Failing to find any plausible contrast, we realize that the modifier 'directly' doesn't do any work here: it is meaningless. — SophistiCat
But: there is one kind of shift of meaning which is both disastrous and characteristically philosophical, and that is to make the criteria for what falls under a concept either so severe, or so loose, that either nothing at all can, or everything must, fall under it.
thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing out terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the contrast associated with them.
What is conspicuous about Linguistic Philosophy is its abdication of any kind of normative role, both in its practice and in its programmatic announcements. — Richard B
Austin spends quite a lot of time in 'Sense and Sensibilia' explaining that there is no point in claiming that we only ever see things indirectly, just precisely because, if that is the case, we no longer have any idea what seeing directly would even mean — cherryorchard
Austin's argument is about what he sees as the misuse of particular words in philosophy. — cherryorchard
We all understand and accept that different creatures with visual organs perceive the world differently. Only certain wavelengths of light are perceptible to human eyes, etc. So of course there is no 'one' objectively correct way of seeing the world. — cherryorchard
Unfortunately, Austin doesn’t talk much about why someone would claim indirect realism, nor why it is important to tear it apart (and “realism”) — Antony Nickles
'Words function through contrast with an antithesis' seems like a perfectly valid and meaningful theory of how words function. — cherryorchard
Can anyone think of any word that is meaningful without a contrast? I haven't seen an example yet. — cherryorchard
The word 'shoe', for instance, obviously gets its meaning from the fact that it refers only to things that are shoes, and not to things that aren't. — cherryorchard
to make the criteria for what falls under a concept either so severe, or so loose, that either nothing at all can, or everything must, fall under it. The term then loses any contrast… [ Philosophers ] do it, from the essentially philosophical desire to say something wholly all-embracing, not realizing that this ambition is incompatible with saying anything at all.
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