How does phantom limb syndrome work? — Michael

Reactivated neural pathways in spite of no longer being complete. A consequence of the largely autonomous central nervous system simply doing it's thing in spite of its having lost most of the input mechanisms of those pathways.

Neural pathways are not just in the brain.

May have something to do with neuroplasticity as well(the biological machinery repairing itself by virtue of using different structures than before to perform some task/function that was once performed by the missing structures).

Severely damaged nerves can do weird things. I nearly cut off the end of my thumb once. Dr said that I was very unikely to recover much feeling in the part beyond the laceration due to the nerves being completely severed. Years later, for a brief time, I experienced odd pains in that area, despite there not having been anything external to me playing a role.

The world is whatever we as philosophers are talking about..........The philosopher's intention to articulate the truth is intrinsically social and worldly in a strategically indeterminate sense...Wittgenstein is trying to dig deeper, say something about 'eternal' logical-linguistic structure.. — plaque flag

I don't think that in reality you are a Direct Realist, but someone who has the position that the world exists fundamentally in language. Perhaps a Wittgensteinian approach. This is what all the evidence points to. You say i) The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics ii) that what really matters are linguistic norms and iii) "to see the tree is more usefully understood as a claim to "I see the tree".

For the Direct Realist, the world we see around us is the real world itself. Things in the world are perceived immediately or directly rather than inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence.

As you say "A tree is 'made of' leaves and branches, but the tree is no less real because we can consider it as a unity", something the Indirect Realist would agree with, in that we have the tree as a concept in the mind. But the Direct Realist is also saying that this tree exists in the world exactly as we perceive it in our minds.

Using Wittgenstein as a starting position, from the Tractatus
1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things

Things in the external world are not static but change with time. For example, the life cycle of a tree has six main stages: seed, sprout, seedling, sapling, adult tree, and decline into coarse woody debris.

The world is all that is the case, and the world is the totality of facts. Facts are states of affairs that obtain in the world and about which we can make true propositions.

The sapling becomes a tree, but the process isn't instantaneous. It requires time for one fact to change into a different fact.

At an earlier moment in time, there is the fact that the sapling is short and we can say "the sapling is short" is true. At a later moment in time there is the fact the tree is tall and we can say "the tree is tall" is true. But there is an intermediary period when neither fact obtains, the fact that the sapling is short doesn't obtain, and the fact that the tree is tall doesn't obtain.

If Direct Realism was true, and we directly perceive things in the world as they are, then every observer will agree about the moment when the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact in the world changes into a different fact.

But we know that different observers will make different judgements as to the moment the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact changes into another fact over an extended period of time.

My question to the Direct Realist is, if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact.

For the Direct Realist, the world we see around us is the real world itself. — RussellA

Is there no distinction to be drawn and maintained between a direct realist and a naive one?

:yikes:

if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact. — RussellA

Could you rephrase this question by dropping "facts" and "external world" out of it?

I don't think that in reality you are a Direct Realist, but someone who has the position that the world exists fundamentally in language. — RussellA

The world is much more than language, yes, but I have to use language to reason about it --- and language discloses / articulates / shapes the world in certain ways. I walk into a men's restroom, not just some room. We largely live in our symbols.

My question to the Direct Realist is, if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact. — RussellA

People can disagree about the world and be wrong about the world, but they are seeing and talking about the world and not their images of it.

Now one can invent a weird language of internal images, and physicists have talked of phlogiston and ether (both eventually abandoned as useless), so it's not a matter of wrong or right but of better or worse.

If we have an indirect access to whatever that is that is not consciousness, then it seems we have a direct access to consciousness by comparison. In this set up consciousness is a real illusion which is indirectly related to whatever it is that is outside of consciousness, while consciousness itself is direct. — Moliere

:up:

This is the dualism I've been mentioning. The given is the image of the hidden.

But I say it's all on the same inferential plane, has to be to make sense.

A group of people can watch the same set of events unfolding in real time and walk away with completely different opinions about what happened.

