These arguments both, can only remove the potential of the underlying matter or substance, by replacing it with something actual. This is the actuality of God. The problem though, is that the reality of potential cannot simply be replaced by the actuality of God, because this produces determinism, which is inconsistent with our experience. Therefore to maintain the reality of free will we must maintain the reality of potential. However, since the concept of free will in human beings cannot account for the agent involved in the selection from the possibilities which underly the natural dispositions you refer to, such as molecular structures, we do not avoid the need for the Will of God. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why would I want to remove the potential of the underlying matter or substance? All I want to do is to explain it, by giving a fuller account of what happens when one billiard ball strikes another. My suggested explanation doesn't even eliminate the counterfactual phenomenon; it simply provides a fully explanation of the causes that produce it.

There's nothing wrong with determinism. It is the idea that free will is inconsistent with it that is problematic.

I don't see any need for the Will of God. What, exactly, do we need it for?

I agree that scepticism is a fundamental starting-point for this debate. But there's a question of the burden of proof. Your challenge to me is to provide a reason for believing that the cup that holds your coffee exists when you don't perceive it. Do you accept that if you were to turn and look at it, you would see it? Is that not a reason for believing that it still exists? — Ludwig V

I mean we have no ground, warrant or reason to believe in the world, when we are not perceiving it.
The ground, warrant or reason for believing in the world is the perception of the world.  But when you are not perceiving it, there is no more the ground, warrant or reason to believe it.  That is from a logical reasoning.

But people keep believing in the world when they are not perceiving the world.  They are believing it without the ground, warrant and reason for believing it.

So what is more rational?  I would say stopping believing in something when there is no ground, warrant and reason to believe it would be definitely more rational than keeping believing in something when there is no ground in believing it.

This was what Hume was propounding in his Treatise, and that point of Hume was what Kant described as "a truth which awakened him from dogmatic slumber." I cannot be sure on the accuracy of this point now without checking it again.  But I am assuming that was what Kant said. Please correct me if I am wrong here.

"Scepticism is what keeps Theory of Perception ticking", as said by Barry Stroud (a late Canadian Philosopher), and I think he is right.

So what is more rational?  I would say stopping believing in something when there is no ground, warrant and reason to believe it would be definitely more rational than keeping believing in something when there is no ground in believing it. — Corvus

This is true. What it shows is that in order to live, you have to be irrational.

The problem of course is how do you distinguish between what is real and what is not real. And if you cannot make the distinction you cannot know that what you are seeing isn't real, at any given time, nor that what you are seeing is real at any given time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Somehow people do regularly distinguish real from unreal, for all practical purposes anyway. It's not merely a logical thing, it's more at the level of innate capability.

We know, for instance, that if a person is blind from birth, but then gains sight, they won't be able to distinguish a picture of an apple from a real apple. That's not a logical issue. It's something about perception.

This is true. What it shows is that in order to live, you have to be irrational. — frank

It shows that the sceptics have been scorned for their rationality by the naive folks. :chin: :roll:

I mean we have no ground, warrant or reason to believe in the world, when we are not perceiving it. — Corvus

And yet both you are Hume write for an unperceived public.

How long must the lights stay out before this form of skepticism takes over? Do you doubt the existence of the world each time you blink?

And yet both you are Hume write for an unperceived public.

How long must the lights stay out before this form of skepticism takes over? Do you doubt the existence of the world each time you blink? — Fooloso4

Blinks don't take long time enough to make the world to totally disappear. Does yours?

We are talking about what is called Academic Scepticism allegedly practiced by both Hume and Kant, which I am trying to learn more (waiting for the book to arrive).

It is about the warrant of belief, not the existence itself. This is an Epistemological issue, not ordinary life issue.

There are at least three aspects to this problem - it's really a series of problems. First is the problem overtly addressed in the present essay: how is it that we can move from the evidence of our senses, on which empiricism is supposedly grounded, to making true statements about the world? Second is the problem of induction, how we can move from a series of such observations to a general principle, a "law". The third problem is to do with when we might correctly say that one even causes another.

