If the biological act of hearing involves using the body to perceive physical sound waves, it cannot be said that a man is hearing voices in his head, because there is neither the biological activity nor the sound waves required to hear such sounds. — NOS4A2

That's obviously not what is meant when we say that the schizophrenic hears voices, and so obviously there is a second meaning of the word.

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And I will comment, that just about everybody contributing to this thread has done that at one time or another. — frank

:up:

Sure. But I think we should ignore the internals altogether. Forget pineal gremlins and immaterial private showings. Let's look at how in fact we treat claims for which selves are responsible. Let's look directly at what philosophy itself is doing and what that doing requires or implies.

I would say we don't (always). When we talk about colour we're not talking about objects but about sense data. — Michael

Exposing a brain to a particular wavelength of light to see how the brain or particles/waves of a brain reacts to the light does not necessitate the need to posit “sense data” to understand the science behind the phenomenon.

OK. But clearly the normativity is partly a priori (as per the Transcendental Aesthetic). — frank

Perhaps it's apriori like riding a bike is apriori for those who can. It's easy for us to talk everyday talk now. It's easy to not pee the bed. I find it plausible that rational norms are patterns or memes that evolved in human doings over thousands of years. They aren't more 'in here' than 'out there' between us. We have the brains / hardware to learn the norms / language / software. Logic need not be eternal. We can't see around it. We 'are' it. Here's how Dreyfus approaches it:

For both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, then, the source of the intelligibility of the world is the average public practices through which alone there can be any understanding at all. What is shared is not a conceptual scheme, i.e., not a belief system that can be made explicit and justified. Not that we share a belief system that is always implicit and arbitrary. That is just the Sartrean version of the same mistake. What we share is simply our average comportment. Once a practice has been explained by appealing to what one does, no more basic explanation is possible. As Wittgenstein puts it in On Certainty: "Giving grounds [must] come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.
...
This view is entirely antithetical to the philosophical ideal of total clarity and ultimate intelligibility. Philosophers seek an ultimate ground. When they discover there is none, even modern philosophers ... seem to think that they have fallen into an abyss -- that the lack of an ultimate ground has catastrophic consequences for human activity.
...
There is, however, something that average everyday intelligibility obscures, viz., that it is merely average everyday intelligibility. It takes for granted that the everyday for-the-sake-of-whichs and the equipment that serves them are based upon God's goodness, human nature, or at least solid good sense. This is what Heidegger called "the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation." One cannot help thinking that the right (healthy, civilized, rational, natural, etc.) way to sit, for example, is on chairs, at tables, etc., not on the floor. Our way seems to make intrinsic sense -- a sense not captured in saying, "This is what we in the West happen to do." What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate "ground" of intelligibility is simply shared practices. There is no right interpretation. Average intelligibility is not inferior intelligibility; it simply obscures its own groundlessness. This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation.

Exposing a brain to a particular wavelength of light to see how the brain or particles/waves of a brain reacts to the light does not necessitate the need to posit “sense data” to understand the science behind the phenomenon. — Richard B

:up:

Oldschool metaphysics is folk psychology.

Exposing a brain to a particular wavelength of light to see how the brain or particles/waves of a brain reacts to the light does not necessitate the need to posit “sense data” to understand the science behind the phenomenon. — Richard B

I'm happy to talk about brain activity rather than sense data if you prefer. Pain is a type of brain activity, not a property of whatever external world object stimulates that kind of brain activity. Colour is a type of brain activity, not a property of whatever external world object stimulates that kind of brain activity.

I wonder if indirect realism and phenomenalism has served to obfuscate the biology of hallucination rather than helped to explain it. — NOS4A2

I think the word seems has messed with folks. I talk about the world. I may indicate uncertainty by saying It seems to me that that's a tree. This is not equivalent to I see a tree on a private internal screen, so perhaps there is really a tree analogously place.

I see a tree on a private internal screen — plaque flag

There's no seeing "on a private internal screen". There's just seeing. Some see a white and gold dress, some see a black and blue dress. Given that different people see different things despite the shared stimulus there's obviously a (second) meaning of the word "see" that concerns something about the individual rather than something about the external world object. Much like the case of the schizophrenic who hears voices. You don't have to accept the existence of some private, immaterial mind to at least accept this much.

But I think we should ignore the internals altogether. Forget pineal gremlins and immaterial private showings. Let's look at how in fact we treat claims for which selves are responsible. Let's look directly at what philosophy itself is doing and what that doing requires or implies. — plaque flag

Ignore the question of the nature of experience if it doesn't interest you.

Ignore the question of the nature of experience if it doesn't interest you. — frank

Oh it does interest me. Didn't mean to offend or be rude or evasive somehow. The question of the meaning of being is great. We can dig into that if you want. My feeling is that not much can be said. So Heidegger ends up being more interesting to me in terms of what can be talked about, the historicity of beingthere in language.

