If it is the case that Mt. Everest existed in it's entirety prior to it's discovery, then it does not matter what one's philosophical bent may be... Mt. Everest existed in it's entirety regardless of whether or not one believes that. — creativesoul

Agreed, but three possible objections:

1. How do we know that to be the case?

2. What if the concept of things existing independent of us (or perception) was incoherent?

3. What if mountains and everyday objects is just a human (or animal) carving up of the world?

All of these arguments have been made against mountain realism. I'm not saying they necessarily succeed, only that it can be a contentious topic in philosophy.

I'm just trying to delineate. I'm not feeling objectionable at the moment. — creativesoul

Well, in the context of subjective experience, humans, since we know that for ourselves. Most likely other animals, given similar enough biology and behavior. But we don't have a means of being sure. Thus "what it's like" to be a bat.

But we can stick with humans as perceivers.

Mt Everest existed in it's entirety prior to it's discovery? — creativesoul

We certainly have had such arguments on the old forum regarding Everest, apples and chairs. They tended to go over a 100 pages.

But yes, for everyday object realists, the mountain existed prior to humanity.

An amoeba? — creativesoul

Does it have sensory organs and a nervous system?

I would agree if we changed that slightly to "help generate"...

What's a "perceiver"? — creativesoul

Living organisms with active nervous systems and sensory organs.

What argument needs made here? — creativesoul

That realism requires things existing regardless of whether we know about them, which I understood OP's starting point to be.

Experience is a quality?

Consisting entirely of Quale? — creativesoul

I don't know, but it's something perceivers generate in the act of perception, memory, imagination, dreams, hallucinations, etc.

This realist doesn't. — creativesoul

Wouldn't a realist have to make that argument? A galaxy millions of light years away or an evolutionary ancestor would exist as they are regardless of whether we ever know, if galaxies and ancestor organisms are real.

Otherwise, "realism" dissolves into man is the measure, which would some form of Kantianism or anti-realiism.

The entire point about something being real is that it exists independent of us, whether we know it or not.

An issue here is focusing on individual things. So if I'm no longer observing the sun, then I can't know whether the sun still exists according to the argument. But a lot of things stand in relation to the sun existing, such as the temperature of the planet on which I live, plants continuing to photosynthesize, and so on.

An even better example is that the ground continues to hold me up even when I'm not aware of it. I can continue to breathe air, and my heat continues to pump blood, and I only become aware of those things if something causes me to breathe irregularly, such as when encountering smoke, or exerting myself.

The best example is having a body. I'm not aware of most of it most of the time. Yet I keep on having experiences with eyes, ears, legs, arms, a back, etc. So the realist argument can be one of focusing on how all the things connect together such that they cannot cease to be what they are when we don't know, since our experiences continue on as if they were still what we know them to be.

On a cosmological level, take inertia. Inertia is the result of all the mass in the universe resisting your acceleration. So if the rest of the universe didn't exist when the car suddenly stops, then there's no reason for you to lurch forward. Similarly, before the germ theory of disease, there's no reason for people to get sick from viruses and bacteria if those didn't exist.

What exactly does one mean by subjective experience. — TheMadFool

There are several things to the definition. One is any experience which varies between individuals. The room feels hot to you, cold to me, and fine for a third person. The experience of temperature is subjective. If we wanted to measure the room's temperature, we use a thermometer which gives us an objective value which does not vary.

Another is private. I have a dream, and although I can tell you about my dream, you cannot experience the dream yourself. The experience is private to me. So although dreams can be studied objectively, the experience itself is only available to the individual who has that dream.

A third is perceiver-dependence. This is based on the kind of perceiver, and their sensory capabilities. So humans experience the world through five senses of an upright walking ape, with differences among individuals due to color blindness, being able to taste a certain chemical, incapacity, etc.

The perceiver-dependent qualities of human subjective expereince would be those sensations we have good reason to believe are generated by our nervous system, instead of being properties of the world around us. So shape, size and location are objective properties of things in the world, while color, sound, taste are properties we experience because of the kind of creatures we are. Going back to the room temperature, our experience of heat or cold is a perceiver-dependant quality. The temperature is objectively the kinetic motion of particles moving about, and not a feeling of coldness or heat.

