Our articulation of the world is deeply historical and constantly being revised, but we live in that articulation (as well as in nonlinguistic aspects of the world that we can't say much about.)

The scientific image describes relatively stable features of our world. But even its concepts evolve (Kuhn, etc.)

But our claims describe the world. The world is that which is the case.

If it is either fictionalism or antirealism then in no sense is it direct realism. In fact in no sense does it address the epistemological problem of perception. — Michael

I really don't think you've grasped my approach to this issue yet.

I'm not sure what ism is best. I like old school commonsense philosophy, on this issue at least:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Thomas_Reid
*********
As Reid understood it, many of his seventeenth and eighteenth-century predecessors (the clearest case may be Locke) had accepted a view along the following lines: in perception, external objects such as rocks and cats causally affect our sense organs. The sense organs in turn affect the (probably, non-material) mind, and their effect is to produce a certain type of entity in the mind, an 'idea.' These ideas, and not external objects, are what we immediately perceive when we look out at the world. The ideas may or may not resemble the objects that caused them in us, but their causal relation to the objects makes it the case that we can immediately perceive the objects by perceiving the ideas.

Reid noted that, as soon as this picture is in place, the question naturally arises as to just how far our ideas might diverge from their causes. Indeed, it begins to seem that we are completely cut off from reality,stuck behind a veil of ideas. This is a counter-intuitive conclusion, and Reid thinks it indicates that the original positing of ideas, as things we perceive that are distinct from the objects was misguided (here, the view echoes that of Antoine Arnauld in his debate with Nicolas Malebranche). Common sense, he argues, dictates that what we perceive just are objects and their qualities. Ideas, then, are a philosopher's fabrication.

All of our concepts exists together interdependently in a system. That's a key point.

So you’re not a scientific realist? You believe in something like colour realist primitivism? — Michael

I largely agree with Popper, so I'm probably a critical realist. But that doesn't mean that atoms are more real than marriages or the scientific norms that persuade us to take them seriously in the first place.

There must be a stronger argument against Indirect Realism that that. — RussellA

There's nothing strictly wrong about indirect realism talk. It's just clumsy. We aren't doing math here or playing chess. We are debating which approach is better.

My direct realism is going to be hard to grasp without exposure to phenomenology and the idea of a lifeworld. My view is that linguistic sociality is absolutely fundamental. Philosophers presuppose it without even realizing it. It's the water they swim in. If you deny this, you are only engaging in a performative contradiction --- telling me I think the wrong way about our world in a language you expect me to understand.

I don't think the scientific image is the Real beneath some paintjob of color and values.

Then forget that term. Is the redness a property of that bundle of matter which is the apple? — Michael

Apples are red.

The world that exists outside language is certainly very different to the world existing within language. — RussellA

How are you talking about it then ? It's a product of language, an empty negation.

Is the redness of an apple a mind-independent property of the apple? — Michael

I don't think 'mind-independent' is a very clear term. It might be better to say talk-independent or concept-independent. Then the emptiness of the phrase becomes obvious. It's the sound of one hand clapping.

I'm fine with the scientific image as an aspect of the encompassing (life-)world.

To say that the Indirect Realist's position that we are separated from the external world by our senses is a silly unjustified assumption is not a very strong argument. — RussellA

Don't you see that it's the weird dudes who think they live behind screens that need to make a case ?

Our talk has always been directed toward others and about the one and only world, so it's pretty strange to invent internal images of the world just to explain the fact that people can be mistaken sometimes.

Let's restart with something simple. Do we see colours? — Michael

We see red apples, the blue sky. We can talk about colors (as adjectives, concepts,...)

There is also the world as experienced by each individual. It must be the case that each individual perceives the world differently. I cannot believe that the world as experienced by a thirteen year old growing up in Soweto is the same world as experienced by a fifty year old merchant banker in Wall Street, as you seem to be suggesting. — RussellA

Two people in the same room see the world through different pairs of eyes. But it's the same world.

The world that we live in and the world that we talk about refer to different worlds. — RussellA

No. That don't make sense. We talk about the world we care about --- the world we all live in together.

And which world are you talking about when you tell me this ?

