If an executive at the federal or state level decides to carry out unconstitutional acts, a court can not summon the army to force them to cease and desist. The court has federal Marshalls, and possibly local police, and sheriffs. True, there are sanctions, contempt of court declarations, and so on but these substantially depend on willing cooperation. — BC

Let's face it. Law that cannot be enforced is dead letter. Government that does not respect the law is tyranny. What next?

I wondered if it was because he was a noble that these were his prejudices -- but reading the wikipedia page on his life it looks like he's more of an elitist because he was just that smart: — Moliere

Oh, I think there was more than that to it - not that he wasn't smart! But you are right that it's people like himself that he thinks can make "critics" worthy of the name. But "people like himself" did not necessarily include the nobility. (Actually, his father was a professional lawyer, although both his parents had noble connections). But his older brother inherited most of the money, so he had to make a living. He rejected conventional careers as a lawyer or merchant in favour of a "literary" life. In his autobiography, he boasts that there were only two years in which his studies were interrupted - though they did give him just enough money to be independent (i.e. to live on the interest). He went on to make a real fortune (giving him an income of £1,000 a year) through his "History of England". So "people like himself", for him, meant people pursuing a "literary" life.

Philosophy is more than the study of the predicate "...is true", to put it into OLP terms. — Moliere

Truth, Goodness and Beauty would be usual list. One might expand it in various ways. But, because I was introduced to philosophy via Socrates, I've always thought that the activity is really the thing. Study is all very well, of course. But it is a mostly a solitary occupation. Dialogue (with others) is not merely desirable, but of the essence.

He requires it to give rules for "confirming one sentiment and condemning another." But it must also explain why some sentiments are better and some are worse (NOT true or false). He gives five criteria for identifying people who are capable of doing this - “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice ..." So the standard of taste is the consensus of those who are qualified to pass judgement. But such people are rare, and consensus over time is crucial to avoid mistakes. — Ludwig V

There is one problem here that I can't get past. Hume's account is right to say that it is not the case that everybody's opinion is of equal value (although everybody is entitled to an opinion) but his account of the standard of taste seems elitist (and I suspect was intended to be elitist in its application). I can't let that go. So my application of this account allows that anyone may acquire the qualfications simply from being interested and opinionated and talking to other interested and opinionated people about what they see and hear.

That's how I understand taste, too. — Moliere

It seemed rather odd to me, at first. Then, I realizes that I should have seen it all along. It's one of those switches in perception that happen from time to time. It seems very odd at first, but then one realizes that the writing off of taste as just arbitrary choices is completely inadequate.

That is, even if there are moral truths, it seems most human beings -- if they operate according to any kind of reasoned path at all -- operate in accord with a sort of aesthetics of morality. — Moliere

We are so used to thinking of reason as about truth, by definition, that it takes a jolt to realize that there could be varieties - domains that should be included in it. There's more to life than truth.

Passion isn't some nullification of morality or reason, but simply the answer to how human nature does it. — Moliere

Yes. My asking why philosophers are so dismissive of appetites left out the passions. The same question applies. Neither appetites nor passions are optional extras.

And it can be taken in either realist(naturalist) or anti-realist(phenomenology-as-ontology) ways -- I don't think he was clear on that because that's kind of an our-time question. He's dealing with an entirely different set of problems. — Moliere

That's fair enough. It seems to me another application of his approach to philosophy. Faced with scepticism, he simply refuses to argue, but points out that we will not really accept the conclusion. We will carry on believing in causation and so much the worse for the sceptics' reason. Here, he transforms the subjectivism that the new science imposes on morality and aesthetics into an account of how we do it. To adapt W, "this is what we do".

And, arguably, an entirely different set of problems from his time, since his Treatise was not well received in his time. — Moliere

Yes, it would be interesting to know why nobody liked it. People still seem to prefer the Enqiry but I'm not clear why.

Though the influence on Kant I think cements him as an important figure (and on that I tend to think of Kant and Hume as closer than often depicted) — Moliere

Yes. I don't think it is all that strange that they are close. One's philosophical enemies should, arguably, be kept even closer then one's friends. I believe that he cites Berkeley as well.

I've hesitated about posting this. But it shows Hume as more complicated than he is usually thought to be. He wrote his essay Of the Standard of Taste in haste as a filler for a book that needed more heft to qualify for publication. So it isn't something he was particularly proud of. It seems officially to be about art. But Hume understands taste to be wider than that. For him, “taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty” assigns either “approbation” or “disapprobation” (or some combination of both) to objects of taste. So what he has to say in this essay is relevant to understanding the basis for his ethics.

Hume's analysis of moral judgements as based on "sentiments" (feelings or emotions) is normally classified as subjectivist. But in developing the idea of a standard of taste, he seems to escape from that classification and to allow at least some objectivity to them. But his standard of taste is not really objectivist either. He requires it to give rules for "confirming one sentiment and condemning another." But it must also explain why some sentiments are better and some are worse (NOT true or false). He gives five criteria for identifying people who are capable of doing this - “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice ..." So the standard of taste is the consensus of those who are qualified to pass judgement. But such people are rare, and consensus over time is crucial to avoid mistakes.

SEP - Hume's Aesthetics has more details.

I'm not sure what to make of it. It has a certain realism to it, because we don't arrive in the world with our tastes settled, but develop them from what we encounter and what other people think. Despite Cicero's opinion that one cannot argue about tastes, we argue persistently about them and are sometimes persuaded to change our mind or reconsider our opinion. But this is not the same as arguing about tomorrow's weather.

Rational wish relates to the rational soul, but there are also desires of the sensible and vegetative soul. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ah! Well, that's a different kettle of fish. But then I'm not clear what we are talking about when we talk and "the will"! Why don't we just say that all three souls have the power to act.

Plato, for his part, actually seems to deny the possibility of weakness of will in a number of places, the Parmenides being the place where he discusses this at most length. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for this. I hesitated about this, because I was sure that he recognizes akrasia but couldn't come up with a reference. (I sometimes pursue these questions when writing replies, but they often lead down a rabbit-hole and distract me.)

the intellect has been reduced to "the means by which one moves from premise to conclusion." In that case, Hume would be correct, reason can never motivate action. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It has always seemed odd to me that our conception of reason is so narrow. I've taken to using "reasonable" when talking about reason that doesn't fit the current definition.

Crucially, the will is also itself an intellectual power, part of the rational soul (Aristotle says "the will is in reason" (De Anima, III, 9), see also Aquinas Summa Theologiae, I, Q82. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the reference. I thought there must be one, but it is a long time since I read De Anima. But then, why do we talk about "the will" as different from "the intellect"?

For Plato, the rational part of the soul has its own desires, which can motivate us to action. Indeed, it is reason's desire to know truth, and to know what is truly good, as opposed to what merely appears to be good (appetites) or is said to be good by others (spirited part), that drives his entire psychology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here's another problem. What on earth is supposed to be wrong with hunger and thirst? Surely it is entirely rational and choiceworthy to want to eat and drink, even though it is not choiceworthy to do either to excess or to consume inappropriate solids or liquids. The trouble is, IMO, that we look for something that is guaranteed to be right and call it reason. We ought to be consistent and say that our intellect, like our appetites and emotions, is sometimes right, and sometimes wrong.

That's what the entire model of reflexive freedom and self-determination hinges on, the idea that we can shape our own appetites, that reason can (and ought be) the master of the passions and appetites. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Integration of the personality is certainly very desirable. But I'm not sure that the model of a charioteer is the only possibility. How about a partnership? That could achieve the same end.