One reason why and/or how is because each person brings their own worldview along. They each have their own sets of thoughts and beliefs about themselves and/or the world around them. It is through these respective worldviews that people 'see' the world. One's pre-existing belief system largely mediates how one comes to terms with the world and what happens in it(and in them). There are all sorts of preconceived notions at work in each of them, and these preconceived notions can and do influence the way the events are taken into account while being witnessed. Thus, any differences in testimony about what happened is often due to the differences in worldviews.

Eye-witness testimony has also been proven to be quite unreliable at times. It does not follow from the fact that different people have different accounts of what happened that they did not all watch the same set of events unfolding in real time.

Correct me if I am wrong about your view :

Apples aren't red, because redness is in the brain.
============================================
But why do you believe in the apple in the first place ?
Why should you believe that shapes exist outside of the brain ?
Why believe in 3D space at all ?
Why believe that elementary particles (strings, etc.), mere ideas of the imagination, are not only outside the brain but 'under' all appearance as their truth and reality ?
If everything is image (mediated), it's all 'really' in the brain.

Is there no distinction to be drawn and maintained between a direct realist and a naive one? — creativesoul

I'm sure there is, but it is probably very subtle.

According to Wikipedia Naive Realism:
In philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, naïve realism (also known as direct realism, perceptual realism, or common sense realism) is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are.

Could you rephrase this question by dropping "facts" and "external world" out of it? — creativesoul

I was trying to incorporate Wittgensteins 1.1 "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" in the Tractatus

By external world I mean whatever exists external to any mind. The IEP uses the term in their article Locke: Knowledge of the External World

Yeah, I should probably not continue here. My own position rejects both direct and indirect realism as it's currently defined. That is due to the stark ontological differences in what constitutes thought and belief, and subsequently... a mind.

It is through these respective worldviews that people 'see' the world. — creativesoul

:up:

Yes. We might use the metaphor of a distorting lens. I might claim that you are biased, and you might claim that I am. But we look at apples, not at images of apples. We intend and talk about apples, not images of apples. (Of course we can talk about images of apples as philosophers debating indirect versus direst realism.)

It does not follow from the fact that different people have different accounts of what happened that they did not all watch the same set of events unfolding in real time. — creativesoul

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Yes, and we can see it the grammar of the words. It's a different account of the same events. All of the accounts intend the same 'object.' But I'm just making conceptual norms explicit in saying so.

Yes. We might use the metaphor of a distorting lens. — plaque flag

I've called it the worldly fingerprint placed upon each of us by virtue of natural language acquisition/adoption. That's another matter in its own right, and would be too far tangent to be considered on topic.

People can disagree about the world and be wrong about the world, but they are seeing and talking about the world and not their images of it. — plaque flag

If all Direct Realists are immediately and directly seeing the same world, on what grounds can they disagree about what they see.

I can understand Indirect Realists disagreeing about the world, as they are not seeing it immediately and directly, but are dependent on personal interpretation.

If all Direct Realists are immediately and directly seeing the same world, on what grounds can they disagree about what they see. — RussellA

Different positions in space, different sense organs, different personalities. The 'directness' is the absence of intermediaries and not (and never was) the assumption of an identical response ('experience'). Two people can see the same apple differently. Joe is nearsighted. Jane is colorblind. They don't see individual images of the apple directly. They both see the apple directly, but differently.

But why do you believe in the apple in the first place ? — plaque flag

Well, this is where my actual beliefs differ from the more limited argument I've been making.

I believe in the existence of objects other than myself and that these objects have a causal effect on my experience. I am unsure as to whether or not I can say anything more about these objects than this, and so unsure as to whether or not I am something of a transcendental idealist à la Kant. Tentatively, I am a scientific realist. I think that something like the Standard Model (or string theory) might describe what Kant would call "noumena".

Given that the entities described by our scientific theories are unlike the entities that appear to us, I do not think it correct to say that the everyday objects we are familiar with (chairs and tables and apples) are reducible to the entities described by our scientific theories. On this account I consider myself something of an antirealist (with respect to everyday objects).

