Did you get a chance to look at the video?

That's a fair assessment, yes.

How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers? — Michael

The sound you hear on a phone is the output of a digital-to-audio converter, so you're definitely hearing a representation. It's indirect.

In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism. This painting by Magritte is about this very issue.

Another oddity with indirect realism is that it implies that communication is always between me and someone I've constructed.

:up:

I think the answer is that the question is language on holiday. We can't stand outside ourselves in order to answer it.

Naïve question: in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER? What is the point of it? I can grasp its introductory use as a kind of thought experiment, but what else is there to this idea? — Tom Storm

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati.

How I deal with it…..the senses are directly affected by real things. I need nothing else from the notion of direct realism. — Mww

That's not direct realism tho.

frank

Yikes!! Can’t have that. Point it out for me? — Mww

Direct realism doesn't makes sense, but it's necessary. How do you deal with that?

Doesn’t make any sense with respect to the central nervous + peripherals system from a physical point of view, nor with respect to some theoretical cognitive system from a metaphysical point of view.

Direct realism is a necessary condition for the proper functionality of sensory apparatus as such, nonetheless, and should be taken as granted from either point of view. — Mww

So you have a contradiction on your hands. What do you do about that?

Your conclusion doesn’t follow. Another possibility which is consistent with the premises is this: we see things in certain human ways, but it’s the things we are seeing, not representations thereof. That’s direct perception. — Jamal

What would be the justification for that view?

Ah, so here we go. — L'éléphant

I'm not going to read the rest of your post. Thanks.

But you already know how it works, I see with my eyes and touch with my skin and hear with my ears. The onus is on the indirect realist to explain what this interface could possibly be that is neither me nor the world. — unenlightened

I think the usual answer is nerves.

what do you say? — unenlightened

Ha! As if anyone cares what I think. :grin:

:up: :up: :up:

Interesting!

You probably know this already, but I learned some interesting stuff about entropy from this video:

The contact with the rest of the world is direct. So how can one perceive indirectly a world that he is in direct contact with? — NOS4A2

The ocean contacts the shore, but it's not perceiving the shore. We don't fully understand how perception works, but it's apparent that a multitude of afferent nerves present electrical stimulus to the central nervous system, which is doing something with those impulses that coincides with awareness.

Lets be clear that indirect realism is the dominant view among scientists, because as @Mww noted, direct realism doesn't make any sense on its face. If we directly perceive objects without any nervous interface, how exactly do with do that? Your eyes don't see things. Your ears don't hear things, and your fingers don't feel things. Your central nervous system sees, hears and feels. There clearly is an interface between the CNS and the world. Thus, indirectness appears to be the way it works.

The onus is on direct realists to explain, if only broadly and superficially, how direct realism is supposed to work. Thoughts?

I think you're mistaken, frank. "Indirect realism" is an epistemological view (i.e. representationalism) — 180 Proof

Ok. That's fine. Although it has an ontological dimension wrt the nature of what you take to be the world. Ontology and epistemology are usually joined at the hip I think.

I think so. The brain which is supposed to generate the picture is part of the picture. All arguments for the brain throwing up a picture depend on features of the very picture which is 'derealized' and not be trusted. Brains (or the 'illusions' thereof) becomes the creations of brains (of their illusory selves). The sense organs become the creation of ... the sense organs. Note that the dreamer is part of the dream. It doesn't — green flag

:up:

There is and can be only one 'inferential-causal nexus.' — green flag

What does this mean?

Here we go again.

When the indirect realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the brown thing.

When the direct realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the Earth. — Banno

Yes. Even boy scouts are indirect realists. Sad, isn't it?

Everyone directly sees the tree. — Mww

Maybe not, but there are representations necessarily. — Mww

I'm not sure you're getting the distinction between direct and indirect realism. Or maybe I'm not.

With direct realism, there are no representations. In some way unknown to cognitive science, the spectator is somehow seeing the earth with no intermediary constructions involved. As you mention, it's a problematic view, which is why indirect realism is the view of the "man on the street" as Searle the serial sexual harasser put it.

The confusion is in what the terms themselves are meant to indicate. What we perceive is real directly; what our cognitive system works with, is real indirectly. — Mww

How do you know that?

Personality is mediation, but mediation need not and seemingly ought not be understood to cast up a second image of the tree. — green flag

Ok, but just consider indirect realism for a moment. The idea is that the world around you is a product of your bodily apparatus. The world you take to be real is a collage of representations.

Is this view self undermining?

The guy on the left. Take away the figure in his head, put in the cloud with the figure in it. The cloud indicates the figure is a representation of the object, the real object perceived directly but represented indirectly. — Mww

The guy on the left is an image of direct realism. He doesn't get a cloud. He just directly sees the tree. But your comment does say something about this topic. You can quickly get lost with the representations that people see, except the tree is in their head, but it can't be, so what's that in the guy's head? Is it a representation or is it a tree? How do you get a tree in your head? You can't get a tree in your head, so you have to have a cloud with a tree in it.