Much like the case of the schizophrenic who hears voices. You don't have to accept the existence of some private, immaterial mind to at least accept this much. — Michael

I think it's better to talk about people being able to be wrong. The point is they are trying to talk about the world. 'Sorry, I thought I paid that bill.' (I thought it was the case that I paid that bill [in our/real world])

Didn't mean to offend or be rude or evasive somehow — plaque flag

Not at all! I didn't take it that way. :grin:

:up:

We do know that no sound called a voice is moving the membrane, moving the bones, converting mechanical vibration into electrical signals as you just tried to illustrate, so don’t go spouting off like you don’t know. Yet all of these are involved in the activity of hearing.

We do know that since there are no such waves, there are no such bodily movements as you described. No signals representing sound waves, no such signals reaching the brain. Therefor the bodily states involved in hearing a voice are different than the bodily states involved in hallucinating a voice.

If the bodily states were not different, hearing a voice and hallucinating a voice would be the same. The conflation comes from the one who confuses his one bodily state with the other, which is entirely fitting from the subjective perspective of a man who cannot even see his own ears.

I think it's better to talk about people being able to be wrong. The point is they are trying to talk about the world. — plaque flag

This has nothing do with talking about the world and everything to do with sight. I can see things without saying anything. I can see a white and gold dress without saying "I see a white and gold dress".

The social group is part of the world not external to it. — Richard B

It depends which "world" you are referring to. Sometimes philosophers talk about the "world" without specifying exactly where they think it is. For example, Wittgenstein in Tractatus writes in para 1 "The world is everything that is the case.", yet never explains where he thinks this world is.

There are different "worlds". There is the world within my mind, there is the world in the collective minds of a social group sharing a common language, there is the world external to any mind and there is the world that is the sum of all of these.

Presumably an indirect realist is not just mumbling about their internal illusion but trying to share news about the 'real' world (or whatever an indirect realist wants to call the one we live in together). — plaque flag

It is curious that language, a representational system, where words are symbols, is being used as an explanation of Direct Realism, an explicitly non-representational system.

Language is needed to talk about Direct Realism, but language should not be confused with Direct Realism. Language is antithetical to Direct Realism. Although language may be used to understand the planet Venus, this does not mean that the planet Venus is a feature of language. Similarly, as language may be used to understand Direct Realism, this does not mean that Direct Realism is a feature of language.

I can directly feel pain and I can directly see a tree independently of any private or public language . There are many things I see that I don't know the word for. Private experiences don't depend for their existence on language.

What is Direct Realism. It isn't about language. From the SEP article on The Problem of Perception para 3.4.1 Naive Realism in Outline one reads:

1) Consider the veridical experiences involved in cases where you genuinely perceive objects as they actually are. At Level 1, naive realists hold that such experiences are, at least in part, direct presentations of ordinary objects. At Level 2, the naive realist holds that things appear a certain way to you because you are directly presented with aspects of the world, and – in the case we are focusing on – things appear white to you, because you are directly presented with some white snow. The character of your experience is explained by an actual instance of whiteness manifesting itself in experience.

2) For the naive realist, insofar as experience and experiential character is constituted by a direct perceptual relation to aspects of the world, it is not constituted by the representation of such aspects of the world. This is why many naive realists describe the relation at the heart of their view as a non-representational relation.

Direct Realism is the position that private experiences are direct presentations of objects existing in a mind-independent world, not that within social communities there are language games.

We do know that no sound called a voice is moving the membrane, moving the bones, converting mechanical vibration into electrical signals as you just tried to illustrate, so don’t go spouting off like you don’t know. Yet all of these are involved in the activity of hearing. — NOS4A2

I specified that we don't know how the brain produces the experience of sound (assuming that it does). We're at the bootstrapping stage of theorizing about it. Some reach out to quantum theory, others reveal the magnitude of the problem by just trying to lay out the basic requirements for a theory.

So yes, we know what the ear is doing. A microphone is doing pretty much the same thing as an ear. Of course we know what our recording equipment is doing with those electrical signals. We don't know what the brain is doing with those produced by the ear though.

The point is for both sides: back down from assuming we have knowledge about how experience is produced. But I supposed I'm particularly annoyed by the arrogance of those who lay out the word "bodily" like that's supposed to be describing something.

Oh dear. You’re annoyed at the arrogance. Excuse me while I cringe. I’m annoyed at the fence-sitting and tone-policing. At any rate, yours or mine feelings on the matter help nothing.

“Bodily” pertains to the body, you know, the structure and being of a human organism? Is that not something? Can any of this be described in any other way? It’s not like the term describes nothing, and it’s actually quite important. In fact any disruption or damage in bodily activity related to hearing, and occurring at any point in the auditory system, can lead to deafness.

We’re not brains, Frank. If you don’t want to include the ear in the act of hearing then the fence-sitting charade can no longer be maintained.

