We have been dealing with the visual sense of the word, and I don't think it is going to help to bring in other senses of 'see'. — Janus
Nice summary. I was—or Banno was—hung up on the connoted attribution of agency to an object that “presents itself.” It wasn’t clear to me how we go from the object as “constituted by the subject through intentional acts” to the object as that which is doing the presenting. I’m not saying this doesn’t work, just that the locution is not clear to me — Jamal
The work of the applied scientist is often popularly described as if it were a series of hostile acts: ‘So-and-so wrested from the soil a new source of food’, ‘Whosits forced the atom to give up its secret’. These are grossly misleading descriptions of scientific behavior.(George Kelly)
At least on the forum, productive discussions of direct vs indirect realism tend to require pinning down where the disagreement is between disputants. — fdrake
It takes a bit of mental contortion to construe the kind of object people are talking about in a direct vs indirect realism debate as transparently an intentional one…At least on the forum, productive discussions of direct vs indirect realism tend to require pinning down where the disagreement is between disputants. — fdrake
I take Husserl to be neither a direct nor an indirect realist , and his use of the term ‘intentional’ is entirely different in its sense from the various ways it is used in analytic philosophy, or in debates between direct and indirect realists. — Joshs
Disagree. Indirect and Direct Realism are part of epistemology. — RussellA
I think everyone should be sceptical, whether the Indirect or Direct Realist. Who wants to unquestionably believe everything they are told. — RussellA
While the direct realist may not always know what it is that he sees, it can usually be found out and explained. The indirect realist, however, assumes that he never sees things directly, only representations, e.g. 1 mm dots, and that has, in fact, epistemological consequences. As long as the assumption is that you never see things directly, then skepticism follows. Not so for the direct realist. — jkop
The Indirect Realist says that in the sentence "I see a straight stick that appears bent", the word "see" is being used as a figure of speech and not literally, as in "I can clearly see your future".
The Direct Realist says that there is no difference between a word being used as a figure of speech or literally. — RussellA
The direct realist doesn't have BETTER reasons to think the red dot in their visual experience is caused by mars — flannel jesus
There might be shame in attempting to continue, rather than turn aside. Coherence has merit. — Banno
Direct Realists are immune to eye problems? — flannel jesus
..speculative metaphysics is not necessarily inconsistent (Hegel for example) — Janus
So is the conservation of energy a fact about the world, or a way of checking that our talk about energy is consistent? And if this latter, then it is not itself consistent, but the measure against which we determine consistency. — Banno
It might be fact about the world, or it might not. — Janus
Perhaps conservation laws are take to be true in the way axioms are - in order to get on with doing stuff. Noether's theorem shows how conservation laws are a result of assumptions of symmetry and continuity — Banno
We can't falsify it; we can't demonstrate it. But we can assume it. — Banno
I don't think you're making a very compelling case that indirect realists need to have any special skepticism in regards to what they see. — flannel jesus
I'm suggesting that perhaps the conservation of energy is no more a fact than the length of the standard metre was 1m. — Banno
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