In both worlds we believe that it is immoral to murder babies. — Michael

Why are we unable to determine right and wrong in the non-naturalist world?

There would be a significant observable difference between living in that world and living in the world we're in now. — Michael

There would be an observable difference in either world. What would not be observable is the morality of the event.

I could tell if babies were murdered in a non-naturalistic ethical world as well, and I'd feel the same suffering in either. I'd just not link that observation of suffering to morality.

If you told me baby murdering were ethical, I guess I'd have to murder babies even if it made me sad to wrestle them from the hands of their mothers and dash them upon rocks.

If ethical non naturalism is true then it seems to be that whether or not our moral beliefs are true has no practical import. Our lives go on the same. — Michael

Why would it be different if ethical naturalism were the case? It might just be that murdering babies is moral in such a possible world.

I don't take non-naturalism to mean there is no reason for its immorality, just that whatever reason there is, it's not a natural one.

I used to tell my kids they were free to choose to get in the car to go to school or they could choose to have me throw them in there.

Freedom exists, but within varying parameters.

Why does it matter if we're wrong? It makes no practical difference to our lives. — Michael

This assumes a consequentialist justification is necessary for morality, which means your beef isn't against non-naturalism, but it's with deontolgy.

If the presumption is that we ought be moral as a matter of duty without regard to outcome, then you either assume you are a royal subject subservient to a higher master or you have a view that somehow fidelity to morality results in some very distant alignment of the universe that is of a higher order.

The latter is consequentialist, but it places concern for that consequence beyond the scope of any meaningful control, so just because it doesn't matter to our lives in the here and now isn't critical.

But let us assume consequences ultimately do determine morality, then you ought kill babies if that is moral, regardless of your confusion caused by your inability to see that distantly.

if ethical non-naturalism is true then these are two possible worlds:

1. It is immoral to harm others
2. It is not immoral to harm others

Assuming that in either case we believe that it is immoral to harm others, does it even matter which world we're in? — Michael

Ethical non-naturalism isn't at all a clear theory, so you'd have to define how you're using it to make sense of this. There seems little consensus on what it means. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/

Regardless, I think we can agree on some fundamental aspects of it: it is a form of realism, meaning morality exists outside of the observer, and morals are not reducible to physical properties.

This leads to certain epistemological issues, namely, how can we know them if they lack physical properties. This leads some to a form of intuitionism, where it is said the observer just recognizes right and wrong. Regardless of why a person believes something moral under non-naturalism, that doesn't change the truth value of the moral proposition.

That is, under moral non-naturalism if I say that murdering babies is ethical and I truly believe it is, the truth of that statement is subject to the non-natural reality (which itself is the most complexing concept in this theory), not my belief.

As to your specific question I quoted above, yes, it matters if we think we shouldn't harm others if we should because we'd be wrong if we didn't.

Your hypothetical is bizarre to be sure in that it hypothesizes what we accept as wrong and assume we're wrong about our wrongness.

Keep in mind as well that under non-naturalism, we're not saying the person dictates the truth, but there must therefore be some underlying non-natural cause resulting in the morality of the event. Just as we might think a flower red in the natural world based upon our eyesight, it is the flower itself that is causing that, not us.

I don't believe non-naturalism suggests no cause and effect, but simply just no natural physicality.

So, if I am in society A and we all believe slavery right, we are all wrong. The naturalist/ non-naturalist issue plays no role in that. If we think slavery wrong and we're wrong, then we'd be wrong not to enslave as well.

Some quibbles.

The thesis that the ancients began with a literal acceptance of the text and moved from it as difficulties arose isn't correct. The text was always modified by interpretation and by the adoption of other sources as authoritative.

Strict four corners literalism is a modern invention.

Keep in mind as well that the literal meaning of the words isn't always clear. In your example, the commandment is not that you should not kill, but it's that you not murder. The Hebrew term recognized different sorts of killing, with war killings not being "murder" as used in that commandment.

The Hebrew word for honor is an interesting one as well, and one you used in your OP. The term doesn't even require that you love your parent. It's been interpreted to mean you are to care for them when they're old.

Your analysis of 10 of the commandments is also arbitrary based upon the way Christianity has used the Bible, but.there are actually 613 commandments, ranging from not combining linen and wool in your clothing, to when you must sacrifice a red heifer, to how you should marry your brother's wife if he dies.

