Why?

On what basis did you decide that it is "more reasonable" that there is a hand before you than that an evil Damon is tricking you?

What did you use as your Prior? And what constituted the new information you used to adjust the posterior probability distribution?

I believe in the existence of distal objects because I believe that the existence of distal objects provides the best explanation for the existence and regularity and predictability of experience. — Michael

"Best explanation".

Statistical, then. Bayesian inference? You compared a set of other explanations, and decided that "here is a hand" is the best one for your seeing a hand before your face?

Are you asking how induction and the scientific method work? — Michael

Ah. SO you induce the existence of the world by application of "scientific method"?

SO does this method involve falsification, or is it statistical?

Thanks for humouring me.

They just recognize, contrary to the claims of naive realism, that mental phenomena exist, that distal objects and their properties are not constituents of mental phenomena, — Michael

And you deduce, or perhaps infer, the existence of the world, including the things around you, from what the senses present to you?

How does that work?

And these sense, they involve eyes, skin, and other bodily parts?

Can you see where I am going - you assume that these things exist as a part of your "scientific" explanation.

Isn't that so?

...and that our bodies respond in such-and-such a way to sensory stimulation, but that's it. — Michael

Thank you.

Sensory stimulation takes place, then?

A bald assertion.

Leave that all out, and you get "Does sensory experience provide us with knowledge of the things around us?"

And the answer to that question is "yes".

Don't you agree? — Banno

Do you agree that sensory experience provides us with knowledge of the things around us?

You post has no content.

I've quite lost track of where you stand on the issue at hand, there being too many voices here. I lost you in the noise.

There was this:

Not all direct realists hold that color is a mind-independent property of distal objects. — creativesoul

and this:

However, this mind-dependence doesn't imply that objects can't be as we perceive them to be. — Pierre-Normand

And it seems to me that arguing for mind-dependence and mind-independence is fraught with ambiguity.

So questions such as "Is the fact that the cup has a handle mind-dependent or mind-independent?" strike me as confuddled. What's true is that the cup has a handle.

While questions such as "Is the fact that the cup is red mind-dependent or mind-independent?" bring on issues of illumination and language - things that are to do with the circumstances - factors that are not relevant to how many handles it has. Whether the cup is red or green might well depend on the observation being made, in a way that the cup having handles does not.

All of which is removed from the topic at hand. And I've spent more time here this morning than is conducive to good mental health.

Edited.

Meh.

Again, I would be very surprised to find any disagreement as to the physics or physiology of perception here.

Hence, and this is addressed to all, if you think that simply asserting the science is sufficient to show that indirect realism is the case, you have not understood the disagreement.

, ; drop colour and re-phrase this in terms of shape. What happens?

Not what I quite explicitly stated. — javra

Yeah, it was.

everything empirical that we experience occurring in the present is known by science to in fact occur some fractions of a second prior to our conscious apprehension of it (with some estimates having it consciously occur nearly .3 seconds after the initial stimulus onset (1)) —such that what we empirically experience as occurring at time X actually occurred prior to time X. This, then, to me is accordant to indirect realism. — javra

Any event we see occurred in the past, therefore we never see any event.

How's that again?

Does sensory experience provide us with direct knowledge of distal objects and their mind-independent properties? — Michael

Again, this is a bad question. You say you want to leave out the word "direct', and yet you keep putting it back. Your inclusion of the terms "distal" and "mind-independent" further prejudices the question.

Leave that all out, and you get "Does sensory experience provide us with knowledge of the things around us?"

And the answer to that question is "yes".

Don't you agree?

For my part, the issue is that some folk think there is a need to justify that they see this text, even as they read it.

But that is a symptom of an excess of doubt. Cartesian fever.

the epistemological problem of perception — Michael

So let's go back to this, then, while I have your attention - what is "the epistemological problem of perception"? In particular, is there only one?

I've said that the science of perception supports indirect realism and not naive realism. — Michael

...utterly missing the point of those around you.

The science is accepted by both "sides". You still haven't come to terms with that simple fact.

