But how if all you have is your experience? How did we come to have scientific theories of how the world is independent of experience if not by some experience? You seem to be saying that you have knowledge of the world independent of experience. How is that possible unless you're omniscient?My experience doesn’t show me the nature of the world independent of experience, the Standard Model and other scientific theories do. — Michael
Right. Reading words informs us as much as reading someone's behavior, or the color of an apple, or the sound of waves crashing, etc. Scribbles and utterances (can be) just as informative as any other visual and auditory experience. The "philosophers" on this forum tend to separate language from the world much like theists separate humans from the world. That is a mistake.Why is it the words and not the events that inform us?" ?
Or "why are the words still about the events?" ?
— bongo fury
The former.
There seems to be chain of causality - events -> (various perception processes) -> (various executive process) -> writing words to convey the events -> looking at words conveying the event -> (various perception processes) -> (various linguistic process) -> (various executive processes) -> (working memory storage) -> (more executive functions and long term memory processes - collectively called 'learning').
There seems a lot of stages between words and learning, so if stages between is what leads to the charge of indirectness, then the we indirectly learn from the words too. — Isaac
The distinction between direct vs. direct realism is non-sensical when you include the experience as part of the world your experiencing, and understand that effects carry information about their causes. The (right or wrong) interpretation of that causal relationship is what creates the distinction between direct and indirect. A mirage is exactly what you'd expect to experience given the nature of light and and it's interaction with an eye-brain system when you arrive at the correct interpretation and not the false one (interpreting it as a pool of water).Much in the same way that Fitch’s paradox shows that the knowability and non-omniscience principles are incompatible, direct realism and scientific realism are incompatible: if the mind-independent world is as the Standard Model says it is then it isn’t as we ordinary perceive it to be and vice-versa.
So pick your poison: either indirect realism or scientific instrumentalism. — Michael
Do you not have direct access to your experience and isn't your experience part of the world as much as what your experience is of?Direct realism doesn’t appear to work under any scenario. — Michael
We accessed what Kant had taken to be an inaccessible world. — Banno
The hypothesis is that what we see might be totally different to a conjectured, inaccessible world about which we can say nothing. — Banno
If this world is inaccessible, and if we can say nothing about it, then how could it be the cause of what we do see? — Banno
Kant has a lot to answer for. — Banno
have had extensive experience with psilocybin, LSD, DMT. mescaline and salvinorin, although not with ketamine. What you claim has not been my experience, however powerful the hallucinatory experience has been, if I have had the presence of mind to test it in the way I outlined — Janus
And yet you've still failed to even present an argument as to why it cannot be both. — Isaac
I was talking about both being true. As I've mentioned before, it is true that the stars in Orion are in the shape of a man with a bow. It is also true that they are in the shape of a rainbow.
Reality can be exactly as the standard model describes, and as we ordinarily perceive it. Nothing I perceive is in contradiction with the standard model. — Isaac
It is empirically under-determined a priori what observations the entities of the Standard Model refer to. Yet the same is equally true regarding the ordinary public meaning of "redness". For what precisely, under all publicly stateable contexts, are the set of experiences to which "redness" refers? — sime
I agree, but this discussion isn’t about truth, it’s about whether or not the things we see are mind-independent. — Michael
I see an apple, the apple is red, I eat the apple, the apple nourishes me, etc. All of this is true but none of this is some mind-independent state-of-affairs that is directly perceived. — Michael
Should the scientist wonder if these scenarios indicate they don't have access to the "real" apple or orange? Seems absurd to say such a thing. — Richard B
I don't understand. Answering your second proposition there would seem to entail a truth claim. — Isaac
You seem to be simply assuming that if you see the apple indirectly you must not 'really' be seeing the apple. — Isaac
I don’t believe that truth consists in a proposition’s correspondence to some mind-independent state of affairs — Michael
in terms of the metaphysics, reading doesn’t provide us direct access to history — Michael
there needs to be some sort of resemblance between the thing I see and what causes me to see what I see. — Michael
The counterargument is that the thing you see is what causes you to see what you see. — Isaac
So if I put a brain in a vat and configure it to cause the brain to see a cat then the cat that the brain sees is the vat (or me)? — Michael
It's whatever inputs you used (probes, computers, whatever). The brain has modeled them as a cat. It's not a very good model. When it tries to interact with the cat it may find that out.
If, however, it lived in a society of other BIVs who all refer to the same hidden state (judged by joint interaction) as 'cat' then that's clearly what the word means in that language community. — Isaac
after taking LSD I don’t then see that LSD when seeing the things it causes me to see. — Michael
You're still modeling hidden states, the subject of your inferences. — Isaac
At times, the empirical needs to set the boundaries for the creative mind.
Can't say fairer than that. What is unpersuasive is unpersuasive. — Isaac
So why the indirect realist prefers the limited and impoverished view of his own biology is the real question. — NOS4A2
Because they prefer the certainty of appearances and/or immediate sense data of their private world. — Richard B
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