:up:

I'd say you're onto something deep!

The appeal to reason works because it is appealing. (or doesn't because it fails to meet the standards of reason -- it is unappealing by the standard of reason)

The trick with aesthetics is to get it off the ground you have to, in some sense, be talking about more than what you individually like. And that's similar to the appeal to reason -- it's just appealing to another sensibility or standard.

But words and sentences are something else. The fact that the same sentence can be expressed by multiple utterances (a text engraved in stone vs a professor's quotation,) show this. — frank

Bold of you to assume that they're the same sentence. ;)

Something I cannot decide, not even with an aesthetic guess, whether it is or is not mind-independent is individuation. It's a phenomena which is understandable within both language and perception: Names-predicates, in the first case, and object-foreground in the latter. And it's understandable as a real phenomena, similar to the way I was talking about causation earlier -- perhaps we trip across individuation because it's a real phenomena rather than because it's our way of dividing up the world. How could you possibly tell the difference?

Not sure exactly what you mean. In case it helps, for me the lifeworld has birds and blunders that we can talk about. Such articulated entities are just there for us. A (mistaken or less advisable) deworlding approach plucks all the leaves away to find the real artichoke. We acted as though we had tried to find the real artichoke by stripping it of its leaves. — plaque flag

Language-as-organ puts it in a similar category to eyes-as-organ -- both organs of perception which compose a body. So rather than semantics as something which is distinct from our perceptions it puts them together in a phrase.

Saying the whole is not knowable seems to imply that there is that which is unknowable. If there were that which is unknowable, would it follow that it is real, or would you say the word "real" here would be misapplied? — Janus

I agree with your deductions.

I think I'd have to remain agnostic there. I can't know if it's misapplied because it's not known. And I'm not sure how I get to that, now that I think on it -- I was clarifying and answering, not arguing.

I take it that when you you say "knowable" you mean 'discursively knowable' and then you go on to wonder if there could be another way to "settle it". Would settling it, for you, imply some kind of non-discursive knowing or just arriving at a feeling of its being settled? — Janus

In a way it would have to be a feeling that it's settled, but I'm not sure if that would be discursive or non-discursive. Gets back to the first question -- "the whole" is what I'm thinking, but I'm not sure how to get there since it wasn't in the categories posited so far.

Do you think what is real to us is the whole of what is real? — Janus

Put like that -- I believe it to be the case, but I do not know it to be the case. And I suspect the whole is not knowable, so knowledge cannot settle whether there is more to the real than what is real to us.

So what does? That's something I still ask and wonder about.

Invokes or evokes? I'm guessing you think counting life as a mystery, as opposed to merely thinking it absurd, opens the door to mysticism and/or religion, and for that reason you don't favour the framing? — Janus

Yes.

Though I want to highlight that it's very much a for me thing. For me, since philosophy is at least fairly personal, it's just what it looks like to me if asked. I'm definitely skeptical of mysticism and religion, but in a way that's not meant to posit myself as somehow above it. I couldn't make a distinction between invokes/evokes logically, though my word choice indicates what I feel.

So just to be clear you think that what appears real to us is (necessarily the whole of) what is real per se? — Janus

Hrm this is sounding similar to my discussion with @RussellA now...

I'm getting stuck on the parenthetical comment since you're wanting clarity -- can you put the question without parentheses?

Yes, the idea that life is absurd, at least as Camus framed it, is that it cannot answer the questions most important to us, and I think in that sense it follows that life is a mystery. — Janus

Sounds about right to me. "Mystery" invokes more than I like, so I like to say "absurd", but I admit functional equivalence.

Heh. That's not a thought I want to dissolve. I'm admitting it's the weak point in my thinking! :) -- it's something I see as a serious problem if I were to take my posited categories as the real. I'm making up another set of categories to offer to solve one set of problems, but admitting that these are provisional [EDIT:and] are for a particular line of thinking rather than universal.

Yea. I don't think they're the type of thing that can be held. — frank

Sounds good to me.

I think we've known this for millennia, wine, and all that. My only point was that those who are claiming that thoughts reduce to bodily activities that can be read by others is wrong. Thoughts and feelings are there even while there are no voluntary muscle movements. — frank

I actually was wondering so I'm glad to have clarified.

