No. It's about simple discussion protocols. If you want to contribute to a thread you should make your case (not just state facts) and cite the support for your claims.

If you're actually a climatologist, it would be a different matter and there might be more scope to just state what is the case (as you see it).

This is a discussion forum, not a blog, not an 'infowall' of useful snippets. If you don't want to take part in the discussions then you might just be in the wrong place, that's all.

Their appearances resemble. Their shape, the colour of their hair, etc. — Michael

But not their position? Is where they are not an appearance, but hair colour is? What about if one twin was facing one way and the other twin another?

That's not true. I provided two citations in spite of the fact that my knowledge is primarily from textbooks. — Tate

Apart from the fact that your citations do not support the claims you made, you provided them after several pages of repeated requests from at least three different posters, and more importantly, you did so after the provoking discussion with @Xtrix. They can hardly be expected to moderate on the basis of something you're about to do, can they?

They claim that the external cause is directly presented in experience, and so it isn't hidden. — Michael

Then how are we ever wrong? The direct realists you've cited for me all say we can be wrong.

And that's why the arguments from illusion and hallucination are evidence against direct realism, as is the fact that different people see different colours. — Michael

But all the direct realists you've cited include the possibility of us being wrong, so all those situations just count as situations in which we were wrong.

The twin on the right resembles the twin on the left even if you never meet him. — Michael

That doesn't answer the question about what properties we're supposed to be matching. The twin on the right has a different spatio-temporal position to the one on the left. So they don't resemble each other after all?

Could you explain why moderation was needed? The only explanation I got from Xtrix was that my post was irrelevant. — Tate

You posted a completely uncited claim without even describing how it related to the argument. You refused to provide any citation when asked. You continue to do so in the same thread.

The topic is a scientific one (albeit the philosophical implications). We ought to expect citation. It's standard practice. We're not interested in what you 'reckon' is the case with regards to climatology.

If I were mod I would have deleted considerably more. I think @Xtrix behaved with some degree of composure given the provocation.

Direct realists don't claim that a red apple is a hidden state. Direct realists claim that a red apple is a directly visible thing. — Michael

A hidden state is directly visible. The process of 'seeing' is one of inferring what hidden states are. Again, if you want anything more direct than 'inference' then you eliminate the possibility of being wrong and no direct realists claims we can't be wrong, hence everything we think about hidden states must only be an hypothesis, it cannot be a direct transferal otherwise we couldn't be wrong.

Imagine a set of twins. The twin on the left resembles the twin on the right. Now imagine that the twin on the left is an apple-as-experienced and the twin on the right is an unexperienced-apple. — Michael

Right. But to tell the twins resemble each other I look at their properties (they both have red hair, they both have high cheek bones, etc). What are we looking for in the "apple-as-experienced" and the "unexperienced-apple" to tell if they're similar, or not?

we should distinguish between two notions of color: color as a property of physical bodies, and color as it is in sensation (or, as it is sometimes described, “color-as-we-experience-it”).

Yes, that's a position I'd agree with, but I take the view that we do not in any way 'see' this second notion. It is a post hoc construct of meta-theory, not a part of perception. It's something we hypothetically construct after having 'seen' the object as a meta-theory of how our perception works. It could also (though I'm less convinced of this) be a tool in our construction of priors about other objects "what would happen if I saw the same thing but a different colour?". This is Friston's theory. But as I say, I'm not fully convinced of it.

You can read a summary about color primitivism and other theories of colors here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#RivaTheoColo — Marchesk

Yeah, thanks. Michael linked me there too, but I'm not seeing the theory you and Michael are expounding about direct realists believing colour actually is the same thing as our 'experience' but in objects. None of the theories talked about in that article seem to make such a claim (not that I can see, anyway).

The closest might be primitivism, but in the section on Primitivism, it says (of one proponent)...

The properties that do the causing of these experiences seem to be complex, micro-structural properties of surfaces of bodies (and similar properties for seeing volume colors, diffraction colors, scattering colors, etc). This problem is addressed by Hacker in his defense of the claim that colors are intrinsic features of physical bodies. He insists that colors are properties that are used to provide causal explanations.

