1. We only have indirect perception of distal objects
2. We have direct perception only of mental phenomena — Michael

Once “mental phenomena” in (2) are understood thinly—as features of experience rather than objects in their own right—then (2) becomes perfectly compatible with direct realism, and it no longer does the work needed to support (1). To get (1), one needs the further premise that only phenomenally present items can be directly perceived. That premise isn’t delivered by science; it’s a philosophical assumption that, so far, has not been successfully argued for.

There have been many appeals to science in this discussion, but the philosophical question at issue is underdetermined by the science. Such appeals will never decide the issue since both sides fully accept it.

I agree that one can use “object of perception” in a thin, grammatical sense: whatever fills the X-slot in “I perceive X.” On that usage, one can say “I perceive pain,” and nothing I’ve said denies that.

But if “object” is understood that thinly, then indirect realism ceases to be a substantive thesis about the structure of perception. Historically, indirect realism was meant to posit intermediary items that explain illusion, hallucination, and perceptual error by standing in for distal objects. That requires a thicker notion of objecthood—something with an explanatory role and some criteria of individuation.

My argument is conditional: if indirect realism is meant to be more than a verbal redescription of experience, then it owes an account of such intermediaries. If it isn’t meant to be more than that, then the disagreement with direct realism largely evaporates.

You are making an ontological claim when you accept that headaches are mental phenomena. Yet you then say that the word "headaches" does not refer to these mental phenomena. Your own reasoning has drawn a clear distinction between a theory of meaning (or reference) and a theory of ontology. — Michael

My appeal to reference is meant to constrain theoretical reification, not to deny phenomenology. A theory that treats mental phenomena as objects has to make sense of their individuation and explanatory role. Pointing out that such items cannot function as objects or referents doesn’t show they aren’t real; it shows they aren’t the kind of things certain theories want them to be.

I agree that perception doesn’t depend on language. But our theory of perception does. And the question I’m pressing is whether your theory commits you to entities—private sensations as objects of awareness—that lack intelligible criteria of objecthood.

The moment we claim that perception involves “objects of awareness” or phenomenal intermediaries, we are making an ontological claim, and those claims are accountable to criteria of objecthood and individuation. My appeal to semantic normativity isn’t meant to explain perception; it’s meant to constrain what kinds of entities a theory of perception can coherently posit.

If “refers to” is exhausted by the grammatical schema “the word ‘X’ refers to X,” then reference does no explanatory work. It cannot distinguish correct from incorrect use, successful from failed reference, or meaningful disagreement from mere verbal repetition. That thin notion is harmless for everyday talk, but it cannot support the ontological conclusions you want to draw about sensations being objects of awareness. If reference is to underwrite those conclusions, it has to be normatively constrained—and that’s exactly what an essentially private item cannot be.

I’ve been explicit about how I’m using “reference,” “mention,” and “referent”—they are components of a semantic theory on which reference is a normative achievement within a public practice. Simply insisting on a thinner, grammatical use of “refers to” doesn’t engage that theory; it just declines it.

But declining it isn’t yet an alternative. The standing issue is still unanswered: how, on your view, can something essentially private function as a standard of correctness within a public practice? Until that role is explained, the appeal to “reference” does no explanatory work.

What exactly do you think "reference" means in this context? — Michael

For me, reference is a normative achievement: a term refers only insofar as its use is governed by standards of correctness within a public practice. Whatever counts as a referent must therefore be capable of fixing such standards. The question, then, is whether private sensations can play that role. My answer is no—private sensations cannot fix standards of correctness in a norm-governed practice, and therefore cannot function as referents.

Yes they can, they're doing it right here. You're using the term "private sensations" to refer to things that you say can act as truth-makers but can't act as referents. — Michael

The use of the term "private sensations" in my sentence was an example of mention not reference. For a term to qualify as a "mention" is for it to satisfy the norms that govern the correct usage of that term. However, satisfying those normative requirements does not imply that there is also something in the world that satisfies the additional normative requirements of being a referent. This is what allows us to correctly use terms like "private sensations" without achieving reference.