So strictly speaking it's not that I believe in the existence of a perception-independent apple that causes me to see a particular shape and colour but that I believe in the existence of perception-independent entities that cause me to see a red, round apple, and that our talk of these perception-independent entities as being the red, round apple is a pragmatic narrative à la fictionalism.

As to why I believe in the existence of objects other than myself, I suppose it's a parsimonious explanation for the occurrence and regularity of conscious experience. It seems to be more reasonable than solipsism.

OK, that was quite helpful.

I guess the delicate issue is whether the current scientific image (or any possible scientific image) makes sense as the Real which causes experiences of red apples. To me that 'image' would (in this context) just be more appearance, albeit organized conceptually in an impressive way.

I used to agree more with Kant, so I can relate. It's a tricky issue in any case.

Whenever I understand myself to be seeing the "same" object as a someone else, I am not making a literal comparison of mine and their experiences, nor of mine and their semantic conditions of assertibility.

All I am doing is interpolating from my own experiences whether or not the sentence "We are seeing the same object" meets my personal criteria of assertability.

Here are some good points against indirect realism, IMO.
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf

By giving a causal account of how ideas get formed in the mind as the result of the external world
pouring into us through the senses we can arrive at an epistemological account of how these ideas can be put together in knowledge. Causation here yields justification, or in Rorty’s description, “a quasi-mechanical account of the way in which our immaterial tablets are dented by the material world will help us know what we are entitled to believe” (1979, 143). The history of seventeenth century philosophy forwarded in Mirror has it that the legacy of modern philosophy is a Cartesian-Lockean metaphor in which minds are construed as representing machines whose units of representation are ideas.
...
What Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs. A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as “the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge” (Sellars 1956, 77). This led Sellars to the point that there is no way to draw a direct link between the supposedly immediate (or non-conceptual) givens of perception and the mediated (or conceptualized) takings of knowledge. For perceptual inputs (e.g., sensations) to be in any way relevant to processes of justification and hence of knowledge they must already be conceptual in form so as to occupy some place in what Sellars called “the logical space of reasons” (1956, 76). Sellars’s claim, upon inspection, is a rather modest one: every conclusion in belief stands in need of
reasons as supporting premises. Modesty, of course, is often a high virtue in philosophy. And in any event, its appearance can be deceptive. In this case, a modest point calls into question the very project of epistemological foundationalism. For what Sellars is suggesting is that as-yet-unconceptualized
perceptual inputs cannot play a determinative role in justificatory practices involving classificatory concepts. The Jamesian “blooming buzzing confusion” of raw sensation may find its way into our experience on occasion but it cannot play any direct justificatory role in so doing.
...
Perceptions are of course conceptually classifiable but not for that reason justifiers of any particular conceptual classification. Every perceptual given is always amenable to a multiplicity of conceptual takings – this is Quine’s thesis of ontological relativity or inscrutability of reference, made memorable in his example of the ‘Gavagai-Rabbit’ translation (Quine 1960, §7ff.). It follows that concepts by themselves do not yield justifications. Concepts are not, merely in virtue of being concepts, justifiers for any other concepts, even though (as Sellars showed) only a conceptually-laden belief can justify a conceptuallyladen belief. Quine’s claim also seems rather modest. But the view it leads to is the radical divorce of epistemology and ontology which follows from the insight that, as Rorty put it, “there is no such thing as direct acquaintance with sensedata or meanings which would give inviolability to reports by virtue of their correspondence to reality, apart from their role in the general scheme of belief”
(1979, 202). Rorty takes Quine to show that perceptions do not enter into us one at a time, but rather as part of complex webs of theory and practice such that any perception is always bundled together with many other perceptions as well as many other beliefs.

They both see the apple directly, but differently. — plaque flag

I directly see the apple, and you directly see the apple, but the apple I see is different to the apple you see. My private experience of the apple is different to yours.

I directly see the colour red, and you directly see the colour red, but the colour red I see is different to the colour red you see. My private experience of the colour red is different to yours.

Then how can there be a public language about apples and the colour red if our private experiences of apples and the colour red are different.

