I think naive realism can cope with only certain changes in air pressure being perceived by us as trees falling. As I understand it, naive realism is this:

If I see a chair, then it is possible that there is a chair and that the presence of a chair is the main cause of my seeing a chair.

This is quite consistent with my sometimes hallucinating chairs and also with some chairs emanating wavelengths of light that I cannot perceive or causing changes in air pressure that are beyond my perception. Another couple of straw naive realisms to mention. Naive realism is not this:

If I see a chair, then there's a chair.

That is more properly termed 'psychotic realism', i.e. I cannot even in theory distinguish hallucination or delusion from reality.

Naive realism is not this:

If I see a chair, then there's a chair and if I see injustice then there's injustice.

That is a theory mentioned above and it combines psychotic realism with moral realism. It's probably the scariest straw realism you could get.

You know me, I'm mad and I'm a fool. — TheMadFool

You don't seem mad and you're definitely not a fool.

But was forced in religion due to my family. — lice

Forcing anything on anyone tends not to endear them to it.

Evil done by nature happens because this is creation not heaven. — Miller

If creators do not bear responsibility for the harm caused by their creations then God's off the hook, granted, but so is all humanity.

There is nothing on earth that answers to “Erin Hunter”. She doesn’t exist. — Srap Tasmaner

Yet you invoked Erin Hunter in your example. If I had invoked Eric Hunter as the author you would have had good reason to correct me: ''No, it's Erin, not Eric." You could accuse me of a failure of reference. Erin Hunter is not of flesh and blood and as you say not to be found walking on the earth. That's not quite enough to establish non-existence, however.

But you didn't spot that I contradicted myself. First I wrote that Potter doesn't exist and that Rowling does. Then, after your challenge, I wrote that they both exist, only in different ways. So, in my role as the naive non-philosopher, how do I get out of that one? I would mumble something like - "Yeah, but Potter doesn't really exist." I would invent a whole new ontological category - Real Existence vs a lowly mere Existence - and I would be in a bit of a mess.

The line I'm taking is to see how far naivety gets us and when it breaks down. It gets us somewhere and we can brave out some initial challenges but only at the cost of raising new problems.

Or are we saying he exists in one way in she in another? Or are we saying he’s one sort of thing and she another? — Srap Tasmaner

Ok, I think my naivety can withstand this pressure. Yes, we can say that Potter exists in one way and Rowling in another. Existence is a predicate. Also '..is red' is a predicate. The apple is red. My trousers are red. But they are different colours. Am I saying that the apple is red in one way and my trousers are red in another? Yes, that's just what I'm saying. So Potter exists in one way - as a character - and Rowling in another - as the author.

Does Erin Hunter exist? Someone writes the Warriors books, but not always the same person, and none of them are called “Erin Hunter”.

You have just given a very good account of the kind of existence that Erin Hunter has and doesn't have. That's like any predicate. The apple is a shiny bright red and my trousers are a dull dark red. Nothing to bother my naivety here. There are different kinds of existence, redness and noise. I'm ok with that.

`To be naive for moment, predicates tell us something about things. The apple is red. When I learn that J K Rowling exists and that Harry Potter doesn't then I'm learning something very specific about each of them. J K Rowling is an author and Harry Potter is a magician. J K Rowling exists and Harry Potter doesn't. That's four things I've learned in total. In this case existence is very predicaty isn't it?

Plato's dialogues reflect philosophical problems discussed in the Academy. — Apollodorus

Thank you for your clear and patient explanation. Frankly, I had no idea.

To me, this is a new aspect on Plato. Perhaps I have the wrong view - or an incomplete view. I know him as a philosopher of big simple questions rooted in our lives. What is justice? How do we know anything? What happens to us when we die? What is love? What do the gods or god have to do with mortals? How can we distinguish appearance from reality? This seems to be a Plato of abstract mysticism, removed from life completely. Once we've eliminated dialectic and become one with the One, what is left? Perhaps we achieve release from rebirth in nirvana. Shantih.

We can see why Plato’s Parmenides tends to be regarded as something of an enigma. — Apollodorus

That is a great detailed summary you wrote, very clear. I have to admit I don't see where the dialogue is going -

Is it aiming to leave us in aporia, unsure whether there are Platonic Forms, a Parmenidean One or Many?
Is the structure - There cannot be One (because of contradictions), there cannot be Many (same reason), therefore there must be Forms?
One what, by the way? Substance, object, universe, thing?