But what is Hegel's solution to the problem of how can we know what is truly the other side of our senses, when our senses alter what we know about what is the other side of our senses ? — RussellA

His solution is to point out that we aren't on the other side of our sense to begin with ---that this was all just a silly unjustified assumption from the beginning. He's articulating the assumption (that the world is transformed before we get it) in order to make it 'visible' and therefore optional. It's the assumptions we don't know we have made that trap us worse than all others. Phenomenology digs this stuff out and drags it into the light for investigation.

In the world in my mind I directly see a tree and in the world that exists independently of me I indirectly see a tree. — RussellA

That 'world in your mind' is basically the same as the internal image I've been talking about. I claim there is no world in your mind --- or that it's at least an inefficient way of talking.

In your support of Direct Realism you referred to Hegel. Hegel clearly sets out the problem with Direct Realism in the passage linked to above. — RussellA

I think you need to read the whole quote carefully. It's a difficult passage. He opens by sketching indirect realism. Then he makes fun of it. He says fear of error becomes fear of truth. Indirect realism seems humble to itself, but it's accidentally a bold theory which is taken for granted.

Following the general Renaissance custom, Locke defined an idea as a mental entity: “whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy/The-Enlightenment

If a man is looking at an apple, thinking about eating it, then the object of his understanding is that apple in our world, the only world. But Locke and others created the myth of a tiny picture or internal private world inside people's heads. There were reasons this was tempting (mentalistic talk in ordinary language), but it leads to confusion. It's an oldfashioned idea, demolished in the 20th century by lots of thinkers (the later Wittgenstein and early Heidegger and Gilbert Ryle and...)

I directly see a tree. There is no doubt about this. The question is, in what world is this tree. There are different worlds, i) the world in my mind ii) the world in the minds of a community iii) the world external to any mind iv) the world as a sum of all these. — RussellA

I see. I claim: The world is not in your mind. The world is not in our minds.

There is just the one world that we all live in and see and talk about. Yes we need our nervous systems to do this, but we are not trapped behind or in that nervous system. I'm aware that others have claimed that we are, but I claim that this misunderstands the position of the philosopher within a space of reasons which is always already normative and social and worldly. If people deny this, they know not what they do, because they are telling my I am wrong about our world. Philosophical claims take for granted a logic that binds others within a negotiation or articulation of the discursive character of the world.

For example, Wittgenstein in Tractatus para 1 writes "the world is all that is the case.", and creates unnecessary debate by never explaining where this world is. — RussellA

It's a brilliant and difficult line. The world is all that is the case because it is the articulated world we talk about, the shared world we articulate. The world as articulated is all true statements. It's as if language is always already pointed at an otherwise indeterminate but primordially shared space. The world is the 'target' of claims. It is the wherein of our concerned beingthere. You might want to check out Heidegger on the issue of forehaving and various theoretical prejudices that interfere with grasping this 'object' (the world) correctly.

Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing. — RussellA

I think Searle is on the edge of direct realism here, but I think 'pain' has its own weird grammar and distracts from contemplating seeing worldly objects. To me it's just better to say that I see the apple, the one out there in our world. Yes, I need my nervous system to do this. But my eyes and brain let me see this apple in our world directly. Yes, I need light to come from the apple to my retina. That's part of how I see the apple. But I don't see an image of the apple, and I don't see a private world in which the apple is given directly. I see the apple right there in our world, the world. And I talk about that apple. It is the case that an apple is there in front of me.

those of us interested in philosophy engage in a true privilege, being able to use thought for its own sake, which reveals aspects of reality other people take utterly for granted — Manuel

:up:

Would you make that argument about quantum physics or molecular biology? — Joshs

:up:
To complain about the specialization of philosophy is to insist it be a less serious kind of investigation than it is --- the kind that doesn't get anywhere, doesn't get more complex with time. To me this resentful anti-intellectualism is what takes philosophy to be a mere hobby -- bongtalk about god, refried relativism, infinitely ironic dada poetry, metaphors for mystical whatnot, and so on --and all of this is fine in an informal space like this. This place is ideal for freestyle cultural criticism, piecing togther some edifying discourse for personal existential use. Great ! But trying to impose one's personal lazy limits on professionals is childish. Some people, some of the time, aren't that interested in their star sign or who will save their soul. They want to know how language works, what counts as science and why....dry stuff if you just want a feelgood bedtime story or culture war goo.

then we can understand the reality of intention and free will as truly non-physical causes. — Metaphysician Undercover

To me that looks like superstition.