This is obviously very different from modern views where "no desire is bad, only acts," — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that. Although, I would usually say that the mere desire to do something bad, is almost always bad, but not as bad as doing it.

We should not expect that ethics can be reduced to general maxims or any great deal of precision (Aristotle for his part warns against this at the outset of the Ethics). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that. One of many nails that A hits right on the head.

This doesn't save Hume though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not necessarily aiming to save Hume. Understanding him would be sufficient.

However, if Hume is not to be an implicit anti-realist (or at least a skeptic) he is in the position of having to argue that we can know, as a fact, through reason, that "x is truly most choice-worthy," but must then turn around and claim that "x is most choice-worthy" does not ever imply "choose x," which is absurd. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why can't Hume be an anti-realist?

My rejoinder would be that paralysis over fear of error can often be every bit as damaging as fear of error itself. There is what Hegel termed in the preface to the Phenomenology, "the fear of error become fear of truth." — Count Timothy von Icarus

True, very true. Both kinds of error are errors. I'm only recommending what Hume recommends - "judicious scepticism".

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. — Yeats - The Second Coming

I have little idea what Yeats had in mind and suspect that I wouldn't approve of it. Nonethless this, sadly, seems to be a suitable motto for our times.

Thanks very much for this. I may not agree with you, but at least I can see where I disagree. Which is definitely progress.

Right, the will is not the intellect, that's what the passage gets at. However, Aristotle has motivating desire coming from appetite, spirit, and rational wish, from the rational soul/intellect. Hume has it coming only from the appetites and passions because the intellect/nous has been deflated to just ratio. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Surely, the will is not intellect. But when you refer to "rational wish", you are referring to a problem, not a conclusion. If all wishes were rational, it would not be possible to act irrationally. That's what the classic puzzle about the practical syllogism is about. Is the conclusion words/thoughts? They are not action. Is the conclusion action? That has no place in a syllogism. Hume doesn't need to deflate anything. Plato recognized this problem in the form of what he called "akrasia" and we call "weakness of will", articulated as "how is it possible to know what is the better action and yet execute the worse one?"

Plato, on the other hand, does supply a bridge in his third element, thumos. Thumos differs from appetite in that it is capable of submitting to reason (or better, nous is capable of training thumos. When that doesn't work out, reason is incapable of controlling both "thumos" and appetite. That's why I prefer the translation "emotion" for "thumos", since emotions include a cognitive element and so can be seen to bridge the gap.

It's worth mentioning that Plato gives another account, (which, as it happens, I prefer) in the Phaedrus. There, Socrates explains to Phaedrus that it is eros that moves us to philosophy, and eros is something that arises between friends/lovers where one is already a philosopher and the other still a student. What's significant here is that he is positing that an appetite can be transformed (harnessed?) in the right environment.)

But perhaps more important is the idea that facts about what is good for beings, their telos, can be reasoned about from the nature of things, because the world isn't value free. "Food is good for man" or "water is good for plants" are accessible to theoretical reason as facts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true. If you add a criterion for what is good or bad to theoretical reason, you can derive practical syllogisms. Only it only applies to some things. It's in the nature of rocks that there is no good or bad for them, only what happens. In addition, what is good for the plague bacillus is bad for human beings. Finally, I accept that there are some things that are good for human beings as such. But it doesn't follow that there are not other things that are good for some human beings, but not for others. That even applies to some foods. In addition, there are some foods that become poisons in excessive amounts. When you try to implement the generalization, you very quickly get into trouble.

More seriously, that argument does enable one to work out what is good for some beings, at least. As it hapens, I'm content with that relativistic notion of good, but it may be that you are looking for something higher or deeper, such as "what is good?". I don't have any idea how to answer that question and doubt whether it has an answer. What's worse is that people often think they have an answer to that question when they do not, and that is the source of much evil. (I don't blame reason as such for that. I do blame the difficulty in being sure that one has not made a mistake.)

This is "scientific" only in the sense that proponents of this view tend to want to conflate it with "science" in order to give it legitimacy. And yet science cannot exist without distinctions of value, as between good evidence and bad evidence, good argument and bad argument, science and pseudoscience, good scientific habits and bad ones, etc. Notions that one ought not simply falsify one's data, or argue in bad faith for whatever is expedient is, or turn science into power politics, etc. are of course, value-laden. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I like to distinguish between science and scientism. It's a complicated issue. There has been much over-reaching since the original battles. But the original battle was, IMO, about the over-reaching of theologians in claiming that the Bible was the ultimate authority on physics.
It is true that once you bring the scientist into your account of science, everything changes. Hence the more modest view that science represent our present understanding of the world, but is always provisional. That is, the most important change is a certain modesty, even humility, in what one claims - what Hume describes as "judicious scepticism".

I think the value-neutral view of the world has an important place. For one thing, it is what enables judgements of value (because values may not be realized) and establishes the difference between desire and it's realization (and yet also provides the means towards realizing desire). It is also where the unknown resides, something that scientists do well to understand.

did Hume discover something seemingly obvious and fundamental that millennia of past thinkers simply missed? Or does Hume start from different assumptions? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aristotle didn't miss what Hume discovered - in fact it is not impossible that he derives his views in opposition to him (or his followers). That's a historical issue that I don't know enough to pronounce on.

From memory, Aristotle says (in from memory Nicomachaean Ethics VI). "Reason by itself moves nothing". He outlines the original concept of practical reason. It isn't a very clear concept, but outlines a quasi-syllogistic format that takes a value statement and a factual statement with an action as a conclusion. "1) Food is good. 2) This is food. 3) I should eat this food."

Hume's "Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions" is a souped-up version of the same thought. He doesn't seem to acknowledge Aristotle's theoretical reason at all. Clearly, his analysis of cause and effect and in his description of "relations of ideas" are meant to replace it. I see his reduction of these to customs or habits as essentially his response to what he calls "Pyrrhonism" - radical scepticism. He accepts that he cannot refute it but that no-one will change their ways. The best cure for it is involvement in the affairs of ordinary people.

The is/ought distinction seems to me a souped-up version of what Aristotle says about practical reason, in that the major premiss is a value statement. In that context, a factual statement is needed to generate the action. Aristotle develops a hierarchy of values, based on the observation that chain of means and ends needs to end in something that is done "for it's own sake" and consequently thinks that there must be a Supreme Good, which everything seeks to attain. Hume's sentiments are less amibitious but have the same function.

One could see Hume as an impoverished version of Aristotle (or, presumably, Thomas Aquinas, & co), but others might feel that it is down to earth and realistic.

It seems to me that by citing different passages, one could show both that (1) Hume bases his ethics on sentiment, and (2) he bases his ethics on utility. the problem here of course may be confusion on my part. I would appreciate any attempt to clarify this issue. — Jedothek

I think this is a good question, but that it has an answer. Utility presents itself as something objective, but is just a posh way of talking about what people want. So it derives from sentiments.
However, there is a real issue about the is/ought distinction. The world does not present itself as neutral and value-free. Our sentiments are responses to the world, in the context of human desires and needs, and our understanding of the world is deeply influenced by them. Arguably, the "scientific" view of the world as value-neutral is a specialized stance, adopted in certain contexts, but abandoned completely when we return to ordinary life. I'm not at all clear how far that undermines the distinction.

Aha, I think it was something I wrote but must have not posted because it was both too vague and complicated a thought, and distracting from some point of a post. Just forgot I didn't post it. — Apustimelogist

I do that quite often. Sometimes a thought just doesn't survive being written down.