A rather famous quote on this problem:

When I say “This is an apple” and only see the front of the apple, then what I say goes beyond what I see. It includes the back, which I do not see. Therefore it is possible that I walk around the ostensible apple and discover that there is no apple. Now, no sum of perceptions can exclude that later perceptions will show that despite appearances there is no apple. Like a general judgment, the judgment “There is an apple” goes beyond everything that we will ever have perceived. . . . If what is sensibly given in itself falls under the category of substance . . . then empirical knowledge always already contains general knowledge, which therefore is not inferred inductively from the former.

-Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect - Sebastian Rödl

For a long while Popper's falsification was the winner

The biggest knock against Popper's theory I can think of is that it has been invoked so many times to call areas of scientific development that later yielded huge breakthroughs "unfalsifiable pseudoscience." Mach, writing before Popper, famously thought atoms were pseudo-science. Popper was invoked to deny quarks a hearing in physics. We see the same sort of attack leveled at quantum foundations to this day, even though research there does indeed progress and touch other areas of the field.

It seems to me that:

A. Scientific theoreticians cannot avoid doing metaphysics.
B. The anti-metaphysical, empiricist-positivist view dominant until fairly recently does get rid of metaphysics, it just enshrines a certain type of metaphysics dogmatically. After all, saying it is "meaningless" to even talk of certain things is, in an important way, to make a metaphysical claim about them.

(For my part, that this discussion should take place at all shows something of the poverty of the sense data theory)

It's also a strong form of reductionism in a way, even though it is often advanced by people who have nothing good to say about "reductionism" in general. It says that experience cannot be fundamentally about the whole of a relationship between some object of experience and some experiencing subject. Rather, the only way to understand the phenomena is by reducing it to phenomena "within the subject."

This seems to cut against a lot of the theorizing in embodied cognition, which I tend to find fairly convincing, while also tending to suggest a view of "sense datum as discrete things," instead of the more plausible view (IMHO) of "sensation as continuous process."

Part of this, IMO, is that Kantian dualism often ends up "baked in" to theories in cognitive science from the get-go. That is, the reduction of experience to a process that only involves the discrete object of study (generally the brain) all but ensures that the same problems that show up in Kant will show up here, because they are presumed from the outset.

A larger issue is that we've generally dumped potentiality, essence, substance, natures, and even form (to a lesser extent) from natural philosophy because they are unobservable. But then we work them back in via less obvious forms because we need them. E.g., thermodynamic entropy, information entropy, the heat carrying capacities of metals, etc. all involve a sort of "potentiality." So, metaphysics still lurks around, it just is less well examined.

Since appeals to Hume and Kant and academic skepticism will take us too far from the topic of this thread I won't pursue it here, but I would be interested to read what you have to say if you start a thread on Hume and Kant and their connection to Academic Skepticism, and more specifically your claim that:

... when you are not perceiving it, there is no more the ground, warrant or reason to believe it. — Corvus

But to do so, it would seem, would be to involve you in a performative contradiction when you go on to council us unperceived beings:

I would say stopping believing in something when there is no ground, warrant and reason to believe it would be definitely more rational ... — Corvus

It strikes me as being unreasonably reasonable.

Since appeals to Hume and Kant and academic skepticism will take us too far from the topic of this thread I won't pursue it here, but I would be interested to read what you have to say if you start a thread on Hume and Kant and their connection to Academic Skepticism, and more specifically your claim that: — Fooloso4

Sure. This is not the main topic in this thread. So I will bow out, and let them carry on. I have been only responding to the questions and posts directed to me.

I will read the book when it arrives, and will open a new thread on it, if there are interesting points on the subject. Thank you for your post.

I think that abstraction and generalization (which, despite Berkeley, I do not think are the same thing) are also sources of truth. So let's not over-generalize about it. Pragmatism is probably the best policy here. — Ludwig V

Of course there are legitimate cases where applications of generalization are more useful than specificity. This comes from the sense applied to multiple objects: classification, inferences from particular observations, etc., which is what Austin is doing. But here I am talking about generalization from a single case or two (in the sense of without objects). Abstraction is a harder practice to justify. Not taking into consideration multiple examples (the practice in multiple situations, contexts), as it were, of how things "are" (as Dewey might say I believe), is to intellectually theorize separate from actual cases (an event with attendant circumstances). So I would need an example (or two) of when abstraction is actually a good or useful process.

