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.

You have not understood what I said. — Fooloso4

I'm relieved.

Makes sense. — Janus

The cow joke?

She certainly succeeded in annoying Dawkins. — Ludwig V

To her credit. That line I quoted earlier so succinctly shows the flaw in his approach.

Philosophers did not want the human soul to be mixed up in the world of objects, as it must be to make knowledge possible. They were too sensitive about its dignity. — Rings and Books

I've italicised that last to emphasis it. Seems poignant.

It was the novelty and promise of 20th century analytic philosophy to which many at Oxford and elsewhere were enamored. A disregard for the history of philosophy at its root. A return to Aristotle was a response to this novelty. — Fooloso4

Mary read Honour Moderations and Literae Humaniore, along with Iris Murdoch, at Somerville. No, she does not disregard the history of philosophy. Indeed, one of the claims of Metaphysical Animals is that the (women) were to a large degree responsible for the rejection of Ayer's positivism and a returned emphasis on the classics. Certainly one would not sensibly claim Anscombe or Foot ignore Aristotle.

So I don't think you are on the right track here.

,

I do occasionally get a PM from someone appreciating something I said. — Fooloso4

Interesting - as do I, and more. The triviality that so often infests the open threads pushes many a discussion into the Inbox. The three more interesting discussions in which I am presently involved are found there, not in the forums. It avoids feeding the "trolls".

I still see something when I dream and hallucinate, — Michael

The "common kind claim", clarified in the SEP article on the problem of perception. When in an internationalist mood, following Anscombe and Davidson, I might consider it. When I'm in a more disjunctive mood I would deny it. Here's were there might be some actual new content to this discussion, were it to rise above the mediocrity of this thread. I speculate that there might be a way of achieving some compatibility between intentionalism and disjunctivism. I haven't worked through it. Another PhD for someone.

You're welcome to redefine "direct perception" if you like, but in doing so you're no longer addressing the indirect realist's claim. Your arguments against indirect realism are against a strawman. — Michael

This again assumes that the only alternative to indirect perception is direct perception. Have you stoped beating your wife yet?

Careful, if you think about this too much you might come to understand how words do things. — wonderer1

Yep.

Reminiscent of Kant's Noumena. The whole denial that I know that the heater grate to my right is what I'm seeing. I know what it's made of. I know where it's located. I know the size and shape. I know it's function. I know some dangers it poses to passersby. I know it's not located in my head/body. I know mental representations are. Thus, the grate I'm looking at is not a mental representation. — creativesoul

Again, indirect realism's framing of the discussion is oddly passive, as if all we ever do is look.

There is no difference between the constituents of an hallucination and a veridical experience. — Michael

I'm not convinced. An hallucinatory cow and a veridical cow are very different things.

We do, after all, have the word "hallucination", "dream", "delusion' and so on precisely because we are aware of that difference.

You want to say that the experience is the same, but having a dream is qualitatively different to being awake; having an hallucination is different to having a cow.

(I had to work a Bart joke in there somewhere).

I feel pain and see things when I dream and hallucinate. You're reading something into the sentence "I experience mental representations" that just isn't there. — Michael

...things...

When you have an hallucination of a cow, you do not see a cow, because there is no cow to see.

:smile:

There's semantic hijacking going on in here concerning what counts as direct realism/perception. — creativesoul

Yep, a continuing attack on "direct realism", a position that no one actually holds.

So we have two scenarios. In both there are things in the world. In both there are representations of those things. But in indirect realism one says that "what I see is the representation". Here the "I" doing the "seeing" is seperate to the representation, and the "I" never sees the thing.

Now this leads to various difficulties. It means, for instance, that when you say that you see the cup has a handle, what you mean is that the representation of the cup has a handle. You are not saying anything about the cup. It leads to a whole network of philosophical garden paths in which, absurdly, the self is forever "cut off" from the world in which it lives.

In the other account, one says something like that "I see things by representing them". Here, the "I" doing the seeing is doing the representing. When you say that the cup has a handle, you are saying that it is the cup that has the handle, not the representation.

The physics and physiology is the same in both cases. The wording in the first account cuts one off from the world. The wording in the second account embeds one in the world. The framing, the grammar one chooses, has consequences well beyond mere perception. — Banno

The trouble here is how indirect realism can produce reliable information about the number of handles on the cup.