I'm not so sure -- but it'd be nitpicky and off the beaten path, since I've already pointed out that this is basically the weirdest part of what I've said. I'm not sure how direct perception of other minds works -- it's a bit odd. There are prima facie reasons to believe it, but it's definitely against usual way of thinking of things and a hard case.

I don't think a thought is like a blob that dwells somewhere. Thoughts come and go, like little moments of reflection. Parcels of awareness or recognition. I think this is the conventional view. — frank

Sounds about right to me. So no need for a mind at all to hold them, right?

Whatever they are, they exist even though the body of the thinker is paralyzed. We know this because we regularly give neuromuscular blockade drugs that stop everything except autonomic activities. If we don't also give sedatives to put the mind asleep, the patient will hear everything that's said, and worse, feel everything that might be happening, like surgery.

So the notion that thinking is something the body does is just wrong. — frank

I think that "giving sedatives" would count as the body still. It's a molecule, right? Not a mental-thing?

The blood moves, the oxygen burns, the sugar gets converted -- there's a body there with molecules. DIfferent drugs have incredibly different effects on the body. Is that any wonder that what we like to call the mind would respond to the molecules of the world? It's part of it after all.

Language is the organ of perception. — plaque flag

That's a great phrase which highlights why I didn't feel comfortable with the original distinction between Semantic/Phenomenological direct realism.

Yes. But that's part of my amusement / frustration. One inherits a methodical pretense of isolation behind a screen as the given. The self, its language, its logical norms...all of these are taken for granted. — plaque flag

:up:

But I started in no better a place, and I don't pretend to be able to become unthrown, so (for me) it's a matter of more thoroughly appropriating the hermeneutical situation, getting clear on what I'm projecting unwittingly, on what metaphors might be controlling me without me seeing them. — plaque flag

I think that's a worthy pursuit. One might even go so far as to say that it's in the vein of knowing yourself. :)

In general, it's a question of the contingent being mistaken for the necessary, like a painted wall we don't think to push against and check. — plaque flag

Spot on. It's easier to fool oneself into thinking something which is contingent is necessary than it should be!

As I see, the whole shebang about subtratums (the 'Real' beneath 'Appearance' and 'Mentality') is an awkward response to the fact that we be mistaken, say something about the world that we later withdraw. — plaque flag

I think that's partially true, but also there's the whole Cartesian history up to Russell's neutral monism -- looking for the substance of everything is a question that's part of the tradition so it's sort of a question that keeps coming around due to it being part of the traditional readings.

But you still have a body, yes? So no need for a mind to hold the thoughts?

In my scheme so far, thoughts could be entities within time with their own kind of causality. We know how thoughts work because our bodies have thoughts all the time, and we see the thoughts of others as well. They are expressed through language, frequently, but then the usual notions about animal-thoughts will have to be considered, and I very much doubt that all thoughts must be linguistic -- else Hegel's reference to picture-thinking wouldn't make sense (as well as the picture theory of meaning)

What if it's just the thoughts that exist, and the mind that gets made up?

The same question. If both pain and the colour red are tied to the world, how does the Direct Realist know that the object of one perception, eg pain, doesn't exist outside the mind, but the object of another perception, eg red, does exist outside the mind. — RussellA

Pain clearly indicates something about the world -- a small part of the entirity, but the small part that I happen to care about most. It's the "outside of" and "the mind" locutions I'm questioning. I'm not my mind. I don't even know if minds exist. But I am a body, at least, and that includes all the senses -- not just sight. It includes pain. I'm within a world, and sometimes the world causes pain.

According to Realism, there is a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. According to Idealism, there isn't a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. — RussellA

Is it the mind's perception? Or a bodies perception?

In a sense, we can only see the surface, we can only see the red post-box, We cannot directly see the substratum beneath the surface, the thing outside our mind, the other side of our senses, the thing that caused us to see a red post-box. — RussellA

Right! And the reason, so I'm suggesting, that we cannot see the substratum is that it doesn't exist at all.

But post boxes do.

Do you doubt that what appears real to us, what can appear real to us, is not (or at least not necessarily or not the whole of) what is real per se? — Janus

Yes!

Or, at least, this line of thinking is going in that direction.

