those paradigmatic grounds for our beliefs are not themselves beliefs, so at this level the issue is not one of fallibility or error. — Joshs

I accept that the issue is not one of fallibility or error. But if they are beliefs, they involve propositions. So, not ordinary contingent propositions, but propositions of a different kind. Surely?

I was looking for a stronger word than adopt because in some cases we don't choose or adopt them, they may more be like presuppositions for a world we think of as true. — Tom Storm

Yes, one might well want to tease out some details about them. They certainly are not ordinary, true-or-false beliefs. But whether they are beliefs or precognitions, they seem to involve propositions. Quite how to express it is another question. You seem to be verging on Kantian apriori. I'm thinking something more like grammatical or hinge propositions, after Wittgenstein.

the issue is not one of fallibility or error. — Joshs

Yes. The point was not well put. It comes back to the question of paradigm breakdown.

Perhaps Kuhn's concept of an anomaly is useful here, but that presupposes some sort of intrusion from "outside" - "actuality"?. It's important to remember (or point out - what I've read seems mostly to forget this) that paradigms/conceptual schemata are not static constructions but dynamic systems of thinking and practicing. So I don't think that anomalies are necessarily the only form of breakdown. Internal difficulties (contradictions?) seem to me just as plausible.

That's a very helpful analysis. Thanks.

What you describe seems to me to come down to working out ways to get along in the world that we share. (And we must be sharing it because we know that the others radically disagree with us.) It is more demanding that "toleration", because toleration is compatible with non-communication - which will often break down because we must co-exist or fight.

What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1

I think it is one way of articulating what is happening when normal ways of conducting arguments break down. That problem is not only found in science.

Well, if you are committed to empiricism, then I would suppose what is closer to "actually the case" is the scientific evidence, not journal articles leading back to neologisms from various early analytic philosophers. — schopenhauer1

I glad you put "actually the case" in scare quotes. It is the crucal question. The great temptation for empiricism is to jump to conclusions. Too much focus on the data is not helpful. Too little is a waste of time.

So my own idea I guess is that philosophers of the empirical bent have to be committed to where the evidence from science takes them, — schopenhauer1

But that's the question. Where does this evidence take us? This question becomes acute when there is evidence pointing in different directions - or interpretations of the available evidence that do not agree on which way it points.

Otherwise, as I stated in an earlier post, science just becomes a noisy room of various disparate findings — schopenhauer1

Well, from the outside, it all too often looks as if that's exactly what it is. Given time (maybe a century or so), the community usually sorts itself out - and then finds something else to disagree about.

If I forge a dollar bill and the king is so impressed he declares it real, then it is real. — Hanover

On the assumption that you have not forged a dollar bill and do not have the abiity to do so, you meant to say "If I were to forge a dollar bill and the USA (I assume this scenario is set in the USA?) has become a monarchy, then it would be real". Maybe. It depends how real dollar bills are defined in the USA. I rather doubt that your scenario is even likely, so I don't feel any need to decide that question.

There's an example in Sense and Sensibilia (pp.65,66) "Suppose that there is a species of fish which looks vividly multi-coloured, slightly glowing perhaps, at a depth of a thousand feet. I ask you what its real colour is. So you catch a specimen and lay it out on deck, making sure the condition of the light is just about normal, and you find that it looks a muddy sort of greyish white. Well, is that its real colour? It's clear enough at any rate that we don't have to say so. In fact, is there any right answer in such a case?"

I conclude that our ordinary understanding of colour will settle what to say about normal variations under various conditions, but doesn't settle what to say about all possible variations under all possible conditions, now matter how remote and fantastic they are.

This distinction collapses, I'd argue, because there's no meaningful difference between the arbitrary changes we impose by photoshopping as there is with regard to the arbitrary changes we might make to the external environment or to our own ability to perceive. — Hanover

Well, I don't see why you say that the difference is not meaningful. The fact that the changes are, in a way, arbitrary is irrelevant.

Perceptions can be manipulated in a number of ways: (1) by manipulating the external environment by changing the lighting, the temperature, the air pollution level, whether it's suspended in air or in a glass of milk, and all sorts of ways; (2) by intentionally changing it by photoshopping it, drawing on it, cutting its leaves, etc; or (3) by changing the perceiver, by altering someone's consciousness, optic nerves, or putting rose colored glasses on the perceiver. — Hanover

You posit a number of different circumstances of different kinds. Why would there be the same answer for all of them? See above.

I find the next paragraphs very confusing, because you shift between talking of the flower and the picture without being clear which you mean, so I'll skip to the chase.

I see whatever I do as an interplay of the object, the environment, and my subjective way of seeing things, which is why Descartes was correct in asking whether his perceptions were reliable measures of reality. — Hanover

I would say the object, the environment and me. However, whatever we say about these cases does not justify asserting that the same difficulties apply to everything we see.

For them it can never be the case that a disconnect exists between what is actual and what we think is actual, a source of fear that illusion and error could cloud our apprehension of what is true. — Joshs

I think I see what you are getting at. I would worry that this way of putting it seems to claim (or could be misinterpreted to claim) that we are infallible or that certain beliefs are infallible. Don't we have to acknowledge that error (I assume that's what "a disconnect between what is actual and what we think is actual" means) is always possible? The point is, we can recognize it and rectify it (in principle).

We inhabit forever preconditions for belief and doubt, but never reality itself. — Tom Storm

That seems unnecessarily pessimistic. We don't inhabit "preconditions for belief and doubt", we adopt them. When and if they fail, we can correct them. I'm not quite sure what inhabiting reality means, but if I understand what you are getting at, I would say we do inhabit reality - and the possibility of error, and the correction of error - is part of that.

I saw what you did there. — Banno

It's an old one, but still a good one. Credit to Ryle.

Once we establish a basis for our skepticism regarding the veracity of our perceptions in one instance (as we just did from your flower example), we'd then logically need to do the same for all perceptions, — Hanover

That doesn't follow. Take the example of forged money (notes or coins). Some money is forged. Some money is genuine. Both those statements must be true, or the distinction between them collapses. So one cannot ask of all notes and coins whether they are all forged. One can ask of each note or coin, whether it is forged. But when it has been established that a given note or coin is genuine, the question is empty.

It was a joke!

More seriously, the question where philosophy ends and science begins is not clear and is contested.

What is clear is that when conceptual clarification is needed, observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient.

I share your irritation with low-key armchair theories, but am also irritated by over-confident (and over-excited) generalization from scraps of evidence.

What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1

I agree that's one of the issues in the background of this thread.

"Is it the 'concept' part or the 'scheme' part of a 'conceptual scheme' that's allegedly incommensurable?" — J

Now, there's a problem.