Hacker's main argument (according to his critics) seems to be grammatical...

Hacker believes that an investigation into the ways in which we ordinarily talk about perception will lead to an understanding of the grammar of our language ans thus the way we see the world around us — From David Stern's review of Hacker's

I've obviously still got a lot of reading to do, but if you (or @Michael) have any more direct link to the actual target of your objections I'd be grateful.

people believe(d) that the world resembles how it appears to us. — Michael

That far I understand. Where I'm coming unstuck is on what anyone means by the world "resembling" how it appears. I don't understand what it could even mean for a world (by which I assume we mean the external world) to 'resemble' how it appears. If we eliminate the whole oddness about mistakes (ie we assume we can be mistaken), then it seems to be saying that if the world appears to have a red apple in it, then it has a red apple in it. But nowhere in that simple exposition does it say what kind of thing a red apple is, so it doesn't seem to address any of the concerns we've been discussing.

If a 'red apple' is a hidden state in a particular configuration, then when it appears to me that there's a red apple in the world, then there actually is one (by which I mean a hidden state in a particular configuration). Likewise if it turns out that a red apple is a figment of God's imagination, then when it appears to me that the world contains a red apple (a figment of God's imagination) then it actually does contain a red apple.

There seem to be an assumption that what appears to us is some clearly defined thing for us to examine if something resembling it exists in the world (and so prove direct realism), but there clearly is no such clearly defined thing. The way the apple appears to me doesn't tell me anything about whether it's a hidden state, a figment of God's imagination, a trick of the light, an electrochemical signal from the electrodes attached to my en-vatted brain... Nothing about how the 'appearance to me' tells me about the apple's make up, it's just not data that forms part of the appearance.

So the question is, when we're examining the world (testing the direct realist's hypothesis) looking for something which 'resembles' the way things appear to us. What are we looking for? What data are we going to find which either confirms or denies this hypothesis?

If we find objects which produce more than one appearance in different people, that doesn't help because all direct realists include the possibility of being wrong - so, one person's wrong. Simple.

If we find our scientific instruments record a world of atoms and electrons, that doesn't help because the way the apple appears to me doesn't include what it's made of, there's simply no data on that. Plus, I could be wrong - all direct realist theories include the possibility of being wrong.

If cognitive science finds our brains use models to help perceive the environment, that doesn't help because direct realism is about what we're seeing, not how we're seeing it.

So I just don't get what evidence we're looking for to counter the direct realist.

If your vote carries no weight and your vote carries the same weight as everyone else's, then nobody's vote carries any weight. — Cuthbert

That's right. Nobody's vote carries weight in the matter of affecting the way we are governed. Votes are a statistical exercise.

It's like claiming that filling in a census actually changes the demographic make up of the population. It clearly doesn't, it just records it more accurately, the actual demographic make up of the population is what it is regardless of whether you fill in the census or not.

If I ask you what you think of Shakespeare, you might tell me, or you might remain silent, or you might lie - none of which changes what you actually think about Shakespeare.

If the returning officer asks the electorate which candidate they most want in that office they might tell him, or they might remain silent, or they might lie - none of which changes the fact of which candidate they actually want in that office.

the idea is that red is a property as we see it, not something that causes us to have a response — Marchesk

But in Locke it says...

the ideas produced in us by secondary qualities don’t resemble them at all. There is nothing like our ideas ·of secondary qualities· existing in the bodies themselves. All they are in the bodies is a power to produce those sensations in us. — Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II: Ideas

...and he was cited as an example of these direct realists. IF you have a different source, perhaps you could cite it for me?

Under normal conditions, when there's not an optical illusion, and taking into account whatever details about color vision need to be accounted for. — Marchesk

Right. So given these caveats, how does two people perceiving different colours from the same object count as evidence against the theory? One of those people can just be said to be under one of the factors that need taking into account.

Reducing your carbon footprint by 90% or increasing it by 200% will do practically nothing to save or to harm the planet. Having just one cigarette in a pub is not going to give anyone emphysema. Etc. — Cuthbert

No, it's not like those things at all.