Quite right. To my knowledge no one here denies that we have something ChatGPT lacks. The question is whether this "something" is an "object" or a "mode of access". Humans can have first-person experience that ChatGPT lacks without that experience being a privately identifiable entity. What ChatGPT lacks is subjectivity, not a hidden "object" to refer to.

The idea here is that objects of perception like trucks, people and virtual game-objects satisfy public, normative criteria of ontological objecthood— identity conditions, persistence, affordances, counterfactual structure—that phenomenal qualities do not. Phenomenal qualities are real, vivid and describable, but they are not the objects of perception in the same ontological sense as trucks and people. They are the manner in which an object is given in perception, not what is given. Phenomenal qualities characterize the episode of perceiving (salience, articulation, affective grip, etc.). They are not ingredients added to the world, but dimensions along which world-directed perception is organized.

But in this sense, ChatGPT understands "headache" just as well as we do, at least in the purely verbal domain. But this cannot be the relevant sense in a discussion on direct realism, can it? — hypericin

There are two things to keep separate here: (1) semantic/linguistic understanding and (2) phenomenal acquaintance. ChatGPT has the former without the latter. This actually proves the point rather nicely that semantic competence does not require phenomenal acquaintance.

You are right that direct realism is not a thesis about semantic competence or linguistic meaning. The reason we got onto this topic is because the indirect realist needs private "entities" (sensations) to do explanatory work as perceptual intermediaries. That commitment raised questions about how such items are individuated and talked about. At some point in the discussion it was stated that sensations do not satisfy public criteria for "objecthood"—re-identifiability, persistence conditions, independent checkability, etc.— and, therefore, are not best understood as "entities" in any robustly ontological sense. Pushback was given and hence the subsequent discussion about meaning and reference.

If sensation-words don't refer to private experience, then why does it seem that having the private experience oneself is necessary to understand the word? — hypericin

Because the word "understanding" has more than one sense. Having the experience may be necessary for empathetic or imaginative grasp, but not for semantic competence. The meaning of “headache” is fixed by public criteria; private experience enriches our appreciation of what those criteria track, but it is not what makes the word meaningful.

This is incoherent. If a) headaches are private sensations then b) the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to things which are private sensations — those things being headaches. That's what makes (a) true. If the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to something else (e.g. cats) then (a) would be false. — Michael

There is a difference between truth-makers and referents. Private sensations can act as truth-makers, not referents. Reference does not float free of meaning. In order for something to act as a referent, it must be able to contribute to fixing the correctness conditions of a word's usage. Private sensations cannot fulfill that function. Hence, they cannot act as referents.

Why would it be a problem? I don't need to see Genghis Khan for the name "Genghis Khan" to refer to the man who lead the Mongols to conquer Asia, so why the insistence that if our experiences are private then our words cannot refer to them? — Michael

Proper names like "Genhis Khan" refer via public anchoring mechanisms like historical records, testimony, chains of communication and and shared criteria for re-identification. The word "headache" is not like this. It is not publicly identifiable. There is no independent criterion for checking whether reference succeeded.

Clearly the phrase "private experiences" does, else you'd have to argue that the phrase "private experiences" is incoherent. It's really not difficult. — Michael

The phrase "private experience" does not refer by pointing to a private object. It refers by functioning in a public contrast. It's meaning is fixed by how the phrase is used, but not by anyone having access to someone else's experience. Ironically, we can only talk about private experiences because meaning is not fixed by private access.

When I say "I have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim to have and when I say "you have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim you have (and which I assume is much like mine). — Michael

Notice what is doing all of the semantic work here: claiming, assuming, inferring from behavior. None of that is fixed by the sensation itself. Again, an essentially private "entity" can't act as a public standard of correctness.

P1. Headaches are private sensations
P2. The word "headaches" refers to headaches
C1. Therefore, the word "headaches" refers to private sensations — Michael

P1: accepted
P2: rejected

We must distinguish between what a headache is (a private sensation) and what the word "headache" does in our language. The word "headache" is not used to pick out a private sensation. It is used to pick out a condition people complain of, treat, excuse themselves from work because of, and diagnose. The sensation realizes the headache, but it is not what gives the word "headache" its meaning. How could it? How could something that you've described as being "essentially private" serve as a standard for correct and incorrect use in an essentially public practice (language)?