I have a dim memory that Aristotle characterizes the square root of two as "incommensurable". That would be a different sense again.

Perhaps we need someone to dissect out various uses and various problems.

The article uses Austin's approach, even talking of misfires. — Banno

I have to read this. In context, this use of misfires speaks volumes. Isn't language wonderful?

Anyway, I wanted to thank you both form making this thread far more interesting, informative and certainly longer than I expected. — Banno

It was a surprise to find the thread and a great pleasure to participate, and I'm very grateful to you and . And I learnt some things into the bargain.

For what it is worth, I couldn't agree with you more on the free will debate article you shared: most scientists just assume there's no free will because the world is determined. — Bob Ross

Well, they are free to assume whatever they want, aren't they?

What is important is that the individual's relation with particulars is direct. That the generalizations require intersubjective agreement only reinforces the idea that they are secondary, or posterior to that primary relation (the individuals of the intersubjective relations are themselves particulars). — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, for me, it is a hen-and-egg relationship and I don't see what is important to you, or what you mean by "direct" here. So we'll have to agree to disagree.

The modern conception of Platonism, if intended to represent the philosophy of Plato, is a straw man. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I'm sure one can find all sorts of things in Plato if one looks hard enough. But it's not something I'm into at the moment. It would help if you specified, when you mention Plato, whether you mean the modern Plato or the ancient one.

Then that black thing would be irrelevant, and you would not even have the example you gave me, because the naming it as a swan was essential to the example. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, the unproblematic black thing is not a problem for the issue at hand. The problematic black thing is the problem, and therefore the relevant case. I didn't go into the intricacies because I thought they were obvious - and indeed it is clear that you understood the situation. So what's the problem?

So until we know what an "interpreter" is, we cannot exclude the chair as a possible interpreter. — Metaphysician Undercover

An interpreter is a person, normally a human being, a person. (I do not rule out the possibility of non-paradigmatic cases). A chair is not a human being, a person, and not even sentient. That's background understanding in normal circumstances. If you want to consider that a chair might be an interpreter, I don't know where to begin. I'm not really interested in a long dissection of the idea of a person vs an insentient object. To make a discussion of this, you need to give me a problem. Simply announcing your question is not enough.

I don't agree reference must be maintained. I think its plausible one could explain the same data with very different constructs. — Apustimelogist

I would say that if both theories are explaining the same data, reference has been maintained. And I never meant to say that all references must be maintained. Just enough to establish that they are both theories of the same things, or at least the same world.

I am not entirely sure it is *essential*. — Apustimelogist

I was trying to be brief, but in this case I was too brief. As I understand it, the point is that Einstein is more accurate that Newton, and the difference between them at "normal" - sub-light - speeds is negligible for many purposes.

Incommensurability is not inherently about some inherent sense of intelligibility or communicability, its about whether the concepts in different theories correspond to each other. — Apustimelogist

"Correspond" is a strong word. I would compare different languages (I'm not saying that "theory" and "language" mean the same thing). We can recognize that two languages are about the same world and even about the same things, so long as some (most?) references correspond; it helps if some (most?) concepts overlap, at least roughly. But we can recognize at the same time that that is not true of all references or all concepts.
It seems to me that incommensurability is really quite vague.

It is a long time since I read Davidson's article and I haven't read Wang's - yet. Putting that right will take a while, but, on the basis that I have dealt with this issue before and read various things, including Kuhn, I hope these interventions are not merely annoying.

While something can be said to be the same, something has changed fundamentally so I don't think it stops incommensurability without coming to the conclusion that SR and NM are identical. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that incommensurability is not as drastic as it seems. There are a number of ways in which we can see a bridge of some kind. First, not only is it possible to for someone not only to learn both Newton and Einstein, but also to use one or the other as appropriate in context. Second, it was essential for the acceptance of Einstein that it explained all the old data (already explained by Newton) as well as the new anomalous data. This suggests that while reference may break down in some areas, it must be maintained in others - at least if the new theory is to compete with the old one. Third, the practices must be recognizable as the same (similar) or different if incommensurability is to be identified at all and when practices are not purely verbal (even if theory-laden), the possibility of sharing references across the divide becomes essential.

I think a strong case can be made for human linguistic ability being evolutionarily adaptive, on the basis that it does provide humans the ability to communicate truths to each other. — wonderer1

Adaptive, yes. But also so much more. Theoretical practices are important, but only to creatures that have values, wants and needs, doubts, questions, mistakes - and these need to be expressed, communicated and even discussed as well.
It is hard to know how to proceed further. The big problem is how far the practice of the relevant science should be taken on board here.

But then I have to admit that there is a solid difference between meaningful disagreement, which does seem to need agreement to at least continue, and silence or absurdity. So Davidson still has a point to me, and I feel, in reading all this, that I'm even more uncertain than when I started in spite of spilling so many words. — Moliere

Yes. The agreements required in order to disagree and, equally important, to reach agreement. seem particularly important to me. But I don't see that necessarily rules out incommensurability that prevents reaching agreement, there must be sufficient commensurability to recognize difference.

Observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient when conceptual clarification is needed. — Banno

... and if only people would let philosophers get on with what they do best!

That is a real problem with "essential properties". — Metaphysician Undercover

I was alluding to that possibility when I said I could change the definition of a swan. I was a bit abbreviated when I wrote "Swan Z is black". On the other hand, if the object I see is not at all like a swan, then I won't be tempted to modify my generalization, so it isn't problematic.

I don't think definitions are necessarily about "essential properties" in the metaphysical sense. That is, they are only essential so long as we treat them as essential.

Therefore we ought to consider that the person's real relationship with the particulars of the world is direct, and the universal, or generalization, is a sort of tool which the individual can use or not use, as one wills. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. Generalizations are indeed like a rule, and every application is a new decision. But they are subject to inter-subjective agreement. So, if I want to communicate with others, in unusual circumstances, I need to carry their agreement with me.

Your representation of the relationship between me, the rule and the case is a bit odd, but I'm not a Platonist so it is not worth arguing about.

No, I meant a). — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I'll just skip this issue. You are clearly speaking a language different from mine, so there's not prospect of mutual understanding.

The infinite regress is avoided in the way outlined by Plato, by assuming the reality of "the good". — Metaphysician Undercover

You implied that you are not a Platonist. Now you adopt his idea of the good. ???

It is only by properly modeling "the interpreter" that we might exclude the chair as an interpreter. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have a point. But then, you don't want to exclude the chair as an interpreter, so I don't know what's going on.

Austin and Wittgenstein both make what they are doing look obvious, so people take the point as simple, or trivial. — Antony Nickles

As Horace observed long, long ago "The "true/real) skill is hiding your skill". (Ars est celare artem)
But then it looks easy and people think it is easy. Perhaps then, there is a role for rhetoric in philosophy - making it look portentous helps to persuade people to take it seriously.

