculated realms and mechanisms, just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why. — Isaac

Because we're talking philosophy. Despite Banno's best efforts, not crockery.

There is an intuition in philosophy that there is a lack, absence or deficiency in normal perception - the sense that things are not what they seem, or that the reality which most of us take for granted is not the whole story.

There is an intuition in philosophy that there is a lack, absence or deficiency in normal perception - the sense that things are not what they seem, or that the reality which most of us take for granted is not the whole story. — Wayfarer

Then the question becomes, is the intuition right? Or is it misleading, as Wittgenstein suggested? "Philosophy simply puts everything before us," as recounted, undoing our conceptual confusions - such as that mind and matter are so incommensurate that we need to posit anitrealism.

Yes, in a sense. It comes down to what 'real' is. To paint a Unicorn (if we're to take a painting as a kind of model) there has to be a Unicorn for you to paint (model). The question is then what kind of thing that Unicorn is. In this case, it's a figment of our collective imaginations. If you painted it with three horns, you'd have modelled it wrong. — Isaac

Then it's not clear what you mean by saying that if there is a model of a cup then there must be a cup. Are you saying that if there is a model of a cup then there must be an external material world and something in that world that "corresponds" to the model? Because that certainly doesn't follow.

Also on this point, why does there appear to be the assumption that English grammar dictates (or at least reveals) facts about metaphysics? The realist will often say that the world doesn't depend on what we say about it. Well, the same applies to their own position: even if our language suggests that objects of perception have an existence independent of perception it doesn't then follow that they do.

There may indeed be a conceptual or semantic distinction between perception and the objects of perception, just as there is a conceptual or semantic distinction between ink on paper and the story being told, but nothing further follows from this. You need to do more than just play word games to argue for a more substantial distinction.

I think there is a sense in which we can say we see the cup and another sense in which we can say that we see a model of the cup. — Janus


But for that second sense, I can't see what process you'd be using. Modelling the cup is part of the process of seeing, so to see the model, do you model the model? — Isaac

No, I'm not saying we model the model. The point is that the perception itself is understood as a model, or more accurately a process of modelling, and the end result is seeing what has been modeled. Now we can say that what has been modeled is the cup, or we can equally, from a different perspective, say that what is being modeled is "something" that results in seeing a cup which is a model of that "something". Either way we are stipulating what the thing being modeled is from a certain perspective; so it reduces to two different ways of talking, neither of which is "the one true perspective".

Now we can say that what has been modeled is the cup, or we can equally, from a different perspective, say that what is being modeled is "something" that results in seeing a cup which is a model of that "something". — Janus

I agree. Do you have an idea of what that different perspective might be?

To have a model of a cup necessarily implies there's a cup. — Isaac

This is not true at all. The model could be completely fictious. Architects make models of things which are only in their minds. There is no need at all, that the model represents a thing which is being modeled. The model may be a complete fabrication. To have a model of a cup, does not imply that there is a cup, other than to the degree that the model itself is a cup.

We're not dreaming it up, but the sense in which it exists 'outside of' or 'apart from' that constructed reality is unknown to us. We can't 'compare' the proverbial 'cup' with 'the real cup' because the real cup is just an temporary collection of atoms. — Wayfarer

We cannot even justify a claim of "the real cup". So to say 'the cup is just a temporary collection of atoms' is begging the question, by assuming there is 'the cup'. Contrary to what Isaac says above, the existence of the model does not logically imply the existence of the thing modeled.

These ways of 'modeling the real world' are inherently misguided because they start with the assumption that what is in the mind represent what is outside the mind. The only true way is to completely reject this assumption, and start with the premise that the mind is constructing the world from nothing. Then we proceed to inquiry as to why the mind constructs the world in the way that it does. The first principle must be intention, (Plato's "the good") or else we have nowhere to start. This is why Plato insists that the true reality must be apprehended as within the mind.

These ways of 'modeling the real world' are inherently misguided because they start with the assumption that what is in the mind represent what is outside the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I blame John Locke. :grimace:

Some food for thought:

T(x) ≔ x is true

T("p") ↔ p
T("p") → ∃"p"
p → ∃"p"
¬∃"p" → ¬p

I agree. Do you have an idea of what that different perspective might be? — Mww

Kantianism?

Some food for thought:

T(x) ≔ x is true

T("p") ↔ p
T("p") → ∃"p"
p → ∃"p" — Michael

It's indigestible without some secret sauce.

It's indigestible without some secret sauce. — Janus

The proposition "it is raining" is true if and only if it is raining
If the proposition "it is raining" is true then the proposition "it is raining" exists
If it is raining then the proposition "it is raining" exists
If the proposition "it is raining" does not exist then it is not raining

All I was looking for was your idea of why we can say we are modeling a cup, or from different perspective, we can say we are modeling “something”.

If the proposition "it is raining" does not exist then it is not raining — Michael

If it's not raining, the proposition "it is raining" exists. It's just false.

If the proposition "it is raining" does not exist then it is not raining — Michael

If it's not raining, the proposition "it is raining" exists. It's just false. — Tate

Your response has no bearing on the sentence you're responding to.

Your response has no bearing on the sentence you're responding to. — Michael

Of course it does.

This is the argument:

1. T("p") ↔ p (premise)
2. T("p") → ∃"p" (inference, existential introduction)
3. p → ∃"p" (inference, hypothetical syllogism)
4. ¬∃"p" → ¬p (inference, modus tollens)

Do you disagree with the premise, or with one or more of the inferences?

The last inference is wrong.

The last inference is wrong. — Tate

It's a valid inference from step 3. It's called modus tollens.

p → q
¬q → ¬p

In this case, q is ∃"p".

If it is raining then the proposition "it is raining" exists — Michael

The argument is ignoring this:

If it is not raining, then the proposition "it is raining" exists.

The conclusion follows from the premise via valid rules of inference. If the premise is true then the argument is sound.

If it is not raining, then the proposition "it is raining" exists. — Tate

I think that this is certainly questionable. What is a proposition? Is it a sentence, e.g. an utterance?

So, if it is raining then the phrase "it is raining" is spoken?

Or is a proposition something else?

think that this is certainly questionable. What is a proposition? Is it a sentence, e.g. an utterance? — Michael

"The term ‘proposition’ has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of the following: the primary bearers of truth-value, the objects of belief and other “propositional attitudes” (i.e., what is believed, doubted, etc.[1]), the referents of that-clauses, and the meanings of sentences.". SEP

So, if it is raining then the phrase "it is raining" is spoken? — Michael

Not necessarily.

"The term ‘proposition’ has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of the following: the primary bearers of truth-value, the objects of belief and other “propositional attitudes” (i.e., what is believed, doubted, etc.[1]), the referents of that-clauses, and the meanings of sentences.". SEP — Tate

So which of them are you saying exist(s) when it is not raining?

So which of them are you saying exist(s) when it is raining? — Michael

Truth bearer.

Truth bearer. — Tate

And what's a truth-bearer? A sentence, e.g. an utterance?