There are no headaches without the private sensation. — Michael

No one denied this. The issue isn’t whether sensations are involved; it’s whether private sensations are what words mean or refer to.

Again, if public use + correction + practice are already sufficient to fix reference, then adding private sensation does no semantic work.

If just one word refers to private sensations then this argument that you and Hanover keep pushing that meaning is just public use, that private sensations must drop out of consideration because we can't know each other's experiences, etc. is shown to fail. — Michael

's point was to show that the use of the word "headache" is not like the use of the word "hot". The latter is a world-directed predicate, while the second is an avowal of a condition of a subject. The difference is that while John and Jane can disagree over whether the water is hot, Jane can't intelligibly deny that John has a headache, unless she's challenging John's honesty or sincerity.

But even so, the word "headache" is not an example of "reference to private sensation" in the way you want/need it to be. Semantically the word "headache" is bound up with location, duration, causes, remedies, norms of exaggeration, medical correction, etc.

That's not to deny that private sensation can play a causal or evidential role. The headache causes me to say "I have a headache" and it is evidence for me that what I say is true. But it does play a constitutive semantic role. The private sensation is not (and cannot be) the referent of the word "headache" because they (being private) cannot be part of what makes it correct to incorrect to apply the word here and now.

If public use + correction + practice are already sufficient to fix reference, then adding private sensation does no semantic work.

I'm not questioning whether you can introspect. I'm saying your introspection can't ground meaning. — Hanover

Nicely stated.

The step you keep taking is from:

"the object perceived must in fact be causally responsible if perception is veridical"

to

"the perceiver must know or believe that the object caused the perception."

That step simply does not follow. Direct Realism requires causal dependence as a metaphysical condition of perception, not causal knowledge as part of perceptual content.

This is precisely why illusions are possible: one can perceive as of the Sun without knowing what actually caused the perception. So the illusion argument does not show that DR is committed to knowing causal initiation; it presupposes the opposite.

On inference: I’m not denying that we can infer from regularities in perception. I’m pointing out that inference to the best explanation presupposes some non-inferential constraint by the world in order for explanations to be better or worse at all. Otherwise, the regularities you cite are equally compatible with indefinitely many hypotheses. The regress is not inference-from-inference, but inference with no account of how perceptual appearances are answerable to the world in the first place.

has put his finger exactly on the issue.

The fact that a sensation makes a sentence true does not show that the words in that sentence refer to the sensation. That inference is precisely what I deny.

“I feel hot” can be true because of a sensation without “hot” meaning or referring to that sensation. Otherwise we could not distinguish truth from correctness, could not explain learning or misuse, and could not make sense of disagreement or error.

I agree with you that “John feels hot” is true when John has a certain sensation and that “John feels cold” is false in that case. I don't deny that. What I deny is that this shows that the word “hot” refers to a sensation, rather than that sensations make certain uses of the word “hot” true. Conflating those two is exactly the point at issue.

You are repeatedly sliding from the claim that sensations make certain reports true to the claim that sensations fix the meaning or reference of the predicates used in those reports. That inference is exactly what’s in dispute. Truth-makers are not meanings.

On my view, sensations play a causal and evidential role in our use of evaluative predicates, but meaning is fixed by public, world-directed norms of application. Simply restating that sensations are involved does not address that distinction—it assumes it away. If you reject that distinction, then yes, we’ve reached bedrock disagreement.

This seems the crux of the problem, where cause is summoned to determine meaning. Cause can be admitted without attaching it to meaning. — Hanover

Yes—exactly. Admitting a causal role for sensation doesn’t entail that sensation fixes meaning or reference. Confusing those two is what generates the illusion that disagreement must be fictional if experiences differ.

As far as I know, DR is exactly the claim that they know what initiated the causal chain. — RussellA

No. Direct realism says: "the object perceived is the mind-external object itself, not an intermediary". It does not say: "perception includes knowledge that the object caused the perception". That is an extra thesis you keep tacking on.

