Yes, all that. And as you seem to note, what is experienced is the world. We should avoid Stove's gem - the false argument that we only ever taste oysters with our mouths, hence we never tase oysters as they are in themselves...

Nothing so far supports the idea that we cannot say true things about the world.

We don't actually experience a world; it is a synthetic inference from the impressions, sounds, feels and images that we experience. — Janus

As if we never actually taste the oyster; instead what we taste is a synthetic inference from the impressions, sounds, feels and images that we experience.

No. That "synthetic inference from the impressions, sounds, feels and images that we experience" is the taste of oysters.

The problem is set up by an excessive emphasis on "internal" and "external", and appears to be inherent in the phenomenological approach itself, from it's emphasis on direct experience.

The world exist through/for different individual nervous systems — plaque flag

I don't see how to make this right. Things are generally not dependent on one's nervous system for their existence.

I tend to agree with Josh in spirit — plaque flag

Quite a few folk say that. What is it you are agreeing with? Searle explicitly agrees with Hilary Lawson that our language is a construct, but points out the error of concluding that therefore the world is a construct. @Joshs seems to repeat that error.

For them, the private object is the given, the most undeniably real and present. Then the public world is a hypothetical construction from all of these streams of experience. 'The' vase with the red flower is a useful abstraction, perhaps a fiction, used to organize a plurality of red-flower-experiences. — plaque flag

A neat summation of a basic flaw that is rampant hereabouts. Do you see it in @Joshs story?

The private object is just the object of representationalism. — plaque flag

Well, that at least might be a different approach. How would it work?

I've no idea what a "private object" might be.

I gather you are familiar with the private language argument?

Your purple bear is no longer private.

Prayer is incoherent. Like most of Christianity.

The most it can be is an expression of hope.

Thanks, but I wasn't able to follow that. Are the two vases the same, or different? What's "the" vase?

I've in mind something along the lines of the analysis of simples in Philosophical Investigations, §48 and thereabouts. You have some understanding of Wittgenstein. Hilary Lawson seems not to have moved past the Tractatus.

I do not wish to conclude that there is a vase, since that there is exactly one vase is taken as granted in @Joshs' story. I am just pointing to the error in concluding either that there are only vase-phenomena or that there are no true sentences about the vase.

But folk hereabouts pay little heed to the logical consequences of their positions, preferring to "double down" and keep painting false pictures. Making shit up instead of thinking things through.

Well, as Searle points out in the podcast, even if we "can't take any particular account as granted", it does not follow that nothing we say is true!

Anyway, the question at hand is, do we ever arrive at an approach where genocide can't be seen as different to charity? — Tom Storm

Seems to me that if one were to follow antirealist ideas into ethics, one would be setting aside any such ethical truths, just as for ontology. Putin, not Christ, is the consequent.

...rarified debates... — Tom Storm

I hope that, that you are reading this, now, is not something of which you need philosophical reassurance.

So apparently the idea is that @Josh takes a group of folk into a room with one vase, asking them to draw the vase, and supposedly the differences between the drawings show that there never was only one vase, but instead a multitude of vase-phenomena.

And to back that up, we must be told that

Same and similar are two of many species of difference. — Joshs

...as if Joshs did not really mean there to be only one vase in the room.

Seems to me that there is a clear sense in which two folk can each draw a different picture of the same vase. Joshs seems to deny this. To me, that reeks of sophistry.

When I hear the word ‘same’ I read it as ‘similar’. — Joshs

Well, there's your problem. "Same" and "similar" are not the same. Phenomenology will only add to such confusion.

You specified that multiple people were to draw the same vase. Not similar vases. Each will draw a different drawing, have a different perspective, give a different interpretation, of the same vase. This is not the same as each drawing a different vase.

Honestly, all this looks to be no more than vacillation on your part...

Is there a fact of the matter about anything? — Joshs

Yes. That you are reading this, for example.

Do they? — Tom Storm

I'll take my previous comment in this post back, seeing as how we don't really need another pissing competition, and just say that I find the antirealist arguments difficult to follow.

Antirealists point out that for "The kettle is boiling" to be true, we need "The", "kettle", "is" and "boiling". And seem to stop there.

But we also need a boiling kettle.

Where do we have an example of ‘ same’ , of ‘identity’, to draw from in coming to that conclusion? What is the origin of this understanding of ‘sameness’? — Joshs

Simply the bit where you specified in your own example that they looked at the same vase:

Ask them to paint the ‘same ‘ vase of flowers as accurately as possible. — Joshs

We do this sort of thing all the time, without problem. You read the same post I wrote. You are on the same forum as I am. You seem to think it problematic, and hence the scare quotes. But in doing that, you are presuposing the problem you think you are arguing for.

@Joshs examples seem to have a common problem, which I think is the one addressed by Austin in Sense and Sensibilia. There's something very odd in supposing that a group all look at the same vase, and yet all see it differently, but to then concluding that therefore they did not all look at the same vase, that there was somehow a different vase fro each of the,

Well, no; they all looked at the same vase, but it looked different to each of them.

@Joshs seems to be arguing that we paint differently, therefore there are no truths.

Hu?

Ok. I don't follow what you are saying here.

what, in all that, renders up anti realism? Why are there no true statements?

There are those hereabouts who propose anti realism. It might be helpful if one of those folk would clarify.

Surely, but where does his antirealism enter? One cannot conclude from the above that there are no truths. Is it a conclusion or a presumption? Thus far he does not seem to be in substantial disagreement with Searle.

Do any of you have a clear grasp of what "closure" might be for Hilary Lawson?

What wit, we two.

No, "Balls" as in that's the answer to your "What?", which can only be subsidiary to my "Who?".