The variations and meaning of the decalogue can be reviewed here, pointing out the text is far from clear or consistent with regard to these commandments:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/decalogue

As to the question of the priority of the decalogue to other biblical commandments in non-Christian traditions, see https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/127235/are-the-ten-commandments-more-important-than-other-mitzvot

This is to say, I don't see how one could extract a single over-riding principle from "the commandments" without deciding which ones you were going to look at and which you were going to prioritize.

What i would say you have arrived at is a variation in the Christian concept of love, which you describe as a lessening of misery, but it seems most consistent with that tradition. https://groundworkonline.com/episodes/love-the-guiding-principle-for-christian-living

The Covid evidence base was tricky because it was a new element. I hate to admit to a little bit of conspiracy theory but I do think that on some level the time of lockdown was used as a basis for bringing in policy changes, in England anyway. So much has changed in a way which seems to be about making the gulf between the rich and the poor greater. — Jack Cummins

Interesting perspective. The more wealthy thought the opposite in that they felt the Covid regulations were meant to shake up the status quo and bring about more communal policies.

I can't say what the motivations of the policy makers actually were, but typically the most vulnerable always get the short end of the stick regardless of intentions. Those adept at figuring out a system typically do so regardless of how it gets set up.

The object of a fair economic system should be to create a system where everyone can equally strive for and achieve success, with some of course performing better than others, and with no preset limits being set on the success you can achieve.

If I can build 20 birdhouses a day and you only 5, I'd be opposed to a law limiting my birdhouse building to 5 so we can all have the same amount.

And should I be required to give my extra birdhouses away for fairness' sake, I'm pretty sure I'd stop making surplus birdhouses and we'd just have less birdhouses.

I found two solutions: heat and alcohol. The bugs and eggs die at temperatures over 50 degrees Celcius, 122 Fahrenheit. A steam cleaner would kill them instantly, but you'd need to be very thorough. I also read that diluted alcohol works too. Between spraying and steaming daily, you'd probably eventually win the battle.

I also saw that the American cockroach eats bedbugs, so you may want to introduce them into your home if not already there.

On this way, risk assessment hinges upon values of what is important — Jack Cummins

Your post brought to mind the issue of climate change and policies responsive to it. The question of risk assessment is twofold: (1) that of assessing the facts and (2) that of assessing desired outcomes. The former is a scientific question, the latter that of policy because of the subjective nature of desire. A climatologist is charged with evaluating #1, a politician #2.

We see the absurd attempt by politicians who try to dictate scientific results based upon the outcome they want. That is, if you want to drill for more oil because it will help the economy, you can't just deny the negative climate effects because it is contrary to your needs.

But the other side is true as well. Science does not dictate policy. That drilling for oil might seriously damage the environment does not dictate that it shouldn't be done. What dictates whether it shouldn't be done is a weighing of desired outcome, which means if we'd rather have a certain economy and have higher sea levels, that is the legitimate democratic policy choice.

This isn't to say that there are not better and worse desires, but the politician is charged with advancing the will of the people if he wishes to maintain his position as a policy maker and not his views of what the single ethical outcome ought to be.

For example, should Covid masks have been mandated? That is a policy question, not a scientific one. The scientific question asks what happens if they are used versus if they aren't. The policy question asks what do we want.

The best candy bar generally is the Snickers bar because it serves as an emergency ration, tiding one over until the next full meal. It's limitation of course is it's low melting point, but the plastic infused wrapper protects the bar proper so that it can squeezed directly into one's mouth if in the field.

The Milky Way bar, with its whipped creamy filling, lives up to its name as being a top contender in our solar system, although its lack of a fulfilling nutty crunch leaves it wanting. It therefore cannot be fully counted on in the way the Snickers bar can.

To take this in a whole nother direction as they say back home, we can consider the Million Dollar bar, a delicacy that at one time only titans of industry could afford due to its high, but wholly justified price. The rich caramel immediately will inject the most weary with a surge of energy that has been known to resurrect the hypoglycemic from their permanent slumbers. It is used in some countries just for that purpose in fact, where the dead are re-alived, albeit it in a zombie like state, where they soon begin donning motorcycle gear and begin to lurk about in search of brains.