Then how can there be a public language about apples and the colour red if our private experiences of apples and the colour red are different. — RussellA

Concepts are public. Concepts are norms. How else could you even ask me that question with a sense of being entitled to an answer ? A tacit commitment to the philosophical situation is prior to every other issue. I touch on that in my new thread, if you want to join.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14264/nothing-is-hidden

This is another quote from that paper. Since Rorty was Brandom's advisor, we seem to be getting a younger version of inferentialism here. Note that concepts rather than claims are the focus. This was eventually fixed --- and needed to be --- because claims and not concepts function as premises and conclusions.
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf
Rorty’s argument was that the Quine-Sellars combine poses an enormous problem for a representationalist empiricism which makes use of two claims that seem unproblematic but turn out to be enormously puzzling once submitted to scrutiny: the first claim being that simple ideas come into the mind in the form of nonpropositional awarenesses, the second claim being that these ideas once in
the mind somehow get converted into something that can stand in inferential relations to propositions in the mind. Lockean ideas had always tried to play the double role of representations of an outside world and justifications for other inner ideas. But explaining how ideas can in fact do this double work is a task that may be impossible. Even the most obvious counterexamples stemming from cultural variance, perceptual illusion, and even just plain ignorance are enormously difficult to explain away. The rain outside may cause me to believe that the Gods are conspiring against me, but that belief is not therefore justified, especially if my audience for justification in this case is a group of evidence obsessed meteorologists, or perhaps neurosis-analyzing psychiatrists). Sellars helps Rorty show that nothing except a conceptually-structured belief can count as a justification for another belief (thus the physical fact of rain by itself justifies nothing) – only concepts are capable of being justifiers. Quine helps Rorty show that our being caused to believe something does not for that reason alone justify that belief (thus the rain causing me to further faith the conspiracy by itself justifies nothing) – no concept by itself can be an unimpeachable justifier. Thus taken together, as Rorty showed us to take them, Sellars and Quine break the link between causation and justification at the heart of modern epistemology.

directly see the apple, and you directly see the apple, but the apple I see is different to the apple you see. My private experience of the apple is different to yours. — RussellA

How have (or could) you establish “my private experience of apple is different to yours”?

How have (or could) you establish “my private experience of apple is different to yours”? — Richard B

Individual differences in visual science: What can be learned and what is good experimental practice?

We all pass out our lives in private perceptual worlds. The differences in our sensory and perceptual experiences often go unnoticed until there emerges a variation (such as ‘The Dress’) that is large enough to generate different descriptions in the coarse coinage of our shared language. In this essay, we illustrate how individual differences contribute to a richer understanding of visual perception, but we also indicate some potential pitfalls that face the investigator who ventures into the field.

Here are some good points against indirect realism, IMO. — plaque flag

What Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs.

The Direct Realist argues that they perceive immediately or directly things in the world.

If a belief can be justified only on the basis of another belief, and beliefs only exist in the mind, then there can be no connection of any kind between the mind and the world. This is more an argument for Idealism than Realism.

A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as “the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge” (Sellars 1956, 77).

There is a causal chain from the external world through my senses to my mind

When I see the colour red, I don't believe that I see the colour red, I know without doubt that I see the colour red. I don't need to justify my belief as it is not a belief in the first place.

IE, the Indirect Realist doesn't need to justify what they perceive through their senses.

How have (or could) you establish “my private experience of apple is different to yours”? — Richard B

True, its an assumption, but a reasonably strong assumption.

But if I was a South African cab driver and you were an Icelandic doctor, the chances that our private experiences of apples are exactly the same is highly remote.

From https://scitechdaily.com:
It’s a question that arises with virtually every major new finding in science or medicine: What makes a result reliable enough to be taken seriously? The answer has to do with statistical significance — but also with judgments about what standards make sense in a given situation. The unit of measurement usually given when talking about statistical significance is the standard deviation, expressed with the lowercase Greek letter sigma (σ). The term refers to the amount of variability in a given set of data: whether the data points are all clustered together, or very spread out.

I probably have a six sigma level of confidence.