For convenience, yellow circles can be named “Sun”, though it could be named anything. The word “Sun” then refers to not only i) perceived yellow circles but also ii) an unknown regularity in the world causing such perceptions. — RussellA

But this doesn’t solve the problem; it relabels it. The question is not about how we name things. The question is about how our judgments are constrained by the world rather than free-floating regularities in experience. Naming does no epistemic work unless perception already puts us in touch with something that can make judgments true or false. Otherwise, the “unknown regularity” is doing all the work with no epistemic access—which collapses into skepticism or instrumentalism.

I don’t see where any regress comes in. — RussellA

You seem to be arguing something like:

(1) First there is perception (yellow circles)
(2) Then inference to a regularity in the world
(3) The word “Sun” refers to both the perception and the inferred cause
(4) No regress

But the regress is not about when inference happens. It’s about what grounds reference and justification.

The inference to a “regularity in the world” must be answerable to something. That “something” cannot be the inferred regularity itself, or the bare perceptual appearances alone (since those are compatible with many worlds).

So the inference presupposes that perception already places you in epistemic contact with the world in a non-inferential way, but that is exactly what Direct Realism claims.

So IR does not eliminate the regress; it pushes it back a step and then quietly assumes the very contact it officially denies.

I’m not introducing “hot₁” and “hot₂,” nor am I saying that “hot” has two meanings. The word “hot” has a single, public, evaluative meaning. Sensations play an evidential role in its application, but they do not fix its reference.

When we say “It feels hot, but it isn’t,” we are not distinguishing two senses of “hot.” We are saying that the usual evidential route to applying the concept—how it feels—is defeated in this case by other considerations (context, comparison, purpose, measurement). That’s why the statement is coherent.

The neutral third party does not look for a hidden property called “hot₂.” They look at the network of public criteria that govern correct application: temperature, exposure, human responses, safety norms, and practical context. That’s exactly why agreement on temperature does not settle whether something is hot, and why disagreement about whether it is hot is real rather than fictional.

Yes, and this evaluation is inextricably tied up in the sensations they cause us to feel. — Michael

I don’t deny that sensations occur, that they matter, or that we can talk about them. What I deny is that their occurrence fixes the meaning or reference of words like “hot” and “cold.”

When we say “John feels hot,” we are not redefining “hot” as a private sensation; we are reporting that John is undergoing the kind of bodily response that ordinarily counts as evidence for calling something hot under normal conditions. That’s why we can intelligibly say things like “It feels hot, but it isn’t,” or “It is hot, even if you don’t feel it.”

Sensations play a causal and evidential role in our evaluative practices, but meaning is fixed by public, world-directed norms of application, not by private feelings. The fact that we can talk about sensations doesn’t show that evaluative predicates are names for sensations any more than the fact that we can talk about muscle strain shows that “heavy” means “causes this feeling.”

Both religious and secular people have caused suffering and death in massive amounts. My thesis is that sacralized authority structures are risky wherever they appear. — Truth Seeker

Sounds like we're on the same page then. Cheers.

Is 37°C hot or cold? — Michael

It's up for debate. That's the point.

“Hot” and “cold” are not names for sensations and temperatures. They are evaluative predicates whose application depends on:

• purpose (a bath? a drink? a radiator?)
• typical human responses
• practical consequences (stay in, get out, add cold water)
• contextual norms

That’s exactly why the question “Is 37 °C hot or cold?” is intelligible, even if underdetermined.

You keep asking "How does the Direct Realist know what initiated the causal chain, given that this is logically impossible?". I've addressed this multiple times.

Direct Realism does not claim to know what initiated the causal chain. That’s not a weakness of DR; it’s a basic feature of any sane theory of perception.

Even if the DR grants your claim that it is impossible to know what initiated a causal chain (and I don't), IR still doesn’t follow. This is because:

• Perception is not inference from effect to cause
• It is not reconstruction of the past
• It is not causal diagnosis

Perception is current openness to what is causally presentable right now.