I think thats fair. — Apustimelogist

It's good to reach a consensus. Thanks for the discusssion.

What I would say is seeing the same marks differently is more to do with a different engagement with the information extractable from those markings; — Apustimelogist

I don't disagree.

but I agree that "see" is ambiguous, partly leading to my previous consideration of whether we see anything at all. — Apustimelogist

OK. The idea that we don't "see" anything at all is interesting. I must have missed it. (I'm assuming it's in this thread somewhere?)

I don't think this is relevant because I don't believe the distinction between the outside 3D world and what we see is relevant given the fact that our brain cannot access anything independently of 2D information. From my perspective, the patterns we see are 2D. Its our somato-motor engagement with the world that brings an additional dimension to what we "see", both in terms of our body and eyes. — Apustimelogist

I agree that the images on our retinas are 2D. But I would say that our brain has access to information about the 3D world through somato-motor engagement (with some reservation about hearing) and I think that affects how the brain interprets the 2D information and consequently how we see it. I think the distinction between our brain doing something and us doing something matters. But I admit that what conscious experience amounts to is not at all clear.

Yes, but what is different isn't the markings but your reactions to the markings. — Apustimelogist

In a way, that's true. But it is also true that there are three different kinds of markings, though it is true that they are distinguished by how I can engage with them.

The experience then is inextricably entwined with our ongoing engagement with the image, imo. — Apustimelogist

Quite so. There's an interactive process going on. The ambiguity of "see" strikes again, of course. I would want to say that I see the markings differently. You would not be wrong to say that we both see the same markings in a different way. I'm not sure that anything important hangs on the difference. I certainly hope not.
The case of writing is somewhat special, in that writing is 2D, and the writing in the image on my retina is exactly the same as the writing in the 3D book. So we shouldn't have a problem in agreeing that what I see is the writing (or the marks). What's going on with 3D is still unclear.
There are various considerations that might make you pause about saying that we see the image on our retina. I've mentioned already that, in a sense, we not see two images, but a single combination. There are other bits of editing that have gone on that differentiate what we are aware of and what is actually there. 1) There's a blind spot where the optic nerve joins the retina. Our brain fills that in by guess-work, which can go wrong and so we can become aware of that even though it is invisible to us. 2) There's a patch in the centre of the retian that is more densely populated with retinal cells than the margins. The sharp focus that we think we see at the edges of our visual field is the result of our constantly looking around us, so the fuzzy image at the edges of the field of vision is filled in with memories from the last time we looked. 3) I've mentioned the squinting that goes on to enable us to "range-find" objects out in the world.

You mentioned attention. When I look through a telescope or microscope, I do not attend to the image as such (unless I need to focus the lens, or clean it). So I think it is more accurate to say that I look at the ship in the distance through the telescope, that is, through the telescope's image. I would say the same for the retinal image. Most of the time, we are not aware of the retinal image unless there is a problem with it - dust floating on the surface of the lense causes spots to appear in what we see, failures in the lens make the image fuzzy or distorted.

Yes, but if you look at writing, you just see marks. You don't somehow see marks and the totality of its relations to other parts of the world. Those relations are only experienced in real time in specific behaviors or thoughts or reactions. — Apustimelogist

That's not quite right. If you look at marks, you may be looking at 1) meaningless (to you) marks, or you may be looking at 2) marks that you know are meaningful, but don't know the meaning of (scripts that you can't read), or you may be looking at 3) meaningful marks that you can read. In each case, your experience will be different. There are three different visual experiences involved.

Our interpretation of what we see affects our experience, or, better, the significance (or lack of significance) of what we see affects our experience of it. We literally see the difference.

You have probably encountered puzzle pictures, but here are two examples that illustrate what I mean.
The Duck-Rabbit Illusion
Rubin's vase

There's an illusion here, that there is a "neutral" - uninterpreted - description of the pictures in terms of the patterns presented. But there's nothing special about this way of seeing the picture - it's just another interpretation.

The trompe l'oeil pictures are another example of this phenomenon.

This is another part of our discussion about the ambiguity of "see". There is a very influential discussion of this in Wittgenstein Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment, [previously known as ‘Part II’ of the Philosophical Investigations] Section xi, para. 118

Rather, apparent differences in belief, and therefore apparent conceptual differences, are in the main differences in expression. Suitable re-expressions, reinterpretations, may be able to make this apparent. — Banno

That's much better. It seems to allow a much more flexible idea of what translation involves than I thought. But then, it seems to leave open the possibility of failure. I'm not sure that's really compatible with what he wants to demonstrate - unless he envisages the possibility of a pragmatic accomodation or even the possibility of the relevant beliefs changing as a result of the encounter - even if both sides stick to their own languages. Is that a possibility?
I looked again at the actual arguments and found it much harder going than I thought when I first read it. One reason is the dearth of actual examples, or, better, cases. His discussion of the yacht (p.18) is fine, though limited. Then he seems to want to extend the scope of this case very widely - even suggesting (though not stating) that this is how philosophy proceeds. Perhaps. Somtimes. And then one wants to say that if that method could resolve philosophical disagreements, philosophical debate would be much more fruitful than it actually is.
I'm still not happy about the slide from conceptual differences to beliefs. It would be tedious to complain that not all differences in beliefs are differences in concepts, so I won't bother with that. However, concepts (or, given the link he establishes between concepts and language) and conceptual schemes (language-games to me) aren't true or false. They are what enables us to establish truth and falsity. Some of the issues he deals with later on seem to me to be very much over-simplified. Yet, I find it hard not to agree with his last paragraph, except for the idea in the last sentence that "we .... reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false." Following his example, I ask what "mediated touch" would be; if that makes no sense, it would seem that "unmediated touch" also makes no sense.

No, I haven't. I would welcome enightenment from someone who has.

I have a question for you. Am I right to understand Davidson's thesis as being that conceptual differences come down to different beliefs, and that, at some point, the differences can be settled empirically?

What else is it? Anything else about it does not come from the writing itself but context and relationships those markings have to other things, including our engagement with them. Without those things, yes writing is just marks on paper; writing is nothing more than marks on paper and how those marks relate to other parts of the world. — Apustimelogist

I'm going to assume that "it" in the first sentence is the marks on paper. But then your second sentence should have read "Anything else about them does not come from the marks themelves, but from constext and relationships those markings have to other things." That's true, and in that context, one can refer to those marks as writing. So writing is more than marks on paper. It is marks on paper and how those marks relate to other parts of the world. The difference in vocabulary depends on and signals a difference in how we are to think about the phenomenon.

Which are not intelligible without experience of them! — Apustimelogist

So either we are in a hopelss circle or the two are inter-dependent.

I think both can be argued in different ways. I think the idea that we are directly aquainted with structure in the outside world is a coherent notion. But I am not someone inclined to say that there is some single, strong, absolute way of describing structure in the world, — Apustimelogist

Well, yes. "Direct" and "indirect" are applied in different ways, depending on the context. (So are "inside" and "outside".) So there is a bit of a morass there. You are also right that there is no single, strong, absolute way of describing structure in the world. It all depends on what we are trying to describe.

You could also argue indirectness though in the sense that we are still in some sense insulated from the outside world by our sensory states, the structure of the brain and its possible foibles, and in principle issues of chronic indeterminacy. — Apustimelogist

I've no objection to saying that our senses and cognitive capacities have their limitations. But, at the same time, they do work for many purposes, and we've been quite clever about working out ways of pushing the boundaries.