On which note, has anybody else noticed Austin's rhetoric in Sense and Sensibilia? He gives the impression of someone at the end of his patience rather than a dispassionate analyst. Yet he is also very fair to Ayer. Puzzling, and complicated.

I don’t take OLP as wanting to end philosophy (nor refute skepticism). I think Austin thought he had finally found a way to get started (though in his mind this was just going to be a kind of cataloguing). — Antony Nickles

Yes, if you look more closely, that is what they (all, I think) had in mind. But people (especially conventional/traditional philosophers, perhaps) focused on the initial phase and the second phase got overlooked. It reminds me of the reputation of Descartes, Berkeley and Hume; their constructive phases seem to get swallowed up in the first phase.

In all, I take the suggestion that we look around at the variety of the world to be license to explore our own interests, and that it is democratic to think anyone can reflect and learn. — Antony Nickles

It certainly seemed democratic at the time, in comparison to the condescension of their predecessors - analytic and other wise.

So, when they talk of “tidying up” or “rearranging” (PI #92), they are not talking about word politics, — Antony Nickles

Yes, I cited those example (with some trepidation) in order to show that the technique was capable of being usefully applied where live social and cultural issues are at stake. Inevitably, politics gets involved and sometimes people get things out of proportion.

I can't offer much more. — Banno

There'd be a PhD in arguing that case. — Banno

There a technique in history called "prosopography". That's what we need here. But it is very labour-intensive. Wikipedia - Prosopography

Analytic philosophy takes the sort of conceptual analysis pioneered by the OLP philosophers as granted. — Banno

It's true that I keep seeing traces or reminders of OLP in discussions that seem far removed and it's true that when something is taken for granted, the need to give explicit references is less important.

I've been thinking about other cases in which we know the socio-political tendencies of philosophers. Locke, Berkeley, Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Adorno, Russell all spring to mind. Descartes, Berkeley, Hume and Kierkegaard have pretty clear religious affiliations. (There's no point in going further back than that in this context.) I don't think that philosophers pay much attention to them in their philosophical readings of them, do they? How seriously should we take the possible conservatism of OLP?

It might be more relevant to ponder why their work has been so widely disregarded. Likely, it would be speculative to suggest reasons, but here goes, anyway.

There's a theoretical issue. Many philosophers have thought to refute their predecessors. Few of them have thought to bring philosophy as such to an end. Mind you, the twentieth century differs from earlier times in that a successor appeared to be waiting in the wings, to take over all the interesting questions - and, to a considerable extent, it has. (Science, of course.) (I'm reminded of the problem for conventional painting when photography developed. The artists worked out a way forward pretty quickly, Philosophy is still trying.) So, perhaps OLP was too successful. It convinced its adherents, who either spread out to pass on the word or gave up philosophy. Not a recipe for a thriving tradition. (It is possible, however, that the same problem afflicts analytic philosophy in general - there seems to be an under-current of concern nowadays that it is not going anywhere and has nowhere to go.)

There is a practical issue. Simply, that the style of argument that Ryle, Austin and Wittgenstein deploy is much, much harder than it looks.

Here's an example "all grass is green" is a generalization. We can say that this proposition provides a relation to individual blades of grass, that each one must be green, but it's really just a pretend relation to individual blades of grass. And because it's just a pretense, despite the fact that you may call it a relation, the knowledge derived here is only as reliable as the inductive reasoning which created the generalization in the first place. — Metaphysician Undercover

So am I entitled to conclude from your last sentence that "all swans are white" is only as reliable as the induction that created it in the first place? Fair enough. So "Swan A is white" and "Swan B is white" etc are the premises of the induction? Fair enough. So now I reason that "all swans are white" Then I discover that Swan Z is black. So my generalization and the preceding induction is not reliable. So I need to do one of three things: a) abandon the generalization b) modify the generalization ("swans are white, except in Australia") c) change my definition of a swan ("A swan may be black or which" or the quantifier ("Most swans are white".) True, the new generalization is also subject to the same hazards. But what am I supposed to do - abandon all generalizations? I don't think so. There's no pretence involved at any stage.

You say that a chair does not interpret what I say, therefore a chair does not produce interpretations. — Metaphysician Undercover

If my chair does not interpret ("produce interpretations") what I say, there are two possibilities: a) that it produces interpretations of some other thing(s) or (b) causes me to produce interpretations. I deduce that you meant the latter. My mistake. But that does not give any ground for supposing that the chair has a mind or is conscious.

Far too often though, the judgement made prior to the trial and error action is represented as non-intentional, to avoid an infinite regress of intentional acts. — Metaphysician Undercover

You do represent the prior judgement as intentional, so how do you avoid the infinite regress?

The need to act is influenced by emotions and all sorts of subconscious things which cannot be described as judgements of correctness. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are missing the cognitive element in most? all? emotions. If I am afraid of snakes, I have made a judgement about snakes and that judgement is an important part of the judgement about what is needed. Prejudices may be erroneous or ill-founded, but they are nevertheless judgements about what is appropriate in various circumstances - even if I am not aware of them.

(I don't understand the distinction between unconscious and non-conscious which you point to). — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, unconscious and subconscious are a bit tricky. But non-conscious, for me at least, means "not capable of consciousness or unconsciousness" or "the distinction between conscious and unconscious does not apply".

I don't believe there is a standard model of interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

1. Something before the interpretation, a text, a picture - something that means something. Call it the original. "Interpretation of...."
2. The interpretation. "Interpretation of .... as ...."
The third stage is not normally necessary when there is only one interpretation available.
3, Evaluation or justification of the interpretation.

Given the accusation of a conservatism so strong that it refused to engage at all with politics, this is a point that it might be worth following up on. — Banno

I don't disagree. A question. Is this a critique of the people, or of the ideas? What conservatism are we talking about? Not philosophical, presumably. Political? Social? Cultural? Linguistic? Are we talking about what was conservative then, or what is conservative now?
It is true that Ayer and Austin were career academics. But I don't think their biographies, particularly in the period 1940 - 1945, support the idea they were "ivory tower" academics. Wittgenstein had a more complicated career, but didn't conform to that stereotype either.

There's a slogan associated with AI Wei Wei. "Everything is art. Everything is politics." He's in a good position to know. Of course, he should have added that "Everything is philosophy". But then, one may begin to feel that this is a matter of point of view rather than domain. Everything can be seen as art, philosophy, politics, etc. because those are aspects of everything. That doesn't mean that everyone should become either artist, or philosopher, or politician.

I really enjoyed the sketch. The parodies of philosophical arguments are very pointed. Like a politician who is anxious to be satirized, one could see it is as a back-handed compliment. But it isn't a criticism specifically on grounds of conservatism.

