So perhaps philosophy is a prophylaxis against propaganda; it's just that we will never be able to agree on what "philosophy" should mean. — Leontiskos

Moreover, it's not so clear what "propaganda" is, either. But we would not want to make this a discussion about the use of "words..."

...global education... — Benj96

Am I right in thinking of you, Ben, as an Englishman?

Here's some data that might be reassuring. More folk are better educated than ever before.

Critical thinking is more of a middle-class concern, perhaps, on the global scale.

My "attitude" is entirely down to me. I'm pleased that others are not saying the same stuff I do; I might therefore claim some small originality, although I suspect it has more to do with my being unfashionable. I'm sorry that you don't think this forum is part of your real life, with which it seems you are quite annoyed.

Nice of you to make this thread all about me. Cheers. Keep it up.

...the very last relevant philosopher... — Lionino

Meh. The stuff I study is fifty years out of date.

Oh, yes, indeed. Parochialism one of the things education is supposed to guard against - education, and travel.

I doubtless need to get out more.

It might be worth pointing out how parochial that post is.

including yourself? — Paine

I'm borderline, with a couple of degrees and actually having been paid many years ago to teach philosophy at Uni.

There might be a half-dozen folk on the forums who have some idea of how to do philosophy. Most of them only post very occasionally.

Overwhelmingly, the forum is populated by folk who read a book once, and so think they know how to do fil-o-so-fee...

And it shows.

Yep.

Not so sure philosopher and critical thinker are one and the same. — jgill

Keep in mind that the folk hereabouts are not philosophers.

I say this by way of suggesting, at least, that it's not a malfunction so much. — Moliere

The social model of disability.

Supose this were to occur, so that you had an idea that was inexpressible.

Call that idea "X".

You now have an expression for X.

Hence, X is expressible.

A question for you. Which discipline's methods do you think are better suited for studying descriptively moral behaviors (behaviors motivated by our moral sense and advocated by past and present cultural moral norms)? I think science's methods (such as inference to best explanation) are critical. Which, if any, of moral philosophy's methods do you think would be suitable? — Mark S

Your posing this reinforces the view that you haven't understood the misfire in your approach.

It's not science against ethics. Sure, anthropology can show us what humans do. But that's not the question addresses in ethics.

So again,

I am not trying to do ethics. I am trying to 1) show how the science of descriptively moral behaviors can be useful in ethical investigations into what we ought to do, and 2), in that absence of conclusively argued-for imperative oughts, that science is an excellent source of moral guidance. — Mark S

You really can't see the inconsistency between claiming to not be doing ethics while advocating science as a source of moral guidance?

Apparently Daniel Dennett's sailboat was named Xanthippe.

I am not trying to do ethics. I am trying to 1) show how the science of descriptively moral behaviors can be useful in ethical investigations into what we ought to do, and 2), in that absence of conclusively argued-for imperative oughts, that science is an excellent source of moral guidance. — Mark S

You really can't see the incongruity in that?

But in your view... — Mark S

None of those are views I advocate.

There's the bit where you give, and the bit where you take back. You offer a "moral science" that tells us all about our social actions, then you say it won't tell us what to do.

If you want to study anthropology, go ahead. But don't make the mistake of thinking you are doing ethics.

How do you define “moral science”? I am not familiar with it. — Mark S

I don't. But "ethics" is working out what we should do. Now that is a difficult question, quite different to the simple one of what we have done.

Trouble is, you seem to think that addressing the latter is addressing the former. Somewhat blithely, as here:

Like the rest of science, the science of morality, defined as “the study of why our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist”, provides instrumental oughts for achieving our otherwise defined goals. — Mark S

Instrumental oughts are directed at some goal. But what ought our goal be? Try addressing that question.

Trouble is, you don't know what you will do next. That's the case, even if what you do is already determined.

So the question remains, what will you do?

Fatalism and nihilism are of no help here.

The definitive footnote: it can only be said what is seen is the shoe iff there is already extant experience of that particular distal object... — Mww

We can never see shoes unless we have already seen shoes: a Transcendental Argument that leads to an infinite regress such that we never see shoes.

And yet, beyond all reason, we see shoes.

Something here is amiss.

Excluding moral ought claims from the science of morality enables a more useful definition of what the science of morality studies with a clear demarcation of science’s and philosophy’s domains. — Mark S

The problem remains, as has long been pointed out, that a description of what is the case does not tell us what ought be the case.

Excluding "ought" claims from "moral science" renders it impotent.

A "moral science" that does not tell us what to do is of no use. You seem to think that it can tell us what to do without telling us what we ought to do. That appears absurd.

I feel pain, pain is a percept, therefore I feel a percept. — Michael

Nice slide.

Is pain a unique percept, distinct from salience? Pain differs from mere touch in forcing itself on one's attention. Special case; or at least, a different case, with similarities to proprioception. The language here is distinct, as is clear in Wittgenstein's discussion.

Which raises a question that might be provocative.

You know where your hand is at the moment. Do you know this indirectly? What could that mean? How is proprioception indirect?

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.

To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.

Sure. Agree entirely.

And what is seen is the shoe; what is heard is the phone - not the percept.

If it were the percept that is seen or heard, then we would have to provide another explanation, how it is that the percept is seen, how it is that the percept is heard. If the sequence produces a percept, and it is that which is seen, you are left with the need to explain how the percept is seen (by an "inner eye"?). We would have the homunculus problem.

If this is to be an explanation of seeing or hearing, the percept is not what is seen or heard, but part of the seeing, part of the hearing.

Just to be clear, the decision here is not between indirect realism and direct realism. Since at least Austin it has been about rejecting that framing of perception; declining to set the issue in terms of that distinction.

Cheers, Michael

But none of this is relevant to the point being made. — Michael

Of course, for you it can't be, because the argument just presented undermines the mystique of "scientific method"

And then, yet again, the Authoritarian Quote. Meh.

The upshot is that indirect realism doesn't get the scientific stamp of approval its fans so desire.

My belief that my experiences are caused by distal objects is a "prejudice". — Michael

That's fine - My belief that I have a hand is much the same.

Going back over it again, your belief that you have a hand, rather than that you are deceived by an evil demon, is a prejudice, not an inference.

But it's not "scientific", not derived from "scientific method" - something which would be extraordinary in the babe who makes this inference.

After this analysis it is clear that indirect realism is not based on inference nor on science. It is a prejudice.

t's not based on anything. It's just what seems most reasonable to me. — Michael

How is it an inference, then, and not a sentiment, or a mere prejudice?

And how is that "scientific"?

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