If I reduce my carbon footprint then I have done some very small amount of good. It may not be enough on my own, but it is good, there's less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If vote (in a situation where I know I'm in a minority) I haven't done some small amount of good. I've done no good at all. The opposition party have won and get to enact their policies in exactly the same way they would have if I hadn't voted. Exactly the same. Not a small but insignificant difference (such as with reducing one's carbon footprint), absolutely no difference at all.

No laws or no physical laws? Why do laws have to be physical? — Marchesk

They don't, they just have to be roughly agreed for us to talk. We have to have some common ground. If you get to make up the laws as well as the theory, then clearly anything goes.

We agree about our basic empirical experience of the world, so we can develop and talk about theories which make coherent sense of that. If you want to claim that our 'experience of red' exists in some non-physical realm, then that's fine, but since we cannot measure or sense this realm in any inter subjective manner, we cannot develop and talk about theories of its function. What possible critique could be brought to bear?

The way it appears would mean the color in our experience. — Marchesk

Yes. The idea that seems to be bring presented is that red is some property of an object which produces the response we call 'seeing red'.

They mean the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range. — Marchesk

I can find no support for this. Both Locke and the colour primitivist agree that we can be mistaken. So they do not think the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range. Otherwise we couldn't be wrong and both admit that we can be wrong.

It just means color as we experience it isn't a property of the object. — Marchesk

How could it possibly mean that?

Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac


Other than none. Which is kind of the point. — Marchesk

No. there can't be any physical laws about it at all. You can't claim colour is not a physical property of objects and the use, in your argument, aspects of that physical property.

Your claim is that colour cannot be a property of physical objects because objects cannot have two colours at once, but if colour is not a property of physical objects then there is no such law, so your argument fails.

The counterfactual world you're talking about is the world of our experience. It looks like colors are properties of objects and light sources. The world of our experience came before science was developed. — Marchesk

But no-one here has presented any science showing that world of experience to be wrong. If we assume colours are the properties of objects and light sources, what science shows that to be wrong?

Chalmers proposed a law binding consciousness with informationally rich systems. So property dualism for him. It's just one possibility. Some have tried to work on making a panpsychist theory built up form minimally conscious subatomic particles. — Marchesk

Chalmers can 'propose' whatever he likes. I can 'propose' the world is really made of jelly and we're tricked into thinking it isn't by space aliens. If there's no laws governing what can be then all theories are equally valid. Since we (broadly) agree on coherence with physical laws, then agreeing something is physical puts constraints on what it can be, thus not all theories are valid. If we say that something is in some other realm that we can't even see let alone measure, has no discernible laws governing it and can't be proven either way, then all theories are game.

There are some contemporary philosophers who do argue for color realism, and they try to make it compatible with science. I'm not convinced those arguments work. — Marchesk

Uh huh. As you say...

If their arguments were incoherent, then [color realism] would have been easily dismissed. — Marchesk

They certainly thought so of at least some appearances, hence Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities. — Michael

Indeed, but you're using the vagueries of colour sensation (which Locke already decided was a secondary quality) to show that objects do not resemble appearances. Locke already covered that by using secondary qualities. His claim about primary qualities was things like solidity, extension, shape, and mobility. So, using Locke, it seems insufficient to show the direct realist os wrong using differences in colour perception as they (Locke being an example) already differentiate two types of property and colour is not primary. What am I missing here?

And see color primitivist realism for the view that objects have an objective colour appearance: — Michael

The article you provided says..

the only way to determine what primitivist color a body has is by the way it appears, this raises the question of which is the body’s real color. Normal perceivers, for example, divide into different groups on whether a body’s color is, say, unique blue, or rather, a slightly reddish-blue, an even more reddish blue, or, alternatively, a greenish blue. Cohen and Hardin argue that there is no non-arbitrary way to pick out one group of perceivers as identifying the “real” color. At most, one group is correct, but we would not know which

So it appears even the critics are agreed that the colour primitivists are still assuming colour is a property which we detect and produces the way it appears, not that colour actually is 'the experience of red' in an object.