In favour of the criticism, there is the by now familiar point, less widely acknowledged at the time, that ordinary language can express undesirable, offensive and damaging stereotypes. A great deal of work has gone into exposing them. The good news is that ordinary language (well, a lot of it) has changed in response. (Which is not to say that there is no more to do.)

On the other hand, Austin does not claim that ordinary language may not need reform (p. 63), though admittedly his description of the process, especially the phrase "tidy up", could be described as an understatement and does largely ignore the practicalities of making the changes he is contemplating.

Curiously enough, at the time, OLP seemed to be very much on the side of the democratizing angels. True, in fact, it was not ordinary language but Received Pronunciation that was being promoted. But even Received Pronunciation was a relatively new invention (on the back of the BBC, which was less than thirty years old at the time), developed to facilitate nation-wide communication through speech, rather than writing. Whether OLP contributed to the changes in lexicography that have happened since, I could not say; but it was certainly an aspect of that wider movement.

But the issue of OLP is tangled up with at least two other issues. One is the very idea of the academy and its tendency to separate itself from the world, drawing in its skirts as it goes on its way. Well, specialization is not a bad thing, is it? Anyway, many academics are anxious to engage with the world as well as pursuing their academic work - some even do their academic work in the world and others aim to spread academic ideas outside the academy.

The other is the socio-cultural dominance and consequent exclusivity of Oxbridge (and, now, some other universities). That has little to do with academia as such and a great deal to do with socio-cultural issues at least in the UK, if not more widely. On this issue, I can only applaud and wish there was more of such criticism now. In fact, much of the second half of the 20th century continued that battle, with some success. (Even Oxbridge has moved on. adjusting to the times, as it has no doubt done so often before) Sadly, this century has seen much (but not all) of that progress eroded.

Just some random points.

Words not only “suggest a context”, they require it. — Antony Nickles

Yes. I didn't mean "suggest" in the sense of something that one might ignore or refuse - "How about some crisps with that?" something more like "Love and marriage go together like..." One might supply "meat and potatoes" or "horse and carriage" or "heaven and hell". Hence misunderstandings.

So maybe we could say the context isn’t always everything, but we definitely do not have certainty in what we “perceive” nor control over what is said in what we express. — Antony Nickles

I'll go with that.

Thus why our words seem to move right past each other when we don’t take into consideration we might be standing in different worlds (of interest, implication, anticipation). — Antony Nickles

Yes. But many jokes as well.

that the circumstances are of greater importance than any “form of words”. — Antony Nickles

It seems to me that a form of words always suggests a context, no matter how tiny the thumbnail sketch. So philosophers who think they are just considering a form of words are mistaken. Context isn't everything, but it isn't an optional extra. (I get really annoyed about the examples one sees that are tiny thumbnails, which are treated as the whole story, when it is clear that a wider context would reveal complexities that are ignored.

But Austin is not championing the status quo, as if it was more entitled or that it naturally has more solidity. — Antony Nickles

I'm sorry. I don't see quite what you are getting at. The complaint that OLP is in some way inherently conservative ignores the fact that their project was a philosophical revolution, even if it was not a political or social revolution.

I'll try to articulate some reasonably appropriate responses. As you expect, this isn't my philosophical cup of tea. I don't automatically dismiss all non-analytic philosophy as nonsense. (Actually, my somewhat heretical belief is that there is some analytic philosophy which really is nonsense.) But much of those philosophies seems to be written in a different language, so I can't engage with it fully. But there may be some over-laps.

a contemporary school of thought that criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophical enquiry to a correlation between thought and being (correlationism), such that the reality of anything outside of this correlation is unknowable. — Wiki

Since to know something is precisely "to correlate thought and being", if there is anything "outside" (whatever that may mean) that correlation, it stands to reason that it is unknowable; one might speculate that it will also be impossible to know whether there is or is not anything in that situation. If the Heidegerrian line of thought you go on to explain works, it, by the same token, correlates thought and those beings. But there are some points that might mean something.

Heideggerian Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand, refers to the withdrawal of objects from human perception into a reality that cannot be manifested by practical or theoretical action.

I've come across readiness-to-hand before and I can see Heidegger's point and in a sense would endorse it. The various things that we take an interest in are not merely theoretical objects, but things that we interact with (and which interact with us).
There is that temptation to consider any description of an object and to feel that there is more to be said, as if something had escaped us. I think we've agreed on that.

If the human perception of a house or a tree is forever haunted by some hidden surplus in the things that never become present, the same is true of the sheer causal interaction between rocks or raindrops.

I grant you that there is more to rocks and rain that their interaction; many other things can happen to both.

Coupling Heidegger's tool analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience.

I'll set aside my objections to the use of "real" in the philosophical sense that treats is as a property like colour or shape. From my benighted point of view, the point of the senses is that they (mostly) inform us about real objects; positing sensual objects as an additional category of existence is precisely the key mistake of sense-datum theory.

It's not only not enlightening, it's not the same in kind, in my estimation, to that of a mental event. — schopenhauer1

You misunderstand me. Certainly a rainbow is not a mental event. My point is that the explanation of a rainbow "reduces" it, to use the jargon word, and so seems to assert that it does not exist. But the rainbow is not merely caused by, but is the refraction of light through drops of water. A physical, physiological, account of seeing the rainbow is not a normal causal account, where cause and effect are two distinct entities, but an analysis of what seeing the rainbow is.

But how does the observer itself emerge onto ITSELF? — schopenhauer1

This is just mystification. There is a theoretical construct which is implied in most pictures; it is known as the "point of view". In addition, we perceive ourselves as three-dimensional objects in the world, partly through various self-monitoring parts of our nervous system and partly from acting (and being acted upon) in the world.

Whenever XYZ is there, the mental property must be present. — schopenhauer1

I can accept that as a rough draft of the kind of thing we expect to find. But I'm sure it will be a lot more complicated than that.

I know, and that's why it's incoherent to say that the sense-datum is what is seen, because seeing necessarily involves what you call "assumptions". What is seen includes "assumptions". — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with that. So I conclude that the concept of sense-data, as adopted by some philosophers, is incoherent.

You are citing specifics again, and that is a problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the specifics don't conform to the generalization, it's a problem for the generalization, not for the specific.

since other animals interpret in other ways which we really cannot relate to — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you know that? Surely, if we can know that their perceptions of the world are different from ours, we can "relate" to them.

The argument holds, because neither understanding nor misunderstanding can be implied by "interpretation" itself. These are judgements made as to correct or incorrect interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

So we formulate a judgement, which is not an interpretation, and then promote it to an interpretation and then decide whether it is correct or not? At first sight, it would resolve my problem. But what is this promotion process?
To put the point another way, surely to make a judgement is normally to evaluate it as correct? If one doesn't judge that a proposition is correct, one can make a range of different judgements, that it is false, or possible and so on. All of which involve evaluating that these different judgements are correct.

