And if I asked where the cup is, your answer, I hope, would be "It's in the cupboard", not some obtuse construct like "I don't know, but if you were to open the cupboard you might experience cup-ish-ly".

That repeated centering of "experience" is misleading. It gives the impression that one starts with oneself and works one's way "outwards" to the world. But that's not right. The world is already, from your first days, broken down for you into the bits and pieces we can manipulate with hands and with language, and so we are each already embedded in a shared world and a community.

Nice — Tom Storm

It's not enough to say that we don't know "what is outside of human experience". We each are constantly facing things which were previously outside our individual experience - opening a box, driving down a new road. Such things are easily spoken of. To talk of something outside of human experience in some collective way is dealt with in the same way - finding out that Greenland was ice free around 400,000 ago is not something outside of our comprehension. And if we were to consider something outside our comprehension, we would by that very fact not be able to say anything about it, not even that we don't know what it is.

I'm guessing Banno would say the word 'reality' derives from a contrast between the things we can experience in common as features of the phenomenal world and imaginary things. — Janus

Not really. I would not put such emphasis on experience.

Cool. SO now to draw this back to our conversation from yesterday. Seems to me that "the cup and handle still exist when we don't see them" amounts to "it is true that there is a cup with a handle, in the cupboard, unobserved". That's realism. Whereas idealism (antirealism) says "If the cup is in the cupboard, unobserved, then there is no truth as to whether or not it has a handle" - hence introducing a third evaluation, neither true nor false.

i haven't said the cup isn't physical when not being observed. — Janus

Then how are we to apply "we don't know whether the physicality of things is or isn't a truth beyond our experience" to the cup, if not "we don't know whether the physicality of the cup is or isn't a truth beyond our experience"??

Why not just say that the cup, and other physical things, remain physical, observed or not?

I don't think it's me "talking gibberish"...

What do you think, ? Is the cup still physical when unobserved? Does it still have a handle?

...we don't know whether the physicality of things is or isn't a truth beyond our experience. — Janus

I have never said, nor implied, that I am not sure cups are physical. — Janus

Yeah, being physical is made-up pretendies, like the Queen being able to move in any direction. The cup might well cease to have a handle when "beyond our experience".

Best leave you to it.

I knew you would say something like that.

If you are not sure the cup is physical, then you are using the word "physical" in a very odd way.

Same as

If the cat is on the mat, yet someone insists that the cat is not on the mat, then there are a few possibilities. They may be using "cat" or "mat " in some alternate way; or they may just be wrong. — Banno

I like that you describe the physical world as a grounding characteristic that has meaning to us but is not necessarily the truth about a reality 'outside' of this experience. — Tom Storm

we don't know whether the physicality of things is or isn't a truth beyond our experience. — Janus

This is like trying to win a chess game by insisting that one cannot be certain that the Queen is a chess piece.

Two dogs fighting over a bone agree that there is a bone.

That you read, understood and replied to my post puts the lie to our disagreement being overwhelming.

yeah, and happy to talk about those sins. However in the end the analysis comes down to choosing between bivalent and other logics. That’s a bit esoteric. An example might help.

Suppose we agree that the sentence “The cup has a handle” is true. Put the cup in a cupboard. Does it still have a handle? A realist might say that it either does or it doesn’t, and perhaps add that since we have no reason to suppose otherwise, the unobserved cup on the cupboard still has a handle and the sentence is true. An idealists might in contrast say that the cup only has a handle in relation to some language construct, and that somehow as a result we cannot or at least ought not commit to the sentence being either true or false; instead it has some alter value, perhaps “unknown” or “neutral” or whatever.

The take home here is not which is the better description so much as to note that the difference is pretty inconsequential, an issue of the better way to talk about the cup.

For my money saying that the cup has a handle even when hidden in the cupboard looks the better approach. But if someone wants to instead insist that on opening the cupboard the cup would appear handle-ish, or some other obtuse locution, I don’t tuning the cup cares.