I don't have it all worked out, of course. I don't have much problem with illusions or total hallucinations being direct perceptions -- they are very clearly direct perceptions, because the perceptive apparatus is perceiving within its bounds as a body within the world in both cases: Like the blind spot in the middle of our vision, just because I don't see the end of my nose doesn't mean I don't see the computer screen, and total hallucinations are almost always explicable, by total number of them, by dreams or drugs.

The really weird case is other minds: direct realism turns the problem of other minds from "How do we know other minds exist?" in the sense that we don't know to the sense that we do know, and that's a bit odd in comparison to our usual intuitions about other minds.

Obviously it takes time to get to know someone, but we do get to know people too.

Of course the latter is not something we could ever discover, but is just a logical distinction between what appears to us and what is independently of us. I'd say it is of importance, because it reminds us that life is, fundamentally, a mystery. So I don't count it as a "little story" but as a realization that is central to human life.

Well now you had to go add more to it than a distinction between Direct and Indirect Realism. ;) -- in the context of the thread it felt like a small story of no consequence.

I'm not sure I agree that life is fundamentally a mystery. . . . mostly I'd prefer to say "absurd", but that's pretty close in functional terms, too.

But I think I could render life as mysterious whether I were a direct realist or an indirect realist, hence why I thought it was a little story.

How does the Direct Realist explain, given that all their knowledge of the world external to their senses comes through their senses, how the perceiver knows that one perception is not direct, eg, pain, but another perception is direct, eg, the colour red ? — RussellA

That one's easy -- pain is tied to the world. :D

Predicates are distinct from properties. Predicates are linguistic whilst properties are extralinguistic. Predicates are tied to particular languages, in that schwarz is tied to German as black is tied to English, but the property black is tied to neither. There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties whether or not there are any languages or language-users.

To my understanding, there are two types of Direct Realism, Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) and Semantic Direct Realism (SDR). PDR is an direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. SDR is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. As PDR is extralinguistic and SDR is linguistic, properties exist in PDR whilst predicates exist in SDR.

I can perceive that an apple has the property of greenness even if I don't know the name of that particular shade of green, but I need the predicates within language in order to say that "the apple is green". — RussellA

So far I've said there are events, relations, time, the surface, entities -- and certainly relied upon the existence of language to say it. Going for a kind of minimalism I try to limit the number of entities and kinds introduced, and this is already a healthy selection of possibles. "Properties" seems to emphasize the visuality of causation and reality, which is a reification and so worth diminishing.

So where you say: "There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties" I would say "There is a real world" -- "out there" in particular is troublesome. Out where? What are we inside of, if not the real world? The imaginary world?

But that is exactly what the Direct Realists is saying. The Direct Realist is saying that they directly know the apple, not just how the apple seems, even though there is a causal chain through time from the apple to our perception of the apple.

The Direct Realist holds a contradictory position. First, that they cannot see through causal chains backwards through time and second that they can directly see the prior cause of a perception. — RussellA

That's interesting.

What if what we directly perceive is not causal chains? It's not like all of reality is composed of causal chains. It's also composed of entities, right? And there are other sorts of relations which exist.

Let's call it "weak Direct Realism" -- for the weak direct realist as long as there is some kind of total world which we have direct access to then Direct Realism holds. Without committing to a particular kind of weak Direct Realism, but just as a for instance: If we directly perceive entities, but we do not directly perceive causal chains, then this is still a form of direct realism. So we might say, in the case of the apple, we have direct access to language, time, entities, and relations -- but not causal chains. We infer causal chains, and because causal chains are real several cultures have inferred causal chains as well -- but upon comparison of the concepts of causal chains we can see that they don't all mean the same thing. So we deny the notion that causal chains are necessary to thinking: rather, while our perception does not have direct access to causal chains, our knowledge does -- and that knowledge is a social product, thereby explaining the differences. (knowledge as being-able)

In the absence of a Direct Realist arguing their case, I would have thought that your representation is the opposite of what a Direct Realist believes, in that it is surely the case that the Direct Realist believes that "we see reality as it is, that the substrate is real and we directly perceive it". — RussellA

That's where I was going with my notion of the surface: so there is a case rather than the positions in abstract.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHuX4huT1sc&ab_channel=StonedMeadowOfDoom

The AI selected a new one for me today so I share.