I'm not finding, in the sources you've provided, the idea that any direct realist considers objects to actually have (rather than have a property which causes) the 'experience of red'. Do you have any less ambiguous sources, or perhaps you could explain them more clearly?

But the phenomenological sense of 'appear' can't possibly apply to the world (without imparting consciousness to all objects) so the same problem arises. If the direct realist thinks the world is exactly as it phenomenologically appears, then their argument is still so embarrassingly ridiculous as to force us to consider our own misunderstanding as the more plausible explanation.

The epistemological problem of perception asks: is the world as it appears to us? Direct realists answered in the affirmative. — Michael

If they're really arguing that we're never wrong, however the world seems, that's how it is, then they should consider the earth flat, the sun in its orbit, dragons exist, and the weather caused by an angry God as these are all ways the world has appeared to us to be.

Since some direct realists are otherwise very intelligent people, I think a more plausible explanation is that you've misunderstood their position. But I'm not sufficiently expert in that area of philosophy to gainsay, so, assuming you're right, what an embarrassment to the field of philosophy that anyone thought such an obviously nonsensical thing.

According to you, something is green if it causes most humans to see it as green and something is purple if it causes most humans to see it as purple. How can a single wavelength cause most people to see it as green and most people to see it as purple? — Michael

Indeed. It's a reductio argument. I think it doesn't make sense that an object is (normally) two colours at once because I think colour is a property of the object and as such amenable to the physical laws we know about objects (such as their propensities to reflect light of particular wavelengths). If, on other confirmatory analysis, the object turns out to be green, then those who called it purple were wrong.

Of course, our models of physical laws could be wrong, and an object could be found which does emit wavelengths which are ambiguous, perhaps could be correctly modelled as both green and purple, but I don't know of any such objects.

The whole "why can't an object be both green and purple" argument is meant to draw out the fact that, we're all really talking as if colour is a property of external objects because we're all quite happily discussing the physical laws which constrain the colour an external object can actually be.

There is something which is a red look — Michael

And what is this thing? Is it physical (if so in what form?). If it's not physical then in some other realm? Dualism here?

It's what occurs when most people's eyes are stimulated by light with a wavelength of 650nm. — Michael

What occurs when most people's eye's are stimulated by light with a wavelength of 650nm is a series of fairly well documented and reasonably well understood neurological reactions. Which of them is the 'Red Look'?

Direct realists say that we see an object as red because that object has that exact red look. — Michael

This doesn't make sense as written. You said above the 'the red look' is "what occurs when most people's eyes are stimulated by light with a wavelength of 650nm". How can an object have it when objects don't generally have eyes?

A red look and an orange look are conceptually different things, and if they were physical properties they would be physically different things. the claim is that an object cannot have two different physical looks for the same reason that it cannot have two different physical masses or two different physical charges. — Michael

OK, so that answers my question above, the concept is physical. So where is it in our brains?

the claim is that an object cannot have two different physical looks for the same reason that it cannot have two different physical masses or two different physical charges. — Michael

But an object can be both narrow and sinuous, it can have two properties of outline. Objects can be both rough and sticky, two properties of texture. Objects can be both vertically striped and horizontally striped, two properties of patterning. And we're still in physical properties. Once we get into conceptual properties, it becomes even easier for an object to have two properties of the same category at once. An object can be both a hammer and a crowbar (tool type). An object can be both a weapon and paperweight (use). An object can be both awe inspiring and beautiful (emotional response)...

There's absolutely no reason to think an object cannot be both conceptually of an 'orange look' and a 'red look' - whatever such notions might mean.

I suspect that your account of experience can't make sense of this, in which case it's irrelevant to the argument being made which is an attack on direct realism, — Michael

Then I'm struggling to understand the account direct realism (or indirect realism, for that matter) is putting forward. If direct realism wants identicality with this undefined concept referred to as 'the experience of red', then it seems it can have it - the concept has no definition so who's to say an object doesn't project 'the experience of red', since we can neither measure such a thing nor do we know anything about any laws which constrain it, we've absolutely no idea whether an object can project it, nor how many such things it could project at once.