If a belief can be justified only on the basis of another belief, and beliefs only exist in the mind, then there can be no connection of any kind between the mind and the world. This is more an argument for Idealism than Realism. — RussellA

You are forgetting uncontroversial or undisputed basic statements. We might all believe the same witness, and reason from her testimony, to justify some more complicated claim.

Personally I wouldn't put beliefs 'in the mind.' Language is worldly. It is marks and noises of a certain kind.

When I see the colour red, I don't believe that I see the colour red, I know without doubt that I see the colour red. I don't need to justify my belief as it is not a belief in the first place.

IE, the Indirect Realist doesn't need to justify what they perceive through their senses. — RussellA

Do you see claims through your sense organs ? I think not. You don't bother to justify claims to yourself unless you feel doubt. Others may or may not expect justification.

Concepts are public. Concepts are norms. How else could you even ask me that question with a sense of being entitled to an answer ? A tacit commitment to the philosophical situation is prior to every other issue. I touch on that in my new thread, if you want to join. — plaque flag

That concepts are norms isn't the same as saying that concepts are public. These are two distinct semantic claims.

I have only had a precursory glance at Brandom's introduction to inferentialism but I suspect you might be misreading, or at the very least dramatically oversimplifying his views, which to a large extent is understandable given this is an abbreviated public forum space where people speak with highly constrained time and space and without knowing of each others prior knowledge and agendas.


In Chapter 5, "A Social Route From Reasoning to Representing" , Brandom makes generally non-controversial arguments that language serves as a medium of 'representation' in the context of social norms.

Beliefs and claims that are propositionally contentful are neces-
sarily representationally contentful because their inferential ar-
ticulation essentially involves a social dimension. That social
dimension is unavoidable because the inferential significance of a
claim, the appropriate antecedents and consequences of a doxastic
commitment, depends on the background of collateral commit-
ments available for service as auxiliary hypotheses. Thus any speci-
fication of a propositional content must be made from the
perspective of some such set of commitments. One wants to say
that the correct inferential role is determined by the collateral
claims that are true. Just so; that is what each interlocutor wants to
say: each has an at least slightly different perspective from which
to evaluate inferential proprieties. Representational locutions
make explicit the sorting of commitments into those attributed
and those undertaken—without which communication would be
impossible, given those differences of perspective. The representa-
tional dimension of propositional contents reflects the social
structure of their inferential articulation in the game of giving and
asking for reasons.
.

So, when speaking in the context of language being a medium for representation , then qualia - which by definition is said to refer to only what an individual speaker could know - gets the chop.

But what Brandom doesn't do in that passage is insist that meaning is essentially representational or that meaning and knowledge are necessarily public affairs. Indeed, that interpretation of Brandom would contradict the very idea that Brandom was an non-representational semanticist at heart. I suspect that Brandom, much like Wittgenstein, makes no negative semantic, metaphysical or mentalistic claims regarding the meaning or existence of "private language". I suspect that all he means, is that private concepts aren't being used representationally and hence beetles in boxes aren't an extensional aspect of the social representations inculcated by social norms. Nevertheless Beetles do matter when it comes to the perspectival and idiosyncratic aspects of language that are relative to each individual who must individually adapt their mother tongue in a bespoke inferential fashion to match their own worlds; such beetles are necessary, but lie beyond the aperspectival limitations of social norms and communication.

Nevertheless Beetles do matter when it comes to the perspectival and idiosyncratic aspects of language that are relative to each individual who must individually adapt their mother tongue in a bespoke inferential fashion to match their own worlds; such beetles are necessary, but lie beyond the aperspectival limitations of social norms and communication. — sime

i.e. an idiolect.

Concepts are public. Concepts are norms. — plaque flag

Either the public body is a set of individuals, meaning that concepts only exist in the minds of the individuals making up the public body, or, the public body supervenes on a set of individuals - a non-reductive physicalism - meaning that concepts exist in the public body and not in the minds of the individuals.

As I personally find non-reductive physicalism hard to believe, my belief is that concepts can only exist in the minds of the individuals.

I touch on that in my new thread — plaque flag

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