They are not simply biased tribalists either, as is evidenced by how they cut ties with or get rid of those who no longer serve their cause. — baker

It's because they're Trump loyalists who will buy into whatever argument Trump advances regardless of the evidence supporting it or the logical consistency of it.

His supporters bought into and still buy into the argument there was a nationwide conspiracy to rig the election in every contested district across the country. Despite no evidence, he continued to try to obstruct the result, all the way down to convincing his followers to physically standing in the way of it.

Trying to characterize his followers as ideological or principled is not consistent with what's been going on.

I don't see why he's fighting to be on any ballot considering he's already told us the elections are rigged. Why does he want to enter a contest where he knows the result is already decided against him? It seems more fair that he be cheated early by the Colorado courts than to force him through the time and expense to just be cheated later by the vote counters.

I was wasting my time it seems. Not even got going yet.

Guess this is how things are now here.

Bye bye — I like sushi

I think the problem with this thread generally is that there is pretty concise answer to the question of whether certain languages are better than others, and that is that they are not.

The question though is understandable from an instinctive level. That is, it would seem that English would be a better medium to explain the theory of relativity than would a tribal language from the Amazon rainforest. That is, surely the complexities of that topic are better explained with a language that has evolved in an environment where such matters have been considered, whereas perhaps the rainforest language would be better at explaining the things common only in the rainforest.

And then we think of specialty languages within our language, like when we hear doctors speak, barely understanding what they say. Surely their language is better than my simple English that lacks such terms.

This is to say that your question is understandable and your replies to the responses to your question are instinctive, but the solution to the question isn't so much found in sorting through a debate on the topic, but it's found by researching the topic. What this means is that while I may speak Amazon speak or have no knowledge of medical terminology, I could, assuming I had the intellectual ability to understand such matters, be trained in medicine with a book written in Amazon speak or one written without reliance on specialty terms. That's just the case, whether it seems on a gut level not to be.

So if this response I'm now providing could have been stated before, why did others (myself included) throw a little ridicule your way? It's twofold I guess. The first is that the debate wasn't taken seriously by those who already knew the answer, but who would have only taken it seriously if there were someone somewhere taking seriously the thesis you're advancing, which could have only been shown by citing to some article or some new school of thought on the issue. The second is that posters (including myself) are not always arriving with an educational temperment when we post, but instead arrive with a combative, adversarial approach, which is understandable as well, as the bulk of us are ornery middle aged men overly connected to our computers.

All of this is to say is that the resignation within your last post was a solid move, having made me rethink our purpose here, as to whether it's to generally educate and discuss or whether it's to aggresively point out failings. I'm thinking probably both.

I couldn't find any articles on whether German was a better language for expressing matters literally, likely because such a thesis is horseshit, but I did find one that tried to arrive at a way to distinguish the literal from the idiomatic, which would be the first step in testing such a theory. The brick wall though I suspect will be in defining "better."

https://aclanthology.org/E17-4011/

I find English the best language for science, literature, and poetry, but that's because all other language is gibberish to me. Might as well be barking like a dog if you're going to speak something other than English to me.

One is good for daily spoken language, but not for writing a powerful declamation. — L'éléphant

Are you just identifying your subjective opinion, or are you saying something objective?

As in, you think you better express yourself with painting than sculpture, or are you saying that sculpture is the truly best way to express certain perspectives?

Seems the former would be the only sustainable claim.

German clearly impacts Germans too. There language is particularly literal and every european I spoke to living in Berlin remarked about how literal Germans were as the most significant cultural difference. — I like sushi

You've got studies showing that the language makes the person more literal and less figurative?

Assuming such could be measured, you'd have to prove it was the language and not the culture resulting in that. It'd be like saying the Dutch are humorless because Dutch isn't a funny language, and so try as we might, we can't tell a joke in Dutch.

Nevertheless, not untrue. — Merkwurdichliebe

I do wish to clarify that I don't think Westerners are more intelligent than non-Westerners, but I limit my comments to Western values in the sense I do in fact hold them superior to others, but not superior to all.

Superior in every way possible would include intelligence, — Baden

That's what this is all about?