I mean, even if by working terribly hard I could understand this dialogue, what's the point of it?

God never said to Adam, "Humanity is free". Eve did — SatmBopd

Goodness. What did Adam say in reply? Do tell.

...good faith in his acquisition. — Benkei

I agree - but there is too wide a scope for disengenuity. I buy a top range brand new bike for £50 online. Turns out it was stolen. How could I possibly have known? Hmmm.... I think there's a case for strict liability in the law, i.e. it makes no difference what I did or didn't know. But good faith can be a reasonable excuse when I really could not have known.

...leave a stasis in their wake — SatmBopd

You mean Finnegan's wake or someone else's?

Sorry, I keep dozing off. What if you said logical what is what again?

The final conclusion is that “if the One is not, nothing is” — Apollodorus

Another pre-Socratic approach was to say that the Parmenidean One exists but there happen to be lots of them. Each 'den' ("thing" - made-up word, opposite of 'ouden' = no-thing) is indivisible, without parts, absolute being without specific properties such as colour or taste. They buzz around in the vacuum and make up the familiar world of sensible objects and properties. The result is Atomism.

no idea how the modern job market works — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's an old joke but still relevant. Q: What's the question most frequently asked by philosophers? A: "Would you like fries with that?"

.....a warning against complete, self-contained systems of thought — frank

We keep trying to get rid of Platonism (understandably, for all its faults) and it keeps coming back (understandably, for all its attractions). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/

"The purpose" for whom? — 180 Proof

True. There is a double meaning. "What [the hell] is the point of my existence?" vs "What are my aims, purposes, projects, goals?"

It's just recognition of the way we think, correct? — frank

I think this step seems intuitive to us but it isn't the direction that Plato took. In his view the Forms were all that existed and the only things about which we could have knowledge. The particulars are shifting impressions and are the objects of perception and opinion merely.

Why did he conclude that?

There are many reasons. One which I'll offer to this thread has its roots in Parmenides's own words. The Greek word 'esti' - used by Parmenides in crucial lines in the Way of Truth - can mean interchangeably:

It is [something] (as in 'It is blue' , 'It is round')
It exists
It is true

The 'is' of predication, the 'is' of existence and the 'is' of truth-attribution are not here distinguished. So the expression 'ouk esti' (= 'it isn't') yields (for Parmenides) a paradox. You tell me that the ball is round and that therefore the ball is not square. The 'is not' of 'is not square' seems to be telling me that the ball does not exist and that what I'm saying about the ball is not true. But if I cannot say the ball is not square then equally I cannot specify that it is round. And since the ball is something that other things are not then I cannot even specify the ball. I end up just being able to say of It (whatever It might be) that It Is.

(Seems weird to us. But if you smudge the distinctions between existence, predication and truth then you can think your way into the problem. And it took Aristotle to unpick it all the way we might approach it.)

A building differs from a nest in this crucial way. The building is created by humans (so it is art, artificial). The nest is created by a bird. The bird is not human, therefore the nest is natural.

Humans are natural beings. The things that humans make are not natural - they are artificial.

For the definition to work we need only be able to tell the difference between humans and non-humans and the difference between creation and non-creation. Then you can check by a simple series of questions

I'm interested in X
Was X created?
If so, was the being that created X a human?

Art - anything created by humans
Nature - everything else
Unnatural, artificial - anything not produced by nature
Equivocation - saying different things are the same

"Unnatural" has other meanings, for example, "perverted", "counter-intuitive".

Computers are unnatural in the sense of artificial. They don't grow on trees, for example, or fall from the sky. Some person has to put them together.

I don’t see what you find so satisfying about doing this all day. — khaled

*That* is the mystery of mysteries.

Any problem that cannot be solved by tap dancing is not worth solving. That's Rogers-Astaire's first law. The second law is that anything you can do I can do better only in heels and backwards.

Perhaps they can care and also get paid. They care enough to organise their lives in such a way that they can continue caring, which means paying the bills amongst other things. There is something special about doing good without reward but for most of us, most of the time, we can sacrifice ourselves only to the extent that we have spare resources to devote to others.