The object does not need to be known as initiator in order to be known as perceived. Otherwise, absurd consequences follow:

• You wouldn’t perceive a table unless you knew its manufacturing history
• You wouldn’t perceive a sound unless you knew what struck what
• You wouldn’t perceive a face unless you knew its causal origin

But that's obviously wrong. You seem to think that IR avoids the problem by saying that we infer what initiated the causal chain, but that only shifts the problem. The inference itself still depends on perceptual contact with something, and that perceptual contact is still not knowledge of causal initiation.

So even by your own lights, IR does not escape the alleged logical impossibility either — it simply relabels perception as inference, which only leads to a regress, as we’ve already identified.

I am acquainted with an apple in the world even if I cannot describe it? — RussellA

Yes — and this is not controversial.

On Direct Realism, acquaintance is not description-dependent. Infants, animals, and non-linguistic humans perceive objects without possessing concepts or the ability to describe them. Even for adults, perception typically outruns description: you can see a face you cannot describe, hear a sound you cannot characterize, or see an apple without knowing its variety, chemical composition, or causal history.

So acquaintance works like this: (1) you are perceptually related to an object, (2) that relation does not presuppose propositional knowledge, (3) description, classification, and judgment are subsequent cognitive acts

This is a standard point even outside Direct Realism. If acquaintance required description, perception would collapse into conceptual judgment, which neither IR nor DR actually wants.

If the laws of physics show that the past is not recoverable from the present state alone, then why does the Direct Realist believe that an apple as it existed in the past is recoverable from our present state of perceiving an apple? — RussellA

It doesn’t. This is the central misfire. Direct Realism does not claim that we can recover past states from present perception, or that perception gives us epistemic access to past events as such. What it claims is that perception is a present relation to a presently existing object, even though that relation is enabled by a causal history.

Recovering the past is a task for inference, science, and explanation — not for perception itself. You are projecting a retrospective epistemic demand onto a theory that is about current openness to the world.

How can we know about the apple in the world independently of any causal chain from the apple to our perceiving it? — RussellA

We can’t — and Direct Realism does not say we can.This question rests on a false contrast:

• either perception is independent of causal chains, or
• perception is inferential from causal data

Direct Realism rejects both horns. The correct picture is:

• Perception is causally dependent on the object
• But it is not inferentially dependent on knowledge about the causal chain

You don’t need to know anything about optics, photons, or neural signals to see an apple. The causal chain enables perception; it is not something you reason from.

Yet you say that the Direct Realist knows what initiated the causal chain. How? — RussellA

See above. This is not what is being claimed. Direct Realism says that we know the object we are perceptually related to, not the full causal history by which that relation was produced.

Pardon the interjection, but I think your reply here nicely captures the nub of the ongoing disagreement. There is a distinction that is being collapsed here. Words like "hot" and "cold" can be used in two different ways—(1) as sensation reports or (2) as world-directed predicates.

I think the mistake here is treating all uses of “hot” and “cold” as sensation-reports. Of course John and Jane can agree without inconsistency that John feels hot and Jane feels cold. But that is not what is at issue when they say “the bath is hot” or “the bath is cold.”

In those cases they are applying a public, world-directed concept governed by norms of comparison, measurement, and practical response. That’s why it makes sense to add cold water, wait, or get out—and why a thermometer is relevant. The disagreement is not fictional; it concerns how the bath should be described and dealt with under shared standards, not whose private sensations are correct.

Sensations may causally influence what we say, but they do not fix meaning or reference. If “hot” and “cold” referred only to private feelings, then disagreement, correction, and error about temperature would be impossible. But they plainly are not.

Well said!

— this clarifies things, and it also exposes the remaining mistake.

First, I agree with you about the scientific method: it is corrigible, self-updating, and does not claim metaphysical primacy. No dispute there.

But that concession actually concedes my point. The moment you say “the scientific method contradicts religious commitments,” you are no longer comparing worldviews; you are comparing a method to a doctrinal system. Methods don’t contradict each other or anything else — they constrain belief-formation. That’s not the same category.