If you were right, and indirect realism is the only view compatible with the physics and physiology of perception, do you honestly think the folk here would have continued denying the science for over sixty pages? Is your opinion of your interlocutors that poor?

Back on page one I said:

This argument is interminable because folk fail to think about how they are using "direct" and "indirect". — Banno

Says the guy who has spent weeks asserting that direct realism is false because it denies indirect realism.

This is the only mention of her in Plato's dialogues. — Fooloso4

Hmm. I wonder if this is more about Plato than Socrates?

Interesting. Thanks for the discussion with .

...a stud person for national farming companies.

Is that some UKian agricultural usage which is very different from USian usage? — wonderer1

A special program to breed more blind farmers?

:wink:

Maybe you need to get out more.

A western example, but in that trashy book of lies, the guardian, so you won't have seen it.

OMG, he drives and uses a chain saw!!

You would benefit from watching this:

Oh, .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWlTcF1JPk

The world is an amazing place.

It seems you are describing the totality of possible worlds. Modal logic sets out your answer.

And, at least in the case of the Phaedo, unwanted. — Fooloso4

Otherwise, by your account, Socrates actively sort out her company. Xanthippe may have been making the point that Socrates would have no further opportunity to educate his friends after the hemlock, perhaps in an attempt to have him make an effort to save himself.

Seventy isn't that bad...

Take care that it really is parsley...

One group just prefers to use the verb "to see" only when talking about seeing distal objects and the other group just prefers to use the verb "to see" only when talking about seeing mental phenomena. — Michael

Can you not see that these are both wrong? We use the word "see" in both ways.

Consider that we are all deaf, illiterate mutes. Naive realists claim that distal objects and their properties are constituents of our experience and indirect realists claim that they're not. — Michael

I'll offer you the same answer as given to Frank, above. Blind, illiterate mutes can herd cows. You account seems a bit ableist...

We do not simply passively "experience" cows. we feed them, move them into yards, slaughter them and eat them.

All this by way of pointing out that the "constituents of our experience" are not one way, from world to mind; we also change what is in the world, and this is part of our experience of the world. While you read this, you are already formulating your reply.

And you do not feed, herd, slaughter and eat sense impressions.

It is very difficult to see how you avoid antirealsim of some sort, or even solipsism, if all you have access to are sense-impressions and never cows. The notion that such things are "inferred" seems very lonely.

So you're looking at a cow. Do you recognize it as a cow? Or just think you recognize it? Knowing that it's called a "cow" doesn't make any difference. There is no fact about which rule you've been following all this time. Other people can't help you with that. — frank

recognising it as a cow consists in not running for the gate because it's a bull, keeping a eye out for pats on the surrounding ground, counting how many cows there are as opposed to kangaroos, and so on. That is it consist in interacting with the cow and with other things. You know it is a cow by those interactions - indeed, knowing it is a cow is those interactions.

There is a way of recognising that it is a cow that is shown by how one, not by setting out a rule. Pi §201. That's what is missed in Kripke's reading, powerful though it is.

Therefore perception has to start with innate confidence in a world circumscribed by space and time, where you, the real you, reside in an unchanging spot as it all swirls around you, or you fly through it as it rests on arbitrary x-y-z axes. — frank

It's not obvious that this follows from your previous paragraph. Yes, dealing with cows requires there to be cows, if that is what you are claiming. But you seem to want some Kantian transcendence here? I have a vantage point.

It's puzzling that I could have recognized the smell as something I'd experienced before. — frank

Well, here's the puzzle: did you recognise it, or just think you recognised it? Dejà vu?

You have no way to tell.

Hence, following a rule has to be public.

Kripke shows that it's not. — frank

Perhaps. That's another multifaceted issue. But all the more grist for the mill.

Which brings us again to the things lurking in the background here.

Oversimplified, Frege gets mentioned because of his separation of sense and denotation; what we might now call extension and intension, sense and reference. He introduced these in response to problems with substitution.

Anne believes that Venus is the morning star.
the morning star = the evening star.
Therefore, Anne believes that Venus is the evening star.

But Anne may believe no such thing.

