I say "The tree has three branches" is about the tree, and not about anyone's perceptions, direct or otherwise. — Banno
The tree has three branches" is very different from "I perceive the tree to have three branches". Idealism is the conflation of the two. — Banno
That is conflating various forms of Idealism. Kantian Idealism is not going to conflate that. Perhaps Berkeleyianism. In fact, Kantianism would insist on that division. — schopenhauer1
Wittgenstein in PI is more an Indirect Realist than a Direct Realist — RussellA
This is about what we know about the tree, not about the tree. It's like saying something like "The tree has three branches if and only if it is observed, by some statistically significant number of people, to have three branches"It is about the commonly perceived tree and is either true or false, as can be confirmed inter-subjectively. — Janus
I don't know where does this question refer to ... :chin:Do you think we confuse the act of perceiving with the object of perception? — NOS4A2
If we didn't perceive the tree we wouldn't know it has three branches — Janus
Ever since puberty, when it is customary to get excited about such questions, I have never again really understood the so-called problem of relativism. My experience was that whoever gave himself over in earnest to the discipline of a particular subject learned to distinguish very precisely between true and false, and that in contrast to such experience the assertion of general insecurity as to what is known had something abstract and unconvincing about it. Let it be that confronted with the ideal of the absolute, everything human stands under the shadow of the conditional and temporary - what happens when the boundary is reached at which thought must recognize that it is not identical to being, not only allows the most convincing insights, but forces them. — Adorno
215. Here we see that the idea of 'agreement with reality' does not have any clear application. — Wittgenstein, On Certainty
I’m thinking that indirect realism, though popularly often expressed in modern scientific language, is a hangover from theology and speculative metaphysics. — Jamal
Ditch the ideal of the absolute, and experience is no longer a barrier, but just the way we interact with the rest of the world. — Jamal
I wasn't intending to push Wittgenstein as taking any sides in this rather silly debate — Banno
You have an image of a causal chain with you at one end and the tree at the other, and have convinced yourself that you cannot see the tree at the other end of the causal chain. — Banno
Let me repeat, this is an absurdity derived from a grammatical fiction. What is the fiction? Directly perceived sense data. — Richard B
I think later Wittgenstein resist being labeled an Idealist or Realist, or anything in-between — Richard B
1) When we perceive the world, how can we directly know the cause of what we have perceived when our only knowledge of any external world has come from the perceptions themselves.
2) How is it possible to know from knowing an effect the cause of that effect, when every effect is overdetermined by more than one sufficient causes.
just driven enough to reject someone's pov but not driven enough to provide a well fleshed out counterargument. — Benj96
and which formed the basis of much of the discussion since then. "The bad argument" is the name Searle gives to what you produced as a throw-away, but which others have taken seriously.For those interested in doing some actual thinking about the issue, a sample can be found at The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument. — Banno
Sure - I agree.
But our knowing or not knowing has no impact on the number of branches on the tree. It either has three branches, or not. That is, the better approach used here is realist, not anti-realist, so we can proceed with a bivalent logic. If you instead wish to drop the law of excluded middle and use a nonstandard logic, then go ahead, but I, and I guess most others, will not be joining you. — Banno
If perceiving is an act of a perceiving agent, the act and the agent are one and the same — NOS4A2
You’ve inserted another element or space within the perceiver called “the world inside the mind”. — NOS4A2
I suggested in the original post that we ought to remove this element from the rest of the man like we can any other part of the man (like any organ), put it on a table beside a perceiver (like we’ve been doing with a perceiver and a tree) for the purpose of analysis. — NOS4A2
The perceiver cannot stand in the way of himself and the outer world, or be his own intermediary, or placed before himself in the causal chain of perception. — NOS4A2
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