Second, the claim that religions are “not amenable to update at all” is simply false. They update slowly, unevenly, often contentiously — but so do institutions built around science once power, identity, and moral stakes are involved. The difference is degree and mechanism, not kind. Calling religious reformers “outliers” just builds the conclusion into the premise.

Third, the violence point doesn’t track the issue you think it does. People don’t kill each other over direct realism because it isn’t socially sacralized. When secular commitments are sacralized — nation, race, history, party, progress — people absolutely do kill over them. That’s exactly the structural point I’ve been making.

So the disagreement isn’t whether science-as-method is superior (it is). It’s whether religion uniquely introduces metaphysical primacy and insulation, or whether those features emerge whenever any worldview — religious or secular — is absolutized and socially enforced.

On that question, I still think the clean line is: the danger lies in sacralization, not in religion per se.

And no, pointing that out isn’t dishonesty — it’s refusing to conflate method, worldview, and institution in order to make the comparison come out one way by definition.

— this is a category error.

“Science” isn’t a worldview; it’s a method. Methods don’t contradict doctrines.

The moment you turn science into a worldview (naturalism, physicalism, etc.), incompatibilities reappear.

So your claim that “only religious worldviews run into each other” holds only by stripping “scientific worldview” of all worldview content.

That’s not a comparison. It’s an equivocation.

No, I’m not ignoring your point; I’m rejecting the inference.

You’re saying:

• Religious worldviews are incompatible.
• Therefore they’re all damned.

That only follows if you add a hidden premise: that religious claims purport to be uniquely global, exclusive, and metaphysically final in a way that “scientific worldview” does not. But a scientific worldview also makes “metaphysically final” claims in practice (e.g., naturalism/physicalism; no souls; no miracles; etc.), and those commitments are contested and mutually incompatible with other “science-friendly” metaphysics.

So unless you argue why incompatibility is damning only for religion (and not for comprehensive naturalistic worldviews), you’re just stipulating the conclusion.

“No Christians are Muslim” is a trivial observation, not an argument.

Mutual exclusivity of creeds isn't unique to religion. Secular worldviews also make incompatible metaphysical and moral claims.

The relevant distinction is how core commitments are justified and revised, not whether they fly under religious labels. On that axis, both religious and secular worldviews span the spectrum from dogmatic to corrigible.

Pointing out that religions disagree doesn’t settle the issue — it just names it.

If your comment was merely “descriptive,” then it inherits the assumptions of the argument it summarizes. And that summary does presuppose what’s at issue: that corrigibility, evidence-constraint, and critical rationality map cleanly onto “secular,” while faith, mythology, and servility map cleanly onto “religion.”

Pointing out that this framing begs the question isn’t a strawman; it’s identifying an unargued premise built into the description itself. If that premise isn’t doing any argumentative work, then the summary adds nothing substantive. If it is doing work, then it needs defending rather than being treated as a neutral restatement.

— this framing just begs the question.

You’re mapping “secular” onto “corrigible, evidence-constrained public reasoning” and “religion” onto “faith-based, insufficiently corrigible dogma,” but that’s precisely the claim under dispute. You’re not defending it; you’re assuming it.

Historically and sociologically, both A and B appear on both sides of the religious/secular divide. Secular ideologies routinely become faith-like, myth-laden, morally servile, and resistant to correction once power and moral urgency enter the picture. And religious traditions can, and sometimes do, operate with genuine dialectics, fallibilism, and moral agency.

So the real contrast isn’t “religion vs secular reasoning.”
It’s functional vs dysfunctional orthodoxy, wherever it appears.

Labeling one side “critical rationality” and the other “mythology” doesn’t establish that distinction — it just restates your preference as a conclusion.

- Sorry, I've been meaning to get back to this...

If both the form and content of each link can change, how exactly is this information about what initiated the causal chain expressed within each link? — RussellA

It doesn’t need to be encoded in each link as representational content. On Direct Realism, the causal chain is a means of acquaintance, not a carrier of descriptive information. The chain enables perceptual contact with the object; it does not transmit a message that must be decoded.

it is logically impossible to determine the position of the snooker balls a moment in the past. — RussellA

This is still epistemic, not logical. The laws of physics do not entail a contradiction in the past state having been thus-and-so; they only show that the past is not recoverable from the present state alone. Logical impossibility would mean no possible world in which the past state is known—which is false.