And in other circumstances a non bivalent logic might be preferable.

So speaking broadly, the idealist/realist dichotomy is not so big an issue.

The relevant observation concerning Assange might be how much the various parties are in agreement.

They agree that there is someone who did certain things on the internet and that as a result folk found out a lot of stuff which other folk thought they should not have. They agree on the overwhelming picture of a world with people, cities, computers, networks, nations and all the other paraphernalia within which this drama can take place. And I suppose most folk would agree that Assange's ability to move from place to place has been somewhat curtailed over the last few years.

Our differences are perhaps of greater interest than our agreements, and so tend to grab our attention. But the things on which we agree overwhelm those disagreements.

So I reject the suggestion that we live in different worlds. Rather it seems that we have different descriptions, and that these descriptions can be translated or interpreted, one into the other.

Now realism sometimes holds that the reason for this agreement is simply that there is a world in which we are embedded and to which our talk "corresponds". So the reason that we agree the cat is on the mat is simply that the cat is indeed on the mat. On the other hand idealism sometimes points out that sentences such as "the cat is on the mat" are social constructs, that we might have used other sentences, or not even have posited cats and mats at all. That there are cats and mats is a result of shared agreement, or some such.

What might be worth considering is if these two views are actually incompatible. After all, not just any sentence will do. If the cat is on the mat, yet someone insists that the cat is not on the mat, then there are a few possibilities. They may be using "cat" or "mat " in some alternate way; or they may just be wrong. What we can say about the world is in some way restricted by the world - that is, there is a difference between true statements and false ones.

If there were only language, independent of what we do with it in our everyday dealings, one might countenance some form of idealism. But there is a difference between those statements that are true and those that are not. Hence, one way or anther, there is a shared world that underpins that difference.

So rounding back, Assange is not in a different world.

Add this to what I have already said; that the difference between idealism and realism is a choice of ways of speaking, and that mapping the world is something we can do with language, when we talk truthfully.

So, how Does Language Map onto the World?

Was anything decided?

Well, there was this book...

A quick doubling down. The idea that language maps on to the world is pretty much the same as the picture theory of language, of loving memory.

That is, again, the premise of this thread is wanting.

Isn't one understanding of later Wittgenstien that he was an anti-realist? — Tom Storm

Well...

The distinction post-dates Wittgenstein, so any ascription will be mere supposition dependent on how he is interpreted. But.

Given his overall approach was to see such issues as problems of language use, I don't think his position would be too different to that I advocated; that the issue is more about which grammar to adopt, a bivalent logic or some other such.

Yep, shut up and calculate. That's another way of saying that we should look to use rather than meaning.

Isn't this leading towards anti-realism? — Tom Storm

How?

It would be wrong to think I am advocating realism. Rather, I'm arguing against the hegemony of antirealism. Your mate in the OP pretty much takes it as granted, rather than as a conclusion. The friends of discursive approaches to philosophy hereabouts will continue to change topic as soon as their narrative is brought into question.

Discursive, as in digressing from subject to subject. If you flick back through this thread you may see what I mean. Hardly a post follows on from the previous.

As opposed to critical, where a suggestion is held down to see if it can hold it's own.

The latter is far more difficult than the former.

Exactly.

Language, world, self --- we never achieve full understanding of any of these, so we go on our entire lives in with this partial understanding, just as when we were infants. And it works. — Srap Tasmaner

Hence the point is not to understand language but to use it.

One that we might agree, at least after one finishes one's coffee.

Are you saying that overwhelming agreement on what is the case is a form of hinge proposition? — Joshs

No. Hinge propositions need not be agreed on, nor need agreement depend on hinge propositions. They are distinct notions.

The remainder of what you say in that paragraph relies on the notion that beliefs must be "rational", whatever that is, apparently something like having a justification. But there is no reason to think this so. Indeed, the point of hinge propositions it that they are believed and yet need not be justified.