The point here is that equality is not a wedding vow, and it is worth admitting that we (meaning the West and its values) are superior to others, in terms of morality, technology, civility, and in every way possible. — Hanover

"Every way possible" should have been limited to those things along the lines of the examples given and not included things like height, athletic ability, sexual prowess, soccer skills, big game hunting, ability to navigate the high seas on a paddleboard, prettier hair styles, and everything else that would be included in the term "every way possible."

I will now add to the end of my errant sentence "along these lines" so as to remove that confusion that I wonder if ever really existed, but it did say what it said, so you were undoubtedly correct to have responded as you did, as opposed to having limited my comment into what a reasonable person might have said.

Let me clarify. What I said was:

The point here is that equality is not a wedding vow, and it is worth admitting that we (meaning the West and its values) are superior to others, in terms of morality, technology, civility, and in every way possible. — Hanover

What part confuses you?

The sweeping nature of which makes it obviously false. But I still want it admitted so and withdrawn without any BS attempts to pretend he never said that. — Baden

I did say it because I meant it. There is a moral superiority of the West to others. What's shocking is that you can't admit it.

You then inserted in your own projections to make it say something that it didn't, like no one but the West is moral and that somehow Trump is proof that America is an immoral nation.

Lol. you know what you wrote is amazingly stupid at best and now you're just going to try to babble it away. Withdraw the comment and get it over with. Or be held to the utter moronic idea that Western societies are superior in every possible way to non-Western societies. — Baden

You're ridiculous.

You can't even agree that the value you adhere to are superior and so you make a reference to Trump and say "but he's as stupid as they come." As if that's responsive to the conversation. Of course there are bad politicians, but should a Republican become President, I think I'd persevere, as opposed to someone from Hamas becoming President.

It's amazingly amazing for example how superior and more civilized American politics is to, say, Japanese politics. Trump is probably the best example of this. Americans also live longer and are more intelligent than the Japanese. Yes, indeedie. Superior in every possible way... — Baden

And so we now are talking about the civility of poltics? American politics is more civil than Palestinian politics, at least to the extent there has been an election in the past 20 years in Palestine, with almost half of their population never having actually lived through one. And what a civil leadership they have. Instead of using their money on schools, medicine, or hope of any kind, they spend it on subterranean rat holes designed to funnel homemade rockets so they can launch them onto the unsuspecting party goers next door. Their politics is built only around their hate for their neighbors.

Of course not every politician is wonderful, and not every nation outside the West (like Japan, as you've pointed out) is morally bankrupt, but I have no problem claiming that Western democracies are protective of the rights you hold most dear, and I can say that recognizing that there are other societies outside the west that adhere to the same values, but also recongnizing that we should not promote those that do not.

The fact that there was mass outrage over the killing of a handful ISRAELI Hostages, but not thousands of Palestinian Children is telling of the Israeli position and extreme bias. — Vaskane

You've uncovered the fact that Israel is biased towards Israel?

I also note that the Palestinians didn't protest the October 7 attacks, uncovering the fact that Palestine is biased toward Palestine.

So you're saying that we should back Israel, not only because Israel needs to defend itself, but because the Israeli way of life is superior to the Hamas/Palestinian way of life, and if the latter is allowed to take over Israel, Israel would be a worse place. Is that what you're saying? — frank

I'm saying we back Israel because they have the right to defend their land that was invaded and we need not be so foolish to think that the outcome of this war won't have greater implications for all involved, which includes who gets to control the area politically.

It's an impossibility for Hamas to militarily defeat Israel, a nuclear state backed up by the U.S. Talk about an invented fear. — Baden

The fear isn't invented, at least not for the raped women and burned babies. Are you suggesting the only way to lose is by complete takeover?

Are you also worried about Honduras taking over California? — Baden

No, but I am pretty sure if Honduras attacked California, what you're seeing in Gaza would look like child's play.

Should we go in and bomb just in case? It's absurd. — Baden

Now my position is being interpreted as arguing for preemptive war? My position is that Hamas set this in motion, not just Israel deciding there might be an attack forthcoming so it decided to act first. Just to remind ourselves of the sequence: Rapists like locusts from the sky first, Israeli tanks second.