How can causal originals be reconstructed even with uncertainty — RussellA

Direct Realism does not claim that causal origins must be reconstructed—at all. This is the repeated mistake. Perception is not an inference from present effects to past causes; it is a current perceptual relation to an existing object.

especially when you accept 8. — RussellA

I don't accept it. I was simply granting it as an expression of your own commitment: "as an IR, I accept this impossibility". This is simply a statement of your position, not an argument against DR.

How does the Direct Realist know what initiated the causal chain, if we only know about what initiated the casual chain because of the causal chain itself, and you agree that we cannot reconstruct prior causal links. — RussellA

The inability to infer causal history does not imply that the object of perception is internal. That conclusion only follows if one assumes—without argument—that perception requires inferential access to causal origins. That assumption is exactly what Direct Realism rejects.

What else is there? — RussellA

What else is there is perceptual acquaintance itself. On Direct Realism, we know the Sun because we see the Sun, not because we infer it from causal data. The causal chain explains how perception occurs, not what is perceived.

Needing causal reconstruction to know the object is an Indirect Realist requirement, not a neutral constraint.

— This just asserts what’s at issue rather than arguing for it.

Many secular worldviews do claim metaphysical primacy: materialism, physicalism, eliminativism, moral realism vs anti-realism, utilitarianism vs deontology, liberal individualism vs communitarianism, etc. These aren’t mere “policy preferences”; they make incompatible claims about what exists, what matters, and what ultimately justifies norms. Their contradictions are no less real for lacking gods.

More importantly, even if we grant (for the sake of argument) that secular views make fewer or thinner metaphysical claims, that doesn’t make internal inconsistency “irrelevant.” It just means the metaphysics is being smuggled in under different labels (e.g. “naturalism,” “sentient welfare,” “public reason”) and treated as background rather than explicit.

So the issue isn’t that religions contradict and secular views don’t. It’s that all comprehensive worldviews involve foundational commitments, and contradictions among them only “damn” religion if you assume—without argument—that secular commitments are somehow exempt from the same standard.

That assumption is precisely what’s being contested here.

Wow, didn't expect this discussion to get reopened. Here are my thoughts on your last post;

Your OP was explicitly structured as "religions contradict; science converges; therefore secular worldview". You did not offer a parallel analysis of contradictions, dogma, or failure modes among secular ideologies. So it’s not unreasonable to read the intended contrast as “religion bad, secular good,” regardless of how you now characterize it.

Only later did you sharpen your claim into a different one: that sacralized authority is a design risk, and that fallibilist, publicly contestable norms are safer. That’s a much narrower—and much more defensible—thesis. But it’s not the one your OP argued for.

On the substance: I’m happy to grant that sacralizing authority and moralizing doubt is a risk factor for harmful insulation. What I don’t accept is that this marks a clean religious/secular fault-line. Secular orthodoxies (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.) plainly instantiate the same structural package, while some religious traditions plainly mitigate it. That supports my claim that the real divide is functional vs dysfunctional orthodoxies, not religious vs secular worldviews.

As for your “falsification” challenge: this isn’t an empirical hypothesis with a lab-style falsifier. It’s a comparative institutional claim. And on that terrain, “public reasons + fallibilism” are not a guarantee once power and moral crusade dynamics enter the picture. They can help, but they do not reliably prevent insulation, coercion, or taboo formation.

Finally, your long section on Biblical atrocities shifts the discussion again—this time to Biblical literalism and the moral character of a specific conception of God. That’s a different debate entirely, and it doesn’t address my central point about comparative framing and institutional symmetry.

So I think the upshot is this:

• If your thesis is “sacralized authority structures are risky wherever they appear,” we mostly agree.
• If your thesis is “religion as such is the problem and secularism is the way out,” then the original comparison remains one-sided and unconvincing.

Either way, thanks for the exchange.