What I think differentiates these practices in philosophy is that they come from the desire for absolute certainty or universal truth as Austin discusses in Lec. X. (p. 104). In order to be universal, we necessarily must abstract from the particulars. In order to have a standard of certainty like direct perception, we must generalize our perception of every object from a case which works that way (direct perception of at least sense-data).

it would... ...involve you in a performative contradiction when you go on to council us unperceived beings... — Fooloso4

You're saying that to someone who I strongly suspect may not understand what a performative contradiction is. Indeed, that poster is being grilled by a few different people here for the absurdity of claiming to not believe in anything anytime unless that something is being perceived at the time. That sort of radical skepticism leads to a reductio in more ways than one could count quickly.

If I were as cruel as I once was, I would've grilled him(I suspect) myself, but this thread topic interests me too much and I just don't find that sort of 'discussion' appealing.

In defense of @Corvus, he says he has on order Catalina González Quintero's

"Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics".

I do not know this work or what he will get from it. Perhaps after reading it he will modify his claims or give us reason to rethink some of our own. In any case, even if we disagree with what he will say or Catalina González Quintero says, it demonstrates an attempt to become better informed about such things.

After all, saying it is "meaningless" to even talk of certain things is, in an important way, to make a metaphysical claim about them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite so. That's the essence of what the "analytic" philosophers believed, and explains why they spent their time talking about language.

A rather famous quote on this problem: "....Therefore it is possible that I walk around the ostensible apple and discover that there is no apple...." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does Sebastian Rödl consider the possibility that I might walk round the apple and discover that there is an apple?


You repeat your claim three times but don't answer my questions.

Do you accept that if you were to turn and look at the cup that is holding your coffee, you would see it? Is that not a reason for believing that it still exists? — Ludwig V

. I take that as meaning that you think there is something wrong with the question. Could you explain?

In defense of Corvus, he says he has on order Catalina González Quintero's — Fooloso4

I am not sure if there is any point to trying defend anything against someone who didn't understand what self-contradiction statements are, but claim to understand performance contradiction. I was under impression that he was going to go through all the arguments that I went through with Banno AGAIN with the whole load of self-contradicting questions, and was wondering what the point was.

I do not know this work or what he will get from it. Perhaps after reading it he will modify his claims or give us reason to rethink some of our own. In any case, even if we disagree with what he will say or Catalina González Quintero says, it demonstrates an attempt to become better informed about such things. — Fooloso4

I am not sure either. But I thought it would be interesting to read somebody whom I have never come across as Kant commentary scholars before. I was presuming maybe there might some new interesting insight in the book. Will be able to tell more once I finish the book. Who knows.

I am not claiming that I am an academic sceptic. Most of my ideas comes from my own reasoning and little amount of casual readings on the textbook and commentaries.

You repeat your claim three times but don't answer my questions.
Do you accept that if you were to turn and look at the cup that is holding your coffee, you would see it? Is that not a reason for believing that it still exists?
— Ludwig V — Ludwig V

Of course, I see the cup when I turn and look at the cup. The perception is coming in vividly.
But do you not see the difference that there is now the firm ground for believing in the existence of the cup, instead of not having the warrant that the cup's existence when not seeing it?

But here I am talking about generalization from a single case or two (in the sense of without objects). Abstraction is a harder practice to justify. — Antony Nickles

Oh, I never intended to imply that generalization from a single case or two was not extremely rash (to put it mildly).