The only existential threat is to the Palestinians. They're the ones who just had their city of 1.5 million people destroyed and you're telling me the danger is Israelis being ethnically cleansed? — Baden

They started a war and then there was a response and so we blame the self defender? And where is the ethnic cleansing? The population of Palestinians has soared since Israel has been a state. Take a look at the statistics of Jews throughout the Middle East during that time. They have literally been removed from every nation except Israel. What rights do you think Jews get in all these supposedly non-apartheid Arab states?

And I'm not a fan of, say, Iran as a society either. But so what? If I don't want to wipe them from the earth militarily, is that supposed to indicate some guilt complex about being Western? — Baden

I've not suggested fixing the world's problems one bomb at a time. We're talking about a real life Western type democracy being attacked by a group of folks who hate everything Western. They are the ones who would in fact reorganize the world one bomb at a time if left unchecked.

We could take a deep dive into this question, but can you see how bringing this up in a thread about a Israel and Gaza makes it sound like you think Israel's attack is justified based on Israel's moral superiority? Do you really believe that? — frank

Of course I don't think that Israel can go and invade any nation it feels (or actually is) morally superior to. The basis for the war is that Israel was invaded by a group of people who were morally inferior to it and the consequences of not protecting itself goes beyond just A now occupying where B used to be. The consequences are that A being in B's place will have far more significant consequences that have to be considered when one is thinking about who to back in this war.

Have you considered the options for defending the value of civility that don't involve bombing schools, designated safe routes, shooting white flag carriers, and pulling the plug on newborn babies in incubators. Because those things don't seem all that civil. It's almost like they're the opposite of civility... It's almost like war crimes do not constitute superior values but are barbaric and something we should be against. Right? — Baden

Yes, those are the facts, just as you've stated them. Israel awoke Monday morning and decided today's the day we'll yank premies from their warm incubators, we'll open fire on the children to nip those emerging problems in the bud, and we'll bomb indiscriminately, well, because we're just enraged at these trespassers.

Or, maybe what happened is that Hamas received billions of dollars from nations that want to eradicate Israel and force everything Western out of "their" region (speaking of apartheid), they built a fortress of underground tunnels, they sent over their rapist special forces to murder and burn, and then they got pushed back only to find those they attacked weren't willing to allow this to happen again, but then they used their finest tactic of hiding behind babies in hospitals to defend themselves.

And then the hostage exchange. How many Palestinian terrorists must Israel exchange for Israeli children? Do we talk about that?

. If you would just remove yourself from the situation and see it as group A vs group B and focus on the actions of each, I think you could come up with a coherent position but you won't do that. Everything is coloured with the fact that you will support Israel no matter what. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. — Baden

Really, you need to read this again, consider the implications, and potentially rephrase it so you don't sound like some Victorian "white man's burden" carrier. Otherwise, be prepared to get your ass satired off. I mean, dude... — Baden

What you need to do is realize it's not about A versus B. Again, you carry around this torch of equality like it's a virtue as if to argue you bring nothing better to the table that the other side does. What I ask of you is what you ask of me, which is to abandon your vantage point as if it's superior. I think your position is foolish.

I'm not walking around asking that other countries be invaded so as to impose my beliefs upon them. I'm protecting the walls of Israel, a democracy from an invasive force.

Mine is no more white man's burden than your is white man's guilt, fearful of just admitting the obvious that a Palestinian controlled region would be disastorous for world democracy and every inhabitant of Israel. Should Palestine come into control of the region, every current Israeli would be forced entirely out of the region, just as they've been forced out of every Middle Eastern nation except Israel and then they would impose whatever wonderful government upon those remaining.

As Bob Dylan says:

I've heard you say many times
That you're better than no one
And no one is better than you
If you really believe that
You know you have
Nothing to win and nothing to lose

If a Palestinian-controlled country existed, this would be fair. But since it doesn’t, there’s nothing to compare it to. Would I want to live in Gaza? Of course not. But not because of Palestinians. — Mikie

Would you choose to live in Egypt or Israel.

It’s hard to believe this is still admitted to so freely.

We’re superior in “every way possible” here in the West. Yeah, I guess if one really believes this, then it’s possible to justify killing thousands of children — in defense of those superior values, of course. — Mikie

What's hard to believe is that you don't think you can say it out loud that your society is better than others.