Odd, that Kuhn has made some sort of come-back. Davidson's point holds for Kuhn, that if you are going to make any comparison between paradigms, you will need to hold something constant between them. Hence the very idea of such conceptual schema is fraught.

Kuhn's theory of paradigms itself relies on overwhelming agreement. After all, those who read his book understood it.

Anyway, I'm sure there's little stomach for political discussion in what's otherwise a nice bit of effete curiosity... — Isaac

I don't see a problem with a bit of effete musing along with one's morning coffee. Not dissimilar to doing a crossword or chess puzzle before setting off to solve the world's problems. Or in my case, move that soil to the back garden.

It is also the approach Heidegger offers — Janus

maybe, (what Heidegger offers is not all that clear), hence my use of Heideggerian language. As to the detail, an analytic approach better sets the logical, grammatical context.

It's also easier to read.

Nice reflection on anti/realism, though. Reducing anti/realism to a choice in logic in a particular context is very interesting. Not sure I can respond or even critique just yet, but it's interesting! — Moliere

Thanks - I'm pleased that approach was understood.

I think the phenomenologists overcome internal/external — Moliere

Then they overcome an obstacle they themselves put in their path - hardly a triumph.

Phenomenology would build an understanding from a foundation of personal, private, indubitable phenomenal experience. A better approach might be to begin with what is at hand, our being as embedded in a world that is by that very fact, already the subject of our manipulation. This latter seems to me the view Wittgenstein offers.

Perhaps it would have been clearer to you in that new context if I had written that all ontology is word play.

It remains unclear what you mean by "framework", and so what the "alternatives" might be. Further, in looking for a framework one steps outside the discussion, diminishing it in the way focusing on the score detracts from enjoying the tune. But of course in the end, it's the performance that counts - the doing.

Which may be the question you are raising in your new discussion with @Wayfarer.

So maybe it would help if you tied all this back to the OP?

You might be too hard on pragmatists. To me, anyway, the original spirit of pragmatism is about not wasting time on differences that make no difference. It's a reaction against a tendency to get bogged down. — plaque flag

Sure, pragmatism can be of use...

Each of us might think that they are the most popular writer on the forum. That may be useful in buoying us each up to write the next post, to advancing the standard of writing, or to keeping the forums interesting. But several thousand of us will be wrong.

Like all substantive theories of truth, pragmatism isn't wrong so much as insufficient. It does not tell us what "truth" is. But of course, no other theory does, either.

And of course my not giving phenomenology enough credit is mostly a rhetorical ploy to keep the discussion in an area in which I am both more comfortable and more interested. That's not something I am alone in doing. It is quite self-consciously done. None of which detracts from my criticism of phenomenology.

I explicitly proposed that the issue is one of the choice of grammar, where you suggest I see a "war". Yours is a smarmy reply with little content, mischaracterising my position.

You've proffered a few jokes, but nothing substantive.

liaising with the government about funding for the end of financial year acquittals — Tom Storm

What fun.

We jump to profound ontology rather quickly sometimes. — Tom Storm

Oh, yes.

What does it rest on other than the obvious? — Tom Storm

I'm presently entertaining the view that the obvious will suffice. So, if we came across someone who thought it acceptable to kick puppies for fun, I suspect we would agree that there was something wrong with them, that they would make such an error.

Perhaps we jump to profound ethical foundations rather quickly sometimes, too.

I should be out moving soil, but...

I don't think this is well understood — Tom Storm

The relation between logical systems and antirealism? I gather that this is what produced the swell in antirealist theory in the 90's. Especially Kripke throwing his hat in the ring. Seems to have subdued over time - there is nothing recent in the Journals of the AAP.

Or that the difference between realism and anti-realism is more one of choice of grammar than profound ontology? But that is all philosophy is - wordplay.

What brings you back to realism in ethics and aesthetics? — Tom Storm

It just seems to me that certain ethical statements are true - that kicking puppies for entertainment is wrong, for example. And that this is not just an expression of my outrage, nor how things are, but simply and directly how they ought be.