In crediting people with Liberality their resources must be taken into account; for the liberality of a gift does not depend on its amount, but on the disposition of the giver, and a liberal disposition gives according to its substance. It is therefore possible that the smaller giver may be the more liberal, if he give from smaller means. — Aristotle, Eth Nic, IV, 19

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D4%3Achapter%3Dpos%3D139%3Asection%3D19

There are areas of knowledge (e.g. arithmetic) where we seem to make stuff up (square roots of negative numbers) but we seem unable to make stuff up just any old how ('there are no irrationals'). The propositions are not logically necessary: they can be denied without self-contradiction. But we can't make sense of much else when we deny them. We can't prove or disprove them by looking for facts. They are somehow independent of any particular experiences. But they are not just playing with arbitrary definitions. Do we need to talk about Kant?

...where you blindly assume/posit equivalencies or symmetries that don't exist.... — Seppo

Not at all. The evidence for trusting vaccination is far stronger than any reasons for mistrust. As you say, anti-vaxx is minority and my 'for every person..' is a manner of speaking only.

And of course some people are manipulated, dim, brainwashed etc. But we cannot assume that because some view seems absurd then the person holding it 'must be' brainwashed or sub-rational in some way. They may or may not be. You cannot tell in general. I would say you need independent evidence of brainwashing etc, aside from the holding of an opinion.

Another example is the resurrection of the dead. 'We look for the resurrection of the dead,' goes the Creed. People who expect the dead to rise could be classed as mad in the same unthinking way as vaxxers and anti-vaxxers sometime class one another. But perfectly sane, rational, unbrainwashed, unmanipulated people hold this view and announce it publicly every Sabbath. Of course there are also crazy people who believe it. But you cannot deduce craziness or other sub-rationality from the opinion alone.

For every person who says "Anti-vaxxers must be brainwashed conspiracy theorists" there is another who says that "Vaxxers must be brainwashed establishment stooges." Neither is correct. It is laziness to hold that the people who disagree with you must be crazy or sub-rational in some other way. The laziness consists in its avoidance of dealing with others as rational beings and listening to what they say - whatever side turns out to be right or wrong.

That seems more likely. — tim wood

It's the same problem as above. Just as the anti-vaxxers 'must be' crazy, then I 'must be' insincere (or ironic) in failing to say so.

So I surmise that the most plausible explanation for covid deniers and the woo-woos is that they are a PR stunt engineered by the stakeholders in the pandemic. — baker

Another explanation could be that they are not mad, insincere or brainwashed or a PR stunt. It is that their views differ from yours and that it is possible to hold their views whilst being sane, sincere, unmanipulated, intelligent and uncorrupted. In exactly the same way, it is possible for you to hold your views whilst being completely sane, etc.

Turning the question round, why did philosophers give up poetry and start writing in prose?

https://www.academia.edu/187810/Was_verse_the_default_form_for_Presocratic_Philosophy

An unwelcome truth is that the folk who are wrong can equally be ourselves. Charitable understanding of another's position does not presume a possible win/win; it does not compromise on truth or equivocate with definitions. It presumes that we, rather than the other, may turn out to have been mistaken all along. Or we may not.

Probably, yes. That shouldn't stop us. — Xtrix

True. I'm suggesting that whilst it cannot stop us making the same presumptions, it is an opportunity for us to stop of our own accord. That may in some cases give a chink of possibility of improving the level of debate. In some cases it may not.

I think my point reduces to giving your second axiom first place. Understanding the other's position includes accepting their definitions, at least for the sake of argument.

So how can someone who is generally bright, well-meaning and sincere be so wrong and pave the way for so many issues? This is a silly question -- because nearly every evil person not only justifies their actions to others, but believes it all themselves. So the real question is: why do otherwise normal people make choices that go against their goals? — Xtrix

Other people will presume that we are crazy, evil, brainwashed, hypocritical or dim in order to believe what we believe. I don't think there is anything we can do about that. But we can check the same presumptions in ourselves. Until we do, I suppose we won't get far with agreeing definitions or any other finer points of debate.

Does Zeno's paradox prove that this has to be the case? — Prishon

Zeno had four paradoxes and he needed all of them for the reason you suggest. He assumed that time is either discrete or continuous and time likewise. He considered all combinations - four possibilities in all. Those pre-Socratics didn't have calculus or anything but speculative theory of matter: but they were no slouches with logic.

.

