That's demonstrably false, since there's tons of counterexamples where appearance didn't match reality. — Marchesk
Let me explain then. You have provided examples of complex thought which uses words. These examples are insufficient to produce the inductive conclusion "complex thought needs words". You have provided no evidence whatsoever, that complex thought requires words, only evidence that some complex thought uses words. Therefore you do not have the premise required to conclude that this proposition "a complex thought doesn’t need words any more than does a simple thought" is false. You have provided no indication that complex thought needs words. — Metaphysician Undercover
All that matters is whether or not the world when not being seen resembles how it looks to us. Are the mind-independent features of the world present in the phenomenological character of experience? — Michael
one cannot see that colours are essentially seen. That is a self-evident truth of reason, not something we are aware of sensibly. — Bartricks
In my view.....
......it is preposterous, bordering on the catastrophically absurd, that the totality of that of which I am aware, re: the entirely of my cognitions, requires that I read, write and speak; — Mww
......if language developed as a means of simplex expression by a single thinking human subject, or as a means of multiplex communication between a plurality of thinking human subjects, then it is the case language presupposes that which is expressed or communicated by it; — Mww
......if language is assemblage of words, and words are the representations of conceptions, and language is the means of report in the form of expression or communication, then language presupposes the conceptions they represent, and on which is reported; — Mww
......thinking is cognition by means of conceptions. If language presupposes conceptions, and conceptions are the form of cognitions, and cognition is thinking, then words presuppose thinking. — Mww
If language is so all-fired necessary for the formation of complex thoughts, why did we come equipped with the means for the one, but only for the means of developing the other? Why did we not come equally equipped for both simultaneously, if one absolutely requires the other? — Mww
The robotics engineer manufactures a machine with pinpoint circuit board soldering accuracy; the toddler has somewhat less accuracy but still understands the distinction between thing-as-object and thing-as-receptor-of object, and the congruency of shape for both, to put a round object in a round hole. — Mww
So I come upon a thing, some thing for which I have absolutely no experience whatsoever. Maybe something fell to Earth, maybe I discovered something previously unknown in the deep blue. The modern argument seems to be......I can form no complex thoughts about that new thing, can have no immediate cognition of it, unless or until I can assign words to it. But, being new, which words do I assign if I don’t cognize what the new thing appears to be? What prevents me from calling the new thing by a name already given to an old thing?
And, of course, everything is new at one time or another. — Mww
How would a world resemble how it looks to us? I can't even make any coherent sense of such an expression. — Isaac
You want to claim that there isn't 'really' a green apple there? — Isaac
That birds would see it as purple? That only shows that green apples look purple to birds, not that there is no green apple. — Isaac
That birds would see it as purple? That only shows that green apples look purple to birds, not that there is no green apple. — Isaac
As I've said many times over the years, antirealism isn't unrealism. — Michael
Human perception is not existentially independent of reality. — creativesoul
The division of us and the world... — creativesoul
it's the position of direct realism that it does. — Michael
I don't make that claim because I don't claim that something is "really" there only if it is mind-independent. — Michael
If something looks purple but isn't purple then there's a difference between a purple-look and being purple — Michael
There's the purple appearance — Michael
For whatever it's worth, I'm not at all against claiming that some complex thoughts need words whereas some do not. — creativesoul
I would whole heartedly agree that words presuppose thinking.... — creativesoul
.....to be more precise and consistent, some does anyway. — creativesoul
Acknowledging that some thought is existentially dependent upon language does not force us into saying that all thought is. — creativesoul
Wondering about time is a kind of thought that needs words. — creativesoul
Not all opinions are equal. — creativesoul
the human brain has not undergone much evolution at all over the past ten thousand or so years. — creativesoul
this is not our first exchange. — creativesoul
You misunderstand the modern argument. Mine anyway. — creativesoul
People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. — Palmer, 1999
People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. — Palmer, 1999
Logic — Marchesk
I didn’t make a claim about object existence. — Marchesk
So what is which is constrained in an object such that it cannot be both green and purple — Isaac
In the complete absence of light and leaves there cannot be any experience of seeing them. In the complete absence of the biological machinery, there cannot be any experience of seeing them. Thus, the experience consists of both internal and external things. It most certainly follows that the experience is neither internal nor external for it consists of elements that are both. — creativesoul
If the experience is considered to be an affect of the biological machinery insofar as it is the biological machinery that experiences red and not the leaves or the light, then it follows that we are thinking of the experience, by your own definitions, as internal. Of course it needs the stimulus of external elements (light and leaves) but it does not follow that the experience is both internal and external on that account, Of course if you define experience as the whole process, then of course it, tautologically, is both internal and external, so these are just different ways of speaking, different ways of conceptually dividing and/ or sorting things. — Janus
The wavelength of light the creature sees — Marchesk
Why can't that wavelength be both green and purple? — Isaac
Your argument is that colour is a property of experience becasue two people see different colours and an object cannot be two colours at once.
But if colour is a property of experience, then the statement "an object cannot be two colours at once" is incoherent. Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac
According to you, something is green if it causes most humans to see it as green and something is purple if it causes most humans to see it as purple. How can a single wavelength cause most people to see it as green and most people to see it as purple? — Michael
There is something which is a red look — Michael
It's what occurs when most people's eyes are stimulated by light with a wavelength of 650nm. — Michael
Direct realists say that we see an object as red because that object has that exact red look. — Michael
A red look and an orange look are conceptually different things, and if they were physical properties they would be physically different things. the claim is that an object cannot have two different physical looks for the same reason that it cannot have two different physical masses or two different physical charges. — Michael
the claim is that an object cannot have two different physical looks for the same reason that it cannot have two different physical masses or two different physical charges. — Michael
I suspect that your account of experience can't make sense of this, in which case it's irrelevant to the argument being made which is an attack on direct realism, — Michael
Then I'm struggling to understand the account direct realism (or indirect realism, for that matter) is putting forward. — Isaac
The epistemological problem of perception asks: is the world as it appears to us? Direct realists answered in the affirmative. — Michael
If they're really arguing that we're never wrong, however the world seems, that's how it is, then they should consider the earth flat, the sun in its orbit, dragons exist, and the weather caused by an angry God as these are all ways the world has appeared to us to be. — Isaac
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