Hmm, almost anyone can make that point and then go on to assert virtually anything about a given matter with impunity. — Tom Storm

That wasn't quite what I was getting at. The point was to acknowledge the possibility of reasonable disagreement, not to license unconstrained assertion.

I’m not convinced by this account, but it’s nicely argued. — Tom Storm

Fair enough. Thanks for the discussion.

But there is a case for saying that, in this instance, "straightforward truth" just isn't available. — Ludwig V

I see what you are saying, but I would gently push back here. In my last post I distinguished between formal, empirical and metaphysical truth. I see the claim "there exists a bijection..." as being straight-forwardly true in a formal sense—given the axioms and the inference rules, it follows as a matter of course. As far as I am able to tell, this is precisely what is being denied by some others on the thread.

If we were talking at the level of metaphysical or empirical truth I would agree with you. But at the level of formal truth, either ZFC ⊢ ∃f (bijection) is true, or it isn't. I have a hard time making sense of the claim that it isn't.

The issue with these sorts of interpretations is that they remind me of differing readings of Moby Dick or any great novel. — Tom Storm

I don't know exactly how Allison would respond to this. I suspect he would say something like "I think my interpretation is better grounded than alternatives, and I am prepared to defend that claim even if it is ultimately not coercively demonstrable by appeal to neutral, public criteria."

Well, we know what Nietzsche thought of this framing: that it valorised suffering and weakness and distorted life. — Tom Storm

My familiarity with Neitzche is mostly second-hand, but I think that his critique may not land against the framing given above. That framing does not valorize suffering and weakness; it valorizes fidelity to truth, love and goodness despite suffering and weakness.

Earlier you used the term reductive to critique my comments (and this isn’t intended as any kind of attack, just a friendly word game), but couldn’t it be said that this formulation is also reductive, in that it ignores the contours of the text and reduces the story to ethical symbolism? — Tom Storm

I think Allison would push back on the charge that he's reduced the story to mere ethical symbolism. I think that he'd acknowledge that the cruxifiction has multiple dimensions— theological, eschatological, political, moral—but that its moral axis is the condemnation of judgment and violence and that the other dimensions revolve around that axis rather than override it.

I suspect he'd also push back on the notion that his interpretations ignore the contours of the text. Allison is the co-author of a three-volume, 2400 page commentary on the Gospel of Matthew that is widely regarded as one of the best scholarly treatments available. I bring this up not as an appeal to authority, or to say this exempts him from criticism, but merely to point out that he is world-renowned for the depth of his engagement with the texts.

Plenty of other versus to draw from, but when I read key passages like Mark 10:45:

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." I feel ritual sacrifice is central to the story. — Tom Storm

Here are some brief thoughts with regard to the interpretation of that verse:

(1) In the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century CE the word "ransom" primarily referred to a price paid to liberate captives, or the cost of freeing slaves or prisoners. In that context, paying a ransom is an act that releases others from domination.

(2) Mark 10, the chapter in which the verse is situated, is not a cultic discussion, but a discussion about power. The disciples are arguing about status, greatness and who gets to rule. Jesus responds by contrasting gentile rulers who “lord it over” others with his own model of authority as service to others.

(3) Seen in context, then, Mark 10:45 does not seem to be answering: “How does God forgive sins metaphysically?” It is answering: “What kind of power does God exercise, and what kind of Messiah is Jesus?” The answer is not domination, violence or coercion, but self-giving service, even unto death.

(4) The phrase “to give his life” evokes a voluntary self-offering, not divine extraction. Nothing in Mark suggests God needs blood, demands violence, or is appeased by suffering. The "giving" is Jesus’s fidelity to his mission in the face of violent resistance. That coheres nicely with the “condemnation of violence” reading.

(5) It's noteworthy that the author of Mark never specifies to whom the ransom is paid. Later atonement theories fill in the blank, but the text itself doesn’t.

(6) With the resurrection, God vindicates the executed one. The system that killed him is exposed and violence is judged, not justified. Seen in this light the meaning of the resurrection becomes: "liberation is costly because the world violently resists it — and God sides with the one who bears that cost". That is not blood-fetishism, but moral realism.