This discussion runs in parallel with the discussion here, with indirect realism as the intensional description, direct realism as the extension.

"I see the cow in the field" if seen as direct, picks out the cow in the field. But if seen as only indirectly referring to the cow, is opaque. Hence Michael's insistence that one can see the cow without there being a cow.

Not unlike other issues involving other propositional attitudes... "I believe the cow is in the field"; "I hope the cow is in the field"; "I see the cow is in the field"?. And this of course goes to intentionality and hence to action.

Kripke and Donnellan put an end to some of this by showing us problems with the description theory of names. Their arguments can be rounded on Michael's idea that we infer the cow from our perceptions. Just as a description need not pick out the same individual in every possible world, our perceptions need not pick out the cow.

I'm sooting from the hip here, by way of showing some of the relations between this topic and various other philosophical problems.

And providing a pile of ammunition for folk who wish to shoot back.

But it might take the thread in new and interesting directions.

Do you mean that there is no doubt that Xanthippe existed? — Ludwig V

No.

It is true that no-one questions it. — Ludwig V

Just that.

Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"


A hundred pages. Not bad.

Thanks, Professor Dennett.

,

The dispute between naive realists and indirect realists concerns whether or not experience provides us with direct knowledge of the mind-independent nature of distal objects. That's not a grammatical dispute. — Michael

Here's a characterisation in grammatical terms: When one says one sees that there is a cow in the field over there, the direct realist says we can be referring to the cow, but the indirect realist says we can refer only to the sensation-of-cow, and must rely on some form of inference to talk about the cow-in-itself.

At issue is whether the word "cow" in "I see a cow" refers to the cow or the sensation-of-cow.

Anscombe, and I submit, Austin, say it can do either. Michael appears to claim that can only ever refer to the sensation-of-cow, and that further work is needed to ever talk about cows.

I haven't read Anscombe's paper. — Pierre-Normand

it's a worthy piece. There is a discussion of the change in the use of "intention", it's special philosophical uses and what Anscombe sees as the misspelling, "intension". The critique of Austin is so much the more cutting because Anscombe adopts both Austin's own style and method. She would have attended some of his sessions at Oxford.

So we have both Anscombe and Austin showing the poverty of this sort of thing:

The epistemological problem of perception concerns whether or not distal objects and their properties are given to us in experience; it doesn't concern the direction of our attention. You appear to be looking at things in reverse. — Michael

with

Frege's conclusion "The concept horse is not a concept" was based on the same sort of trouble about different uses of expressions. What "cheval" stands for is a concept, and what "cheval" stands for is a horse; these premisses do not, however, yield the result that if Bucephalus is a horse he is a concept. Similarly, what John is said to have sent Mary is a book, and what John is said to have sent Mary is a direct object; these premisses do not yield the result that if John gave Mary a book, he gave her a direct object. — Anscombe

Michael manages to only see the concept, and never the horse.

But Anscombe continues:

Now 'ordinary language' views and 'sense-datum' views make the same
mistake, that of failing to recognize the intentionality of sensation, though they take opposite positions in consequence. This failure comes out clearly on the part of an ordinary-language philosopher if he insists that what I say I see must really be there if I am not lying, mistaken, or using language in a "queer", extended (and therefore discountable) way.

Even using a list of variations in a way familiar to readers of Austin.

So we have the indirect realist, here, Michael, insisting that one only ever sees the "mental", and the direct realist, here, an advocate of "ordinary language", saying that we only ever see what is really there. And neither has it quite right.

Now Anscombe's "advocate of ordinary language" might appear to be Austin...

John Austin, who opposed the view that there are two senses of "see" ac- cording as the seeing has to be veridical or not, remarked casually that there were perhaps two senses of "object of sight". I think it was in this connection that he contrasted "Today I saw a man born in Jerusalem" and "Today I saw a man shaved in Oxford" -both said in Oxford. At any rate, one says, you didn't see him born today; perhaps you did see someone being shaved. So the one description, while true of what you saw, in a sense does not give what you saw. A description which is true of a material object of the verb "to see", but which states something that absolutely or in the circumstances "you can't have seen", necessarily gives only a material object of seeing. — Anscombe

But as I recall Austin is explicit, in Sense and Sensibilia, in avoiding commitment to direct realism per se, rather rejecting the framing of the dilemma altogether.