:) Thanks. That's nice to hear.

The way I've been saying we know cause-and-effect is that we learn it from our culture. We know of black holes because they fit within a wide body of knowledge used by several people. Observation is important to science, but it's a social process which produces knowledge rather than a methodology. The methods get developed along with the knowledge, and vary depending upon what we're interested in.

Mind-independence and indirectness, as concepts, have so far been my target as bothersome notions -- the former because we don't know enough about minds to know either way, and the latter because it seems to posit some kind of ultimate reality that we are approximating towards which is similar to the problem of mind-independence in that since it cannot be known we cannot know we are approximating towards that reality, and therefore we have no reason to claim our knowledge has any relation at all to that notion. It functions like a thing-in-itself.

without worrying too much about ultimate reality or mind-independence — Jamal

That makes sense. I'm thinking in terms of "What is real?" throughout, and trying to see if I could pick up a position in this endless debate. It's not one I commonly jump into anymore, because my notions of metaphysics and reality, as I've demonstrated so far, aren't really congruent to the discussion most of the time but I thought I'd give it a try anyways.

Hrm, it's not the name though it's what you set out for the name -- in relation to causation no direct realist would say "we can see causal chains all the way back" because we are situated in time. Like I said before, cause-and-effect relies upon a notion of time. Even more, cause-and-effect cannot be determined in the abstract -- the billiard balls can have two or more possible prior states within the game of billiards. We already know the objects and how they behave: that is, events have entities in them, and entities behave in different ways. I'm not so sure about properties and all the rest. Why would there be properties? Aren't these just predicates?

Rather than saying a direct realist would hold that we see reality as it is, that the substrate is real and we directly perceive it, I'd say that the direct realist states that there's nothing indirect. That doesn't mean that upon looking at billiard balls a direct realist believes they'll see the causal chain all the way back. We are still situated in time, after all -- which is why cause-and-effect necessarily requires a notion of time, and events require entities -- there's a lot already assumed in the discussion that's not really demonstrable as much as needed to even talk

That's like saying you are an Atheist Christian, or a vegan carnivore. — RussellA

Well -- maybe we need new terms then. Perhaps the way these have been distinguished isn't true of what people believe. What I've been calling a set-up. Not that set-ups are bad -- they help us to make distinctions and try to understand ourselves and others in relation to one another. Just that they can be made so clear that they no longer represent anything that people believe.

I had seriously considered a higher degree in either the sciences or philosophy, and had that opportunity.

One of the reasons I respect the institution so much is that academics will say what you're saying -- even in print. Several books give frank advice about the prospects, and I just had to realize I was the person who went there to be able to support themselves. So, science degree, but I read philosophy on the side. Then, industry.

Cool :)

That's good enough for me. I certainly encourage criticism of bad things.

There are definitely good criticisms to be made of the university, especially in its modern incarnation.

I suppose I just feel the need to stick up for the institution of philosophy, and the work of academics. I really am in debt to them. Without the modern liberal university I'd still be too poor to live my life, and confused on top of that. I don't feel right if I don't acknowledge that and stand up for it on occasion.

Is it any more complicated that for every effect there is a cause. — RussellA

Well, yes.

One thing that cause and effect naturally invokes is time -- and the way scientists, philosophers, and historians treat time varies greatly.

Then you have to have a theory of cause and effect which is usually to say they are events, and effects are those which come after causes. But what is an event? Well, that depends on the area of study -- an event in history won't be the same as an event in an ELISA experiment won't be the same thing as an event in phenomenology.

Then you have to have some kind of theory of the relationship between events. It can't just be any old event that happens to follow another one -- otherwise the rooster crowing in the morning would cause the sun to rise, to use a more Humean example of causation.


Given the complexity of cause I think the summation that every event must have a cause, or for every effect there is a cause is something of a simplification of a very difficult concept or feature of reality to untangle. In fact, I don't think it can be untangled -- I think it's more correct to view it as a multifarious entity.

But, let's put this to the side. It's a bit off the beaten path, though it looked at first like it might be promising with respect to in/direct realism since causation is a little different from color and shape and what have you. In TPF discussions I'll stick with anti-realist Direct Realist -- it seems to fit, given what's been said.