...the sort of framework you deny exists. — Srap Tasmaner

Who, me?

The sort of truth we are talking about here is that occasionally ascribed to statements. Of course these sit within a framework - the language and form of life. What is it you think I am denying? Be clear.

How external is reality supposed to be for the realist ? — plaque flag

That emphasis on internal/external is a derangement from phenomenology. In it's place I might put bivalent logic: there is ice on the poles of Mercury, or there isn't, and that both exhausts the possibilities and is independent of our propositional attitudes towards the presence of ice on the poles of Mercury.

I've edited together my notes on realism and antirealism in an attempt to set out my view.

Speaking very roughly, just to get started, realism holds that ...stuff... is independent of what we say about it; anti-realism, that it isn't.

"Stuff", because the content makes a difference. For instance, if the content is aesthetic, then anti-realism is the view that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder; an aesthetic realist might hold that beauty and ugly are a part of whatever it is we are beholding; an anti-realist, that beauty and ugly are attitudes we adopt, or some such. An ethical realist might say god and bad are as much aspects of the world as matter and volume; and ethical anti-realist, that no observation of the world will reveal good or bad, because they are not 'out there' to be found.

While "realism" has a general use, it's ontology that is often of interest. Stealing blatantly from my Rutledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, a realist may hold to things like that correspondence to the facts is what makes a statement true; that there may be truths we do not recognise as such, do not believe and do not know; that the Law of excluded middle holds for things in the world; and that the meaning of a sentence may be found by specifying it's truth-conditions. An anti-realist may in contrast hold that truth is to be understood in sophisticated epistemic terms, perhaps as what a "well-conducted investigation" might lead us to believe; that there can be no unknown truths; that we need include "unknown" as well as true and false in our logical systems; and that the meaning of a sentence is to be found in what it might assert.

I've usually characterised my own ontology as realist. I've argued against typical examples of anti-realism such as pragmatic theory, logical positivism, transcendental idealism and Berkeley's form of idealism. I have however also defended a constructivist view of mathematics, an anti-realist position; and sometimes off-handedly rejected realism in ethics and aesthetics, only to change my mind later.

Changing this to a linguistic argument, realism entails that there are true statements; while an anti-realist would not make that commitment.

So a realist says the ball has a mass of 1kg; the anti-realist might say that saying that it has a mass of 1kg is useful, or fits their perceptions, but will not commit to its being true. The anti-realists failure to commit amounts to a failure to understand how language functions; "the ball" is the ball.

There's a mission to Mercury by the ESA and JAXA. Part of the mission is to decide if there is water at the poles - something hinted at by previous observations. Both the realist and the anti-realist will agree that we do not know that there is water at the poles of Mercury. A realist will say that either there is water at the poles, or there isn't - that either the statement or its negation is true. An anti-realist may say that the statement "There is water at Mercury's poles" is neither true nor not true, until the observation is made. Which is the better approach?

I wonder also if Anscombe's direction of fit works here. It's the difference between the list you take with you to remind yourself of what you want to buy and the list the register produces listing the things you actually purchased. The intent of the first list is to collect the things listed; of the second, to list the things collected. The first seeks to make the world fit the list, the second, to make the list to fit the world. Is it that anti-realism applies to ethics and aesthetics because we seek to make the world as we say, while realism applies to ontology and epistemology because we seek to make what we say fit the world?

We (note the plural) talk in terms of mass and balls and so on. The direction of fit here is that we intend these words to be about whatever it is that is "out there". And when we do this we find that we can construct coherent and useful accounts of what happens. It's not luck, it's a process of eradicating versions that are dysfunctional. A language community in part imposes its language on the world. We talk in terms of balls and stuff that is not balls. Like Anscombe's shopping list, we use the words to pick out things in the world, or we use it to to list the things we have. Both are equally legitimate, and each relies on the other.

How many planets are in our solar system? The number of planets is both an observation and an imposition.