Nagel makes the argument that science creates a view from nowhere that has no perceiver-dependent, private, perceptually-relative sensations. There is nothing it's like to be a wavefunction or a supernova or evolution. It doesn't feel like anything, it doesn't look like any color, it doesn't sound like anything. The particles moving about in a room don't feel cold or hot. Ultimately, it's mathematized models of some reality divorced from our experience of it.

And they say the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis ain't true... bullshit! — Wallows

Doesn't the strong version of that support conceptual schema relativism?

@StreetlightX But then there's the "unusual effectiveness of mathematics", particularly for physics. Also, space and time themselves might be emergent features and not fundamental.

Having pain is the experience. I have direct access to having pain of my own, and I have indirect access to another's. There are two kinds of accessibility here, yet you've claimed we have none. — creativesoul

Yeah, I should have said indirect. But it's also the case that we don't always have that indirect knowledge. It might exist in really subtle physiological cues, but we can't read brain activity that accurately, and we haven't put chips in everyone's heads yet. But sure, often enough we have some evidence to what people are experiencing.

I wonder if that's entirely true. Scientific objectivity doesn't mean you ignore essential and defining aspects, here subjective experiences, of the object of study. Rather scientific objectivity is specifically designed to eliminate observer bias and in no way does it/should it overlook, in this case, subjective experiences. — TheMadFool

Well, it's because certain properties of experience are perceiver-dependent and not in the objects themselves. The air feels cold, but that doesn't mean it is cold in an objective sense (the feeling of cold varies between individuals and time). It just feels cold to you now.

I believe Nagel was saying that science uses an objective view from nowhere (perspective-less or lacking subjectivity) to create explanations. But the subjective doesn't fit into these explanations. And yet subjectivity is part of the world.

If the universe went bang, and stars formed fusing heavier elements leading to life evolving, then somehow subjectivity emerged.

Is "indescribable" a description? If not, then how did it become a common saying? How did other humans learn to use the phrase? — Harry Hindu

We developed the cognitive ability to point to things we can't properly express. Unknown unknowns and what have you.

I don't see how this answers my questions. — Harry Hindu

The answer is inscrutable. I'm sure you understand.

"I finally achieved Nirvana this past Sunday."

"Oh yeah? What was that like?"

"Truly Indescribable. Beyond words!"

"Ah, I see. That explains it perfectly. Thanks for sharing! So what's the meaning of life?"

"42."

"Of course! I understand fully."

But they're properties of my brain. I mean, when brains are interfered with those things respond differently, so I don't see that as a reason to discard physicalism. — Isaac

They may be in reality, but brain models of neurons and neurotransmitters don't include sensation. That's just a correlation or outcome that we know exists from having brains.

I'm a physicalist simply because it seems a default for me, and I need a good reason to discard it. — Isaac

Simple: the colors, sounds, smells, tastes and feels aren't properties of the physical environment you interact with. Or at least not when it comes to our physical models.

Or to say it a better way, nobody has succeeded in explaining how they are.

Wittgenstein showed that philosophy, yes in it's entirety, consists in language on being on holiday. And that's it really. It supposedly ends in quietism. — Wallows

He argued for that. But to what he extent he "showed" that to be true is another matter. There isn't consensus among philosophers that he was correct. Some agree and others have not. I don't believe what he argued rises to the level of proof. So it comes down to whether Witty's arguments make one's metaphysical itch go away.

But if not experience, then - it's not clear what it could even mean to extend the problem of induction to logic and math. — StreetlightX

Which gives logic and math a kind of atemporal, aspatial quality. Which is odd, given that we inhabit temporal, spatial universe of change.

A problem is only a problem if you think it's a problem. — A Seagull

No, that's not how problems usually work.

What are these destructive conclusions of which you speak? — A Seagull

The undermining of knowledge. Biting the bullet is admitting that the ancient skeptics were right.