Which (sc. ship or a star) is just a pattern that I see; thats all I mean by image, without further distinctions or assumptions. — Apustimelogist

It's as if I were to say that I see an animal, "without further distinctions or assumptions". Do you not even recognize a distinction between the images that enable me to infer that some images are images of 3D objects? It's as if you were to say that all writing is just marks on paper etc., or that the body of my dead friend is just meat.

They aren't mutually exclusive. You only know something about your actions insofar that you have experiences about your actions. — Apustimelogist

.. and you only have experiences of your actions because you act.

The brain is the model, no infinite regress of observers required. — Apustimelogist

That's an interesting reply. But on reflection, since we remember things and there's evidence the memories are stored in the brain, I've decided not to pursue this line. "Model", these days, is flexible enough to cover almost any form of information storage.

I believe that all the images are just patterns and the significance is retained by way of what I said in the bit you quoted. — Apustimelogist

So an image plus affordances is not an image?

I wasn't using directly in the same sense ("inside the body") as earlier! — Apustimelogist

OK. Can you explain the new sense? I'm particularly interested in whether you think there is such a thing as indirect perception and what that might amount to.

On "conceptual schemes", I should add that there is quite a lot that Davidson says that I agree with. I think he is right to argue that there is not one single conceptual scheme that all human beings share. I do maintain, however, that our world includes many partially incommensurable schemes - partly shared and partly not. Further, the difference between scheme and content is not anything like as clear-cut as his argument requires. On the other hand, I accept that the differences in thinking can be expressed as beliefs. I think, for example, that belief in God is not a straightforwardly empirical scheme, but the anchor of a way of thinkng about the world that is conceptually different from the way an atheist or sceptic thinks about the world. But then, Davidson doesn't seem to recognize that there are different kinds of belief.

Well,

But as I say earlier, I think you could argue that joint positions don't actually directly convey 3D physical space without further integration of information (e.g. A finger joint typically cannot move through all degrees of freedom of 3D space). — Apustimelogist

Perhaps not. But a knuckle joint or a thumb or an arm or a spine can. — Ludwig V

Well, I think its at least debatable. I don't think those joints are anywhere near mobile enough, imo. — Apustimelogist

The main point is that we do have the information and it is integrated knowledge. So we agree. What matters here is that we don't have it via an image of any kind.

Well then the 2D image is how I am seeing a 3D car. I can't shake the awareness that my visual field is two-dimensional (except for the color dimension) even though I can distinguish distance. — Apustimelogist

Well, I agree that the 2D image is how you are seeing the 3D car. But it doesn't follow that you are seeing the image, except perhaps indirectly. When I look through a telescope or similar, what I see is the ship or star. I may be aware of the telescope indirectly because of my limited field of vision, but I do not see two images, the one in my eye and the one in the telescope.
When you refer to the 2D image, you are not seeing the image in your retina. That would mean seeing two images. What we see is one image at most.
It is very easy to fall in to thinking of the eye as some sort of camera or telescope, and in some ways it is. But the difference is that the camera focuses its image on an image-recording device, which an observer can access later, and a telescope has an observer at the eye-piece. But the eye does not have an observer (perhaps the brain) or an image-recording device.

The brain doesn't have any direct access to the outside world. It can never intelligibly compare things with some criterion that has come from the way things somehow are on the outside world. — Apustimelogist

Well, somehow we can work out when our eyes deceive us, so there must be some criterion that lets us know when those 2D images are wrong. Acting and moving with a 3D body in a 3D world is a rich source of correction. But that does depend on linking perception with action rather than experience.

All the brain can do is construct models which make predictions about what happens next, and that can fail and get re-adjusted. — Apustimelogist

If you suppose anything like an image or model in the brain, the question arises how the brain can access it in order to apply it to the incoming information. The answer is always an observer of some kind. But then, that observer will need to construct its own model or image and there will have to be a second observer inside the first one.... I'm sure you see the infinite regress that has begun. The brain is not an internal observer - unless you call it an observer of the outside world.

I see it in terms of just the direct patterns I see, and my reactions to those patterns in real time. Without those reactions, the idea that I am recognizing an object like a car is empty. I see the 2D patterns of the car and react to them in a way consistent with my recognition of it. — Apustimelogist

People sometimes talk about "affordances" in this context. (I seem to remember they were mentioned earlier in this thread). Of course they are important, because they are the significance of the objects that I see.
Some images are images of something, some are just patterns. If you treat them all as of the second kind, you have lost the significance of the image.

Sure, but I don't think the "real thing" can be transcend the 2D information accessible from the retina. — Apustimelogist

I don't understand what you mean here.

But you seem to just embrace the idea that you are directly acquainted with a 3D object. When I then ask what it means that I am acquainted with these 3D objects, it comes back to what I have said about 2D information and enactive processes. — Apustimelogist

If "directly" just means inside the body, then obviously I cannot be directly acquainted with objects outside my body. Not very interesting. The interesting an important question is whether I can be acquainted with objects outside my body. The answer has to be, yes. I would not use directly and indirectly in the the context of objects outside my body.

But I think the animal case is conceivably a disagreement about facts as opposed to classification. — Apustimelogist

Oh, it certainly could be a question of facts. But some people have insisted on describing the sounds emitted by an animal in pain from an experiment as "vocalizations" in the misguided belief that is more objective than "screaming". Such differences of classification prevent rational argument about the facts. So, classification needs to be agreed before the facts can be agreed, and if people are in the grip of the idea that animals are just machines, that agreement is not possible.

Another example:-

I think the difference in our perspective is that you just say you see the 3D car and stop there; while to me, my percepts can be deconstructed so I do see that my visual space is 2D (apart from the color) — Apustimelogist

We do agree pretty much on how the eye works, yet we describe the facts differently. Our disagreement is not about the facts, but about agreeing a coherent way of describing them, i.e. how to think about them, i.e. a coherent conceptual structure for understanding them. It's not a straightforward task.

But as I say earlier, I think you could argue that joint positions don't actually directly convey 3D physical space without further integration of information (e.g. A finger joint typically cannot move through all degrees of freedom of 3D space). — Apustimelogist

Perhaps not. But a knuckle joint or a thumb or an arm or a spine can. On the other hand, I would agree that our understanding of 3D space does depend on "holistic integration of the information of the senses". The result of that integration happens to be true. So what's wrong with it?

But what do you then mean when you say that you see your car? There is nothing more, imo, to seeing a car than this 2D information, your reactions to it, and your ability to make predictions about it and engage with it. — Apustimelogist

I mean that I see a 3D object, which I can walk round, get inside, drive around and take to pieces. None of those is true of images of the car, no matter how many you accumulate.

For me, we just use these distinctions to infer something about what would happen with regard to movement. — Apustimelogist

I wouldn't object to that. But what validates the inference? There must be some way that you can compare the image of a 3D object with the 3D object. But you seem to deny that we can. So the image of my car is no different from an image of starship Enterprise or a dragon - and even in those cases, we know what it would mean to see the real thing, even if it never happens.

If you have no body to re-orientate, what you hear when you "hear the location" could not possibly give you any spatial information - it would simply be a difference in the quality of sound in your ears. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps. But I do have a body to re-orient.

I guess my perspective also leads to the question - are you literally seeing anything? — Apustimelogist

It depends what you mean by "literally". For me, when I walk through my front door, I literally see my car. If I only see the image on my retina, then I don't see "literally" my car, but an image of it.

Yes, I think you are correct. But the 2D nature of the image on the retina is not ambiguous - so that is my anchor. — Apustimelogist

An image is always an image of something else, never the real thing. So my anchor is the real thing. That's what makes the image of a car an image as opposed to a complex array of coloured shapes.