Reality is such that it can be divided up into tables and not-tables. As Davidson (and others…) suggested, the world is always, already interpreted. I would add that the interpretation is put in place by our use of language. We need to put aside the notion of an uninterpreted reality - there is no alternative to imposing an interpretation. In admitting this we deny the dualism of framework versus reality. There are no alternate frameworks. That's a direct consequence of our living in the same world. What look like an alternate frameworks needs must be interpreted in such a way as to merge.

So the world is not what we experience, it is what is the case. That's a difference that few here seem to have picked up on.

Consider Fitch's paradox. Anti-realism holds that stuff is dependent in some way on us, that thinking makes it so. That is, some statement p is true only if it is believed or known to be true. For anti-realism, something's being true is the same as it's being known to be true. Now a direct implication of this is that if something is true, then it is known - that we know everything. Anti-realism is apparently committed to omniscience. The problem does not occur in realism, which happily admits to there being unknown truths.

Consider Fitch's paradox in the case of aesthetics. The anti-realist claim is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder - for all (a), (a) is beautiful if and only if (a) is thought beautiful. It follows, fairly innocuously, that everything that is beautiful is thought to be beautiful. In Ethics, ethical anti-realism holds that what is good is exactly what we know is good. It follows that we know everything that is good.

Consider mathematics. The anti-realist thesis is that for a mathematical proposition to be true is for it to have been proved. So it seems to follow that all true mathematical propositions have been proved. If p is a true mathematical proposition, p has been proved.

An alternate is to adopt a trinary logic. For mathematics, we might borrow from Kripke, and suppose that there are three truth-values for mathematical propositions - true, false and otherwise. We assign "true" to some set of tautologies, "False" to contradictions, and "other" to everything else. When a proof of a proposition is found - a deduction from other truths - we assign "true' to that proposition.

Only proven mathematical propositions get to be called "true" - the main point of constructivism. But I'm guessing the more mathematically literate will find fault with this proposal. The implication is that the conjecture that every prime greater that 2 is the sum of two primes is not true, and it is not false.

I'm amenable to giving consideration to a paraconsistent anti-realism. So I don't think the “middle way” is absurd. The question may be were it is appropriate to apply anti-realism rather than a blanket acceptance or denial. Realism is about there being stuff. Whether our statements about that stuff are true or false is incidental to realism. Whether we understand things about that stuff is also incidental to realism. A realist might well adopt a three-valued logic with regard to statements. Nothing in realism locks the realist into a particular logical system. That is, it seems what is loosely called semantic realism, the view that realism must make use of a correspondence theory of truth, is a bit of a straw man. Or if you prefer, antirealism is a theory about belief, and has little to do with truth.

So the argument usually portrayed as realism vs antirealism is perhaps better thought of as about whether we should best make use of a bivalent logic, or use some paraconsistent logic. And for my money the best way to talk about the various bits and pieces of our everyday use is with a bivalent logic.

That might not be the case in other specific circumstances, nor in ethics, aesthetics or mathematics.

So it's about what we might believe, not what is true.

A distinction antirealists (and pragmatists) have lost.

The 'objective' truth is something like the balanced end of inquiry or the way a human ought to describe the situation. — plaque flag

I'm puzzled by folk differentiating 'objective' truths from truths. Prefixing "subjective' or 'objective' to truth seems to me to do no more than muddle the nature of truth. Neither "the balanced end of an enquiry" nor "how someone ought describe a situation" lead inevitably to truth. So, a balanced enquiry might well reach a false conclusion, and sometimes one ought describe the situation untruthfully (Kant's murderer at the door...)

, , Surely Quine put the analytic-synthetic distinction, if not in its grave, at least in mortal peril. Or are you both closet Chomskyans?

If you like; I've no clear idea of what the difference between an oyster-for-me and an oyster-for-anyone might be. Isn't it all just oysters?

