Thanks for that, but I am still unclear as to what, or if, you are asking or suggesting.

Th point being made was to do with the nature of metaphysical claims - see Confirmable and influential Metaphysics; That the truth of metaphysical claims is not determined by the world around us but by the way we use them - in the same way that a bishop is determined by restricting it's movement, that the length of a metre was determined by the standard metre, and the conservation of energy is determined by invoking symmetry.

Banno's rule at work: It is always easier to critique something if you begin by misunderstanding it. Here folk understand Davidson from a few lines and pretending to make sense of Wittgenstein sans private language. Let's leave that aside.

I lifted from SEP an account of a transcendental argument found in Wittgenstein:
"...it is impossible to make sense of what it is to follow a rule correctly, unless this means that what one is doing is following the practice of others who are like-minded"
It seems that this is the sort of thing that @Jamal has in mind, and yet it is not found in Kant.

So it is unclear what, if or how this was a "sublimated" from Kant.

Unless one is to suppose that anyone using a transcendental argument owes a debt of gratitude to Kant. In which case Wittgenstein is hardly in a unique position.

Or is it that Wittgenstein is here being viewed through a Kantian lens? Those with a predilection for a particular philosopher will inevitably bring that philosopher's perspective into novel considerations. Here "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" is being restructured by others (and not by any means specialists in Wittgenstein) as "the limits of my form of life mean the limits of my world".

Now influences from Schopenhauer are well document. Wittgenstein made use of several of Schopenhauer's arguments and even some phrases. But apparently summed him up thus:
"Schopenhauer is quite a crude mind, one might say, ie though he has refinement, this suddenly becomes exhausted at a certain level and then he is as crude as the crudest. Where real depth starts, his comes to an end. One could say of Schopenhauer: he never searches his conscience."
Schopenhauer made use of Kant, so it would not be surprising to find distillations of Kant in Wittgenstein.

@Jamal , it's s long road from learning that Wittgenstein read Kant to claiming him as a subliminal Kantian.

I will leave my comments on Davidson's theory there. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Probably for the best.

, , then again maybe there is stuff that autodidacts just miss out on.

Dogs cannot set out the rule they are following. We can.

Probably a good way to derail this thread:

...on Wittgenstein’s view, while chess is essentially a game for two players, this does not exclude the possibility of playing it against oneself provided such solitary games are not regarded as paradigm instances of chess. Similarly, he can claim that language is essentially social, but still allow the possibility of exceptions provided these are peripheral cases. The issue is complex... — SEP: Private Language

Elven is not a paradigmatic case of a natural language.

Maybe we should leave it there? There's history here.

Ok, back to Chess metaphysics then. The Bishop moves diagonally.

I'm not at all sure what you said there. I don't know what a "physical reference" might be, nor an "actual metre".

Are you aware of the difference in opinion between Wittgenstein and Kripke?

A thread on its own. Or a career.

Does that mean it is true? How could we know? — Janus

We can't falsify it; we can't demonstrate it. But we can assume it.

So, where were we? This:

Coherence has merit. — Banno

It might be fact about the world, or it might not. — Janus

I'm a bit surprised that you say that. But anyway.

Perhaps conservation laws are take to be true in the way axioms are - in order to get on with doing stuff. Noether's theorem shows how conservation laws are a result of assumptions of symmetry and continuity.

I'm suggesting that perhaps the conservation of energy is no more a fact than the length of the standard metre was 1m.

(But what would Kripke say here?)

And how does it contradict itself unless it asserts truth an falsehood of some proposition?

Maybe we should go back a few steps. Here is a nice clean metaphysical proposal: Energy is always conserved. it's metaphysical in Poppernian terms because it is neither falsifiable nor verifiable. (The naive falsificationists are now having conniptions...)

And when we find what looks like energy failing to be conserved, we invented the accounting trick of potential energy to make sure the books stayed balanced.

So is the conservation of energy a fact about the world, or a way of checking that our talk about energy is consistent? And if this latter, then it is not itself consistent, but the measure against which we determine consistency.

Or something like that. Mere speculation.

..speculative metaphysics is not necessarily inconsistent (Hegel for example) — Janus

I'll have to take your word for it.

Dialectic provides a wonderful frame for critique - in the hands of Žižek, the jokes just roll. But is it true?

I am not sure what it could mean to even ask.

And if it is not even true, nor false, how is it inconsistent?