It's not possible to justify killling thousands of children if one of the ways we're superior is that we don't kill thousands of children to impose our superior values. There is a difference between imposing and defending. The children were killed because Hamas declared war on Israel and its values and put them in harm's way.

Au contraire, morality works like this: in the decades long conflict of Israel vs Palestine, when Israel attacks and kills Palestinian civilians, that is good because they are the good guys but when the Palestinians do the same, that is bad because they are the bad guys. If you want to know whether killing innocent people is good or not, you need do no more than look at what people they are. If they are "Palestinian", killing them is good. If they are "Israeli", killing them is bad. If the IDF is doing the killing, it is good killing. If Hamas is doing the killing, it is bad killing. This is also very convenient because the IDF does much more killing so there is much more good killing than bad killing and the world is good and right. If you disagree with any of this, you are indeed irrational and simply hate the good guys. In fact, you are probably a bad guy, like Hamas. — Baden

This a caricature of your opponent's position, claiming that only good can be seen in their own behavior and evil in the other's. The caricature of your position is that you can't see good or evil anywhere, but just points of view, as if no particular way of life is more defensible than the other. I'd suspect there are none here who would choose to live in a Palestinian controlled country over an Israeli controlled one, and certainly not our mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives, and especially not those who might not subscribe to traditional male/female roles. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what one might expect in terms of justice and equality when comparing one country to the next.

The point here is that equality is not a wedding vow, and it is worth admitting that we (meaning the West and its values) are superior to others, in terms of morality, technology, civility, and in every way possible. To the extent you accept or reject this notion of exceptionalism will likely color your view on how aggressively you defend those values versus how aggressively you declare it imperialistic and try to quash it.

In any struggle, large or small, the ones who bear the brunt of the conflict are always the most vulnerable. The children in their beds and women walking about were the first attacked, and now it's the poorest and least able to protect themselves that are being harmed. War is a horrible thing, but this war wasn't started by Israel and it most certainly wasn't started on October 7.

This is the worst of the gaslighting. That these Hamas militants with their tiny rockets, rifles, and hang gliders are a real military threat (even an existential one!) to a nuclear powered proxy of the world's superpower that will only accept their complete subjugation or displacement and actually has the means to achieve that. Analagous to Trump claiming the election is stolen while trying to steal it himself. — Baden

If your opponents have overstated the threat, here you have understated it. If Israel did not have the iron dome, it would be showered with rockets daily and be unlivable. The hang gliders were actual militants brought over as an act of war by their accepted government. You understate this threat and act as if this was a handful of thugs who could have been quickly eliminated, but this has been going on for decades, with backing of other governments, and it poses a real threat to the citizens to live a livable life, reasonably free from fear of death, burning, and rape. That is the purpose of terrorism, to destablize, to ruin, and evoke fear.

Hamas has an intricate system of underground tunnels designed for no purpose other than attacking Israel. They use every dollar they get to build tunnels and rockets instead of building infrastructure for their people. Gaza is a military base on Israel's Western border whose primary objective is the eradication of Israel. That they can't acheive victory is just their unfortunate reality and is not the result of lack of effort. They aren't just a handful of miscreants who just need a bit of understanding and appeasment, and it's not reasonable to believe Israel will just let them exist and accept that every now and again they'll be terrorized.

The flowers are Potentilla erecta, which have four true petals. — Banno

What does the word "true" add to this sentence?

This isn't responsive though to your attempt to negate the distinction between the object and the perception. Our conversation initially revolved around what you seemed to suggest was the superfluousness of referring to phenomenal states and your equation of the perception of the thing to the actual thing.

This Austin quote isn't controversial to any degree. He's not discussing metaphysics at all, but instead is just trying to hammer out how we use the term "direct" and "indirect." The fact that we have reasons to distinguish between those things we perceive without obvious interference between ourselves and the object offers a reason why we have words for that, but that's as far as it goes. It says nothing about reality. It just talks about how we talk.

list. Bless. It's not that simple. — Banno

You say there are two sorts of perceptions: direct and indirect. I ask you to give me examples of each. You say it's too complicated?

Well, yes, its not. It's a Beetles song, heard many times before, that I can play bits of and that many will be able to sing along with and which quite a few folk have made their own. — Banno

I want to bring this song thing into my house. What do I bring in my house to have that song? As we've determined, realism demands the song thing be able to exist independent of the perceiver.