I would say I am not necessarily saying that we don't see in 3D, but that this is nothing above information on a 2D retina and an enactive component regarding movement and prediction. — Apustimelogist

But the image on our retinas (we have two, remember) and our enactive lives are what enable us to see the 3D world. They do not prevent us from seeing it.

I would say that this question of evidence interpretation is a question of beliefs and so in that regard, Davdison would not consider it as something about conceptual schemes. — Apustimelogist

Suppose that someone died, and we are considering a suspect. There is good evidence that S caused the death, but also evidence that they did not intend to. I think that means that S is not guilty of murder. You think that means they are guilty of murder. Our disagreement is not about the facts, but about what counts as murder - that is, our concept of murder. Murder is part of a group of concepts under the heading of "crimes". So our disagreement is not about what happened, the facts of the case, but how we should clssify them. You can label that a disagreement about beliefs, if you like. But it is not the same as a disagreement about the facts and cannot be settled in the same way.

I think there are radical differences in how we are thinking about this. I'm not saying it is all just a question of words. But our different uses of words are not helping us.

They are different senses abput different things, one from directly inside the body, the other from outside. — Apustimelogist

The problem here is about the meaning of "direct" and "indirect". You seem to the saying that internal senses are direct and external senses are not? But we have pain and touch receptors connected to the brain and processed in the brain before we experience anything. If what we see is the image on our retina, how is that any different?
In any case, if the internal senses are direct, they give us 3D information directly.

I'm talking about what you see. Its a 2D image. — Apustimelogist

"What you see" is ambiguous. When I look at a normal 2D picture, I can say that I can see the picture and say that I see my car in the the picture. Presumably, the same applies to this 2D image. The iimage is more like a lens, by means of which I see my car.

You pointed out that the image on our retina is 2D. Fair enough. But I don't see that we ever see that image, because it is extensively processed, including the amalgamation of two images. Don't forget. that retinal image is broken up into what, presumably is an encoding that is quite different from any image.
I'm not sure whether to count the result of comparing two images or the extent to which our lens needs adjusting to produce a clear image a visual cue. It could go either way, I suppose.

But this (sc. 3D hearing) is not very different from the visual case in the sense that your learning about 3D space vicariously through cues. — Apustimelogist

I partly agree with that. But what is learning is not me, it is, let us say, my brain. I don't ever hear two sounds, one for each ear and then realize that I can deduce where the sound is from that. I hear one sound, located in space. The learning and the processing takes place way "below" consciousness and involves an encoding process that is nothing like a sound even though it is caused by sound.

For me, the question here is: what does it mean to say that you interpret 2D pictures as 3D? Does the 2D image magically turn into a 3D one? — Apustimelogist

I'm not sure whether you are aware of the phenomenon of trompe l'oeil painting. There are many examples in Wikipedia - Trompe l'oeil painting . I think that "Escaping Criticism" by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874 is a particularly clear example - the pictured person is climbing out of the frame. (I would upload it if I could!)

The 3D spectacles that are used in 3D cinemas are a different technique for achieving similar effects. I would say that, in the case of trompe l'oeil it is the case that a 2D image is experienced as 3D. There's no magic involved. I realize that you may know about this already, but it is possible that you don't and I want to make sure that we are talking about the same phenomena.

I can be a bit relentless when I get stuck into a philosophical debate like this. Sometimes I annoy people. Please let me know if I am annoying you.

I just don't know what level of mutual comprehension occurs between humans and other animals - and presumably it dependa on the animal - and I was framing it in a way I would if I didn't know what the other person's perspective on that would be either. I think even people who think very little of animal cognition would agree there is a minimal level of intelligibility between humans and certain animals, even in an emotional sense. — Apustimelogist

Some people (Descartes' is the classic philosophical example) deny that any animals experienced anything and saw them as purely mechanical. This resulted in some of his followers concluding that dogs don't feel pain and cruelly mistreating them in order to prove the point. But the disagreement is not a question of evidence, but of interpretation of the evidence. So Davidson's thesis that we can abandon talk of conceptual schemes and return to beliefs and experiences seems to me to be false.
Most people are on the spectrum, but the issue is where a mechanical explanation is sufficient, (as with creatures like bacteria and fungi) and where it is appropriate to apply the kinds of explanation we use to explain (most of) the actions of human beings. Reason and purposes vs causes and evolution.
Which is not to claim that we do not learn the conceptual schemes that we apply to the world.

All the visual information about space is inherently 2D. — Apustimelogist

It is certainly true that all the visual information about space can be represented in 2D. It's called a picture, and you can walk around the world thinking of yourself as watching a movie. That's why I draw your attention to the other senses, since there is no equivalent in those contexts. You mention proprioception and body motion as possible 3D. But how could we have 3D bodies in a 2D world? BTW, you are forgetting that we have 3D hearing as well.

Well, yes it is 3D information in the sense that the objective world seems to be spatially 3D. I'm just saying that we can only navigate this visually, on a 2D space of the retina. — Apustimelogist

If we only had a 2D picture and no other information, I don't think we could even conceive of a 3D space, never mind navigate it. Our intepretation of that 2D image is conditioned by what we know from all our senses. Without that, I don't think we could even make sense of the possibility of a 3D space.

For me, 3D visual perception is not some direct perception of 3D information - you only ever have 2D visual information. — Apustimelogist

Well, as I said above, any 3D scene can be represented in 2D. We have learned to interpret 2D pictures as 3D scenes. If all we experienced were 2D, how could we even get the idea of 3D?
There is a real difference between a 2D and 3D visual image, but it is not simply based on 2D information, but on the fact that the two images our visual system works with are slightly different. In combination, they give a diferent experience. Call that an inference if you like, but the experience really is different.

What would non-minimalism be? — Apustimelogist

I was just picking up on what you said:-

I would say maybe there is something like intelligibility in common with non-human life. Maybe we can say humans an animals might share some vague sense of mutual intelligibility with regard to something like space or even emotions on some minimal level depending on the animal, but then animals may be incapable of many of the kinds of abstract predictions a human can. — Apustimelogist

A non-minimalist would have said "to a greater or lesser extent" and cut out all the "maybe" qualifications. I would have said that there is often mutual comprehension between animals and humans based on whatever interactions occur in each case. However, even though that looks like an empirical question, it depends how the facts are interpreted, so I'm pessimistic about the possibility of productive argument about that. That one of the reasons why I don't think that all disagreements can be settled on empirical grounds.

And we must include eye movement and lens focusing (i.e. ciliary muscle) in this too - your eye palpates the scene in its motion and focusing which is part of your distinct familiarity with 3D space. — Apustimelogist

Yes. In terms of focusing, there is also the "squinting" that aligns the eyes so that they can focus on the same objects. (Hold up a finger at arm's length in front of you. Move it gradually towards you. You will find that you have to adjust your eyes to follow it. If you don't, you'll find you see two images of the finger. Then there's the peculiarity of how one sees one's own nose.) But none of that is 2D information. The ears work differently. They apparently note the difference when a given sound arrives at each ear and compute the direction from that. How knowledge of my own body's position works - or our balance sense - I have no idea.
But it's also true that at greater distances, we rely on 2D information.
(I like the idea that my eye "palpates" the scene. My hands and feet also palpate my surroundings. In the second case, it is clearly not 2D information.)