Oh dear. You’re annoyed at the arrogance. Excuse me while I cringe. I’m annoyed at the fence-sitting and tone-policing. At any rate, yours or mine feelings on the matter help nothing. — NOS4A2

I didn't mean to police your tone. I feel I benefit from discussing things with you. Your challenges are almost always worthwhile to me.

“Bodily” pertains to the body, you know, the structure and being of a human organism? — NOS4A2

Yes. I had to study that sucker when I was in school. Totally apropos of nothing, I was driving along a highway during a time when I was studying the function of the heart. All at once, an image (of sorts) appeared out of my thoughts: I was seeing the whole operation of the heart at once. It blew my mind and I think it must have been a result of pondering the various aspects separately, knowing that they all fit together. It's called integration, one of those amazing features of consciousness that we would love to understand. We're just not quite there yet.

We’re not brains, Frank. If you don’t want to include the ear in the act of hearing then the fence-sitting charade can no longer be maintained. — NOS4A2

I definitely include the ear in the act of hearing. As I said, I just don't know what the brain is doing to create the experience of hearing. Nobody does right now. It's not a fence-sitting charade. It's just recognizing our present limitations.

By the way, you should think about getting into Forex trading. Spend about three months studying it, about three months on a demo account, then start with a real account trading small amounts until you get better at it. If you want some youtube videos that explain more, I'll pm them to you.

As I said, I just don't know what the brain is doing to create the experience of hearing. — frank

We know it has something to do with the cerebral cortex. Those with cortical deafness have functioning ears but damage to their primary auditory cortex and so can't hear but can exhibit reflex responses to sound. Cortical blindness is a comparable condition for sight, where there is damage to the occipital cortex.

When we talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices we're talking about the activation of the primary auditory cortex despite no signals sent from the cochlea. I think it's a perfectly acceptable use of the verb "to hear". Hearing happens when the primary auditory cortex is activated. Seeing happens when the occipital cortex is activated.

We perceive pain and we perceive a tree.

The Direct Realist says that our private perception of a tree is a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world.

Wouldn't it follow, if Direct Realism is true, that our private perception of pain is also a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world.

Wouldn't it follow, if Direct Realism is true, that our private perception of pain is also a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world. — RussellA

Yes. It is. Some trauma in the body.

I can see a white and gold dress without saying "I see a white and gold dress". — Michael

Of course. That's the grammar of 'see.' A direct realist might say that you see the dress itself and not an image of the dress, and I'd agree.

But I'm trying to shift our talk away from 'folk psychology' and toward the application of concepts.
What does it mean for you to be convinced that you saw a gold dress ? What might you infer from that, even within the relative silence of a relatively internal monologue ? [ AI can read minds now.]

What's wrong with indirect realism ? How do I 'prove' that we don't see images of dresses rather than dresses ? I don't, because it's something like proving there is no God. Instead I try to make explicit how our claims about dresses are about dresses in the public world, the world, our world. I see talk about the tree not my image of the tree.

***
We can also make claims about interior images of dresses, but even here we it's as if every person has a tiny little room that only they can see into ---with that room being part of the world at large despite being behind a locked door. Our language is an all-of-a-piece inferential nexus. "No finite <isolated> thing has genuine being'

The Direct Realist says that our private perception of a tree is a direct presentation of something existing in a mind-independent world. — RussellA

Respectfully, the direct realist doesn't believe in pineal gremlins or private perceptions. The direct realist claims that talk about the tree is actually about that tree and not some obscure metaphysical entity that philosophers like to torture themselves with metalogically. <smile>

RussellA perceives direct realists only indirectly: the direct realist in his head does not resemble the direct realist as it is in the external world.

Direct Realism is the position that private experiences are direct presentations of objects existing in a mind-independent world, not that within social communities there are language games. — RussellA

This is how an indirect realism can't help misunderstanding what the direct realist is trying to say. Please don't take my playful bluntness for rudeness. These 'private experiences' are tooth fairies. The 'mindindependent world' is Candyland.

Direct realists understand that the world is not just language. Of course, my friend ! The point is to drag us out of a confused folk psychology from 1777 (or thereabouts) into an awareness of how this issue could even matter, which is to say socially, within the making and criticism of claims and inferences.

Look what we are doing now. When I talk about direct realism, I'm making claims about the position of direct realism. My claims are aimed beyond me to how we ought to talk about our world.

RussellA perceives direct realists only indirectly: the direct realist in his head does not resemble the direct realist as it is in the external world. — Jamal

:up:

That's effing hilarious. I don't laugh out loud much, but that's just the twisted kind of thing that I enjoy. It's the kind of joke Nietzsche would make (which I hope you understand as a compliment.)

It's the kind of joke Nietzsche would make (which I hope you understand as a compliment.) — plaque flag

:up: :blush:

Getting something wrong about the tree need not be understood as nevertheless getting something right about my tree.

We can talk about the world and just be wrong sometimes.