Again, you are addressing what you expect to be said, not what has been said.

Attempting to use purportedly reliable scientific knowledge to support a claim that we have no reliable knowledge of distal objects is a performative contradiction. — Janus

. The philosophical dispute between direct (naive) and indirect (non-naive) realists concerns the physics and physiology of perception. Indirect realists are right and direct realists are wrong. — Michael

Balls. If that were so there would not be a philosophical issue. There is no difference in the physics or physiology between direct and indirect descriptions. The difference is that the direct realist sees a cow, the indirect realist sees... something mental. You keep setting out a scientific account as if it settles the issue, but there is no disagreement here.

There is a difference in language attribution.

But further, I am not here advocating direct realism as you see it, and it seems to me you have not addressed, indeed perhaps not followed, what I has writ.

So again, we talk past each other. And i don't think that's down to me.

That issue of language has nothing to do with the epistemological problem of perception. — Michael

:rofl: I think it is exactly the problem. We do not disagree on anything to do with the physiology or physics hereabouts. Where we disagree is as to the language of perception.

I say we see the cow. You say we see only the mental cow.

I don't see our approaches as meshing.

"The model emerges in the process of you interacting with the room. — wonderer1

Something like that. This is where @Isaac would chime in. :worry:

This discussion will again get nowhere. not with comments such as

When I say "I see colours and colours are mental phenomena" I am referring to the mental phenomena, not whatever else the term "colour" might be used to refer to. — Michael

Well, yes; if by "colour: you mean only mental phenomena, then colours are only mental phenomena, and you have thereby invented your own little language game that you can go play in the corner by yourself.

Enjoy.

This is equivocation. There is "colour" as an object's surface disposition to reflect a certain wavelength of light and there is "colour" as the mental phenomenon that differs between those with 3 channel colour vision and those with 12 channel colour vision (and that occurs when we dream and hallucinate). — Michael

There's also the colour red. Folk knew about it well before they knew about wavelengths and three channel colour vision.

If there is a equivocation here, it is being forced on us. But in any case, it seems we now agree that colours are not just mental phenomena.

Colours and pain are mental phenomena. — Michael

If colours are no more than mental phenomena, how is it that we agree that clear skys are blue? How is it that we agree that an ache is not a sting?

They are also linguistic, and physical.

No single thread runs through the whole rope - that sort of thing.

I've been a visual artist for a long time. I can put aside mental shorthand and tune into my visual field. I see color, light, dark, and lines. I can do that so thoroughly that I forget what it is my looking at, but this is something new artists struggle with. The mind strongly insists it knows what things look like and it will override attempts to draw what's actually in the visual field. I've known about this since childhood, so it's obvious to me that a person can voluntarily shift focus depending on what their concerns are. If it's an incoming car, I probably won't dwell long on how the car is foreshortened in space as it approaches me. — frank

Cool. So this is something you learned to do? You learned not to see the cow, but to see the colour, shade, shape and so on?

I'm not seeing what we are to do with this. Is the claim that the colour, shade, shape and so on are the mental model, and that you have learned to see it? I don't think that quite right. Interesting, though.

Our experiences are different though. — frank

Sure. But not so different that we always say we are seeing different cows... At least some times we are incline to say we see the same cow...

That might be enough.

So a further point, about language use, perhaps: Is it clearer, better, to say that you see the cow, or that you see the model or image or representation of the cow that your neural network constructs?

By way of argument in favour of the former, we sometimes might claim that you and I are to be said to be looking at the very same cow. It seems difficult to say this if what you see is the product of your neural net, and what I see is the product of my neural net. You see the product of your neural net, I see the product of my neural net, and hence we do not see the same cow.

That is, saying that what you see is the model or image or representation of the cow, and not the cow, makes other things we commonly do, oddly complicated.

So

...constructing the "image" is your experiencing the cow. — Banno

Does that make sense to you? You experience the cow by your neural nets building some sort of model or image or representation of the cow. Add to that the smell, the feel of the hide, and so on.

I would propose that instead of trying to explain sight, let's first do a quick analysis of what we do with the concept of self: — frank

Not sure that's a good plan. I don't see that self will be any simpler than sight - that seems very unlikely.