Ten philosophers expert in the same field will have ten different theories. As Searle said:
"I realize that the great geniuses of our tradition were vastly better philosophers than any of us alive and that they created the framework within which we work. But it seems to me they made horrendous mistakes." — RussellA

True.

But then we can point to the different notions of causality in the sciences. And we can contrast those notions of cause with notions of causality which historians use.

It's not just the philosophers who generate a multitude of theories of causation. I mention them first because they have my highest respect with regards to causality -- if they can't figure it out then I feel justified in saying causality is multifarious, only partially known, and so not innate.

Though we do know that after 3.5 billion years of life's evolution, the concepts in the human mind are more complex that the concepts in the mind of the earliest bacteria. — RussellA

That's interesting.

I wouldn't say I know that, but it's interesting to attribute minds to bacteria. Would they have the concept of causality?

Also it's interesting to think about concepts in terms of complexity. How would the complexity of a concept be established?

Still -- we just don't know enough about the relationship between human biology and human psychology to be able to say our belief in causality is an evolutionary phenomenon. Cultural selection doesn't behave along the same lines as natural selection, and I'd say that it's our culture which gives us our mental background, that teaches us about the world, that shapes our psychology in a specific instance (a specific, rather than general psychology).

A very easy way to see how these are different is to note how our species is still alive, but cultures have died.

Then what has been the point of 3.5 billion years of evolution if an instinctive feel for causality is not part of the structure of the human brain. — RussellA

I'm not sure how to answer this -- evolution doesn't have a point, does it?

Evolution works at the level of a species. While we are members of that species, we are not the species. Species don't have concepts, but individual humans do. And depending on how we use "causality" then various species also have a notion of causality or don't as the case may be. But it'd still only apply to individuals of a species, rather than the species as a whole. It's a mereological thing -- the whole doesn't have concepts, and evolution is a theory about the whole, not its parts.

(EDIT: Regarding wholes/parts -- of course biologists study individual animal psychologies, and such, too -- that's not what I mean. Just that we can't make the inference from the general theory of speciation to concepts which a species must have to survive)

Also it's worth noting, especially in light of the notion of popularizing philosophy, that the prototype was an aristocrat -- that philosophy wasn't for us.

While I don't deny there have been some strong philosophers who earn their bread in schools, it does seem dangerous to make philosophy so respectable. The prototype was poor and eventually executed. Maybe the 'spiritual' function of philosophy moved into literature, art, politics. — green flag

I don't feel that way. Though I have an expansive notion of philosophy, too.

The academics are those who dedicate their professional life to it -- which is important! There are actors which dedicate their lives to the craft of acting, and I'd put these in similar positions. More importantly, though, I like to note how I benefit from people who have done this. Without academics I wouldn't be thinking what I think today. I owe an intellectual debt to the institution.

I'd say that the prototype is more Plato than Socrates -- Plato learned what that kind of philosophy would do, so set up a school to influence the youth in a less politically charged way. Then he wrote texts for his fellows to read with the purpose of improving the health of the city. At least as I understand it.

From that angle, safe philosophy is all there is :D

I can see the kind-of aspect, because a lot of us try to get back to the original texts and such -- so it's not quite at the same level of, say, Alain de Botton. Plus the conversational aspect, where we're not just reading but also able to converse -- that makes it a bit different from some of what's associated with popularizing.

One bit of pop philosophy that I still pretty much adore is Socrates' Cafe style meetings. I used to run those back in college, and I thought it was great.

Also, hey --- this website! Kind of. Maybe?

Give me a guy who reads nothing but pop philosophy books and who is healthy, happy, creative and productive over one who has spent his time reading the complete works of Kant and endlessly examining his life any day. — Mikie

Give me the corrupt, the endlessly unsatisfied, the unproductive and miserable! The lay-abouts, the good-for-nothings, the hippies, and the rabble! :D

If causation was not innate and was something learned, as with all things, some people would learn it and some wouldn't.