The counterfactual seems tough here. If there is a lone astronaut on a mission out past the Moon, and a freak particle accelerator accident someone generates a black hole that tears the Earth apart, so that now our astronaut is the lone surviving human, would her thoughts lose their content? — Count Timothy von Icarus

There were other people. They are how she got there. I don't see this as any sort of counterexample. "...it is impossible to make sense of what it is to follow a rule correctly, unless this means that what one is doing is following the practice of others who are like-minded"


An axiom need not be seen as god's writ. They can be seen as something we choose to do, a way to maintain coherence. One undertakes that this is the foundation, rather than discovering a foundation.

And yes, we can doubt anything; but not everything. Something must be understood as foundational, if only for our present purposes.

If Aristotle had only had the opportunity to read On Certainty.

Some folk do have a predilection for inconsistency. Anything follows.

(p & ~p) ⊃ q

So it's clear enough that Wittgenstein's early philosophy can fairly be described as transcendental. — Jamal

I think we can set this out more clearly.

As standardly conceived, transcendental arguments are taken to be distinctive in involving a certain sort of claim, namely that X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y—where then, given that Y is the case, it logically follows that X must be the case too. — SEP: Transcendental Arguments

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — Wittgenstein

5.6 concerns Solipsism.

Finally, we may turn to the work of Donald Davidson, who like Putnam bases his transcendental claim on a form of externalism, which links the content of our mental states to how we relate to our environment; but in his case, this idea is directed against scepticism concerning other minds. Thus, while the sceptic holds that the existence of such minds is doubtful, Davidson argues that it would not be possible for a creature like me to have thoughts unless I lived in a world with other creatures who also had thoughts, so the truth of the latter can be deduced from the fact that I am indeed capable of thinking: ‘What are the conditions necessary for the existence of thought, and so in particular for the existence of people with thoughts? I believe there could not be thoughts in one mind if there were no other thoughtful creatures with which the first mind shared a natural world’ (Davidson 1989: 193; note that he uses ‘existence,’ not ‘possibility’). On one interpretation, Davidson’s transcendental argument is based on his account of what it takes for a thought to have content, for which he argues that a process of ‘triangulation’ must occur, whereby the content of the thought someone is having is ‘fixed’ by the way in which someone else correlates the responses he makes to something in the world. Thus, Davidson argues, if there were no other people, the content of our thoughts would be totally indeterminate, and we would in effect have no thoughts at all; from the self-evident falsity of the latter, he therefore deduces the falsity of the former (cf. Davidson 1991: 159–60). Davidson therefore argues that the mistake the sceptic makes, in common with the Cartesian heritage of which he is part, is in the assumption that it is possible to be a lone thinker: Davidson’s transcendental argument is designed to show that this is not in fact the case, given the constraints on what it takes to have thoughts with content, so that the existence of a single thinking subject entails the existence of others.

As Davidson suggests (cf. Davidson 1991: 157), his position here might be said to have certain similarities to that put forward in Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument, at least under the interpretation given by Kripke (see Kripke 1982). Kripke takes Wittgenstein as arguing that it is impossible to make sense of what it is to follow a rule correctly, unless this means that what one is doing is following the practice of others who are like-minded: what makes our continuation of some addition rule a case of rule-following at all (for example), is that the community goes on in the same way; and, unless addition were rule-governed as a practice, statements like ‘2+2=4’ could have no meaning. Thus, from the fact that we are able to make such statements meaningfully, the existence of a community of others that ‘fix’ this rule can be inferred, as a necessary pre-condition for the former (cf. Kripke 1982: 89). On this view, then, unless the sceptic is prepared to admit the existence of this community of fellow-speakers, and thus attribute a capacity for intentional rule-following to those around him, he cannot make sense of the idea of meaningful thought in his own case.

We have therefore seen that taking their inspiration from Kant to a greater or lesser degree, philosophers have come to develop a range of transcendental arguments that are intended to refute scepticism in a robust and ambitious manner, by establishing anti-sceptical conclusions on the basis of transcendental claims. . — SEP: Transcendental Arguments

Meh. I'm taking a leaf from Joshs and posting long quotes.

So what is the transcendental argument Wittgenstein uses, @Jamal? "Thus, from the fact that we are able to make such statements meaningfully, the existence of a community of others that ‘fix’ this rule can be inferred, as a necessary pre-condition for the former..."?

"Form of life" is only used a couple of times in Wittgenstein's opus. How does it cash out?

His argument does not seem to be about biology.

There is no shame in hitting the wall of paralogisms and antinomies. Or maybe there is. — Jamal

There might be shame in attempting to continue, rather than turn aside. Coherence has merit.

