So the notion of primary and secondary qualities has faded somewhat, and we can ask if this is because it has become so ubiquitous as to be taken as granted, or if it has been shown to be too wanting to be of much use. I think it's the latter. — Banno

I think it faded from philosophy because Kant showed that knowledge of the categories of primary qualities is apriori. The old way is still the prevailing one among regular people. Most still think of an object's girth as something that's mind-independent, while its color is not.

All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as ↪Wayfarer suggests. — Banno

I think he was just saying that it's the way most people think.

Well said :up:

When something is working so relatively well, folk can just take it for granted. Then as things start to go wrong, it can take those who have become disconnected from the realities quite some time to understand why. — apokrisis

Could be. Or I was thinking it might be a problem with aggression during peacetime. We turn on each other.

Can you lay out a case? — Moliere

The case is basically what you've said, just with some Nietzsche added in. The outcome is the so called dark enlightenment philosophy. It says that democracy is not the pinnacle of social development for humans. It's just a tool, and it's now failing, so it's time to ditch it in favor of authoritarianism. Its fans include Peter Thiel (pronounced Teel) and JD Vance.

I look at it more in terms of where social currents are headed. Authoritarianism has become appealing for a reason, right? In spite of being the most comfortable humans in history, there's a loss of faith in democracy. It's been highjacked. That's how people all across the political spectrum feel. They point at each other as the highjackers. The question for me is: why is this happening now? What does it mean? Historically, democracies and republics tend to end in monarchy due to crises like war. I wonder if I'm watching how the stage is set for the transition prior to the crisis. People lose faith in themselves for whatever reason, and once the crisis happens, people close ranks around a powerful leader. That part is just human nature.

I'm laughing but I suppose I'd go to Rawl's Veil of Ignorance: the likelihood that I'd be a King is very low, so it's simply not attractive. — Moliere

I guess I take that question more seriously than you do.

I think democracy is more of a levy to capitalism than an accelerator: democracy, thus far, has happened to help capitalism, but that's because democracies are overwhelmingly not democratic even in the representative sense. The people there come from money and so vote for things that help thems, like all humans do. (this is a big problem for representative democracy: since humans vote for themselves, by human nature, you can't build representative systems since the apes that get the office are no better than the apes at home, and will vote for themselves) 

But if you build in more steps for scrutiny then this gets tampered as the individual decision becomes collective. — Moliere

Why not just go straight to monarchy? That's where ancient Greek democracies always ended up.

So you can explicate and maintain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? I'm not so confident. — Banno

John Locke did a pretty good job. Kant showed how he was wrong, but Kant isn't exactly our worldview, is he?

Humans were originally nomadic because they followed migrating herds. They probably didn't have much corruption. There wasn't much to corrupt.

Abraham and the Exodus are folklore. The Israelites occupied a specific area.

Muhammad had a number of occupations. The Arabs weren't nomadic.

The Torah and the Quran emerged out of nomadic shepherds. — Tarskian

Just happen to be reading a book about the early Iron Age, and the Israelites weren't nomadic. Arabs weren't either. I can see how you'd get that impression though.

But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. The fact that this keeps coming up is due to this ‘bifurcation of nature’ (Whitehead). It’s not due to the predilections of individual posters or some newbie mistake on their part. It’s deeply baked into our cultural framework. — Wayfarer

This is true. The conundrum is coming from a worldview that says people are isolated consciousness bubbles. You can't see inside my bubble. The most extreme consequences of this is a complete breakdown in meaning as described by Quine and Kripke.

If that's so then we could make the economy better even if hierarchy is inevitable. — Moliere

In a capitalist society, wealth becomes concentrated, then redistributed by economic crisis. It's happened over and over, no matter who was in charge. The secret to the endurance of capitalism is that it's incredibly creative. In a sense, it created all of us.

The only part democracy plays is that it provides the freedom capitalism needs.

You are thinking of Lucid dreams? I've had them a few times. No, I'm talking generally - we differentiate between dreams and wakefulness. — Banno

Not when the dream is happening, though.

I thought the Fed was apolitical and does whatever it wanted? — Mr Bee

Yes. They still try to avoid screwing with the economy when an election is close.

I mean Trump and the Republicans will be mad at a booming economy if it helps their enemies but let's be honest Trump would be harassing the Fed every day to cut rates if he were president right now. — Mr Bee

He'd have to install mechanisms for overriding the chairman. I guess he'd give it his best shot.

But we can tell when we are dreaming. — Banno

That's not very common. It's only happened to me once.

Can you elaborate on how you feel i've missed the Geiger counter? — AmadeusD

I was just kidding.

I'm an ontological anti-realist. Both direct and indirect realism are facets of our present psychology. I can't take either seriously because I don't have a vantage point from which to determine .

Plus I think you've overlooked the Geiger Counter.

The Fed isn't supposed to make rate changes during an election cycle, but they're probably going to have to in September. They're expected to lower the rate in keeping with jobs data. Wall Street will party and the economy will look good. That's bad for Trump, obviously.

We know how things affect the world and so can know about a thing from its effect.

Perhaps a different analogy is more helpful. A blind man can know that he is eating an apple because he knows what apples taste like, but the taste of an apple does not “resemble” the apple or any of its properties. An apple’s taste is a phenomenological consequence of the apple’s chemicals interacting with the tongue’s sense receptors. — Michael

I see what you're saying. But consider the spoon dipping into the two dimensional world. Everyone sees the same thing. There is therefore agreement about what's happening, and further, causality is noted. The passing of the spoon causes things to disappear from the world because it bumps them out of the film or plane. Can these guys say they understand the world?