If all we're talking about is 'the experience of red' then literally all options are on the table. It could be a property of our mind, it could be a property of objects (which we detect with our 'experience detectors'), it could be a property of God which both the object and us merely reflect.

I can't see how any amount of thinking is going to pin down the nature of this 'experience of red' since it has no laws governing it.

I agree with your assessment of how important this topic is to broader political and social goals.

I think generally it's a good system, you'll be no doubt aware of the overlaps with something like REBT, which I have a lot of sympathy with.

Some - hopefully friendly - criticisms...

We're often not aware of goals which are, nonetheless important to us. Eating is one example. It's really important that we eat enough, but when you get people to list their goals in your therapy sessions, how many list eating? Eating, of course, is rarely something we have any trouble achieving either, it just serves as an uncontroversial example. Rest might be a more difficult one - definitely needed, rarely thought of as a goal, often difficult to get enough of.

Modern life is so fiendishly complicated that much of what we really need (for our mental well-being) is not being provided and yet our brains are simply not geared up to expect provision of it to be some kind of 'personal goal', we expect it to just be there (cue monstrous amount of evolutionary psychology - yuck!).

So getting people to focus on goals not being achieved is a great idea, but it would be good to include reference, in that process, to goals which one might simply think of as background, yet are not being achieved nonetheless. Otherwise you tend to get the standard 'bucket list' types of goal and less of the the real stuff that actually makes humans happy (climbing Everest is a surprisingly fleeting pleasure and rarely matches up to hearing a baby giggle).

Along the same lines, plans can suffer the same problem. We're woefully short on data when it comes to the question of how to get from where we are to where we want to be. Again, like with goals, we wouldn't plan in 'step 4 - eat lunch' and yet we kind of 'know' that eating lunch is going to be one of the steps in any plan (that goes over lunchtime). I'm using eating as an uncontroversial example again. More controversial, but important, examples might be, say, keeping up the social bonds which are needed for so many plans to work, but often neglected. Too often goal-oriented people neglect their role in helping others achieve their goals, and so miss an important (but perhaps, unexamined) goal of their own. Webs of social networks are often too difficult to track manually so including them in some kind of plan is difficult. Which leads to...

Planning can often be dominated by the easy-to-predict and neglect the difficult-to-predict, simply because it's hard work and we tend to avoid hard work. So deliberate plans can sometimes be worse at achieving goals than non-deliberate ones, simply because deliberate plans have neglected all the complex factors which help/hinder but were too difficult to manually account for. A bit like trying to catch a ball by actually doing the maths on the parabolic arc.

My favourite example of this is scarcity. The effect that material scarcity has on our brain's ability to carry out any other task is enormous (there's been some great work on this), and yet resolving scarcity is rarely considered number one on the goal list

Finally, lest my reply get longer than your OP, I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly?) that this is a form of CBT - you work out what behaviours are required to achieve your goals and then carry them out. But there's no mention of challenging the beliefs that are currently in the way. I'm not going to explain what it means because I know you already know. I'm just interested if there's a reason you didn't mention it.

The wavelength of light the creature sees — Marchesk

Why can't that wavelength be both green and purple?

Your argument is that colour is a property of experience becasue two people see different colours and an object cannot be two colours at once.

But if colour is a property of experience, then the statement "an object cannot be two colours at once" is incoherent. Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once.

The best you can say is that if colour were a property of objects, then it could not be two colours at once. But here you're creating a counterfactual world in which colours are the properties of objects and claiming you know what physical laws would exist in such a world. Which is an unsupported claim - we only know the physical laws of our own world, the one in which you claim colour is a property of experience, not objects.

I'll keep voting and have some victories while you can sit home and let people like me decide your future without opposition. — Philosophim

Voting (or not) does not decide my future. It's not a belief, it's a fact.

If 60% of the electorate want candidate A, then candidate A will be elected, and so determine (that element of) my future.

This is true before the election even takes place.

This is true whether I vote or not.

