Whaever gives rise to the collective representation of a world does so reliably, else there could be no collective representation. That is all we know about the "in itself". — Janus
We can talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices (that aren't there), or we can talk about the schizophrenic not "actually" hearing voices (because there aren't any). The idea that one or the other is in some sense the "correct" way of talking, or says something about the philosophy or science of perception, is mistaken. — Michael
You claim that we "represent" an X that is otherwise completely unknowable. But somehow you believe there is a we in the first place, that we all represent this weird X. This, sir, is itself a claim about the world. — green flag
Your account leaves out how we have contact with one another in the first place. Do we have Kantian bodies in the thing-in-itself ? If so, we shouldn't be able to know that. If not, how do we 'meet' to create the intersection of our private representations of the one X that we seem to call the world in your account ? — green flag
collective representation constructed upon inter-subjective communication — Janus
Of course we can just be naive realists and take the world to be just as it appears, and that is arguably the default. This is fair enough, since the in itself reality is unknowable, but consciously taking that stance is also showing a kind of willful blindness to our actual fundamental ignorance. — Janus
Well, I mean, it's not that we "can just be naive realists" - it's that we are naive realists the vast majority of the time, despite how incoherent it may be to us.
We don't have a choice.
Maybe if someone us mystical or something, maybe they can avoid being naive realists most of the time, we can't.
The funny thing is that really simple arguments begin to show how weak such belief actually is. — Manuel
I don't think you are seeing the issue.
Do you think are all trapped in individual control rooms ? Locked forever in sensations and concepts ?
Where do other people exist for you ? Only on your screen ? Is the idea that other people are trapped behind there screens something you see on your screen ? Or the truth about screens that transcends your screen ? — green flag
How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ? — green flag
There is an excellent and informative article in Wikipedia, the Private language argument that I always refer to. — RussellA
279. Imagine someone saying, “But I know how tall I am!” and laying his hand on top of his head to indicate it! — PI
When the indirect realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the brown thing.
When the direct realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the Earth. — Banno
How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ? — green flag
We are truly naive realists if we believe that the way we experience and understand the world to be is exactly the way it really is independently of us. — Janus
we cannot get outside our experience of it to see what whatever is causing it is in itself. — Janus
I do not understand why some do not see or feel the emptiness of this description. The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. — Richard B
What exactly is the "metaphor" and the "pseudoproblem" you think it "structures" you are trying to get out of? What exactly does structure mean in this context? — Janus
Are you saying that language is inherently somewhat fuzzy? If so I agree with you, but it's all we have to attempt to communicate, and it seems determinate enough. — Janus
s there some arcane method we might discover that can we employ to make it more determinate? If not, then why bother and why not instead just focus on our actual communication and try to make it as clear as possible, — Janus
So, it seems you believe in philosophical progress; I don't; I tend to think philosophy by and large has gone backwards roughly since Kant. — Janus
The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. — Richard B
No, it's not nonsense. There is something else that needs to be added to the explanation. I've said this before already, and no one seems to care to include it as a corollary to whatever it is we claim about reality so that we don't run into that kind of issue. And that something else is the hypotheses we keep making about the world that stand the test of time and save us from perishing. If the world population now in the 8 billion does not work as evidence for you, then I don't know what would.Yep, pure nonsense! — Richard B
People can see red even if they don't have a language to describe colour. — Michael
I can smell so many different things and yet I don't have words to describe each kind of smell. There's no thinking involved in this. I don't think, "it's smell X" or "it's smell Y". I just smell. — Michael
What a young child means when they say that an apple is red is exactly what I mean when I say that an apple is red — Michael
it's certainly not the case that when I see that the apple is red (but say nothing) that I am thinking anything about quantum mechanics. I'm just seeing. — Michael
Learning that the tongue contains gustatory cells that respond to the chemicals in food, and that sugar tastes sweet because of its hydrogen bonds, doesn't change the taste of sugar. And learning the name of this animal doesn't change how it looks. — Michael
Well, for a start both those claims are demonstrably false. learning new things about an object changes the priors our lower hierarchy cortices use to process sensory inputs which changes the resultant responses, including post hoc construction of the 'experience'. This has been demonstrated over an over again in the literature.
But notwithstanding that, the claim isn't that you'll see it differently, the claim is about seeing 'red'. 'Red' is a cultural division of a continuous colour spectrum. No one can see 'red' who doesn't know that category. they just see. Light stimulates the retina and the brain responds. That response can be of almost any type depending on priors (and to a small extent 'hard-wiring'). None of that response answers to 'seeing red'. there is literally nothing in the brain (and people have looked really hard) that corresponds to 'seeing red'.
All we have neurologically is photons hitting retinas and behavioural responses in a constant cycle. they differ between people and there's no grounds at all for identifying any of those responses as being 'seeing red'. — Isaac
There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1). The distinction between these two different neural representations advances our understanding of visual neural coding.
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This task aimed to exclude the involvement of higher cognitive processes, such as color naming, as it did not require any explicit judgment of the chromaticity of the stimulus.
What is it you think that experiment is demonstrating which contradicts what I've said? — Isaac
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