The self stays the same... — frank

Well, no, it doesn't. It is in a state of flux.

For the rest, the experience is of a cow, not of a "visual field" or of an "image" of a cow.

I would say you experience the image. — frank

That's not right. Rather, constructing the "image" is your experiencing the cow.

I don't understand why this seems so difficult to comprehend.

Not sure why you have posted this. Is it by way of agreeing wiht what I have said?

It makes sense to say that you interact with the room by way of a complex of representations, but how is the model equal to you interacting with the room? — frank

Well, where are those representations? If you are interacting with them, then presumably they can be distinguished from you... hence you see them, and we havn't an explanation of what seeing consist in at all.

As contrasted with interacting with the room by constructing those representations. I dunno. Seems a simple enough point.

This comes down to the nature of the self. — frank

In a way, yes, since it is oneself that does the perceiving. Is the "self" seeing the tree or the representation of the tree? I say one sees the tree, by representing it. Although I also have sympathies for disjunctivism.

I'm not seeking to eliminate the self. I do have a preference for externalism and extended mind views, that the content of mind is stuff that is in a way external to the mind. That you believe Canberra is in Australia is in some sense about stuff outside the mind.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/content-externalism/#ContExte

So does the view I'm trying to express still make no sense?

I appreciate the attempt to streamline the issue here, but that just doesn't make any sense. — frank

:smile:

So it seems.

It's a rejection of the homunculus. Indirect realism has you sitting inside your head, seeing and touching what is constructed by your nerves. It separates the observer not just from the thing observed, but from the observation.

Take a look at Michael's diagram:

It's the "mental image" that is seen. The observer is somehow distinct from the "mental image".

But doesn't it strike you as odd that the "mental image" is not part of the mind doing the observation?

Isn't the "mental image" mental?

Building that mental image, that model, that representation, is something mind, and presumably, brain, does.

So seeing the screen this text is on is constructing a mental model of the screen.

That's different to the indirect realist view, that you do not see the screen but instead see the "mental image" of the screen.

Does that help?

Direct realism was a resident of an idealistic world where the mind directly contacts the forms of things. Indirect realism came into existence when people started trying to become more materialistic about the mind and body. What do you think neo-directness is a response to? — frank

I would not take Aristotle as an idealist. Direct realism has trees and cups and stuff that we see. Indirect realism falls short of that, since we never see the tree or cup or whatever.

But I do not wish to be dragged in to a discussion that I think misguided; that there is merit in the distinction between direct and indirect.

When you move around the room, you see and touch and interact with its furnishings. In so doing you construct a model, a representation of the room. You are not seperate from that model, in such a way that the model could be said to be what you interact with. The model is you interacting with the room.

Further, it's silly to say you infer the existence of that bloody footstool you bruised your shin on.

Have you had a read of the Midgley article I linked to recently? Seems somehow pertinent.

Here's the point, again; one does not see the representation; seeing is constructing the representation.

It's all footnotes to Aristotle.

As for Aristotle, not only was he married, but it seems quite likely that he loved his wife. She was the daughter of a friend of his, a philosophic despot, and Aristotle when he died, many years after her, asked in his will that they should be buried in the same grave. And his opinions, if one may mention such a point, are often married opinions. Man, he says, differs from other animals in being syndyasticon zōon, an animal that goes in pairs, not only for procreation, but for all the business of life. There is profound division of labour between men and women. They supplement each other, and as their functions are different, so is their goodness. Certainly Aristotle on the whole thinks men’s functions much more important, men’s virtue greater. But he has grasped the point that natures can differ, that the pursuit of virtue is not a scurry up a single narrow ladder with the devil taking the hindmost. He is not logically compelled to think women inferior, as Plato is, and Spinoza, and every other moralist who grounds virtue on the power of abstract thought. Aristotle’s ideas here have by contrast all the free movement of maturity. He always suspected, and did so still more the further he grew away from Plato, that there were other lives and other virtues besides those of the scholar; that perhaps it did really take all sorts to make a world. Plato on the other hand, right up to his death, always kept the irritable sensibility of the adolescent in resisting the claims of temperaments alien to his own. — Rings and Books

It seems she agrees with you.