So the non-conscious cannot be excluded from interpretation through the requirement of understanding or misunderstanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Some interpretations seem to be based on a process that we are not subjectively aware of. The usual term for that is unconscious, which is distinct from non-conscious. Non-conscious beings neither have nor lack an unconscious.

However, there is necessarily some underlying inclination toward a good, or intention, purpose, which drives the act as an act of judgement. But acting with purpose, intention, is not restricted to consciousness. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with the first sentence, and we should, perhaps, take more account of it in our analysis of perception. But philosophy is interested in theory, which is supposed to be driven only by the pursuit of truth. I would agree that this stance can lead philosophers into mistakes.

So I do not think you can disassociate interpretation from seeing in this way. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not trying to disassociate it. I'm trying to understand it. I'm arguing that there is a problem with the standard model of interpretation.

Searle seemed to think Austin had not understood Private Language. — Banno

What I remember about that anecdote fits with that. But then, he's not alone, neither in his time, nor now.

the stuff about doubt is mostly in On Certainty, which I think came out in 1969. — Banno

OK. And it certainly isn't clear what he thought.

Well done. Interesting format. — Banno

Thanks. I hoped it would work, but wasn't sure. The text just seemed to fall into that format.

Again I'm noticing how much this presages Wittgenstein. This time the discussion of doubt in On Certainty, with "hedging" taking on the role of doubting. — Banno

I don't want to be picky, but Philosophical Investigations was published in 1953 and Sense and Sensibilia in 1962 (both posthumously - I guess that must be just a coincidence), So any presaging must be the other way round. However, the relationship between the two is intriguingly mysterious. It would be wonderful if there was something from him about Wittgenstein. Isn't there an unflattering (to Wittgenstein) anecdote about a comment by Austin on the private language argument?

I kind of like the idea of a 18th century Hume being more (the age of Enlightenment) cynical than the 20th century — schopenhauer1

The irony is, of course, that he didn't think he was a sceptic, and, given that he believed in the Christian story on faith, despite his own demonstration that there is no reason to believe it, he certainly doesn't seem particularly cynical.

We can try to quibble about what a specific author said in a text in a chapter, in a passage, but let's get to what the subtext is, it's this (the hard problem.. ) — schopenhauer1

I'm afraid I find it helpful to focus on a specific text. However, since I don't properly understand how the problem arises (though I've seen a lot of arm-waving), I don't yet have a basis for discussing solutions. (I find it very liberating not to have to pretend to know all about everything now that I'm retired.)

I don't see how it really solves the problem any differently to recognize that indeed it's about the whole body's embeddedness in its environment. — schopenhauer1

But assuming by "whole person" we mean the theory "embedded cognition", — schopenhauer1

Those theories look attractive, though the range of what's on offer is a bit confusing. But when I say "whole person" I meant the context of human life and practices, not cognition, embedded or not. I don't have allegiance anywhere yet, though who knows what may happen next.

It's basically that objects interact with the world through vicarious properties but retain a sort of hidden property that makes the object itself and not just a composite of properties. — schopenhauer1

You are like someone who takes delivery of a flat-pack bookcase, unpacks all the bits and the instructions and wonders where the actual bookcase is. It's a paradox of analysis - the subject of the analysis seems to disappear.

There is something that makes an object that object, without dissolving it, but also recognizes that object has properties that allow it to interact with other objects, etc. — schopenhauer1

You are beginning with a mistake. If there was something that makes an object that object, it would be just another component. It's the problem that Aristotle tried to solve with his idea of "essence" (literally, in the Greek "the what it is to be"), the scholastics with "quiddity" and Locke with his idea of substance ("something, I know not what"). Not even chasing wild geese, but unicorns.

What would it mean for something to have the "property" of a sensation? — schopenhauer1

I grasp the idea that sensation is an activity or an event or partly both; there is a standard verb for it. But "property" is not so clear; I don't know what the adjective would be for it.

But whence "emergence"? It seems like a sort of pseudo-answer, like a Homunculus Fallacy by another name. — schopenhauer1

Yes. I have the impression that the idea was proposed as a project, and that various ideas have been proposed. As one would expect, there are several candidates, none particularly appealing. The sunlight and the rain interact and a rainbow is the result. Would it be fair to say the rainbow emerges? I suppose so, but I don't find it particularly enlightening, compared to the pedestrian scientific explanation.

Memories and anticipations inhere within, and are necessary to, the act of seeing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but the sense-datum is supposed to be what is left when all assumptions are set aside.

I see very little in any conventional definition, or use of the word, to support your requested restriction. — Metaphysician Undercover

Would the Cambridge dictionary definition be evidence of what the conventional definition is:-

interpretation - an explanation or opinion of what something means.
The dispute is based on two widely differing interpretations of the law.
It is difficult for many people to accept a literal interpretation of the Bible.
We were disappointed that they insisted on such a rigid interpretation of the rules.

interpretation - a particular way of performing a piece of music, a part in a play, etc.:
Her interpretation of Juliet was one of the best performances I have ever seen.

An interpretation by actors or musicians is the expression by their performance of their understanding of the part or parts they are playing:
Masur’s interpretation of the Brahms symphony was masterful.
This does seem to be the best interpretation of their observations.

There is nothing to indicate to me that this type of act could only be carried out by a consciousness. — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? So the chair you are sitting on might understand what you are saying, and your dustbin might understand that to-day is the day it gets emptied?

Since the interpretation might equally be misunderstanding as well as understanding, we cannot say that "understanding" is implied by "interpretation", so the link between consciousness and interpretation may be denied in that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite. Something that is not conscious cannot understand or misunderstand, so your argument does not "break the link".

That makes the perspective of "sense-data" ontologically problematic because our innate sense of good and bad must be derived in some means other than through the senses, because it must have an active role in the process of interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I would put it this way. We are innately inclined to remember feed-back on what we do. In the case of seeing, that's how we get feed-back. So we learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn't. That's the basis for how we see something. Interpretation can play a role sometimes, but I'm not sure it's meaningful to suppose that it always plays a role.

But if the interpretations are different, where's the logic in assuming that they are interpretations of the same thing in the first place? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not. What's the criterion for saying that two interpretations are interpretations of the same thing or that they are interpretations of different things?Without that, interpretations objects in their own right, with no connection to anything else. Strictly speaking, to speak of an interpretation without saying what it is an interpretation of, and indeed we often add "as". So Freud's theory was an interpretation of dream as the outcome of unconscious hopes and fears.