As to abstraction, I intended an "ordinary language" sense of the word, not a view of the debate about nominalism. The Cambridge Dictionary definition is "existing as an idea, feeling, or quality, not as a material object". This, to me, fits with, for example, Austin's insistence that not everything is a material object. Numbers would be an prime example. The Cambridge Dictionary gives, truth, beauty, happiness, faith and confidence as examples of abstractions. I have always understood properties like colour and shape to be abstractions, but perhaps I'm wrong. I noticed that you said that it was a "harder practice to justify" rather than

Not taking into consideration multiple examples (the practice in multiple situations, contexts), as it were, of how things "are" (as Dewey might say I believe), is to intellectually theorize separate from actual cases (an event with attendant circumstances). — Antony Nickles

Yes, quite so. And theory without application to cases is empty. But theory with application is not. So it's not an issue about theory in itself.

Of course, I see the cup when I turn and look at the cup. — Corvus

You still don't answer the question. So you still believe that you would have to accept the counterfactual if you did and that you would then have to admit that it is a ground for believing it exists when you don't perceive it.

The next question is whether you accept that you exist when you are perceiving an object and whether you perceive yourself when you are perceiving an object.

IX continued...

Ayer says

The conclusion that I have now reached is that in order to account for our perceptual experience, it is not necessary to maintain that any of our perceptions are delusive — Foundations, p.19

So if not because of problems with illusions, what are Ayer's reason for holding to sense data?

I've over-read the texts here, and now find it difficult to see what Ayer is arguing. He really does seem to think that the only two possibilities are that we see material objects or we see sense data; that there is no nuance and no alternative. that's the only way in which I can see his argument reaching the conclusion it does.

So his argument is that we can only perceive either material objects or sense data; that we cannot perceive material objects; and that hence we must perceive sense data.

Two premises; both just wrong. The argument is so poor it's almost gormless.

So here's a question for anyone who cares to delve deeper. That seems to me to be the argument in Foundations, found on pp 24-25. If not that argument, then which?

And if that argument, then Austin.

Quite so. That's the essence of what the "analytic" philosophers believed, and explains why they spent their time talking about language.

Well that and trying to turn language into sense data by claiming that: "the meaning of a sentence is the empirical data that would verify (or falsify it)." This view is runs into a host of problems, not least of all that it is a statement that it does not seem possible to verify based on sense data.

Does Sebastian Rödl consider the possibility that I might walk round the apple and discover that there is an apple?

Yes, that's sort of the point. You can see the whole apple by moving around it, but you cannot see it all at once. Now what grounds do you have for saying: "before I could see the back side of the apple, now I can see the front. Since this remains the same individual apple I looked at earlier, I am justified in positing that I am looking at a whole apple that has a back that I cannot see?"

Common sense tells us that we can justify this with recourse to the idea of the apple being an "object" that can be seen from many different directions. But common sense isn't "sense data." Common sense includes "metaphysical" concepts like "objects." Any solution also seems to require a consideration of time and temporal logic, which is part of Rödl's argument. But also consider that any apparent apple could just be a crafty hologram as well.

Rödl's point might seem fairly silly from a common sense point of view, but he rebutting fairly technical attempts to show how knowledge could possibly be reduced to merely sense data. These attempts also had to "leave common sense behind," like most philosophy, since it turns out a lot of unchallenged assumptions are packed into common sense.

The problems for a sort of "arch-empiricism," only gets worse if you assume that any reference to metaphysical terms like "object" means only the very sense data that might verify the truth of a statement involving them. I tend to lean very empiricist, but I think the positivists just took this in a bad direction.

Plus, it seems to me that mathematicians talk about infinities and continuums all the time, and theologians and atheists debate about God all the time, while having meaningful discussions, despite the fact that anything infinite or infinitesimal cannot be verified through sense data.

You still don't answer the question. So you still believe that you would have to accept the counterfactual if you did and that you would then have to admit that it is a ground for believing it exists when you don't perceive it.

The next question is whether you accept that you exist when you are perceiving an object and whether you perceive yourself when you are perceiving an object. — Ludwig V

I would go with Hume. There is no reason to believe in anything when I don't perceive, be it the world or myself. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in the world or myself. I keep asking you to know the difference between the two cases.

You still don't answer the question. So you still believe that you would have to accept the counterfactual if you did and that you would then have to admit that it is a ground for believing it exists when you don't perceive it. — Ludwig V

So let me ask you this time. I have asked you this question many times, but you have never answered for it yet.