I'll put it another way. Someone could come along and argue that all we have our words and not reality. So proper philosophy would be to recognize that our words aren't describing reality. They're just words, after-all! There is no reality independent of the words. Or the words make the reality. And yes, we did have at least one person who did argue along those lines, and they were quite good with words.

The problem is that the existence of words entails creatures who speak. And speaking is based in a biological reality. So it can't just be words, since the words depend on the biology of mouths and vocal cords and what not to be spoken.

Same with philosophizing. In order to do philosophy, there has to be something real that makes the philosophizing a possibility. Philosophy doesn't just exist. It exists in response to a world by creatures who are puzzled by their place in the world. Probably because their models never quite fit.

I (and others) haven't arrived at this belief because it's the way the world seems to us to be, We've arrived at it becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects. So If you've got such a criteria, then we can ditch the whole idea of model dependent realism. Say an alien comes to earth, they don't even see in colour like we do, they detect some other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and maybe the Weak Nuclear Force directly, maybe they have completely different model of how evolution and DNA works (afterall, we had a completely different model 200years ago). Give me an reason why they would still recognise you as one thing and me as another. Or even you as one thing and the chair you're sitting on as another. — Isaac

Ahhh, so you're a meriological nihilist. That still leaves the fundamental stuff. Our alien visitors agree on the electromagnetic spectrum it seems. That's a starting point. And if they agree on EM, then they probably agree on chemistry.

Here's my point. The fact that pattern matching occurs means there's some sort of objective organization that results in pattern matching. Model Dependent Realism doesn't exist as a philosophy if nature doesn't produce creatures who do philosophy.

It's easy enough to imagine the universe without any philosophy taking place. Just have the physics be a little different.

I cannot have your pain. I can most certainly have my own. If we know what having pain consists of... then it doesn't make much sense to say that having pain is inaccessible, does it? — creativesoul

It's accessible in the sense that we do have similar experiences as human beings, but not entirely. What's inaccessible is each of our own personal experience. We're walking along the street. You realize I'm deep in thought. What am I thinking? You can't read my thoughts, so the best you can do is guess. And you didn't realize I had a headache, or that I'm color blind and see the world a bit differently than you.

I can share all that with you to an extent. But it's not something you can access yourself. We can't just peer into someone else's minds and watch their experiences like some kind of haptic VR setup.

This becomes even more the case with animals, since we're not dogs or bats, and don't interact with the world quite the same. Imagine having the body of a cephalopod and being able to activate thousands of light emitting cells on your skin to signal other animals. What would that be like?

What does he mean when he says that a feeling goes beyond what is sayable? — Harry Hindu

Perhaps that language can't fully capture experience, or do proper justice to how one feels on occasion.

We still don't even have a really good model of what light is. It doesn't seem to be quite a particle or quite a wave but something that exhibits properties of one or the other in various situations. — Terrapin Station

Same applies to matter. Maybe it's all some kind of field.

Representationalism can't do this, because per its claims, we can never directly access the world. The best we can ever do is conjecture. — Terrapin Station

It does leave itself open to skepticism.

What if we said that we directly perceive some aspects of an object, like it's shape and location, but other aspects. such as its reflectivity to visible light are indirect?

We can see this with eating shrimp. We can know things about the shrimp from putting it in our mouth, like size and solidity and that it's an animal, but we don't know about its chemical makeup from the taste, without developing a science of chemistry first.

The camera is coloring it, sure. The issue then is whether we can know this or not. Direct realists say we can. Representationalists say we can't know it. — Terrapin Station

Direct realists tend to say objects are colored, that's why we see color. Indirect realists are fine with perceivers coloring in the world. We can know this through scientific inferences. Thus objects have shapes, but probably not colors, although they do have reflective surfaces.

And yeah, I'm aware that @creativesoul and a few others will take issue with that. But this is where the qualia argument gets started. Because there are reasons to think that some prosperities of our experience are mind-generated, while the other properties are good for scientific investigation.

To further your analogy in context of my replies to Banno, if your camera then adds a filter along with some metadata to the picture, then that extra stuff are not properties from the object itself. That information is generated by the camera.