The matter of what a majority of people in my constituency feel politically is what determines who wins an election. Voting is simply the bureaucratic exercise of officially informing the returning officer of that position.

If I vote, I give the returning officer a more accurate dataset. I do absolutely nothing to change the population from which that dataset is drawn. My vote changes nothing. It adds to data accuracy. The situation the data is recording is not made any more or less the case by my improving the accuracy of the record.

Logic — Marchesk

How? Talk me through the logic.

I didn’t make a claim about object existence. — Marchesk

I know. You made a claim about its properties. Properties you also claim we do not experience. So I'm wondering how you know anything about its properties.

If colour is a property of our perception, then what is it that is constrained in external objects when you say they cannot be both green and purple?

It can't be the nature of colour since that's apparently a property of our perception, not constrained by any physical law pertaining to the object.

It can't be the nature of the object, since we don't know the nature of the object on account of all its apparent properties being actually those of our perception. And in any case, the nature of the object is unrelated to its colour (which is, rather, a property of our perception)

So what is which is constrained in an object such that it cannot be both green and purple?

You can't have something be both all green and all purple. — Marchesk

How do you know? I thought we had no direct knowledge of the external world. Now you're saying that it's objects are definitely such that they can't be both green and purple. How could you possibly know that?

If someone describes themselves as a 'protester' on the strength of not voting, it's another overstatement. — Cuthbert

Maybe, but the question was about it's being a political position, not a protest. IF voting Labour is a political position (despite the fact that it might be only strategic, or habit, or defeatist), then so is not voting (despite the fact that it might be apathy, laziness or stupidity).

many people who exercise and attempt to diet do not lose weight. It is no guarantee. — Philosophim

No. I said it was highly probable. Getting what you want by voting isn't. It's quite literally only going to achieve that if yours happens to be the casting vote. In all other situations the world will carry on exactly the same regardless.

its one of the few viable processes of expressing what you want. — Philosophim

I don't see how. As I said, if I vote for Labour that could mean I agree with anything from all of their policies to none of them. It barely reveals anything about what I want and a well conducted survey would reveal far more.

People vote. That means you can convince people in your community to vote as well. You can advertise. You can run for office yourself. — Philosophim

I can. None of which are voting. In fact, if I successfully managed to convince 60% of the population of my ideas, I still wouldn't need to vote.

Take the opposite, that you can't vote at all. That you can't congregate with others to discuss what you're going to vote on. You have absolutely no choice to be run by a few others who have all the power. — Philosophim

Why? You're assuming voting is the only response to power.

Which means some voters in any vote, will win. Sometimes that can be you, but only if you vote too. — Philosophim

Nonsense. I don't need to vote to find out if others have similar principles to me. I only need look out of the window. If I were to vote I might vote Green, or Communist Party. I don't need to eagerly await the election to discover neither of those candidates are going to win. So my vote did what, exactly?

Either you're at the table, and will receive some modicum of respect and consideration, or you're at the kids table while the adults make decisions about your life. — Philosophim

This is just patronising bullshit. Voting is not a 'table' in any sense whatsoever. There's no discussion, no interaction. We're presented with choices and we decide which one we least hate. that's it.

ou could start a campaign to be anti-car. You can be the first vote. Then go explain to people why. Many people may hear your explanations and think, "Yeah, anti-car is the way to go!" — Philosophim

All of which can be done without voting too. My actual vote is irrelevant.

Even if you don't win the vote, if you start getting a sizable amount of anti-car people, the car people have to start considering you. Maybe they'll compromise on cars a bit. — Philosophim

Why? If 60% love cars and 40% hate them, you go with pro-car policies and win. You don't water them down. Why would you?

Let me give you an example of some real life statistics. Generally people in their early 20's don't vote very much. As such, candidates don't court them. Each time you don't vote, your demographic is not considered in policies, as those who vote are. And so you sit around thinking, "Politicians won't care about my vote anyway", thus perpetuating the cycle. — Philosophim

Which would only make any difference at all if my demographic wanted the same things as me. Otherwise why would I care if my demographic gets considered. My demographic tend to be heavily conservative so I'd prefer they were considered less.