Therefore, premising that the difference is due to a difference in attention does not imply that the difference is not also a difference in what is seen, because attention plays an active role in determining what is seen. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good point. So now I ask whether "those differences result from differences in what is seen, or perhaps in what they remember or even in differences in what they think I want to hear."

Can you imagine that a plant might produce interpretations of its world? We can go far beyond "consciousness", in our speculations about interpretations. What about a non-conscious machine, an AI or something, couldn't that thing being doing some sort of interpretations? — Metaphysician Undercover

If a plant produced interpretations of its world, it would be conscious. If an AI produced some sort of interpretation, it would have some sort of consciousness.

A longer reply might (possibly) be more helpful. It depends on circumstances in which you would interpret something as an interpretation. That's why I can't answer the questions. They seem to me idle playing with words. There's nothing to argue about here, because there's nothing to agree or disagree with. All I can do is ask you to elaborate your fantasy. I'm certainly not going to draw any conclusions from it.

Certainly, there are plenty of stories about conscious AIs. But they are writing stories about rather peculiar human beings and then inserting "AI" where they are thinking "person". Don't get me wrong - I enjoy some of them, but they don't face up to the philosophical question about when an AI would be conscious. That's not a criticism. Art is not supposed to be science.

Well, I think he means it in the Humean way of "impressions" and "ideas". — schopenhauer1

I agree that's what's in the background. (There was a great revival of Hume amongst analytic philosophers, at least in the UK, at the time.) But Hume posits "relations between ideas" and rejects "reason" (or some sense or other of it). So Ayer is riffing off Hume, rather than reproducing him.

Some say yes some say no. — schopenhauer1

If photons can count as sense data, then I say yes. But the idea is that we aware of them, so then I say know. So I just say I don't know what they are (supposed to be.)

Is it the "whole body" is involved and thus, one cannot separate it? If that's the case, how does one avoid panpsychism? — schopenhauer1

Well, the idea that the mind is the brain is clearly physiologically inaccurate and since action is embedded in perception, I go for the whole person. But I don't see panpsychism as a problem - just a mistake, generated by the philosophical fondness for exaggerated generlization.

There are things like object-oriented ontologies where all objects have some sort of qualitative aspect, for example. — schopenhauer1

It depends on what you mean by "object". If "to be is to be the value of a variable" is true, then clearly that's false.

Many people consider this secondary properties as the qualities themselves are only apparent to an observer, not "there" in some non-observational sense, other than the physical substrata from which the qualities become realized. — schopenhauer1

I'm coming round to the idea that accepting Locke's argument is a mistake. After all, in ordinary language (for what it is worth), there is no doubt that it is the stop-light that is red and that there is nothing red in my head. Moreover, Berkley's argument that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities won't stand up seems a good one.

And now we are back to the Philosophy of Mind. — schopenhauer1

Perhaps we should never have been anywhere else.

impressions seems pretty equivalent to sense-datum, unless there is some weird technicality I am not understanding. — schopenhauer1

You are dead right about that. Berkeley used "idea" a bit more widely but clearly included the same idea(!) in its scope. Kant's "phenomena" is also very similar. "Sense data" is an update to the idea designed to suit the 20th century.

Ayer is ever closing the human off to only phenomenal and not "the world". — schopenhauer1

To be fair to him, he doesn't deny the external world and doesn't deny that we know things about it.

However he would agree with you that

Even if the judgement is based on experience, that doesn't mean necessarily, "sense impressions" but various judgements and inferences derived from those sense impressions. — schopenhauer1

It's the idea that all knowledge of the external world is based on evidence from the senses. This is useful because it closes the infinite regress of evidence - (sense-data, for Ayer, are incorrigible, so immune from sceptical doubt). So part of what is at issue here is whether all knowledge of the external world is an inference. Austin spends a good deal of time dismantling (or trying to dismantle) that model. The lesson from Austin (and I'm pretty sure he intended this) is that incorrigiblity is a philosophical dream inspired for the search for absolute certainty.

There is a complication here, that Ayer says that physical objects are "constructed" from sense-data. I think he means "logically constructed", so this isn't a straightforward metaphysical claim, but exactly what it means is not clear.

My version of this is that life is not really about avoiding error, but coping with it when it crops up.

That is to say, the "real world" is never known, just represented.. — schopenhauer1

I have an issue with this. First of all, if the "real world" is never known, you have changed the standard meaning of "know" for a distortion created by the idea that "certainty" means immunity from error (see above) and if "representing" means nothing unless what is represented is also known. Comparing representation with original is how you know it is a representation - think picture vs original. How do you know what the picture is a picture of if there is no way of, at least sometimes, comparing them?

..this creates the division of mind/body that many philosophers want to get away from as it again, brings in the "specter" of the ghostly mind, which is to be eradicated and replaced. — schopenhauer1

That is exactly what is at stake in the broader context. I'm sure you know that the modern idea of "qualia" is a (not unsuccessful) attempt to preserve the ghost.

My responses to Lecture XI

There's a good deal of familiar ground in this. But there are differences of detail and elaboration that are of interest. The only thing that seems to materially add is the concluding section on hedging, which I've already drawn attention to.

One other point struck me:- "Warnock says that a witness being asked to report only “what he actually saw” results in the witness being more cautious. Austin's reply is that "I might begin, for instance, by saying that I saw a little silvery speck, and go on to say that what I actually saw was a star. I might say in evidence that I saw a man firing a gun, and say afterwards, 'I actually saw him committing the murder!' That is (to put it shortly and roughly), sometimes I may supposedly see, or take it that I see, more than I actually see, but sometimes less." (p. 134)

It occurs to me that the quest for certainty has missed something. There are two ways of being wrong. One is to state more than I really saw. The other way is to state less. In other words, falsehood is not just suggestio falsi (saying what is false), but also suppressio veri (not saying what is true). Exaggeration is not true, but neither is understatement.

Thus this whole argument needs to go away to preserve realism. — schopenhauer1

You, I and Austin can all agree on that conclusion - depending on what you mean by realism. The trouble is, it hasn't. (See qualia).

Forgive me, I have to go now. I can't respond to this in detail.

I

We need to look at all acts of sensing as acts of interpreting. — Metaphysician Undercover

Different interpretations of a picture presuppose a picture that is the original and mediates between interpretations. Ditto different interpretations of a law or other text. So if all acts of seeing are acts of interpretation, what is the original of what is being interpreted?

To be sure, we give different descriptions of what we see which are, or amount to, different interpretations of what we see. I would be happy to describe "what we see" as sense-data. However, I interpret that in the ordinary sense of see, not the sense required by sense-datum theory. Whether the sense of "see" required by sense-datum theory is coherent or not is one of the key questions.