Imagine someone who hadn't leaned about causation, who were oblivious to the concept of cause and effect. Would they be able to survive in a world where things happen, where future situations are determined by past events. Suppose there was someone who treated the law of causation as optional, who turned a blind eye to the fact that present acts have future consequences. Why would they eat, why would they drink, why would they move out of the path of a speeding truck, why would they study, why would they do anything, why wouldn't they just curl up in a corner of the room.

I would suggest that such people would quickly die out, to be inevitably replaced by those well aware that present acts do have future consequences.

After life's 3.5 billion years of evolution in synergy with the unforgiving harshness of the world it has been born into, something as important to survival as knowing that present acts do lead to future consequences will become built into the genetic structure of the brain, meaning that within the aeons of time life has survived on a harsh planet, knowledge that present acts do lead to future consequences will become an instinctive part of human nature.

As with other features of the human animal, an instinctive feel for causation will be no different to other things we feel, such as pain and the colour red. — RussellA

The story from evolution to concept isn't understood. But, even more, I agree with your first sentence, and note that people unable to figure out how things work do in fact die -- that's why we have to take care of our children for so long. It takes forever for them to develop, relative to many other species. It's a massive undertaking to watch over our kind as they adjust and learn the world.

My scenario pointed out that the philosophers have come up with at least three distinct theories of cause, rather than a total absence of the notion of cause -- giving me reason to doubt that cause is innate (else wouldn't they have come up with the same theories?).

I'd say the reason people learn this notion so often has more to do with our environment than it does with ourselves. That is, it's real.

But that substrate thing? Naw.

Realism is defined as the assertion of the existence of a reality independently of our thoughts or beliefs about it, so a Realist wouldn't deny that there is a sub-stratum. — RussellA

If Realism is the thesis that there is a sub-stratum then I'd fit anti-realist.

Just not sure what to make of the belief that the tree exists whether it's in a mind or not, given the previous notion of mind-independence. The moon spins. People feel. Perspectives fit within the surface, just as minds do, just as moons do.

I think people would be tempted to call the surface something like "experience", but I would do no such thing. "Experience" used like this is a reification. This notion of reality is that it is irreducible, and absurd -- to call it a substrate is to give it too much meaning, because there's no base.

The Phenomenological Direct Realist believes they directly perceive something existing in a mind-independent world even if they don't know its name. The Semantic Direct Realist believes they directly perceive an apple existing in a mind-independent world.

For the Direct Realist, the terms phenomenology and semantics distinguish important features of their view of reality. — RussellA

It still feels like a set-up to me. Wouldn't the direct realist have to be committed to the notion that our phenomenology is part of the world, just as semantics are? "Mind-independent" is doing a lot of work in distinguishing the direct from the indirect realist.

Let's just say the surface is mind-independent. Minds, whatever that happens to be, are within the surface, but do not define the surface. And, there's no substrate.

So by the set-up I'd be an anti-realist Direct realist :D -- maybe not so bad.

That's true, but I have an innate belief in the law of causation, in that I know that the things I perceive in my mind through my senses have been caused by things existing outside my mind in a mind-independent world.

My belief in the law of causation is not based on reason, but has been been built into the structure of my brain through 3.5 billion years of life's evolution within the world.

I have no choice in not believing in the law of causation as I have in not believing I feel pain or see the colour red. — RussellA

I don't know.

I think "causation" is one of those habits which we learn from those around us who teach us how to use it. It's different from what we feel, i.e. red or pain. We infer causation, and there are many ways of inferring causation. I'd say I am more on the side of Hume in saying that it's a habit of thought, but I wouldn't go so far as to specify it as a necessary connection between events. I think it's a much looser concept than that, as we can see the various notions of cause put forward by philosophers: Aristotle's four-causes, Hume's necessary connection, and Kant's tri-partite division into three distinct categories where the third is a synthesis of the previous two -- these conceptions of cause are not the same. Philosophers, at least in specifying this habit, are able to make distinctions between ways of thinking about causation, which gives me a reason to doubt that it's some innate idea: some of us have been able to pick it apart and then found different things. So it's more likely that we're inventing causation than it's innate, given the evidence of the intelligent and creative.

But even if causation isn't real, the trees deep in the Amazon live on without my mental blessing. Is that mind-independent?