It's not a bias toward the physical on my part (I don't think 'physical' is a fundamental concept) but just a care for whether socalled explanations are just sentimental stories about gods more complex than what they are supposed to explain. To me the concept of free will is mystification of our enacted convention of selfhood as a focus of responsibility.

And questions of "why" are readily answered when intention is the cause. So when the question "Why this and not something else" is asked, it is easily answered with, that was choice of the intentional agent. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm surprised that you would say so. The obvious next question is : 'why did that intentional agent make such a choice?' One does not explain something relatively simple (a natural world without life in it yet) in terms of something hopelessly complex (the psychology of a superior being, perhaps of a god.) This is anti-explanation.

But why do some think it is a genuine explanation ? Because it makes them feel good. It gives them an emotional orientation. Fine. Let people have their religion. But I like explanation and clarification, which is joyful sober hard work. For me this is essentially social / normative. Serious critical minds come together to tell a truer and truer story about our shared world.

1, How could random chance produce rational thought, and unreal Ideals? — Gnomon

Respectfully (and I hope helpfully), I suggest (1) you study the theory of evolution [to understand complexity emerging from simplicity] and (2) read more philosophy [ to question Everyman prejudices about 'unreal' or 'immaterial' ideas] .

Smart people have made some real progress on this stuff, and (as you mention) it's inexpensive entertainment.

science and philosophy accept the supremacy of human reason; religion has sacred texts and people (prophets, incarnations, etc.) whose authority cannot be denied. — Art48

:up:

You have hit the target here.

So we clarify forever what we mean by the supremacy of human reason. We have/had enough of a foggy idea to get started of course.

Not explicitly. — 180 Proof

I like structuralism (Saussure on language and Benacerraf on math), which thinks in terms of roles in structures. So the numeral 4 is like the wooden bishop (the material token) in Chess is like one of the many ways to say 'hello' in 45 languages. Along these lines, translation is just finding a phrase that does basically the same thing in the target context as it did in the source context, so it is not moving some immaterial content from one material container to another. I think we both reject the container metaphor, so I'm elaborating for others too.

The 'fallacious reification' only enters the picture when we think of them as being objectively existent - which they're not. — Wayfarer

Perhaps I'm somewhere in the middle on this. Concepts exist in some sense. Note that they are objective or public. There is a right way to use them. None of us individually govern them, and they make philosophy possible.

I think you mean 'nonphysical,' but even this is not obvious. Concepts could be the patterns in the movement of otherwise nonconceptual stuff. It is way too easy in my view to forget time and motion.

Are dances nonphysical ? Or are we too quick to think of motionless stones when 'physical' is used ?

'Flatness' and 'lightness' are not objectively existent things separable from their instantiation in wings, but nevertheless all wings must 'participate' in the forms of flatness and lightness if they are going to achieve flight. — Wayfarer

So the question is whether this participation metaphor is the best one. Why isn't it just that wings need to be flat ? Adjectives look like classifications which I'd expect to have inferential consequences. Because that wing is not flat enough, the plane it's on won't fly.

My guess is that "platonic ideas" (universal) are quixotic (mis)uses of language rationalized whereby (formal and nonformal) abstractions are fallaciously reified. — 180 Proof

:up:
Have you considered an equivalence class approach to thinking about ideas ? In other words, an idea is just a blurry set of expressions that are used in basically the same way, for the same purpose. This way sentences need not be thought of as containers of Content.

When you find yourself disagreeing with the beliefs of your earlier self, are you really contradicting your earlier self? — sime

Just to be clear, the point is to be coherent now. So you can imagine two bits that shouldn't both be on at the same time, with one of them having been on and the other being switched on. Zap ! Cognitive dissonance. A discursive self now has the duty to flip one of these bits off. This is a brutal oversimplification, but hopefully you see the point.

From the perspective of an engineer who has a causal understanding of AI technology — sime

I also know the tech pretty well, studied it in grad school, for whatever that is worth.

any agent of finite capacity can only learn to play well at one language game at the expense of doing worse at the others. — sime

As far I know, we humans are of finite capacity.

each belief can nevertheless be considered to be "true" at the time of it's construction without entailing contradiction with any of the other beliefs, — sime

I view the self as temporally stretched. The nowpoint of physic's time might not be relevant here. The liar statement is a fun example though, maybe because it helps show indirectly that the self must be consistent.