But since there is no truth, no argument is needed. Capitalism is a comforting narrative used to excuse those with the balls. I assert it, hence it is so.

Down with the patriarchy! and all that.

"useful for what?" — Janus

balls.

And I think you and I both have the same follow up questions to this. — Tom Storm

Yep. The first should be "Useful for whom?" - and the realisation that it's the afore mentioned turds.

I have read a number of interviews and papers on line — Tom Storm

I had a scratch around, but haven't found much. Do I have to watch youtube videos? Can you point me to some text that has a bit of substance?

Sure, 'Things don't need to be objectively true in order to be extremely useful', but as Searle repeatedly points out, it does not follow that there are no truths. Quite the opposite.

I don't see the attraction.

Looks like the emperor has new cloths - again.

Lawson definitely argues there are better and worse positions to take in terms of social policy and government. — Tom Storm

Well, on what I have read Lawson asserts this, but without argument. Have you seen something with a bit more substance?

In the podcast, Lawson blatantly defines "lies" as when someone assert something that is not true. Searle jumped on the irony. Lawson appears inconsistent. But I guess that if there is no truth, that's not an issue.

I'm not impressed.

I'm mostly interested in what a realist theory of language might be. — Tom Storm

How Does Language Map onto the World? — Tom Storm

"Map"?

Language does not always map on to the world.

In addition to statements and assertions, there are questions and commands and exhibitions. In addition to narratives there are policies and instructions and poems and nonsense. This by way of noting that "mapping on to the world" is only part of what we can do with words.

But sometimes we say things that are true. To call that a "mapping" might be to adopt too referential a theory of the way language works - the credulous, overly simple view that all words are analysable as nouns.

Sometimes we say things that are true. That's pretty much what realism claims. Denying that sometimes we say things that are true strikes me as a verbal form of self-evisceration.

But I am asking about Lawson's view as expressed in the OP and what others think this says about ideas like idealism. — Tom Storm

Well, I had a listen to the Lawson - Searle - Dawson podcast. Searle went over the usual observations concerning realism, Dawson did not seem to have much of significance to say, preferring to firmly assert his position than to argue his case, while Searle pointed out the obvious problems, using the arguments I've borrowed and used hereabouts many times. Neither seemed to have much to say that was novel. there's more on Dawson's web site, but it is paywalled, and presumably in his books, but the reviews are mixed. From this material I haven't gained a strong inclination to pursue his writing.

Dawson was interesting, apparently looking for some middle ground. I don't think there is a middle ground, since I agree with Searle that realism pretty much inevitable - and by that I mean simply that there are true sentences. An unfashionable view, to be sure, but who gives a fuck.

Lawson strikes me as bit like Feyerabend, in wanting to make the world better by showing that there is no "ultimate truth" to be discovered. For Feyerabend the enemy was Big Science, the Moto "anything goes". In the end the come back was that "Anything goes" becomes not a motto for reform or revolution but for conservatism: if anything goes, why change anything? "Anything goes means that everything stays the same". If Dawson's target is more political and social than methodological, then the outcome is Putin and Trump and Johnson, and in Australia Scotty from Marketing and Mr Potato Head. In denying that there is any truth, he gives such turds permission to say and do whatever they like.

What do you take “realism” to mean?

That's it.

Prigozhin had best stay away from windows.

One is that I think the lack of really caring about one's masculinity is itself a masculine trait. — Moliere

Thus emasculating your respondents.

I have a mate who owns a property near Wangaratta, drives a John Deere all day, keeps his cigs tucked in the shoulder of his singlet, and always has a half-smile on his face. He saw the title of the book "Real men don't eat quiche", and murmured quietly "Real men eat whatever they fuckin' want."

I don't have any statistics, but if you look on the web you'll see instances of people who call themselves transgender women raping other women. How many do there have to be before it is too many? The vast majority of men would not rape women if they shared bathrooms with them. — T Clark

isn't this another example of addressing the wrong issue? It's not being trans that is wrong here, but being a rapist.

Let's address the actual problem.

Is it reasonable for women to object to sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with trans women. — T Clark

Why? And further, how can they tell that the other folk in their restroom are trans? Is this an argument for better makeup for trans folk? Or do women in restrooms routinely look at each others genitals?

Two side points.

How would this thread be different if it were entitled "What is a real man?"

And why is sport such a fetish?

Well, perhaps the article has sown a seed, it may become apparent that chromosomes do not determine phenotype or social role, and that as a result it is just silly to suggest that the built environment be determined by chromosomal differences; it may become apparent that your chromosomes do not determine your capacity to use a urinal.

The place of philosophical analysis here is in setting out what it is that is at issue.

Obvious hypostatisation, verging on anthropomorphism.

Just pointing out that such issues ought not be framed as an either/or.

You're in the US? From what I've seen, you are right that there is no where enough support for those with a disability over there.

The issue I've described doesn't attempt to hammer a preferred definition onto a word. — Hanover

Hm. The thread's title is 'What is a "Woman"', but it's not about definitions.

Ok.

No comment as yet on the article. I look forward to your response.

I probably shouldn't address this as it serves to continue the superficial narrative, but...

It ignores no one. — Hanover

It ignores Aneuploidy; but that's not so important. The problem is in part the insistence on "As aren't Bs aren't Cs aren't Ds", the failure to account for real discrepancies in how we categorise stuff, on understanding necessity and kinds and how sometimes it's a family resemblance. But mostly, it's about misunderstanding what is at issue.

Again, the difference between a men's and a women's lavatory is the urinal. The issue in your OP should be the built environment, not your unenforcible solution to a nonexistent problem.