I would say maybe there is something like intelligibility in common with non-human life. — Apustimelogist

It would seem you are a minimalist on this question. Let's not forget the differences between dogs and bacteria. There's not one answer for all non-human life. There's a spectrum. What complicates the issue even more is that, IMO, the relationship we can form with (the "higher" forms of life") actually affects, not only our judgement, but also how those creatures behave and consequently the practices that they and we can share. That shouldn't be a surprise. We learn to be human - what being human is - through our interactions with those around us.
But then, there also people with whom we do not share everything. As in the holocaust and other examples of inhuman or bestial treatment meted out by human beings - not to mention occasions when we find the behaviour of others unintelligible - there are examples all around us.

All visual cues trivially occur to us on a 2D field - the retina is a 2D structure. The use of two retinas does not change this fact. You are just using 2D cues in an interesting way to make inferences that guide action and predictions about the world. — Apustimelogist

I agree that we have to think of the senses as part of a sensori-motor system, which cuts out the distraction of "presentations" and "perceptions".

One can argue that vision is 2D in the eye, I suppose, and that there is an inference being made. But my ears don't have a 2D image. Nor do my touch or pain receptors. Yet we experience them in 3D. Our knowledge of body position is similar. We don't make the inference - the results of an inference made "unconsciously" are available (are reported) "directly". This, I suppose, is why Kant had to posit a priori understanding of space; similar points apply to time.

I think the point is that nothing humans do is in principle unintelligible (in regular contexts). — Apustimelogist

That fits with Wittgenstein's idea that human life and practices are the essential context for everything. It would seem that he did not see any similarities with non-human life. This is somewhat puzzling to me, though I would not automatically extend that understanding to all life. There is disagreement among human beings about that.
There is more to be said about how we deal with extreme - non-regular - contexts.

Davidson's point is that the idea of conceptual schemes becomes vacuous once mutual intelligibility is allowed — Apustimelogist

Yes. But that's a misunderstanding of what intelligibility is. Intellgibility is not black and white, but a spectrum. He seems to think that "conceptual schemes" are a tight logical structure which is either completely intelligible of completely unintelligible - which leads to his reductio. That fits with what appears to me a very naive view of translation as just a set of equivalences. That's seldom or never available.

There is though, I think, also an interpretation aspect in the sense that we can plausibly act or re-act in response to the same experiences in different ways - that is a sense of interpretation purely in the sense of acts, behavior, changes of attention, vocalization, prompted thought or even mental imagery, prediction, memory, etc ... — Apustimelogist

That's very close to what I would call a concept.

You seem

We use words like 'dog' in relation to a coherent structure of experiences that map to an outside world insofar as our biological machinery is coupled to an outside world. — Apustimelogist

Now it seems that you are substituting words for concepts.

I don't think we can do without some sort of idea like that of a concept or idea.

our ability to sense and engage with 3-dimensional depth in visual space can only be inferred indirectly from 2D visual cues and also information from our bodies — Apustimelogist

Not quite right. We have 3D stereoscopic vision because of our two eyes; it fails at larger distances, but it works well at smaller distances - as the 3D films show. Our ears manage to give us 3D hearing as well.

I did say "almost" a relief. Don't get me wrong. This stuff is really scary. Philosophy is a way of coping, given that there's nothing I can do about it.

Are you saying that Land's thesis is germane to the attempts of the present administration? — Paine

It was written in 2012. Call it deep background for philosophers. But it's not analytic philosophy. It's written in the context of post-modernism and articulates what was going on at the time in a dialectical framework. It's easier to follow than much stuff that goes under the label of post-modernism, but it's a wild ride nonetheless. No, I don't buy it, but I think I understand the issues better - and why Musk and Trump are behaving as they are.

You also need to get your head around accelerationism as well. Try Andy Beckett in the Guardian of 11 May 2017 or a Google search for "accelerationism.

It suggests the main game might be setting up "Government by AI"... Not at all concerning, that. All good. — Banno

Perhaps. But has links that suggest a more mundane motivation, and that's almost a relief.

I am not seeing a lot of references to Rousseau's or Land's actual statements In the comments as yet. Will this be forthcoming? — Paine

It is really important, if one wants to understand this, not to be hypnotized by what's going on now, but to get one's head around the background - Land, and then accelerationism. But it will take time and effort. Still, this is clearly not going to be a nine-day wonder, so it will likely be worth it.

Yes. The metaphor of a lens is much better. And, of course, the selection of what is to be noticed by reference to what is of interest or use makes perfect sense. We don't start with a clean sheet of paper, but as human beings thrown into the on-going social and material world. We start with where we are.
So we need to think of pragmatism, in some form, at the level of the conceptual scheme or paradigm or language (and this needs to be flexible, capable of adapting to changes and surprises. Then truth and falsity apply where the scheme applies. (The idea of truth that is independent of what enables us to articulate it and discover it seems like a desirable goal, but doesn't make any sense.)

All of that is very helpful - and confusing!

I realize that it would be helpful to identify specific remarks to back up what I say, but I have found it difficult to choose exactly the right quotations. Nonetheless, I think there is a basis in what you both have said for the following comments:-

It seems to me that Thompson and Davidson have much in common. But there seems to be a difference (though Thompson seems to say that Davidson points us towards it) in that, for Thompson there are sometimes (but, I notice, not too often) local differences of opinion that involve incommensurability. Davidson certainly rules out the "superholist" view and rejects the conventional realism/anti-realism dilemma. Yet he does seem to adopt an unconventional version of realism. But I don't think that he rules out local disagreements that involve incommensurablity. But nor does he rule them in.

One of the features of Kuhn's version of all this is that he broadens the scope of his paradigms beyond the purely linguistic, to include, for example, technology. I would have expected something similar from Thompson (embodiment, enactivism).

Davidson's view that the only issues are about our beliefs and whether they are true or not "in the world" is surprising, especially when he insists that there are no "raw" (i.e. uninterpreted) experiences, yet it seems to be the case that such facts about the world are the causes of our beliefs. (McDowell's objjection that causality is indifferent to justification seems correct to me.). On both grounds, the articulation of our beliefs is critically important, but the means to articulate them would, surely, be some form of conceptual structure or structures. In any case, it seems just obvious that there are many ways to insulate specific beliefs against empirical refutation. For example, "God always answers prayers. Sometimes the answer is no", "All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds", the concept of repression in psychoanalysis &c,

I hope, but am not sure, that at least some of this makes some sense.

Thanks very much for this. Very helpful.

It appears bonobos are capable of sharing our ability to conceive of others as knowledgeable or ignorant of some fact. — wonderer1

The more we look for abilities that both animals and humans have, the more we find.

The thread became entangled in animal intelligence, a garden path, to my eye. — Banno

Yes. There are those who cannot conceive of a non-human animal that truly shares any concepts with human beings and those who are quite sure that all animals in this world share that world, to a greater or lesser extent. Never the twain shall meet. Looks like two incommensurable conceptual schemes to me.

I have questions. I hope someone can enlighten me. (I have read Davidson's article, but it was a while ago...)

Does Davidson think of us as having just one conceptual scheme? Shared by all humanity, past, present and future?

Does Davidson recognize in any way how complex translation can be?

So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.

Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww

Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.

Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww

That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.

Philosophers get acclimatized to a very general use of words like "appearance". But not all appearances are the same.

For example, Descartes' point that sometimes our senses deceive us is the ground for the philosophically traditional radical scepticism. Escaping from that trap is one of the basic motifs of modern philosophy.

We know that some appearances are misleading. What follows? Does it follow that all appearances are misleading? No. Does it follow that all appearances might be misleading? No, the fact that we can tell that some experiences are misleading means that we can distinguish appearances that are not misleading from those that are.

So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.

Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww

Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.

Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww

That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.