And what of Yablo’s paradox?

The first argument presented in the OP is pretty much one of Ayer's arguments, as addressed by Austin. The counters I presented to the others derive from Austin addressing Ayer.

Come on, you know everything I write is derivative.

Yep, "directly in front of us" - much the same as Austin. AI's will tell you what you want to hear. Treating them as an authority is a mugs game.

(Edit: It's probably worth pointing out that the point of the piece quoted from DeepAI was to demonstrate prevarication on its part, not to elicit an argument for Direct Realism.)

No amount of prevarication can make that a direct process. — AmadeusD

...DeepAI... — AmadeusD

Why not have Deep AI do its own prevaricating?

"Explain how we see things directly, not indirectly. "

We see things directly through the process of vision. When light enters our eyes, it passes through the cornea, then the pupil, and is focused by the lens onto the retina at the back of the eye. The retina contains cells called photoreceptors, which convert the light into electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the optic nerve. The brain then interprets these signals as images.
This process allows us to see objects directly in front of us. We are able to perceive things without the need for any intermediary devices or reflections. Our brain processes the visual information in real-time, allowing us to perceive objects, colors, shapes, and movement directly.
In contrast, indirect seeing would involve perceiving objects through mirrors, cameras, or other reflective or refractive surfaces. This would involve the light reflecting off an object before reaching our eyes, resulting in a altered or distorted image. However, our direct vision allows us to see things as they are without any obstructions or alterations. — DeepAI

A catboat (alternate spelling: cat boat) is a sailboat with a single sail on a single mast set well forward in the bow of a very beamy and (usually) shallow draft hull. Typically they are gaff rigged, though Bermuda rig is also used. Most are fitted with a centreboard, although some have a keel.

Yep.

Direct Realism is aka Naïve Realism. Indirect Realism is aka Representational Realism,.
(Wikipedia Direct and Indirect Realism) — RussellA

The Wiki pages are a dog's breakfast, and have been for years. See their talk pages.

Like I have mentioned many times before, Indirect Realism is no more skeptical realism than Direct Realism is. — Ashriel

That's not quite right. Take solipsism, a scepticism about the existence of a world around us. Solipsists might claim that they do not see the things around them, but only the images created by their mind.

That is much the same as the claim of indirect realism. They claim that what they see are images created by their brain.

Unlike the solipsist, they might then add that there is a causal link between the "external world" and those images.

In both cases there is a picture of a "self" as sitting looking at images, and a gap is introduced between self and world.

The alternative is that what one sees are the things around us, and that this seeing consists in modelling those things in one's mind. Here the modelling is not a seperate thing to the seeing, and hence has less in common with the account proffered by the solipsist.

Borrowing the example used in this thread, both the indirect realist and the solipsist might say that they see a red dot that represents Mars.

The alternative is that one sees a red dot that is Mars. This is indeed what we do say, until studying philosophy.

I still think that Indirect Realism is the best way to describe what occurs, but that's probably because of my other epistemological and metaphysical views, like dualism and internalism. — Ashriel

Then there is probably not much point in my continuing.

Edit: I changed "representing" to "modelling" in the latter part of this, which might help clarify the point being made. Seeing, touching, smelling tasting and so on consist in constructing a model of the world around the organism and of the organism's interaction with that world. The organism is not seperate from the world.

Our perceptions are directly linked to the world(assuming they are)... — Ashriel

Which is it, that they are directly linked to the world (how?), or that you assume that they are?

The sceptic is tapping on the door...

Further,

The back of the house presents itself to you... — Jamal

...has intimations of intent on the part of the back of the house.

Just reasons I would not choose that phrasing.

, , what it seems to me is missing is that perceiving is pictured as passive; the object is presented to you, you just sit there perceiving. But we manipulate the things around us, and we discuss them with other folk, and as you said in your new thread, Jamal, all of this is part of a social practice.

:wink: Yep. If it were not for Newbies I would have to think up new arguments, new things to say.

,
Meh, it's not a choice of words I would use, but there are bigger fish to fry.

I was saying rather that we see Mars as it presents itself to the body via light. — Janus

I don't see any advantage in such obtuse phrasings. They seem to me to simply confuse the issue. I'll leave you to it. "The dot is the planet Mars"

It's not Mars presenting itself; it's Mars. The account given by does not correspond to how we use language. We say "you can see Mars, right next to Venus - Mars is the red one, Venus the bright one". It's worth the effort as they are presently in conjunction.