I think there is a place in philosophy for flighty ruminations, but the current state of affairs has gotten out of hand. — Leontiskos

There's a practicality to Midgley's writing that is endearing. Her rejection of scientism is especially needed at a time when engineers and physicist take to doing philosophy, often very poorly.

It's a brief piece; a pot-boiler. There is more, most of it produced much later in her life. Her work is somewhat aggravating, determinedly, wilfully not dispassionate. Worth some attention. This thread has attracted trivial critique, but there is some value in her writing.

It is more that your trolling is seen as tiresome. — Lionino

Of course, you do not have to be here. At over 200 posts, I'm not at all displeased with this thread. So thanks for your contribution.

Cobblers. One can see the word inexactly. That's why some need glasses.

One of the conundrums with indirect realism is that it seems to start as direct realism, where the scientist assumes he sees the world exactly as it is, then he concludes from what he's observed that he's not seeing the world exactly as it is. How do you deal with that problem? — frank

I think you are right that direct realism is the beginning position. I doubt that many folk think they see the world "exactly as it is". Rather folk realise that sometimes they see things amiss. This is what the various illusions bring into focus, so to speak.

That we see illusions shows that we do not see the world exactly as it is; but it does not show that we never see the world. Nor does it show that what we see is not the world, but something else caused by the world.

That is those who advocate for indirect realism on this basis are grasping more than the situation will allow. That we sometimes see the world as other than it actually is does not imply that we never see the world as it is.

Cool.

Indirect realism is the view that what we see is the representation. The alternate is that what we see is the tree, and that we see the tree by constructing a representation of the tree.

Well, for instance, it's hard to see how disjunctivism could be indirect. That a veridical viewing of, say, a tree, could be an instance of viewing a mental image of the tree, while an hallucination was not..

Try using other sense as paradigmatic, rather than sight. It's much harder to maintain that one touches something indirectly - to "infer" that the surface is smooth or rough; or to make sense of smelling the coffee indirectly... how does one "infer" the taste of lemon?

I think everything on that list was indirect realism. — frank

Indeed, which is where you err.

I thought that was indirect. — frank

See the word "by"? It's important. We do not see the representation; we see by constructing the representation.

I’m with you. — Michael

Indeed, you share the same error.

Hear, hear.

Most especially, "Attempting to use purportedly reliable scientific knowledge to support a claim that we have no reliable knowledge of distal objects is a performative contradiction."

There is an alternative, which is to reject the juxtaposition of direct and indirect experiences entirely, and admit that we do sometimes see (hear, touch, smell...) things as they are; and that indeed this is essential in order for us to be able to recognise those occasions in which we see (hear, touch, smell...) things in the world erroneously. — Banno

Indirect realism is the prevailing view of our time. — frank

The most accepted vies is representationalism, which is neither direct nor indirect. The issue is no longer "Do we perceive representations (indirect realism) or do we perceive objects (direct realism)" since it is understood that we perceive by constructing a representation, which is better described as neither direct nor indirect.

Essentially, the whole argument of this thread has been bypassed since Austin.

Folk are misled by physiologist saying silly things like "we don't see the tree, we see the representation of the tree". They are wrong, and should know better. We see the tree by constructing a representation of the tree. Hence, we see the tree.

Well, generally speaking, on realist accounts, statements are either true or false. What admits to degree is not truth value, but belief. And what we know, we also believe.

So if one denies that there is a difference between knowledge and belief, one also drops realism.

@Janus has consistently taken a more restricted view of "belief" than that which I think more typically found in philosophical discussion. I'd characterise it using propositional attitudes, roughly, as follows: I take "Adam believes P" as simply that Adam holds P to be true. Janus takes "Adam believes P" as both that Adam holds P to be true and has consciously assented to its being true.

That's what seems to sit behind his notion of "active" belief. It seems this leads Janus to being unable to deny what is before his eyes; that being before one's eyes somehow amounts to the sort of conscious assented he requires.

At least, that's how I have understood some of his comments.

I can go on an on... — Chet Hawkins

Yep.

We are still left with the question of why certain beliefs are more privileged compared to others and why? — substantivalism

Presumably, because they are true; not because they are certain.

Confusing these two is the reason this thread is at page 14.