Philosophers get acclimatized to a very general use of words like "appearance". But not all appearances are the same.

For example, Descartes' point that sometimes our senses deceive us is the ground for the philosophically traditional radical scepticism. Escaping from that trap is one of the basic motifs of modern philosophy.

We know that some appearances are misleading. What follows? Does it follow that all appearances are misleading? No. Does it follow that all appearances might be misleading? No, the fact that we can tell that some experiences are misleading means that we can distinguish appearances that are not misleading from those that are.

When Macbeth sees a dagger in front of him, there is no dagger. So we say that there appears (to him) that there is a dagger. Macbeth is deluded. The dagger is a subjective experience - an image, not a reality. When the sun appears over the horizon at dawn, exactly on time as usual, there is no mistake, no delusion. Here, an appearance is perfectly real, perfectly true, perfectly objective. These appearances are revelations, not illusions.

Before Copernicus & co., everyone assumed that it was the sun that was moving and the earth was still. That is a mistake, just like the illusion that one sometimes gets when the train on the next tracks moves in relation to our train. We tend to assume that our train is still because we are still in relation to it and there are no visual clues to tell us otherwise. But this is not a subjective, delusional appearance like Mabeth's dagger. It is just an misinterpretation of the real situation. From a different point of view, the situation would be perfectly clear.

Under certain conditions of sun and rain, rainbows appear. One wants to say that there appears to be a coloured arch floating in the sky. There is no arch. But this is not a delusion like Macbeth's dagger or the relative motion of the trains. It is a perfectly real phenomenon, which is just what it appears to be, except that the physical substrate of the phenomenon is not what we expect; it is millions of rain-drops reflecting the sun's light.

Sweeping up all sensations under one description is misleading and creates unnecessary problems. Look at the details.

I distinctly recall holding the minority view in that thread, as I maintained that the Aristotelian distinction of h.sapiens as 'the rational animal' is a valid ontological distinction. In other words that h.sapiens and canids (etc) are beings of different kinds. I said that the ability to speak, count, create technology, pursue science, and the like, amounts to a difference in kind, not simply one of degree. — Wayfarer

You are right, of course. It's probably not a good idea to re-litigate all that here. Briefly, I don't know what the difference is between an ontological distinction and any other kind, so forgive me if I just talk about a distinction (or difference). It seems to me that there are differences between h. sapiens and other creatures and similarities. A big part of the issue is which of them matter, and that depends on the context. I object to emphasizing the difference and then thinking that animals do not experience pain in much the same way as we do. But it is easy to push the similarities too far and then applying inappropriate moral values to them. It's a question of balance and context and of attention to the details of each case. Dogs are a special case because of the relationships that they have which human, which are not unparalleled but are extreme on the spectrum of human/animal relationships.

On the business about intellect, imagination, and sensation, to treat these as entirely distinct abilities, each functioning in its own box may seem clear, but distorts the complexity of our cognitive capacity and grossly neglects the importance of our not merely existing but acting in the world. This is a very large subject. It would be better, perhaps to take it to another thread.

Kant does not claim that we know things as they are in themselves (noumena), but he does assert that something external structures our experiences. — JuanZu

I can follow the line of thought until this point. But this is where, for me, it falls apart.

What are you guys calling “appearance”? — Mww

I do agree that our discussion is messy. That's partly because the context is a bit messy. From my point of view there is more than one context. There's Berkeley and Schopenhauer, as well as Kant. The immediate spark, for me at least, was the idea that happiness and unhappiness affect how we experience or interpret the world, or the phenomena or appearances. My problem with the Kantian system is simply that the idea of the noumenon. I understand this as meaning a something-or-other that sits "behind" or "beyond" the phenomena" and which cannot be known. I'm not a fan.

Thing is….I’m sure both of you are fully aware mistakes in empirical cognitions inhere in judgement, not in appearances. And mental illness is not the rule, but the exception to it. — Mww

I don't think that we first recognize that something appears to us and we then make judgements about it, or rather, even to recognize that something has appeared is a judgement. Judgement is always included in every perception.
Yes, mental illness is not the norm. There are many different kinds of problem here. The common element is the issue of how one interprets the world and how that process is not an abstract issue of knowledge, but is conditioned by all sorts of other factors.

I'm no scholar of Thomism, but I've got a grasp of the basic outlines of what Edward Feser (who's a good source in these matters) calls 'Aristotelian-Thomist' (A-T) philosophy - Aristotle's matter-form philosophy. — Wayfarer

It seems that we have a similar level of knowledge about those ideas. That helps.

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses.

Put it this way. For me, perception requres understanding. Without that, one only has a "raw sensation" which is meaningless.

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. — Maritain

This is just behaviourism restricted, for some reason, to animals. But many people were quite happy to explain human beings in that way as well as animals. It is a way of thinking about them, not vulnerable to a simple refutation. (Compare religious belief).
But If "a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder;" how does it not see or smell the sugar or the intruder and know perfectly well what they are - what the appropriate reaction is?. I'm bewildered.

He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows,

If he has not the idea or concept, he does not know the thing. But since he responds appropriately to the thing, he has a concept of it. Not necessarily the same as yours and mine, but similar.

What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning.

A couple of metaphors do not clarify anything.

Introspection is limited, — Manuel

I agree that we know that there are things that we know that are not available to the direct access of introspection. If we know that, we have access to at least one fact about them - that they exist. If we know that we must have indirect acess to them.

It is a mistake in modern philosophy of mind to believe that everything (or almost everything) must be accessible to consciousness. — Manuel

If we knew that there are some things that are not available to consciousness, they must be available to conciousness.

I do believe that we know some fundamental aspects about mental reality in merely having consciousness. — Manuel

How do we distinguish between mental reality and other kinds (such as physical or abstract reality) unless we have access to those other kinds?

Then all ideas, even complex ideas, become like a compilation of sense impressions. This effectively evades the issue of universals. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hume and Berkeley are both nominalists. Nominalism is one solution to the issue of universals. There are others. But I don't see how accepting one solution to the problem is evading it.

Postscript - afterthought

don't we have to conclude that the world is the perception, and the world is within the person, not vise versa? — Metaphysician Undercover

If our world is the totality of our perceptions, given that the perceiver of a perception is not perceived in the perception, perhaps we need to say not the world is within us, but that we are our world. I could live with that.

The issue is where do we position "the world", in this interaction. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand my world to be everything that I interact with, together with myself. I interact with many different kinds of thing, some of which don't have a location in any normal sense. Perceptions are one example of this. So I'm not clear what the question is asking for.

The reason for this separation (sc. of the phenomenal) is that mistakes inhere within the appearance, as mental illness demonstrates. If we do not allow for this separation then there is no way to account for the mistakes which the sense apparatus makes, in presenting its representation to the conscious mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with that. But consider - if all you have to go on is appearances, how do you know when you have made a mistake?

And since the mind only has the appearance to base its judgement on, it must allow for the logical possibility that the sense apparatus is completely mistaken, in an absolute way, as the skeptical starting point. — Metaphysician Undercover

Some appearances are mistakes. Some appearances aren't mistakes. It would be a mistake to think otherwise. The question is how to tell one from the other.

By what principles do you reduce two distinct worlds interacting into one united world? — Metaphysician Undercover

My world is what I interact with. Your world is what you interact with. It follows that if I interact with you, you are a part of my world, and that if you interact with me, I am part of your world. I don't say those two worlds are identical. I do say that they overlap.

Furthermore, it puts all those mistakes discussed above into some sort of limbo, where in one sense they have to be part of the world, but in another sense they have to be excluded from the world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Macbeth's delusional dagger is, in one sense, part of Macbeth's world. But since it does not exist, it is also not part of his world.