It is surrender without a fight. — Philosophim

Voting is not a fight. Not even in the slightest bit. It's an exercise in statistical bureaucracy to find out who people want to hold that office. There's not even the tiniest element of 'fight' in it. It's like filling in a census.

Say there are two parties, the car party and the anti-car party. In my village, everyone has a car which they drive whenever, clean lovingly on Sundays, read magazines about etc, and last year the anti-car party got no votes.

In what way does my voting anti-car change that situation?

An election is just a snapshot of how things stand with people's political persuasions. I don't change anything by making that snapshot more or less accurate.

Voting is electing that a group of people that you are involved in should do something, or not do something. Your refusal to participate in the process simply means you don't get any say on what goes on around you. Its like being a child. — Philosophim

That's just repeating the assertion, not explaining why.

Imagine a person who complains they can't lose weight, but doesn't exercise and eats junk food all day. If they complain, they will simply be viewed as lazy by people around them. — Philosophim

Probably.

That's because it's provably true that dieting and exercise has a very high probability of causing you to lose weight. Hence if you don't do it you're not trying.

Voting does not have a provably high probability of causing the country to be run in a way you wouldn't complain about. In fact, when it has been tested, it's shown quite the opposite.

So what's the link between voting and complaint?

If I said an overweight person had no right to complain about their weight if they can't even be bothered to listen to heavy metal, you'd consider that unjustified. Why? Because there's no demonstrable link between listening to heavy metal and losing weight.

There's no demonstrable link between voting and getting the country run the way you want it. So why does doing so confer a right to complain denied to those who don't?

Just don't complain when people pass laws that you don't want. — Philosophim

When it is not possible to distinguish protest from apathy then 'protest' is no longer an applicable description. — Cuthbert

How do either of these positions differ in the case of voting? It is also impossible to tell the difference between enthusiastic support and reluctant consent just from a vote.

If I vote Labour am I supporting all of their policies, some of them (which ones), none of them (but want the Tories out)? You can't tell. So it seems irrelevant.

And I don't understand why voting then provides the right to complain. If anything, it's the opposite, you actually provided your written consent for the person to run the country for you.

It attempts to explain observable phenomena, but it would be wrong to say that its terms – "strings", "branes", "the ninth spatial dimension" – refer to whatever "hidden states" explain observable phenomena. — Michael

Begging the question. That's the matter we're disagreeing on.

If these hidden states don't "match" the models then these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension – they're something else. — Michael

So when you said...

Ordinary perception doesn't provide us access to the external world (outside our models), but assuming scientific realism the Standard Model does. — Michael

...what did you mean? The Standard Model might (as you admit above) not match the external world, so it doesn't provide access to it any more than our perception does. I'm sure scientific realists aren't claiming our current models are all right.

if these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension then it isn't that "strings", "branes", and "the ninth spatial dimension" are non-referring terms, it's that they refer only to the models. — Michael

Again, a re-statement of the very proposition we're disagreeing on.

If the hidden states don't "match" our model (or sense-data) of the colour red then they are not the colour red, they're something else, and colour terms like "red" refer only to the model (or sense-data). — Michael

You've not explained what you mean by 'match'.

By not voting - and also not standing for election - and also not doing anything to protest against or to change the constitutional system - then I am consenting to any result. — Cuthbert

But that's not the same as consenting to the policies of those who get in. Simply consenting that whomever got in is the legal holder of the that office. I don't see anything in that which mitigates the political message of not voting.

assuming scientific realism, the nature of the external world "matches" the model. — Michael

What does it mean to 'match' a model? Are you saying that scientific realism says we've got our models right?

Which means what, exactly? That the hidden state resembles our model of a red apple, such that it is as a red apple appears to us? — Michael

I don't see why resemblance even enters into reference. If I say "Jack, come over here!" when the man's name is John, I'm still referencing the man, I just got his name wrong. If I say "bring me that green cup", pointing to a red cup, I'm still referencing the cup, I just got its colour wrong.