'Epistemic identity' is when you can't tell two things apart. So if God and Chance are epistemically identical then you can't tell which created the Universe. OK so far. Then you conclude that God and Chance are the same thing. But they are not. They are not (as you put it) ontically identical. 'Ontic identity' is when two things actually are the same.

It is as if, because everyone is a suspect and you don't know who did it, you conclude that they are all guilty. You are writing as if Murder on the Orient Express is the only story.

Obviously there is in my knowledge of my cat something that is not me, but something else entirely,[.......] you know, experience itself, can you say there is a room still there absent all this — Constance

First there's a cat independent of your experience. Then there's no room independent of your experience. Where does the cat live?

Just as shrugging off the private language problem is no answer, so it stirring up dust and contradiction.

Philosophy cares about issues like this, not the mundane affairs of exchanging meanings that are well familiar. — Constance

You speak for philosophy and you know what it cares about. But listen more carefully to philosophy itself. It has on occasion shown concern for the ways in which words carry or fail to carry meanings.

So, how does one approach this? — Constance

By slowing down. Clarifying the questions. Checking each thing you write for absurdities. Listening to objections. Yes, it's the long hard slog.

Tell me what the definition of identical means. — TheMadFool

Take a walk outside the philosophy studio for a minute. I am not the same as my brother. Now go back inside. Whatever account of identity we come up with it has to be consistent with that. If we come up with a meaning for 'the same as' in which I'm the same as my brother, we've gone obviously wrong. And not going obviously wrong can often be as good as it gets in philosophy. Sometimes even that is out of reach.

What do we observe? Order. Ergo, it's got to be either God or Chance. Here's where it gets interesting. Our observation of order in the universe can't distinguish between God and Chance. — TheMadFool

OK so far.

That means, God is just another name for Chance and the converse is true as well, Chance is God's alias. Atheism and Theism are one and the same thing!

Whoa! Who broke the window? It was either my brother or it was me. You can't tell from observation which of us did it. Therefore my brother and I are the same. That reasoning does not work.

It's interesting enough before the final part.

Let the conditions unfold then. I don't think we are bound to this phenomenological singularity because I think it makes all problems go away. I simply ask the question about basic epistemology, and find this inevitable conclusion. — Constance

If you can accept the conclusion that communication is impossible, why attempt it?

No conclusions are inevitable if words do not make sense, even to the user of them.

Shrugging off problems is easy enough but it's different from addressing them. The private-language problem is one that confronts the view that all we can know for certain is our own perceptions.

There is only one conclusion, and I mean only one, that issues form this radical hermenuetics of the brain in vat problem: Nothing whatever can be affirmed outside phenomena, thus, the inside and outside of the brain in a vat is nonsense, for it is nonsense to speak of an outside to something all possible insides and outsides contexts of which are bound to a singularity. — Constance

How do we deal with the problem of private language? If naming-words refer necessarily to internal phenomena - all singularly private and mutually incomparable - then we cannot communicate. 'Yes, I understand, you are saying things are like such-and-such!' - But 'such and such' can be neither like nor unlike anything shared between us, for nothing is shared. Worse, we cannot distinguish one phenomenon from another even in our own case. If the distinctive criteria for some experience make sense to the person having that experience, then those criteria have a sense that can be explained, communicated and shared between us.

If your view is true then necessarily you cannot explain it to me. Your explanation is a kind of accompanying music to a phenomenal film that is playing in your mind. And my understanding is whatever I might be hearing.

Fingers in ears, la-la-la. Looking forward to it but I'm supposed to be 'working from home' right now.....

Identity: ϑ ⊧ ϑ; but consider "this is the first time I have used this sentence in this paragraph, therefore this is the first time I have used this sentence in this paragraph"

I'm looking forward to the video at leisure but this leapt out for attention. Isn't it an indexical (context-dependent) utterance? The second utterance expresses a different proposition from the first - so they are not identical propositions and we would not expect identity to hold. The expression "this sentence" refers to a different sentence in the first utterance from the second.

(Just as my saying "I am Cuthbert" expresses a different proposition from someone else's saying "I am Cuthbert", which explains why the same utterance can be either true or false depending upon context.)

But there's only one sentence. Ah. Shut ma mouth. I will watch the video. I know it's all a trick, though, so I'm not going to be taken in. Not that I'm prejudiced, of course.