What gets added or explained by bringing qualia into the already complex story? — Banno

Sure, so we could stick with perceiving properties of things. Then that can lead to questions over whether all those properties belong to the things perceived, or whether some belong to the perceiver. And then from there you have Locke and can bootstrap your way to Nagel, and then you're a short step from Chalmers.

I'm confused as to how patterns can be recognized or in error if there is no pattern matcher or mind or self or whatever we want to call the organizing principle that makes sense of the flux (finds patterns).

That's not quite the same as a "what it's like". — Banno

Maybe. You're taking issue with the language usage. I take it you think that leads to a problem that might not be a problem.

Dreams are also directly perceived. They are just different things we are encountering. To see dream dragon is to encounter a different thing to my house. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Are you saying that the contents of dreams are real? Your use of perception in dreams is highly non-standard. In any case, dream experiences mostly don't originate with the use of the sensory organs.

Differing abilities aren't a problem either. Each object itself is multiple. It is what anyone perceives of it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asserting idealism? This sounds like some TGW philosophizing.

went through this earlier in the thread. Just because I don't believe in any objective division of the world into parts, doesn't mean I think it's homogeneous. — Isaac

So the world is a heterogenous flux allowing for seeing different kinds of patterns. And this flux on occasion produces pattern matchers?

I'm asking how the pattern matching occurs in the flux of things. In any case, that sets up a dichotomy between the flux and the pattern matching, because we can ask how our patterns match up with the flux of the world.

I'm not convinced that there is a "what it's like", for bats or otherwise. — Banno

Do you think bats have experiences that might differ qualitatively from ours in some aspects? If not bats, then dolphins, dogs, chimps even other people?

As a direct realist, maybe you can explain what the problem is supposed to be, because it's not clear to me what Wallows was thinking. — Terrapin Station

I understand it to be that since direct realists deny the contention that we're aware of some mental idea or representation when perceiving (instead of the physical object itself), then there isn't some inaccessible mental content that can't be shared. Instead, we're just talking about the objects themselves.

However, there are experiences in addition to perception such as dreams, and the problem of sharing those experiences comes up. Also, there are going to be issues even for direct perception between differing abilities. If you're a super taster and I'm not, then my ability to understand your taste experiences will be somewhat limited (inaccessible).

Yeah, this part I don't entirely get. If I were a direct-realist, then there wouldn't really be unsharable content in my mind. Let me know why would you think otherwise? — Wallows

What is meant by "unsharable content" in this thread? That you can't talk about it? Or that other people can't directly access it?

Even direct realists have dreams, which they can talk about if they remember, but someone telling me their dream doesn't mean I get to experience it. I can imagine what the dream was like, but it's not the same thing as having the dream myself. And so it goes for every other experience. But the point of dreams is that they're not perceptual, and thus direct realism is irrelevant to them. So there are experiences outside of direct perception to deal with for this kind of discussion (whether mental content is shareable).

And so the problem still presents itself for direct realists, because it's not just about perception, but all subjective experience.

So close, it's hardly worth quibbling, but I don't think other people exist either. I think the real world, all that is the case, exists. Any division of that into separate objects, forces, etc are just models, just one way of subdiving things, among other options. — Isaac

Yeah, that is definitely worth quibbling over! So, do you exist?

Yes, only I don't see how there can possibly be a way the world really is. Any 'ways' it could be require distinction (shape and form, even if only figurative) and I cannot see any convincing way in which distinction can be the case without anyone doing the distinguishing. — Isaac

But then how does the subdividing happen? What's making the distinctions? Is it "your" mind? Based on what?

Parmenides started this whole business by arguing that despite appearances, change was impossible and the world was really a sphere. My biggest issue upon hearing that is what makes the world appear like it does change, and it's much more than a sphere?

We can ask the same sort of think of a Kantian. What gives the mind the ability to categorize the noumena into the phenomena we experience? Doesn't that imply a pre-existing order?

And if there is a pre-existing order, then we have some basis for inferring it.