Notice there’s nothing indicating the operation of the senses, in the second illustration. And notice the figure is in the head, beyond sensory apparatus. This indicates the brain works with that which is not given from the senses, but rather, works with the representations for which the senses merely provide the occassion. — Mww

I don't think there are any representations in direct realism. Maybe you get a little tree? A head-sized tree?

Direct realism:

How's this? All the images of indirect realism have a little cloud like that.



Is this wrong?

Why does the indirect guy have that cloudy thing in front of his face? — Mww

That's the representation cloud isn't it? Wait. Do we need a different picture?

guess our immune system is strong and good, Frank. :up: — javi2541997

I don't think that coronavirus cares about strong immune systems. Sometimes a person can have some weird genetic thing that makes them immune to certain diseases.

Uh. Ok. I still doubt there's going to be much death or destruction. Not much more than we Americans usually do. You can put your horn hat on and ride down to Washington if you want. Check out the Lincoln Memorial. It's incredibly moving for people who aren't jaded as hell.

Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment. Thanks.

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible.” — Joshs

I'll have to ponder that for a while

“Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation – I have already explained –; that is to say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies, – so that, if they must be fought, they can only be fought and called into question together. A depreciation of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings about a depreciation of the value of science…”

He's saying that Christianity and science rise and fall together because they have the same basic attitude to truth. It's a fascinating idea. :cheer:

Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect…”

See, I would say that his description of the mechanistic world as contiguous with our own desires and passions is exactly what Schopenhauer was saying. Am I wrong?

Thanks. An interesting essay, with lots to unpack — Fooloso4

So to clarify, you had not read this particular work by Nietzsche. I think it's pretty important to take his views about truth into consideration while taking in the rest of his ideas.

Beginning with the title he has already made two distinctions: between truth and lies, and between the moral and nonmoral sense. — Fooloso4

That's in the title, yes.

All play a role in the question of the eternal return as discussed above, and make it clear why the gnomic "truths are metaphors" is at best inadequate and at worst misleading. — Fooloso4

These are his own words:

"Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.”

But having furnished the essay, (which was like having to extract a tooth) we can move beyond that. — Fooloso4

So you come back to this issue again, so let me explain. At first, I was sure you hadn't looked into Nietzsche very far since you didn't know about his views of truth. Then you said you'd studied him for years, so I assumed you had read this essay. Now I find that you studied Nietzsche for years without understanding that he was a Kantian.

I also explained to you that I work in an emergency room and I was waiting for a trauma at the time I was discussing Nietzsche with you. I explained that this is why I was brief. So maybe you could see your way clear to cutting me some slack.

From the essay:

we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities…
— frank

Original entities and what we say about them, our metaphors, are two different things. The entities are not metaphors. — Fooloso4

No one has ever claimed that the "thing in itself" is a metaphor. No one. Ever.

. Put differently, the natural world is the human world. — Fooloso4

This is not contrary to my point. As Nietzsche explains, science forgets its limits. He is not trying to do science. The Eternal Return is not cosmology. The Big Bang is cosmology. The Eternal Return is not. Nietzche's view of truth and science should make this abundantly clear.

The cosmological question of the eternal return remains open. — Fooloso4

Ok. Argue for it in the light of his Kantian views. Make it fit. You said there is literature that addresses that. Feel free to quote a little something from one of them.

In either case, like the natural world, it is not something apart from the human world. — Fooloso4

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not.

My point is simply that moving will at best still be an option for an extremely small share of the population when you consider the numbers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you saying that anti-immigration sentiment isn't just about racism? That it's also about this tool capitalists use to undermine the power of labor?

I wish they wouldn't put "bank" and "run" in the same sentence:. WSJ

He does not have a theory of truth — Fooloso4

It was along these lines from On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense:

"The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."

“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished…”

"To be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone… From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as “red,” another as “cold,” and a third as “mute,” there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes.

"As a “rational” being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.

"If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare “look, a mammal” I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be “true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man.

"At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man’s service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.

It is even a difficult thing for [man] to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that “the correct perception” — which would mean “the adequate expression of an object in the subject” — is a contradictory impossibility.


"So far as we can penetrate here — from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths — everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree."

This is an interesting article about it if you happen to have jstor access: here.

I'm breaking a superstition to say this, but I've never had COVID-19. I've been up to my eyeballs in it, but somehow never contracted it. Most people I know have had it at least once, one person has had it four times even after vaccination.

Have you had it?

Just Bangladesh can supply more low-income migrants than Japan and the US can absorb. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is this related to climate change?

Where do you think I got the inspiration? — RogueAI

:joke:

Boy scouts are about connecting with the outdoors; building new and existing friendships; learning new skills; and helping create a better world. — Banno

That's awesome.

Yep. I'd add that moral statements differ from mere preference in that they do not just say what I want, but what you ought to want as well. I might think I ought to give 10% of my income to charity; that's a preference. It becomes a moral statement when one says everyone ought give 10% to charity. Morality, and ethics, are about other people. — Banno

Christianity is about a revolution in values. It's about redemption and forgiveness.