Nobody in the world realizes what's happening, and indeed, they can't even imagine it. There's no telling what's really going on.

This is all to point out the biggie from Hume: our confidence in our knowledge of the world is not based on anything logical or empirical. I'm not arguing for direct realism because it doesn't need an argument. You can't live without it. Indirect realism inevitably opens up into global skepticism. It's an unsolved puzzle.

Anyway, the answer is that you trust your senses because you don't have any choice. You're an obligate direct realist, at least in the way you behave. Where there's a conflict between the way you behave and the philosophy you espouse, blah blah blah.

I believe in the existence of a Geiger counter despite the fact that experiences might not resemble their cause for the same reason that you believe in the existence of radiation despite the fact that Geiger counters do not resemble radiation. — Michael

Which was what?

I already have. Why won't you answer my question? Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation? It doesn't resemble radiation at all. — Michael

I missed it. Where did you answer why you trust your senses?

My use of the geiger counter starts with trusting my senses with regard to the existence of the device. I trust my senses when I observe a readout. I trust the sensory input I received during the time I studied physics so that I have a vague idea how a geiger counter works. I always have a little doubt about the proper functioning of electronic equipment which is mostly a result of experience, so I trust what the counter says if it makes sense, in other words, if it fits in with everything else that's going on. Is that what you're looking for?

Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation? — Michael

If I was like Hanover, I wouldn't trust that I have a Geiger counter in my hand. Is there some reason you can't just answer my question? Why do you trust your senses?

I don't even know what you mean by "senses telling the truth". Hanover and I are talking about experiences resembling their causes. — Michael

Why do you trust your senses if what they show you may or may not resemble what's in front of you?

Russell said the opposite: if direct realism is true then we must accept physics, but physics tells us that experiences do not resemble their causes, therefore if direct realism is true then indirect realism is true. — Michael

That is a conundrum, because it can't be both.

I addressed that with the very question I asked you, and which you conspicuously didn't answer. — Michael

1. Some of what you know about the Standard Model is information from your senses.
2. The rest is apriori knowledge.
3, You can't arrive at the Standard Model using apriori knowledge alone.

Conclusion: you have to believe your senses are telling you the truth in order to accept the Standard Model.

This is what Russell was talking about. It's a conundrum.

Do you trust the numbers on a Geiger counter to tell you the level of radiation in the environment, even though the numbers do not resemble radiation?

The presumption you have that one can trust one's experiences if and only if one's experience "resemble" their causes is a fallacy. — Michael

Why would you believe you actually have a geiger counter in your hand if your perceptions may or may not resemble the object?

Didn't you say that perceptions may or may not bear any resemblance to the object?

This is like asking why we accept the Standard Model if we cannot see electrons with the naked eye. — Michael

I don't think so. It's more like asking why you accept science of any kind if you can't rely on your senses to tell you the truth.

If you're conceding our perceptions might just be a pragmatic stimulus to navigate the world, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the object, then we're agreeing. — Hanover

If our perceptions may not bear any resemblance to what's out there, then why believe the science that led you to accept indirect realism?

I used to live in walking distance of a laundry mat, a grocery store, a public tennis court, a bar, and the university.

I should point out that when I stub my toe, I feel the pain in my toe, not my head — Harry Hindu

That's a cool trick the nervous system does. Pain is handled by a special neuron called a nociceptor. People who have chronic pain develop nervous superhighways so that any pain stimulus in the area jumps onto the same path. In other words, they lose the ability to correctly locate the pain. That problem can eventually progress until they have what's call "generalization" where they can't locate pain at all. It's just everywhere.

And this is the important point. It's not the case that we call this experience a red experience because it is the experience of 700nm light; it's the case that we call 700nm light red light because it is the normal cause of red experiences. — Michael

True.

Then why did you claim that there is a "gross disconnect" between a red experience and a picture that doesn't emit 700nm light? You seemed to be implying that it is "correct" for 700nm light to cause a red experience and "incorrect" for a different wavelength of light to cause a red experience. — Michael

I was just explaining multiple realizability in case you were interested. 700nm light causes red experiences so often that we call it red light. That's not a misuse of "red." It's just a different usage. As it happens, there are other brain states associated with the experience of red besides the one produced by red light.

I want to know if you accept the existence of colours-as-mental-phenomena. — Michael

Sure. My point was that we have limited understanding of how experience works. It's not as simple as: 700nm frequency causes the experience of red.

I'm asking you if "experienced as red" means "experienced as emitting 700nm light" given that you defined "red" as "emitting 700nm light". — Michael

I'm guessing you understood me just fine, you're trying to make a point by pretending you didn't?

"check out the strawberries that are experienced as red when they're not really emitting 700nm light" — Michael

Right. I don't know what you're talking about with what followed that.

Do you mean a pixel that emits 700nm light? — Michael

It's a range, but yea.

What's a red pixel? — Michael

A pixel that produces the frequency of red.

wasn't talking about a correspondence between stimulus and experience. I was talking about a correspondence between brain states and experience. — Michael

That isn't there either. All kinds of brain states can produce the same experience.

Gross disconnect between what? What do you even mean by "really" black and white? — Michael

There are no red pixels in that picture. It's an optical illusion. You were talking about correspondence of experience to neural processes. The point was to explain what multiple realizability is. There is no simple correspondence between stimulus and experience.