The realist commits to the view that "the flower has four petals" is either true, or it is false, and that this is so regardless of who is looking at it or how. Those are epistemological claims — Banno

A realist knows nothing about the flower except that it exists or not. This has nothing to do with how we know things or what counts for knowledge.

You didn't see it directly, you saw it through a telescope, or a mirror, or only its shadow; how we are to understand "direct" perception depends entirely on what it is contrasted with; so of course it is difficult to imagine what "direct perception" is, per se. It's a nonsense, an invention of the defenders of the sort of argument Ayer is presenting. You can find examples in every thread on perception*. — Banno

This is indirect realism, just with you claiming varying degrees of indirectness. There is no pure direct perception as you've described it, but just your arbitrary gradations of directness versus indirectness. Perhaps me looking at the flower is more direct than me seeing its shadow. Is that all you're saying: everything is blurred to some degree, just some more than others, and the more unblurred is called "direct" when contrasted with the more blurred?

Then we have to determine somehow which perceptions are most closely correlated to the noumenal flower in order to rank the perceptions from most direct to least direct?

This goes back to my request for a list. You can't avoid making this concrete with actual examples of direct and indirect perceptions or at least providing which are more and which are less direct and then providing reasons why you place them on your sliding scale.

And that repeated mischaracterisation of those who reject indirect realism is at the heart of why these threads are interminable. Sometimes you see stuff directly, sometimes you see the same stuff indirectly. — Banno

Very well, once you overcome your exasperation, in column 1 tell me those instances where we see directly and in column 2 tell me those instances where we see indirectly, offering whatever context you need.

I propose that when you hear a song, it is the song that you hear. — Banno

Is the song not the sound waves? Is it just the experience of hearing sounds?

A realist will say that it is true that the flower has four petals, and that this is true regardless of what you percieve. — Banno

A realist makes no epistemological claim. He doesn't suggest an accuracy of the senses. He will say that the flower exists however it does independently of the observer. He has no opinion on how many petals it has.

instead of just reacting, it is clear that the alternate to our seeing things only indirectly is that we sometimes see them directly, sometimes indirectly. — Banno

So I ask my question once again so I can understand what you're talking about. You say there are certain objects we see directly. We will call them D. There are certain objects we see indirectly. We will call them I. Give me a list of object Ds and then a list of object Is. I can then go back and forth between the two and figure out what the rule is that you are using to place each in its respective catagory.

You hold that you never see the sub or hear "let it be". That's enough of a reductio to reject your view. — Banno

What I hear is an interpretation of sound waves. It's for that reason that when you sing behind a wall, I don't hear the song. What do you suppose I hear when I hear the song?

You are agreeing that there are things about the flower that are true regardless of one's perceptions. Where previously you had insisted that "My position is that it is unknowable" you now agree the flower has four petals. You don't believe your own theory. — Banno

A realist, which I think we both are, holds only that things exist outside the mind. The simple act of existing is not a property. What I can say of the flower is that it exists. What I can say of my perception of the flower is that it has four petals. I don't think I'm inconsistent in my position.

What's all symbolic? — Ludwig V

Everything that you sense. Such is the nature of indirect realism. That's why it's called representationalism. Your phenomenlogical state of the flower is the symbol you have for that flower.

You are arbitrarily claiming that some perceptions are symbolic and others not. When you see the flower, what you see is a representation of it, just like when you see a blip on a computer screen, you see a representation of an airplane.

The blip is a representation in the symbolic sense. — Ludwig V

It's all symbolic. You can't just remove the instances that show indirect realism and call them the indirect sort without having some basis for that.

William James thought that what an infant sees in the beginning is "a buzzing, blooming, confusion", just because it doesn't have any sense of what has been socially agreed upon. Sadly, they can't tell us, and we can't see it. — Ludwig V

I think we all see flowers fairly consistently cross-culturally, indicating the way in which we perceive relates to biology as opposed to culture. That is, tribe members from the rain forest see flowers as I see flowers, despite our not sharing social norms. They may worship flowers and hold them as sacred objects, but they don't see them in the chaotic state you're describing how James suggests infants see things.