I don't see how your conversation with Claude helped.

By the way, I'm presently detecting an odor that I know I've smelled before, but I can't remember what it is or what it's called. I think it may be a flower, but I don't know. That shows that you don't have to know a name for something to recognize it and be keenly aware of it. Although I have Asperger's, so I may be wired differently. — frank

Indeed. And your attention is directed towards That.

Supose we call the smell "S". Discussion might go on around you as to what is causing S, if it is acrid or floral, if it is becoming stronger or if it is more noticeable near the window, and so on.

Or if you are by yourself, you might come back tomorrow and puzzle as to if the smell has changed.

And so the puzzle grows.

, , it remains that Xanthippes' presence was undoubted.

As is the assumption that this needs to be pointed out. — Fooloso4

Cast your eye down the list of discussions on the forum home page. While you and I might know better, Cartesian scepticism is unfortunately not uncommon.

There's a qualitative difference only in the sense that there's a qualitative difference between photorealism and cubism; it's still just paint on canvas. It's not as if in the veridical case distal objects and their properties are constituents of the experience. — Michael

Amusing, but it's a qualitative difference like there's a qualitative difference between cubism and method acting. While you might get to watch either, the context is quite different, as is the way one thinks about each.

It's not as if in the veridical case distal objects and their properties are constituents of the experience. — Michael

Isn't that the very point at issue?

The discussion moves on to talk of interpretation. I don't think that term quite strong enough. it doesn't capture the way in which we are embedded in what we see, touch, smell and feel, nor how that is set in place by our interactions with others, especially in terms of language.

Thanks for mentioning the SPR article on the problem of perception. Tim Crane, who authored it, was the perfect person for the job. What feature of intentionalism is it that you wish to retain that you think might be compatible with disjunctivism? — Pierre-Normand

Well, I've been using Austin's arguments here, despite being well aware of Anscombe's excellent critique. For the purposes of this thread the story is about why indirect realism is wrong; that's a different topic to which story is right. There's a whole lot more going on here than ever gets addressed in these threads.

But to be a bit more specific, we've all by now seen the man in the gorilla suit in the basketball game. Our perception is directed, intentional. While you are reading this you are ignoring the stuff going on around you, the itch of those haemorrhoids, the noise from the other room, the smell of the coffee. Other views of perception fail to give this aspect its proper place, they are excessively passive. This is the advantage of intentionalism: that perception is intentional, an action we perform.

I'm not convinced that intentionalism is obligated to accept the common kind claim, as is suggested in the SEP article.

Perhaps a thread specifically on The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature would attract some interest. But it's not an easy paper.

Thanks for the question.

So do you supose that there could be an algorithm, a method, that gives us truth in any given case?
— Banno

That's an interesting question. — Benj96

I'd kind of hoped that by asking the question, the absurdity of the idea would become apparent. Could the same algorithm answer questions as diverse as how black holes function and if she loves you?

“commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter” which leads us to where Descartes ends up, — Antony Nickles

See the thread on Rings and Books for more on this.

...we want to avoid our disappointment and surprise — Antony Nickles

Excellent answer.

Is this the kind of married life Mary advocated and you imagine marks an important distinction between philosophers? — Fooloso4

Well, I was taken. by this line:

...most people recoil towards experience, and attempt to bring their strengthened self to terms with the rich confusion from which it fled. Marriage, which is a willing acceptance of the genuinely and lastingly strange, is typical of this revulsion. — Rings and Books

A curiously accurate characterisation of marriage. It acknowledges the difference between a flatmate and a partner. There is a very different commitment, the willingness to work together while accepting those aspects of one's partner that are not within in one's control. More than a recognition of the other, marriage seeks the likes of Joy in the presence of the other.

Midgley points out that it is redundant to deduce the existence of one's wife or husband from first principles. Doubt here is absurd.