We don't have to be right about something's properties in order to reference it.

But you just said above "I can't talk about [the external cause], can't even mention it."

So which is it? — Michael

I was following the conclusion of the state of affairs you describe (where nothing refers to our external world, hence we cannot talk about it).

Are you just saying that we think of the external cause of one's perception as being a red apple? — Michael

I'm saying that the term 'red apple' refers to the hidden state we model as a red apple. And additionally that this is consistent with our best model of how our brains work (also hidden states).

I'm saying that the term 'red apple' does not normally refer to the actual model, and, more importantly, to the extent it might be used that way by some subset of philosophers, it is not consistent with our best model of how our brains work.

assuming scientific realism the Standard Model does. — Michael

It's literally called a model.

That we might say this isn't that, as a mind-independent fact, walls have a pitch. — Michael

We wouldn't, no. Because we are humans and the word 'pitch' in human language doesn't describe a property of a wall reflecting sound.

The word 'colour' does describe the property of an object reflecting light of particular wavelengths.

I think you're conflating our model of the external world with the external world. — Michael

How could I possibly be doing that? All we have is our model(s) of the external world. I have no direct access to the external world to conflate it with anything. I can't talk about it, can't even mention it without all I'm saying actually deriving only from a model of it.

You can't say the only access we have to the real world is our models, and then go about apparently comparing our models to the real world and finding them to differ. We have no non-modelled access to the external world, so how is it featuring in your comparison?

Does the wall have a pitch, a tone, and a pace? I don't think this at all sensible. — Michael

modern science has shown to be wrong. — Michael

How does modern science tell us walls don't have a pitch? This is about language use, not science.

If we were bats we might well describe walls as having a pitch. We don't because it's not part of our form of life.

It would show that the apple doesn't have the property of being green or purple. — Marchesk

Why would it show that?

it's the position of direct realism that it does. — Michael

Can you give an example from a direct realist?

I don't make that claim because I don't claim that something is "really" there only if it is mind-independent. — Michael

I should have highlighted 'there'. Your claim, unless I'm mistaken, is exactly that the green apple isn't there (where it seems to be in the external world), but rather is in our minds, with merely some causal something being 'there'.

If something looks purple but isn't purple then there's a difference between a purple-look and being purple — Michael

It looks purple to birds. Being purple is about the property of how it looks to humans. 'Purple' is a word in human language, not bird language.

There's the purple appearance — Michael

There isn't.

Human perception is not existentially independent of reality. — creativesoul

Indeed.

The division of us and the world... — creativesoul

But division is not independence. To divide an army into units is not to say they're independent, nor is it to say they're not all still part of the army. One can still say "I don't think the army are reckless, but that unit is"

When we talk about internal and external, we're just dividing the world along lines useful to that model. Systems can be defined by their Markov boundaries. We're not obliged to divide the world that way, but it's a lot more convenient than referring only to "the world" every time one wants to describe some part of it.

An example then.

Most people, if asked, will say that it was morally right to fight the Nazis. Do you think all those Nazi soldiers consented to the irreversible harm of being shot?

Most people think self-defence is morally defensible, do you think the attacker consents to being attacked back?

Most people think emergency surgery to save unconscious patients is morally correct, do the unconscious somehow consent to the massive harms?

Most people think imprisoning or punishing criminals is morally good, do the criminals consent to such harms?

Most people think procreation is fine...

The world is absolutely full of examples of harms being inflicted on people without their consent for the greater good.

Go ahead and argue that not causing irreversible harm to others without their consent isn't a basic moral belief most people hold. — Tzeentch

@Pinprick has already done so, I'd just be repeating what they've already said. People do not hold that as a moral belief because it is impossible to adhere to without either omniscience or killing one's self.

What I sought to convey was that procreation breaks some rules that many procreators themselves would consider the basics of moral interaction between individuals. — Tzeentch

Something @Pinprick just showed you to be false. Most procreators do not consider your rules to be the basics of moral interaction for exactly the reasons given, it is impossible to apply them.

I prefer Spike Milligan's

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