What is your reason to believe in the existence of the world, when you don't perceive it?

So here's a question for anyone who cares to delve deeper. That seems to me to be the argument in Foundations, found on pp 24-25. If not that argument, then which? — Banno

Strangely enough, he's doing an argument from ordinary language use. Pared down, he's saying there are two senses of "see."

1. John sees a star.
2. John sees a speck no bigger than a six-pence.

If there's confusion about the second sentence regarding the sense of the verb, further explanation would insert "what appears to be" after the verb. But Ayers says we usually don't need that extra phrase because we can discern the different senses by context of utterance.

Because these two senses exist in language, we can generalize this case.

Now we forget about John and his star and go back to cases of mistaken perception. I thought I saw two pieces of paper, but there was only one. Again, there are these two senses of "see"

1. I saw two pieces of paper.
2. I saw one piece of paper.

In the first case, what I saw does not exist as a material object. Therefore, it's a sense datum. Here, Ayers is reporting on the sense data theory, he's not presenting this as his own ideas. He says he accepts it, though, with the caution that what the sense-data theorist ends up doing is offering new jargon to explain a hypothesis which can be empirically verified or refuted.

In other words, he's saying that the sense data theorists isn't offering us any needed revisions to everyday speech, but rather offering jargon that's helpful for special purposes.

(@Banno even feels Ayer might be misrepresented). — Antony Nickles

Well, yesterday I thought the argument so bad that I must be missing Ayer's point. Today I still think the argument extraordinarily poor, but still can't see an alternative. Ayer is presenting a very poor argument.

He's deluded by the overwhelming need for certainly, as Austin continues in Chapter X.

...we want a moral rule or goal so that we don’t have to be good, we can just do what has been determined is good, and thus we are absolved because we can just claim, “I followed the rule!” — Antony Nickles

This was Philippa Foot's criticism, wasn't it? The boys want certainty, so they can avoid responsibly. The War overarches all of these considerations - it's hard for young folk to understand the way in which it provides the foundation for this whole exercise. All of these men served with distinction, and all had to find some way to come to terms with what they had to do. What's true of Hare is true of Austin and Ayer and Wittgenstein. They fundamentally need to understand why they set aside personal responsibility ot the greater cause. It's an unfair question - addressed in The Cain Mutiny.

So can we not conclude that the two versions are not equivalent and hence not inter-translatable? — Ludwig V

I think the conclusion, after Austin, is that this whole framing of the issue is muddled. However if we do take the framing as granted, then "statements about objects just are statements about sense data" is not an observation or conclusion but a piece of what is variously called metaphysics, or definition, or invoking a rule. That is, statements about object just count as statements about sense data. In those terms it cannot be false, or even wrong, but is rather misplaced.

So a translation (interpretation) would have the form :

(This collection of sense-data statements) is true IFF (this statement about a material object)

A rough example, the ubiquitous cup...

(I see a red quadrilateral and a red ovoid and another ovoid) is true IFF this is a red cup.

Now I hope it is plain both that this is the consequence of Ayer's position, and that it is absurd. A cup is not equivalent to a collection of sense data. And it's not just that it is entirely possible to have the sense data and not the cup, or the cup and not the sense data, but that the supposed equivalence is between entirely different things. The analogy is not like the mistake in saying chalk is a type of wood, but like saying chalk is a type of democracy. Material objects are not sense data.

This is why one cannot answer the questions @Corvus is so insistent on. They are not coherent enough to have an answer; or if you prefer, the answer is Sense and Sensibilia.

Ayer.

...different senses... — frank

I think it clear from Austin that there are not here two differing senses of "see". But I take it you are setting out what Ayer is claiming, rather than evaluating it?

In the first case, what I saw does not exist as a material object. Therefore, it's a sense datum. — frank

Yes, that seems to be his argument. It's dreadful.

In other words, he's saying that the sense data theorists isn't offering us any needed revisions to everyday speech, but rather offering jargon that's helpful for special purposes. — frank

Ok.

