So asserting the Kuhnian proposition that empirical knowledge has a paradigmatic structure which makes Popperian progress incoherent is just a kind of temper tantrum designed to lay waste to every position? — Joshs
I gather Stephen Law is more sympathetic to Popperian realism than to Kuhnian relativism, but perhaps one can counter his ‘Going Nuclear’ model with one that posits someone named Stephen who, in getting over their head in a philosophical discussion, decides to impugn the motives of their interlocutor rather than attempt to revise their own construction — Joshs
Be clear. — Banno
The anti-realists failure to commit amounts to a failure to understand how language functions; "the ball" is the ball. — Banno
"the ball" is the ball
It's why Isaac -- though he considers himself a kind of realist -- considers words like "real" and "true" useful mainly for bullying your opponents. — Srap Tasmaner
I do see what I infer to be your interpretation of Kuhn's and Popper's thinking to be a bit simplistic. Popper recognized the importance of falsification to recognizing faults in one's naive hypotheses/intuitions. Kuhn recognized the importance of new paradigms arising in the aftermath of naive hypotheses/intuitions being falsified — wonderer1
But -- but -- isn't it true that there are true statements?!"
It can be hard to convince yourself -- hard even to see the possibility -- that the answer to that question does not matter. — Srap Tasmaner
You might be too hard on pragmatists. To me, anyway, the original spirit of pragmatism is about not wasting time on differences that make no difference. It's a reaction against a tendency to get bogged down. — plaque flag
I explicitly proposed that the issue is one of the choice of grammar — Banno
Or that the difference between realism and anti-realism is more one of choice of grammar than profound ontology? But that is all philosophy is - wordplay. — Banno
You've a few jokes, but nothing substantive. — Banno
The problem is set up by an excessive emphasis on "internal" and "external", and appears to be inherent in the phenomenological approach itself, from it's emphasis on direct experience. — Banno
Thanks - I'm pleased that approach was understood.Nice reflection on anti/realism, though. Reducing anti/realism to a choice in logic in a particular context is very interesting. Not sure I can respond or even critique just yet, but it's interesting! — Moliere
Then they overcome an obstacle they themselves put in their path - hardly a triumph.I think the phenomenologists overcome internal/external — Moliere
A better approach might be to begin with what is at hand, our being as embedded in a world that is already, and by that very fact, the subject of our manipulation. This latter seems to me the view Wittgenstein offers. — Banno
When you ask "How Does Language Map onto the World?" what kind of "world" you have in mind? — Alkis Piskas
Now, you have said the you have made some modest reading about this subject. And you have selected the views of Hilary Lawson as most appealing to you. Yet, these views only lead to a kind of impasse making you wonder if the problem of creating a realist(ic) theory of language is insurmountable. — Alkis Piskas
metaphysical frameworks, such as idealism and panpsychism, which were derided as baseless nonsense by the positivists of the past, are back in new forms. But such claims cannot be taken as a true description of an ultimate reality for there is no credible realist theory of language that would make sense of such claims. — Tom Storm
metaphysical frameworks, such as idealism and panpsychism, which were derided as baseless nonsense by the positivists of the past, are back in new forms. But such claims cannot be taken as a true description of an ultimate reality for there is no credible realist theory of language that would make sense of such claims. — Tom Storm
I am wondering what people who study philosophy think of this claim as it strikes me as an interesting argument and might breathe some new life into debates about idealism. — Tom Storm
As someone how holds imperfect knowledge in this realm (in all realms, actually), at this point in our history I find the quoted argument for the most part valid. — javra
Nevertheless, for those of use don't remove the objective idealism from out of Peirce's metaphysics of objective idealism (with his notion of Agapism, for example, very much included), his is one example of a description of reality which can - I so far think - at the very least facilitate a "a credible realist theory of language" that thereby makes sense of the very metaphysics addressed - one wherein the physical world is effete mind in relation to which propositions can either be true or false. — javra
I think the phenomenologists overcome internal/external, but it's very easy to read our Cartesian assumptions into their work. — Moliere
Phenomenology would build an understanding from a foundation of personal, private, indubitable phenomenal experience. — Banno
And of course my not giving phenomenology enough credit is mostly a rhetorical ploy to keep the discussion in an area in which I am both more comfortable and more interested. That's not something I am alone in doing. It is quite self-consciously done. None of which detracts from my criticism of phenomenology. — Banno
It remains unclear what you mean by "framework" — Banno
So maybe it would help if you tied all this back to the OP? — Banno
Language, world, self --- we never achieve full understanding of any of these, so we go on our entire lives in with this partial understanding, — Srap Tasmaner
Just realized there's another way to put this: just as DNA is in some sense instructions for physical growth, I'm using "framework" to mean something like instructions for mental growth, what I was reaching for with the word "learning". — Srap Tasmaner
living things have to have grown into the shape they have. — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not looking for a defence of realism, I'm more interested in the implications of this matter - do we need a theory of language that explains how any realist claim is possible in order to accept those claims?
If we do not employ a realist account of language (as per postmodern thinkers), what is it we can meaningfully say about this notion of 'reality' we are so fond of describing and seems to be a substitute for god? — Tom Storm
https://iep.utm.edu/john-austin/#SH2a... Austin examines the word ‘real’ and contrasts the ordinary, firmly established meanings of that word as fixed by the everyday ways we use it to the ways it is used by sense-data theorists in their arguments. What Austin recommends is a careful consideration of the ordinary, multifarious meanings of that word in order not to posit, for example, a non-natural quality designed by that word, common to all the things to which that word is attributed (‘real ducks,’ ‘real cream,’ ‘real progress,’ ‘real color,’ ‘real shape,’ and so forth).
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