Or, I can't make sense of the idea of a private oyster, beyond one consumed without company. I'm not keen on qualia.

We experience the world, not our experience of the world, and not our experience of our experience of the world, and not our ... — plaque flag

Worthy of Monty Python. Have you a view as to the sense of "we experience representations of plants and animals"? Seems much like experiencing our experiences...

We might leave this as moot, since we've discussed it at length previously. I do not choose to say we experience our representations - I think it a misuse. You disagree.

So, in one sense we can rightly say that we experience plants and animals, and in another sense, we can rightly say that we experience representations of plants and animals. — Janus

Oooo almost. Following Austin, I have to say not that "we experience representations of plants and animals", but that our experiencing is a representing of... plants and animals. It's still the plants and animals that are being experienced, not their representations.

The cat is sitting on the arm of my chair. I'm experiencing the cat, not my representations of the cat.

Like the oysters.

And this should be understood not as a piece of neuroscience, but a clarification of how to use words like "experience" and "representation".

but I'd argue that such frameworks are inferentially synthesized by animals, including humans, from out of an initial "buzzing, blooming confusion", — Janus

We ought take care to avoid the problem identified by @Isaac and I, in which the model constructed by a neural network is confused with the world around us. Our neural nets do construct what is called a "model" of the world, consisting in various weightings of neural pathways or some such. But this is not what we experience.

So there is a view, more often implied that expressed, that what we perceive are such neural models. But that is mistaken; indeed, it is an iteration of the homunculus, this time with the little man looking at it's own neural pathways. Rather, those neural models constitute our perceiving.

That is, the folk looking at the vase see the vase, not each their own neural net.

Anyway, back to Hilary Lawson. I listened to another podcast last night in which he tried to explain his use of "open" and "closed". It sounded very much like Searle's use of direction of fit in relation to intentionality. Roughly, stuff is "open" until such time as we choose to render it "closed" by tying it down with language... or something like that. That it is we who make the vase count as a vase seems to be common to both Searle and Lawson.

So again, to the point Searle makes, that it does not follow that we cannot say anything true about the vase. We do not need antirealism.

Well, in this thread our similarities should outweigh our disagreements. I think it pretty clear that @Joshs is viewing Wittgenstein through a PoMo looking glass. The emphasis on narrative and first-person phenomena skews one towards an unneeded antirealism.

Gather 10 people in a room, and include persons from all corners of that world and all eras of human history. Ask them to paint the ‘same ‘ vase of flowers as accurately as possible. Compare the results and try and find any aspect of their paintings which exactly match each other. The wide variety of differences shows us how we actually interact with each other on the basis of supposedly shared experience. — Joshs

Which takes us back to your use of "same".

What does not follow here is the never stated but only hinted reductio, that therefore, there was never a vase in the first place. But this reductio is what is needed if the story is to support some unspecified form of antirealism.

It remains that there may be one vase, which different folk see and report differently.

Hence the argument does not support your rejection of 's point, a repetition of Davidson's observation that we overwhelmingly agree as to what is the case.

And this in turn fits with Wittgenstein's analysis of doubt, in On Certainty. To doubt, we must hold some things as indubitable. A view not too far from Quine.

I am in agreement with Witt and phenomenology that discourse must by considered primary and grounding. — Joshs

I understand that, on the contrary, Wittgenstein took use, not just discourse, as "primary and grounding". Not what we say, but what we do, is what makes the difference between following and running counter to a rule.

See the lines immediately after what you have quoted:

217. “How am I able to follow a rule?” If this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my acting in this way in complying with the rule.
Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.”

Indeed, that whole discussion follows on from §201, which I have been at pains to point to:

there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.

The difference is fundamental. There is more to this stuff than just narrative - there is the form of life, the fact of being embedded in the world, and so to our being both acted upon and acting upon it. Not just talking about it.

Hence use, not discourse.

I said we don't actually experience a world; I didn't say we don't actually experience oysters. — Janus

We do experience the world, one oyster at a time.