I’m just saying that you’re not acquainted with mental phenomena. We’re so unacquainted with mental phenomena that we cannot even describe one. If we were acquainted with mental phenomena this whole issue wouldn’t be such a struggle. — NOS4A2
Most philosophers wedded to some notion of acquaintance end up rejecting the idea that we have acquaintance even with bread-box sized objects, immediately before us, under ideal conditions of perception. The test to determine with what we are acquainted is often reminiscent of the method Descartes recommended for finding secure foundations of knowledge—the method of doubt (see Russell 1912: 74; Price 1932: 3). If you are considering whether you are acquainted with something, ask yourself whether you can conceive of being in this very state when the putative object does not exist. If you can, you should reject the suggestion that you are directly acquainted with the item in question. Based on possibilities of error about physical objects from illusion, hallucination and dreams, it seemed to most that we could rule out acquaintance with physical objects, future events, other minds, and facts that involve any of these as constituents. Consider, for example, physical objects. It seems that the evidence that my experiences give me right now for supposing that there is a computer before me is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that I am now having a vivid dream or a vivid hallucination. If this is right, then the experiential evidence I possess cannot be the computer or any of its constituents. Neither the computer, nor any of its constituents, need be present in that vivid dream or hallucination. Even when our evidence for the presence of physical objects seems as good as we can get, then, we are not acquainted with physical objects or their constituents. (However, some have recently defended the view that we can be acquainted with physical objects in perception. See, for example, Johnston 2004.) Traditionally, acquaintance theorists have taken the most promising candidates for entities with which we can be acquainted to be conscious states of mind (e.g., an experience of pain, a sensation of red) and their properties (e.g., painfulness, redness). Russell and many other acquaintance theorists also take themselves to be acquainted with facts, i.e., with something’s having some property—at least mental facts (e.g., my being in pain, my desiring food, my experiencing red).
I say that I am acquainted with an object when I have a direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e., when I am directly aware of the object itself. When I speak of a cognitive relation here, I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes judgment, but the sort which constitutes presentation. (Russell 1910/11: 108)
Russell thus characterizes acquaintance as a relation of direct awareness, a relation in which, as Russell and some others have put it, something is “presented” or simply “given” to the subject.
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Acquaintance with something does not consist in forming any judgment or thought about it, or in having any concept or representation of it.
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We have already seen that for Russell acquaintance is nonjudgmental or nonpropositional; to be acquainted with something is to be aware of it in a way that does not essentially involve being aware that it is so-and-so. Russell seems to be extending this to knowledge by acquaintance: it is knowledge of something, and logically independent of knowledge that something is so-and-so.
I don't think it's a matter of knowledge as much as an interpretation of what we know. — Moliere
I don't know why I'd prioritize ipseity over the object... the sacrifice of fidelity to our intuitions. — Moliere
Rather, I can't see how we'd be able to tell the story about retina, photons, or brains without knowing -- rather than inferring -- about the world. — Moliere
Else, "retina, photons, brains" are themselves just inferences about an experiential projection in a causal relationship with a reality we know nothing about, but just make guesses about. — Moliere
The only problem with this view being that we do know things, so it falls in error on the other side -- on the side of certain knowledge which rejects beliefs which could be wrong, when all proper judgment takes place exactly where we could be wrong. — Moliere
There's a difference between being able to accomplish something, and knowing something.
I'd liken our neuroscientists to medieval engineers -- they can make some observations and throw together some catapults, but they do not know the mechanical laws of Newton or its extensions.
It's more because we're ignorant of how this whole thing works -- even at the conceptual level, which is why it's interesting in philosophy -- so I wouldn't believe it without more. I'd think the person was making some sort of mistake along the way, in the same way that I thought about the Google employee who thought that later iterations of ChatGPT are conscious. — Moliere
But given that experience is an act involving a practical relationship between oneself and the rest of the world (and never a space located in the body with area and volume), it follows that objects are often participants of that act. — NOS4A2
Maybe it’s relevant for indirect realists and dualists of all types, no doubt, but my relevant concern is why they’re begging the question, why they proliferate unobservables into a menagerie of ineffable terms and concepts, and why they’d eschew the 3rd-person perspective in favor of one that cannot even see his own ears, let alone what is occurring in the skull. — NOS4A2
It’s not begging the question to accept the reality of a first-person perspective with phenomenal character; it’s the foundation upon which the dispute between naive and indirect realism rests.
Their argument is over whether or not distal objects are constituents of this first-person phenomenal character.
We don't need to talk about what a cow is doing to talk about what the brain is doing. — Michael
But to talk about what the brain is doing when presented with a cow... — Mww
You post has no content. — Banno
I would ask whether anything could ever count as indirect under this view. — Apustimelogist
(using this is a prompt - I'm not replying to your argument or position, just fyi, below:We don’t perceive both the object and the representation of the object. — Mww
What do you think "constituent" means? — Michael
there is no direct link between most things in the world and our experience of them. This is, in fact, the hard problem — AmadeusD
using arguments like this seems to me to entirely side-step the question, and assumes that the very concept of 'direct'ness is somehow intensional and not something which can be ascertained 'correctly' seems both unsatisfactory, and under-explanatory. — AmadeusD
Well alright, but then I think I would be interested in whether you would think it acceptable for an indirect realist to call you an indirect realist, since you are not necessarily contradicting their beliefs at all as far as I can tell. — Apustimelogist
I don't see the contradiction in the idea that there are things that happen beyond our immediate perceptions which we create stories to try and explain even if we cannot definitively know anything in a perfect way. — Apustimelogist
I am not sure I understand. — Apustimelogist
I really don't think its as complicated as you make out. The only way information gets into our brain and cause sensory experiences is by stimulating sensory receptors. The light hitting my retina is causing patterns of excitation at any given time. If artificially exciting them in an identical way did not produce the same results it would seem inexplicable to me. Why wouldn't it? To me that is an unnecessary skepticism. — Apustimelogist
The difference now is, you said “talk of what the cow is doing”, which presupposes it as an extant experience. — Mww
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