I agree that there is the surface of perception, cognition and language which is real and we have direct access to, and there is a substratum which is also real. The Indirect Realist believes that they can only make inferences about what exists in this substratum, whilst the Direct Realist believes they can directly perceive what exists in this substratum. — RussellA

In the set up I think I understand the distinction between direct and indirect realist. However, I think I'd call myself a realist, rightly, yet deny there even is a sub-stratum. The surface is all there is which we have direct access to, and there's no reason to believe there's a substratum. That's because without access to the substrate there's no way to check our inferences, or a way to check if there is a relationship between the substrate and the surface. We could only check it against the surface. It may match the substrate, but we'd never know due to its indirectness.

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that the substratum is real and exists. They both perceive, cognize and talk about "apples". The Direct Realist believes that apples exist in a mind-independent world, the Indirect Realist doesn't.

I can perceive things that I don't have words for. For example, exotic fruits of Asia. Therefore, it's possible to be able to perceive an apple without knowing that it has been named "apple".

As both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree they perceive change, we cannot use change to determine who is correct. Therefore, just consider the picture at 230 days. As both the Indirect and Direct Realist are able to perceive things they have no name for, remove any reference to the name" apple". The Direct Realist would argue that the object at day 230 exists as it is seen in a mind-independent world, whilst the Indirect Realist would argue that it doesn't. — RussellA

I feel like this notion of mind-independent world gets too much emphasis for a direct realist's way of putting things. It feels like how the indirect realist interprets the direct realist, rather than how the direct realist defends their view.

I wouldn't reduce reality to either phenomenology or semantics (or science). "Surface" is a metaphor without a counter-part in my way of understanding. I might go so far as to say -- it's all surface! No matter how deeply you dig into the earth, or bite into the apple, or build the transcendental conditions of experience it's just another surface. It's because the surface changes that we reach for these stories about in/direct reality: we like stability. We like being able to predict things. But the world is only partially predictable, and even when it is we frequently change our minds later about how we should predict change.

Rather than adding something in-between myself and reality, I'd just say reality is wider than some system of thought. Systems of thought are build to cohere, and reality is far from coherent. That's why it makes sense to say it's independent of ourselves, at least. We like coherency, and the world resists.

It's all good. I'm still behind myself for the same reasons :D -- two weeks behind, at this point, and still at work during class today. Work picked up, eating into study time (or, for me, focused time -- I run out eventually)

Yes! At least my memory of the lectures is he mentions ruling class ideas pretty frequently. Something that's nice about the lectures is that he's doing a lot of the work in making it relevant to people. I know why I find it relevant, but he's doing a great job of connecting it to the class.

Seems to me that in the example provided they're all apples. That's because you're putting the apple to use to argue against a particular position. They are no longer apples the moment we stop calling them apples. Say when the last picture was thrown into the trash and no one called it an apple anymore. (unless we want to, of course -- the apple can be resurrected in words at any time, just as it never needed to be cast into words to be itself)

In order to judge whether "apple" is the right term at a time we have to have access to the apple. And at any time, even if there is a substrate which holds the properties of the apples beneath perception and cognition and language, then all my use of "apple" will only be embedded in the shared world where the apples change, where we have perspectives, and we have no substratum to settle how it is we should use words. We remain at the surface, which we have direct access to. (surely we have direct access to the indirect reality? In which case, couldn't we just call this the real, and the other the unknown?)

Most of the time I think the indirect realist inserts more than is needed into an ontology. We might as well be anti-realists at that point -- the real is outside of perception, and all we have is perception. But the indirect realist wants to assert, all we have is perception, and there's something real out there underneath it all as an inference, as I understand it in this thread, starting from naive realism -- that what we see is what's the case, modified to our perception.

But if so I think it has to be established by some other means than by looking at change, difference in opinion, or difference in perception because these are realist things -- the realist would just note that things do, in fact, change, or do, in fact, look different at different times, which is why we select different words at different times. What's needed isn't change, but the substratum. Given all the changes we perceive, all the perspectives we have, and that we know true sentences -- how is it we know that the sentence "Reality is experienced indirectly" is true? The direct realist won't deny change or anything we experience or the mechanisms of perception, because these are all part of the world as we experience it.

Only the little story about the Real being beneath the real-- that's what's being doubted.