We do not say "You can see a representation of Mars right next to a presentation of Venus".

The dot is the plant Mars.

Indirect Realism is not any more skeptical realism than Direct Realism is. I address this in the OP itself. — Ashriel

Yep.

And Indirect Realism is a form of Representationism. — Ashriel

Yep.

I hold that what we see corresponds to the external world. Just that what we see is not the external world. — Ashriel

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.

The first, above, is an example of Searle's Bad Argument.

saying we see representations is equivalent to saying we see seeings — Janus

Glad you saw that. :grin:

...bumper sticker... — AmadeusD

The bumper sticker I proffered was

...the dictum "We never actually see the world as it is, but only ever see the..." and then suggest variously "sense data", or "qualia", or some variation of "mental model". — Banno

Not, I hope, too dissimilar to the OP, which gave a neat rendering of the arguments, which I addressed.

Perhaps we can make it a bit more general: "We never actually see things in the world as they are, but only ever see some representation of those things"

And in those terms my reply might be something like that this is mis-phrased, and that seeing a thing consists in constructing a representation of that thing. In this phrasing one does not see the representation, one sees the thing.

Subtle and nuanced stuff, so it won't go down well here, but it works for me.

I’ve nailed down the crux... — AmadeusD

Maybe the "crux" is not so clear...?

Do you believe most philosophers are direct realists? — flannel jesus

No. I don't think they set out the problems of perception in those terms, having moved on to more fertile issues.

But overwhelmingly, philosophers are realists.

...the last one... — NOS4A2

This?

NOS4A2 elicited responses from Banno and others

Ok, then if you accept the rest, you accept that we sometimes do things with words?

Seems to me you are reading to much in to "elicited responses". I would not have written this unless you had posted; that's all that we need in order to say you elicited this reply.

Cheers.

What I believe this shows indirect realism does not get support from science as much as they would think. — Richard B

Yep. When held down, their arguments tend to fall apart.

The offence of indirect realism, so much as it commits one, is found in the dictum "We never actually see the world as it is, but only ever see the..." and then suggest variously "sense data", or "qualia", or some variation of "mental model".

Regardless of that, we do, on occasion, see, hear, smell or touch the world as it is, and thereby make true statements about things in the world. It is true that you are now reading a sentence written by me.

Now there are a range of arguments brought against this view. You can read a summary of them in SEP; there are various articles on the philosophy of perception, but the one most germane to this discussion is The Problem of Perception. I commend it to those who would treat the topic with a bit more rigour than might be found in a quick Google search, WIki article or YouTube video. But don't stop there - the article has a fine bibliography: read on!

The article ends with the following conclusion: "The question, now, is not so much whether to be a direct realist, but how to be one."

For those who are relatively new to the forums, there is a thread on this topic about every three or four months, and they generally go for two or three dozen pages. They consist in the main in some folk expressing pop accounts of indirect realism while others with a background in Philosophy point out the many flaws in those pop arguments, only to be informed repeatedly that they "have not understood the argument".

It is a good topic for a forum like this, because there are some neat arguments involved. Just don't think that what you are presenting is original, or hasn't been addressed previously.

We can't see a single photon because it's too small. Similarly we can't see the star Alpha Centauri because its projected diameter on our retina is too small. — Quk

Sure we can see Alpha Centauri. Here it is:

It's a triple star system, Alpha Centauri A on the left, Alpha Centauri B on the right and Proxima Centauri, the closest star apart from the Sun, circled in red.

You are not seeing them directly, but in a photograph. You can resolve the main pair with a small telescope or binoculars.

None of the light that is entering your eye as you look at Alpha Centauri, originated at Alpha Centauri. It originated from your screen.

So it would seem reasonable to say in this case that you are looking at Alpha Centauri indirectly, as opposed to when you stare up a the southern night sky and see it directly.

That's not like seeing a single photon. Nor like not seeing a single photon.

None of which is to deny that we see because light from the thing we see enters our eyes. We see with light: we don't see light.

So you are right, if you like, that there is a whole lot going on between Alpha Centauri and your eye, none of which stops you sometimes seeing it directly, sometimes indirectly.

That wasn't sarcasm.

It's late here and I'm not going to spend time gong over this with a newbie right now.

Take a look at the thread i cited earier -

The arguments you present were articulated by Ayer and demolished by Austin. See the thread Austin: Sense and Sensibilia. — Banno

Mmm. I've spen a bit more time on this than just Google and wikipedia.

But hey, you go for it.