For example, line up a group of people facing a particular direction, tell them to take mental note of what they see, then have them turn around and write it down. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not clear whether those differences result from differences in what is seen (unlikely, but possible) or differences in what they notice or attend to, or perhaps in what they remember or even in differences in what they think I want to hear.

Now imagine if one's temporal frame of reference was a couple billion years, or just a couple nanoseconds. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm afraid I can't imagine that. However, I can consider the possibility that someone's temporal frame of reference is different from mine. Indeed, while it is unlikely that any actual beings are as so radically different from mine, it is more than likely that other living beings have different temporal frames of reference. Quite how that would play out, is harder to work out, so I'm not much further forward. While I grant that it's possible, I have no idea how one might come to know that it differs or by how much. However, even considering the possibility presupposes a) that I can identify them as conscious, therefore alive and b) that their subjective time would relate to mine in some way, such that I could explain differences by the difference in temporal frame of reference.

I understand what speculation means in ordinary life, but in cases like this, I lose my bearings. How do you manage?

Here, for what it's worth is my summary of lecture XI. I've set it up as a dialogue.

This lecture is about Warnock on Berkeley – a restatement or revision of “Our own ideas are what is immediately perceived” – i.e. what makes no assumptions, takes nothing for granted.

Warnock Making assumptions is not necessarily speaking loosely (as Berkeley thinks). Eradicating assumptions is a matter of paying attention to what we are entitled to say. The case of the witness being asked to report only “what he actually saw” results in the witness being more cautious.(p.133)
Austin But this doesn’t justify sense-data. “sometimes I may supposedly see, or take it that I see, more than I actually see, but sometimes less”. (p.134)

Warnock “Immediately perceive” has no ordinary meaning so Berkeley can decide how it is to be used.
Austin This is an over-statement. In any case, both Berkeley and Warnock do trade on the ordinary uses of “immediately” and “perceive”. (p.135)

Warnock The patch of red that we immediately perceive might or might not be a book, so what we immediately perceive is something different from the book.
Austin This is a confusion, since that patch of red is the book. (p.136)

Warnock rejects Berkeley’s view that there are entities of some sort which are what we immediately perceive. He looks for the kind of sentence which expresses a “judgement of immediate perception”. (p.136)
Austin Possible wrong assumptions are not a matter of propositions/sentences (i.e forms of words) but of forms of words in the circumstances of their use, i.e.statements.

Warnock’s discussion of “Hearing a car” assumes there is nothing else to go on.
Austin But what if there is something else to go on? (p. 137)

Warnock “Material object” does not mean the same as “collections of ideas”. They are related as verdicts to evidence. (p.140)
Austin This model only applies to second-hand judgements. It excludes the possibility of being in the best position to make a judgement. It leaves out the position of the “eye-witness”. (p.140)

Austin Sense-data are the result of the demand to find the minimally adventurous form of words. Warnock’s approach is a matter of hedging from statements about material objects, not building up to them. (p. 141) But we don’t hedge unless there’s some reason for doing so. The best policy is not to ask the question. (p.142)

"Translation" here is an idea that came up earlier in the discussion. It treat the idea of sense-data as a question of language than of metaphysics. I was referring to that. Here's a summary.

So a translation (interpretation) would have the form :
(This collection of sense-data statements) is true IFF (this statement about a material object)
A rough example, the ubiquitous cup...
(I see a red quadrilateral and a red ovoid and another ovoid) is true IFF this is a red cup. — Banno

Rather, observation can be had by any number of methods, many of them inferential. It's a weird hill to die on, unless you really contort the cause-effect relationship back to "sense-data" to prove your point that it all goes back to that. — schopenhauer1

Yes, in a way. You are using "observation" in a common sense way, and I'm on board with that. But Ayer's argument is that all observations other than sense-data are inferences from sense-data.

To be charitable, you can say that sense-data must be involved in the human way of interpreting the world, but that is pretty charitable. — schopenhauer1

To my mind, the effectiveness of the argument about sense-data depends on the appeal of this argument. Dissecting that is a complicated business. But it is difficult to imagine a different way of interpreting the world which was completely incomprehensible to human beings - we couldn't even identify it as an interpretation of the world. (That's a vey brief gesture towards how the argument might go.)

If anything, the whole discussion leads to a sort of Platonic notion of information as agnostic to sense-data and just "existing" in some sense, whatever the interpreter is. — schopenhauer1

Yes. and I find the idea of information as something that couldn't ever inform anyone somewhat puzzling. The relationship with the idea of sense-data is not clear to me. If one interpreted sense-data as light, sound, etc. (i.e. as physical effects of "the world" on our sense-organs), then they make some sense. But that's not what is intended by Ayer. He has in mind "experiences" or what Berkeley called "ideas" and Hume called "impressions" and Kant and Husserl called "phenomena"

Does the project of "logical positivism" or "empiricism" in general rest solely on Ayer's idea of sense data? — schopenhauer1

Two quotations from SEP - Vienna Circle

"The Vienna Circle was a group of scientifically trained philosophers and philosophically interested scientists who met under the (nominal) leadership of Moritz Schlick for often weekly discussions of problems in the philosophy of science during academic terms in the years from 1924 to 1936."

"While the Vienna Circle’s early form of logical empiricism (or logical positivism or neopositivism: these labels will be used interchangeably here) no longer represents an active research program"

And one from SEP - A J Ayer

"Ryle was also instrumental in getting Ayer to go to Vienna in 1933 to study with Moritz Schlick, then leader of the influential Vienna Circle of philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals, joining W. V. O. Quine in being one of only two visitors to be members of the Vienna Circle. His philosophical experience in Vienna was somewhat limited by his uncertain knowledge of German, but he knew enough to pick up the basic tenets of logical positivism."

For example, when we determine the chemical makeup of a substance, scientists use an electron spectrometer. — schopenhauer1

I don't think working scientists ever give a moment's thought to sense-data. But for what it's worth a defence of the idea would go something like this. The spectrometer is a material object like any other, so the usual "translation" could be made. It would be even more complicated that the normal examples of tables or trees, but there's no reason in principle why it could not be made. Reading the information is not specially complicated. The rest is up to interpretation via the various theories. Compare an astronomer observing starts through a telescope. There's no knock-down argument here.

Berekeley considers a watchmaker as a potential counter-example and has no difficulty arguing that, complex as it is, all our knowledge as well as the watchmaker's is easily translatable into collections of ideas. The real argument is in the actions of the watchmaker in building the watch - or so it seems to me. Action in the world establishes that I am embodied - a three-dimensional object among other three-dimensional objects.

Why is "verification" so narrowly defined as sense data? — schopenhauer1

Because Ayer is seeking to find the foundations of knowledge. Sense-data provide the incorrigible and self-evident starting-points of the the chains of evidence that underpin our knowledge. Perhaps, most of the time, we don't actually articulate the chains all the way back to the beginning. But we can, if we need to.