You are right that the quotation fails to distinguish between sensation, imagination and intellect. I would attribute this to his empiricist approach to philosophy, especially to the doctrine that all our knowledge comes from the senses; so it goes deeper than just Berkeley. I read him as based on Cartesian Dualism but adapting it, with the result that God is placed as the unseen reality moving the world rather than matter. His ideas about God, I understand, are derived from Malebranche's occasionalism. He doesn't seem to refer much to Thomist or Aristotelian doctrines, though he does re-introduce the concept of final causes, which had, of course, been abandoned by the new physics.

I don't know about Thomism in enough detail to respond to that alternative approach in detail, though I think I can see the sense in it.

I don't know enough about Berkley to know his influences (I read him pretty much blind), but this actually makes a lot of sense if one looks at his philosophy as essentially recapitulating the "classical metaphysical tradition"*, just through a sort of bizzarro world, fun house mirror setting of modernity.
IMHO though, it ends up looking terribly deflated. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. The fascination, for me, is tracking the distortions and errors that allow him to reach his conclusions. It's a long list. And yet, he somehow manages to put his finger on ideas that are not simply a recapitulation of the classical tradition and which we are still arguing about. I mean that (on my understanding), he is the originator of what we now know as the idealist tradition in philosophy; also, I don't know of earlier philosophy who explicitly argues for relativism about all our empirical knowledge of the world.

There is one topic that you may not know about, but which, I think, is helpful in understanding Berkeley. Have a look at SEP - Occasionalism

Berkeley’s talk of occasion here reveals the immediate influence of Malebranche. Malebranche held that the only true cause is God and that apparent finite causes are only “occasional causes,” which is to say that they provide occasions for God to act on his general volitional policies. Occasional “causes” thus regularly precede their “effects” but are not truly responsible for producing them.

A side-note on Dr. Johnson. I doubt if Dr. Johnson thought he was making an argument against Berkeley. He must have intended his gesture as a counter-example. At one level, Berkeley undoubtedly has a reply. He needs to "translate" "Dr. Johnson kicked the stone" into a redescription in terms of ideas, in the same sort of way that he would translate an apple falling on the stone into ideas. So far, so good. But in this case, he has to deal with God's ideas and Dr. Johnson's ideas and their interaction. The SEP - Berkeley (3.2.6 Spirits and Causation) says:-

Thus, within the domain of physical objects, Berkeley appears to think that God is the unique genuine cause, consistent with our characterization of occasionalism. There has been, however, some controversy in recent secondary literature as to whether one’s own body is to be included in this domain of physical objects. Some (such as McDonough 2008) have argued against this inclusion, while others (such as Lee 2012) have argued that we, as finite spirits, have no genuine causal input in the movement of our own bodies, and such movement is directly caused by God like any other physical object for Berkeley.

So it isn't at all clear how the translation would work in Dr. Johnson's case.

PS added later.
I don't think this is a marginal issue. Tallis' article proposes a different conception - the mind as embodied and enactive. I'm very attracted to this approach and not just in relation to Berkeley. But he does not identify what failings in Berkekely's doctrines might make this approach more plausible. If I were constructing such an argument, it would be at this point that I would intervene.

The irony or strange aspect about this here is that Schopenhauer does not mention much these happy moments, choosing to speak about art, which is fine and important. — Manuel

Art can make people happy. Perhaps he just thinks that art is more appropriate to a philosophical context than the pleasures of walking the dog.

One day the boy who cried wolf will be right. Hopefully not soon, but, sobriety ought to make us see we are not doing good as a species at all. It could change, absolutely. But it's yet to happen. — Manuel

I didn't mean to imply that the nuclear threat has disappeared. On the contrary, it may be more serious now than it was in the last century. It has just been superseded by the (possibly more serious) threat of climate change. My expectation is that it will be dealt with. But the process will be messy and only partially effective.

It's still an important step removed from direct access. — Manuel

Indirect access to reality is still access to reality. I suppose that introspection counts as direct access? But there, the distinction between reality and appearance collapses.

I think you misunderstand, "the world" is as interpreted. Therefore the world of the happy person is a completely different world from from the world of the unhappy person, and a difference of interpretation is irrelevant because interpretation is already integral to "the world". That difference is therefore a difference in the world. This is due to the role of the subconscious in interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have a lot of trouble with the term "world". It gets used of the worlds of chess and football and physics, of the "lived world", of the different worlds that orbit the sun and who knows what else? There's nothing wrong with your interpretation of it. You are also right that in this context the interpretation involved is a bit mysterious, because it is not the result of a conscious process.

But I did think that it was appropriate to take "world" in the context of the TLP as single and unique, because of the opening remarks:-

The world is everything that is the case.
1.1The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Plus, even when, later on, he deals with the interpretations we make of the world, he about "seeing as.." which suggests to me that he is still thinking of a single reality interpreted in different ways.

If the happy person and the unhappy person are the very same person at a different time, then the worlds has changed for that person. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this needs to be put somewhat differently. For me, "the world has changed for that person" suggests that person is living in one world, which has changed. I would suggest something like "then that person has changed from one world to another. But perhaps that would perhaps raise questions about whether that person is the same person.

I'm not quarrelling with the point that happiness and unhappiness affect how we see everything. So these moods are not simply conditioned by the way the world is. But it is complicated, because sometimes the way the world is can change our mood. I would suggest that it is a question of interaction with the world, not a one-way street.

Psychosis is not treated by getting the person to understand that what they experience is not the real world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm no expert, but I do understand that you don't deal with psychosis by presenting evidence. Psychosis is not unique in this. It is also a mistake to think that religious beliefs can be dealt with by presenting evidence; it is not a matter of evidence, but of how one interprets the evidence. But if a non-psychotic person can treat a psychotic person, doesn't that suggest that, at some level, they are both living in the same world?

Schopenhauer has the wrong approach to happiness. — Patterner

I like all your quotations. But don't they also reveal that happiness (and therefore also unhappiness) is complicated? I understand the implication to be that there is no one right approach to happiness/unhappiness.

I'm fond of Wittgenstein's comment in the Tractatus:-

The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy. — TLP 6,43

At face value, that's nonsense, of course. The same person living in the same world may be happy at some times and not happy at other times. Neither is necessarily a permanent state. But I think the meaning is that happiness and unhappiness affect how one interprets everything in the one world. "Glass half full" and "Glass half empty" are not about different glasses, but different perspectives on the same glass. Happiness and unhappiness affect how one interprets everything.

There's another point, though,

Apparently, he did do quite many things that brought him joy, walking his dogs, eating sausages in a tavern, going to the theatre and listening to music, and lots of other small details along this line. — Manuel

Doesn't this show that happiness and unhappiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive?

It's not that his pessimism per se is wrong, one can view the world that way, but it's a particularly gloomy way of looking at the world, which is not necessary. — Manuel

I agree with you that the world seems in a particularly bad way at the moment, There are many good reasons for being fearful, even alarmed, about the state of the world order these days. But one may reflect that it is not unusual for there to be good grounds for fear and one's worst fears may well turn out to be excessive. (Most of my childhood and youth was overshadowed by the threat of a nuclear holocaust.)
But there is a counterbalancing excess of optimism, which loses touch with reality and sails gaily and blindly into disaster. We need balance and realism to function successfully in the world. Schopenhauer's (perhaps only official) totalizing gloom is a mistake, but the radical optimisim of Dr. Pangloss in Candide is no better.