The point is that we are talking about a logical ground to believe in the world when not perceiving the world.  Please ask yourself, what is your logical ground for believing in the world when not perceiving the world.  Please don't say the world exists even when you are not perceiving it, because it is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the basis for scepticim regarding the external world. — Corvus

As Hume showed in relation to inductive reasoning, there is no purely logical justification for believing that any of the observed natural regularities will continue to hold. That is because it is not logically contradictory that they may not hold.

However, we have good inductive (not deductive, mind) reason to believe they will hold, since they have never reliably been observed to fail. Hume might say this is merely thinking based on habit, but nonetheless we have good pragmatic reasons to believe that the plethora of observed natural invariances will not suddenly cease to exist. This belief is consistent with the whole coherent and consistent body of scientific knowledge and everyday experience and observations.

The same goes for the belief that things persist when unperceived: that they do persist is merely the inference to the best explanation for why things generally will be found where they were last seen, absent them having been moved in the interim.

Of course, it is not logically contradictory that things should cease to exist and then come back into existence again, but considered against the whole body of science and everyday observations it is highly implausible.

The biggest knock against Popper's theory.. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good argument, but Lakatos' research projects or Watkins' "Confirmable and influential Metaphysics" had the potential to overcome this problem. The real knock-out blow was Feyerabend's careful historical falsification, for philosophers, and Structure of Scientific Revolutions for everyone else.

What progressed was a spurning of attempts to found science on a "formal" system that ensured or at least explained it's capacity to produce truth, or truthiness, or some such, in favour of a "sociological" approach, explaining success in terms of such things as open discourse, reproducibility and honesty.

And that, interestingly enough, corresponds nicely with Lecture X of the book at hand.

...saying it is "meaningless" to even talk of certain things... — Count Timothy von Icarus

The biographic accounts I have read put this approach, at least in Oxford, firmly on Ayer. Before the war the Dons were apparently beset and confounded by earnest young men clutching Language, Truth and Logic, interrupting their lectures on Kant and Hegel with "But I do not understand what you mean by...".

I share your preference for embodied cognition, but unfortunately I will have to echo the young men here, since I do not have a clear way to unpack what you have said in the remainder of your post.

...different senses...
— frank
I think it clear from Austin that there are not here two differing senses of "see". But I take it you are setting out what Ayer is claiming, rather than evaluating it? — Banno

Yes. I think Ayers would say that whether there are two senses or not should be decided empirically. I like that.

It strikes me as most absurd that folk think there is no reason to supose the world continues on when unobserved - when one has been unconscious, for instance.

Perhaps this comes from such folk confusing reason with deduction?

Far and away the simplest supposition is that when you are asleep, the world continues on without you. This accounts for both the overwhelming continuity and small changes that have take place when one wakes, and agrees with the accounts of what occurred, as given by those who stayed awake...

But to rationalise in this way is also preposterous. It's not as if such a justification could be better grounded than what it is supposed to be justifying!

Realising that the world continues in your absence is a key step in developmental psychology, one that it seems folk here have either skipped or unlearned. But I'm confident these folk will demonstrate their understanding of object permanence outside of the Philosophy Forum, and that this is the sort of aberration suitable for @Ciceronianus' latest thread.

That is, I call bullshit.

Sure. A great point. :up:
Although I recall Hume had problem with induction for being circular or question-begging type of reasoning.

From my point of view, if someone had a bad memory or have had little or not enough experience of the observations, induction doesn't work for him. In these cases, inductive reasoning cannot be a good ground for believing in something. If there is a possibility of even one failing, then it cannot be a law or principle.

Hume seems to be in the position that inductive reason (because it is based on habit and customs) can only offer us probable knowledge of the world, hence it cannot be a good ground for believing in the world.

Of course, it is not logically contradictory that things should cease to exist and then come back into existence again, but considered against the whole body of science and everyday observations it is highly implausible. — Janus

There are many sceptical discussions even on the whole body of scientific knowledge for their validity, because all scientific knowledge is obtained from the phenomenon i.e. sensibility via observations. Obviously there are problems in the certainty and accuracy of the scientific knowledge too. Even Science cannot escape from Scepticism. This is a totally separate topic. Maybe you could start a new topic with this issue.