For Carnap the touchstone was consistency, not correspondence. Ayer and Austin on the other hand opted for correspondence. — Banno

The difficulty of consistency/coherence theories is that language itself has a place for non-verbal reality. So I'm with Austin and Ayer here. As you say, Strawson disagreed. However, I don't really know how to articulate words vs world. One of the many topics about which I could do with some revision/refreshment.

Everybody has a hiatus from time to time.

For now, I'm going to go with Ayer as arguing that language about material objects is entailed (for some unspecified notion of entailment...) by sense-data, and that sense data are a hedge on our ordinary talk about objects. Then Austin's reply is that there is no reason for such a hedge, especially since the unspecified nature of the entailment does not provide the sort-after incorrigibility. — Banno

I didn't, perhaps specify clearly enough that my problem with Ayer is that he thinks of material objects are "constructions". He might have meant "logical constructions", I suppose. Either way, this needs explanation. (Perhaps the might be some more detail in his book.) I have a clearer idea of "hedging" means, though it's connection with any version of "entailment" is a bit obscure.
I don't think they are incompatible.

I have a feeling that there's no reason not to proceed to lecture XI, and was thinking of producing a summary. Would that be helpful?

I'm glad our dialogue was constructive and sorry about your decision to leave.

OLP couldn't exist without definitions — RussellA

I’ll grant you that, but it does not rest on definitions — Antony Nickles

It may help to clarify "definition" here. If it means a written set of criteria or list of synonyms that can be entered in a dictionary, rule-book or law, it will be important to remember that we manage to learn to use words correctly without them. That doesn't mean that the words we use don't have a definition; it just means that they don't have a formal definition.
Formal definitions are a useful supplement, but not necessary, except in certain formal situations. (Austin makes this point, correctly, in my view - and he adds, also correctly that we learn very many words by ostensive "definition). In addition, the information given in a dictionary will be useless to anyone who does not know how to use the words, that is, how to apply the definition and use the word in sentences that are at least sufficiently grammatical to convey meaning. (Grammar was developed and used long before it was articulated and written down in Alexandria in the 3rd/4th century BCE. (It was developed to help people teaching or learning a language as adults - clearly written grammatical rules cannot be used by someone learning their first language))

On the other hand, an animal such as a dog has a non-verbal instinctive understanding not to put their paw into an open fire — RussellA

Quite so. But non-verbal understandings and beliefs - and perceptions - are different issue.

I agree, it is a very strange thing for the Indirect Realist to say what we see is sense-data. But then it is also a very strange thing for the Direct Realist to say that what we see are material objects. — RussellA

Well, yes. Austin questions (I think, dismantles) Ayer's use of "material objects" as well as his use of "sense-data". He thinks that neither term is useful or coherently usable. But he would be quite content to say that he sees tables and chairs - and rainbows and rain.

Does it mean either 1) the OLP uses ordinary language when analysing ordinary language or 2) the OLP analyses ordinary language but doesn't use ordinary language? — RussellA

This question emphasizes to me that the description "ordinary language philosophy" is not very helpful. The more I consider it, the less I understand what it means. If one reflects that, however many technicalities are used, the fundamental structure of the language is kept, because it is foundational to any use of the language. In a sense, there is no alternative to ordinary language, even though it can be modified and added to in all sorts of ways. (I except mathematical language which uses neither ordinary grammar nor ordinary vocabulary (though even there, there are some ordinary terms that do crop up - "number", for example.)
In a sense, anyone who speaks/writes relies on ordinary language, however much it may be added to or modified.

As an Indirect Realist, I can say "I see sense-data" meaning "I perceive by the eye sense-data" and I can say "I see a material object" meaning "I imagine the possibility of a material object". — RussellA

Yes, you can. It doesn't half help, though, if you make it clear that you are an indirect realist. I know how to interpret what you say.
However, by the same token, a Direct Realist can say "I see a table" meaning "perceive by the eye a table" (though it's a terrible phrase and almost incomprehensible if one takes it seriously) and, if there's an argument going on with an Indirect Realist "I imagine the possibility of sense-data" (because sense-datum language is derived from "material object" language)
But then the disagreement between them seems just a quarrel about words, hardly worth spending any time or effort on. What's at stake here? Nothing.

However, the figure of speech is foundational to language, meaning that the expressions "I perceive by the eye", "sense-data", "I imagine the possibility" and "material object" are all figures of speech and therefore not to be taken literally. — RussellA

Well you could say that any use of a word that isn't a name for a unique object could be described as metaphorical. When I describe a car as red and then describe a coat as red, I am carrying the word over to another case. In other words, you are applying "metaphor" so widely that I can no longer grasp what it means for you. What you be an example of a literal use of, for example "imagine"?
I'm afraid I haven't read Metaphors We Live By, so I can't engage with what they say. But I understand "metaphor" as defined as a non-literal use of a word, and if that's right, not everything can be metaphorical. Mind you, I can just about get my head round the idea that the literal use of a word is also a figure of speech.

The Indirect Realist is considering the pair sense-data and material object in two distinct ways. In one way as sense, which is a linguistic dichotomy, and in another way as reference, which is not a metaphysical dichotomy. — RussellA

Do you mean that "sense-datum" and "material object" are both referring expressions. That depends on us agreeing what they refer to. I can understand that "material object" refers to things like tables and chair, but probably not to rainbows or colours. But I don't understand what "sense-datum" refers to. That's the issue.

However, Austin's argument is flawed, as he infers that because there is no metaphysical dichotomy, then there cannot be a linguistic dichotomy, which is an invalid argument. — RussellA

That's odd. I interpret him as arguing the other way round, that because there is no (valid) linguistic dichotomy, there can be no metaphysical dichotomy.

and the work they did obviously has merit. — Antony Nickles

My supervisor often used to say that being wrong in interesting ways was nearly as good as being right.
I've quoted this before on this forum, but I'm old enough to believe that some things are worth repeating.

Right or wrong, the best thing is to leave or create a path to continuing the discussion (just as a scientific theory needs to do more than just be "true". It needs to open avenues for further research.). I'm afraid the "no theory" theory, if anyone has ever seriously held it, doesn't do that.

Unfortunately, people always just want something to take away, so any hint that they are generalizing something and we take that as all the value they have, rather than to show us a practice which we continue with our own interests and examples. — Antony Nickles

Well, I was remarking that I like Austin's "analysis" of "real" because it gives me an "oversight" of the yse of the word. So there's that to consider.

The idea of practice is important. When I was a student, it was often emphasized that examples are not marginal, but often critically important to any argument. It's not as easy as Austin makes it look.