Doesn't it strike you as odd, the assumption that a person can believe in something impossible? — sime

I don't believe in 'strict' impossibility. Roughly speaking, norms are fundamental here. Some sentences we can't make sense of or we don't find remotely plausible. This royal we is something like the high ground that individuals fight to assimilate and transform.

(When interpreted with empathy, do Flat-Earther's really exist?) — sime

Yes. They make claims about our world in our language. Their claims have inferential purchase. If I believe them, I will also believe implications of their claims --- which may be why I can't believe them, for their claims imply others that are not consistent with other of my beliefs.

A dynamic-evolving logic comes first here.

As an Indirect Realist, I directly see a tree, I don't see the image of a tree. — RussellA

Say what now ? Is that a typo ?

The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. ... The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary.
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2

<recap>
We talk about the object and not some private internal image of the object, therefore it's cleaner to talk also of seeing the object and not some private internal image of the object.

Yeah, novelty usually pricks one's mneumonic slumber. — 180 Proof

It's maybe like an employee running for the manager when they don't want responsibility for the decision.

Mind is the capacity to grasp meaning and is present in very rudimentary form even in the simplest organisms. — Wayfarer

How about mind as the body's performance of meaning ? As you say, it's there from the beginning. But with us there is intense timebinding. I see this 'spirit ' or thickening-stacking software as what differentiates us.

And mirror neurons might give us that strong illusion of sharing platonic ideas and the same sensations ?

... or metacognitive bias (via neo-natal bonding + mirror neurons —> developing 'theory of mind'). — 180 Proof

That sounds right. I really ought to know more about the brain. I'd like to study it as a prediction machine, especially in the light of what transformers are doing. Attention is drawn to surprise, right?

Thank you for the kind words. It helps keep me reaching.

it seems that the ultimate source of human conceptual ability remains a mystery — Gnomon

As far as I can tell, the only 'mystery' (and I think @180 Proof agrees ?) is that of any postulated origin, because we can always ask but why ? Why this and not something else ?

:up:

I hope this fits in here. It was written by Google's Bard. It cracked me up.

“So, Plato, you say that the soul is immortal?” Bukowski asked, taking a bite of his hamburger.

“Yes, that is correct,” Plato replied. “The soul is eternal and cannot be destroyed.”

“Well, that’s a load of bullshit,” Bukowski said, taking another bite of his hamburger. “The soul is just a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses. When you die, those chemicals and electrical impulses stop, and that’s it. There’s no afterlife.”

“That is a very simplistic and materialistic view of the soul,” Plato said. “The soul is much more than just a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses. It is the essence of who we are, and it cannot be destroyed.”

“Whatever you say, Plato,” Bukowski said, finishing his hamburger. “But I’m going to keep eating my hamburgers, and I’m going to keep enjoying life, and I’m going to die when I die, and that’s all there is to it.”

And with that, Bukowski stood up and walked away, leaving Plato standing there, dumbfounded.

I'm using Bard for the first time, and here's a great example of idle talk.

Here is an imitation of Martin Heidegger making fun of Plato:

"Plato, my dear friend, you are a dreamer. You live in a world of your own making, a world of eternal forms and perfect ideals. But the real world is not like that. The real world is messy and imperfect, and it is constantly changing.

You think that you can escape the real world by retreating into your ivory tower, but you are wrong. The real world will always find you. And when it does, you will be forced to confront it.

I urge you to come down from your ivory tower and face the real world. It is a harsh world, but it is also a beautiful world. And it is the only world that we have.

So stop dreaming, Plato, and start living."


This is better:

The snake of history
Uncoils and eats itself,
Writhing and twisting
Through the centuries.

Its tail is its head,
Its head is its tail,
And it devours itself
In an endless cycle.

It is a symbol of death
And rebirth,
Of destruction
And creation.

It is a reminder
That nothing is permanent,
That all things must change,
And that even the past
Is not set in stone.

The problem is, how do we know what exists on the other side of our senses independently of our senses, when all the information about what is on the other side of our senses comes through our senses. — RussellA

Your use of we is a tacit acknowledge of that inferential norms are public --- and that we are discursive, worldly persons, not imps locked up in a cage made sense data. One can only create such a theory as a citizen of the world who sees sense organs and takes them as real.