Who is Frantic Freddie, I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about here. Are you saying that Nietzsche is borrowing some ideas from other thinkers. I think Nietzsche's concept of amor fati is different from the ancient stoics. It's more above loving and embracing life rather than mere stoic acceptance, which for Nietzsche seems not very life affirming. — Ross

Sorry, sometimes I give philosophers nicknames. I've always thought Nietzsche to be a very excitable, emotional sort, too fond of exclamations and hyperbole for my taste.

The Stoics didn't merely accept life; that's a common misconception, like the claim that the Stoics disliked emotions. The Stoics always thought of Nature as being governed by a divine, benign, spirit which is immanent in it, and so could not think of our lives as something we must merely accept and resign ourselves to as best we can. You can see something of their reverence for life and the world in the Hymn of Cleanthes, but the Roman Stoics in particular were expressive of this, i.e. Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

Frantic Freddie had an unfortunate tendency. He enjoyed belittling others, thinking his views were unique. But they weren't entirely, and so he would from time to time borrow from other philosophers, without attribution and even while criticizing them. His Amor Fati, for example, is similar to Stoicism, though he maligned the Stoics.

Perception is an activity, not a thing. — hypericin

Everything in our lives is an activity, because our lives consist of interactions with our environment. We're not spectators of the world, we're participants in it. Perhaps you don't think of us as mere spectators, but you deny us the status of participants, as you separate us from the rest of the world by imposing a wall of "representation" or "illusion" which you assume precludes us from intelligent interaction with what we, in fact, interact with every moment.

Just what I was going to write in response to your question "what do you mean by the rest of the world?"

How about this, then. What do you claim is the subject matter of science, or the sciences, or scientific inquiry? Or, say, of geology?

he question we're addressing is the probative value of evidence, which presupposes representations of "truth" whatever that may be, and which is the subject matter of this thread. That is, when I see something, of what probative value is my having seen the thing in terms of proving the thing exits? That is, does the evidence I possess prove the thing I assert, namely that the thing is as I say it is? It seems we need to know what the thing is if we seek to establish whether my claims about it are true. — Hanover

What we do every day, every moment, in interacting with the rest of the world provides no relevant evidence regarding the nature of the rest of the world?

What are you referring to by "the rest of the world"? — frank

What are you referring to by "science"?

You have to go out on a limb to disagree with him, and like Ciceroninus, you're in danger of turning rationalist (relying on your own reason to say what is, rather than science). — frank

You believe that science is in support of the view that we can't know the rest of the world?

So you say why not just say that the phenomenal is all there is. I say because it's not. But I do agree, pragmatically, none of this matters, where "this" is 90% of what we talk about here. Of course, "this" is a referent; the antecedent is what actually is. — Hanover

The fact that "none of this matters" would seem, to me, to establish something regarding its acceptability as an assessment of the world and out place in it. That it's incredible.

Yet I think you probably understand the difference between subjective and objective data. You're quibbling over wording — frank

Well, words are important. For example, speaking of "sense data" or "qualia" or feelings or thoughts as if they're things, somewhere, in the mind, distinct from the world we interact with at every moment. If that's what "subjective data" are, I don't accept that view.

. My point here is simply to say that should I perceive what I think to be a flower or airplane and there's some reason to dispute it, it makes perfect sense to check the health and accuracy of the perception equipment, whether that be running a diagnostic on the radar equipment or giving me an eye exam. — Hanover

But why? If you can't see what a flower really is in the first place, why bother checking to see if you have an eye problem?

One world, with many different aspects which can be colloquially referred to as "worlds". You are being lawyerly, I guess. — hypericin

You seem to be fascinated by your perception of me as a lawyer, or perhaps of lawyers in general. I suggest this unhealthy, as you say you believe it isn't real.

we cannot look up from our perceptions. — hypericin

Then stop pretending to do so, for goodness sake.

First time through, i read that as "medicated". — Banno

I'm not sure medication would do any good. There's nothing real in that mental world to begin with, apparently.

Would Heidegger be banned?
— Cartuna

Only in my dreams, alas.
— Ciceronianus

Well, he ain't around, no posts by him anywhere these days, so either he has been banned or found for himself a forum better suited for his values. — god must be atheist

Plenty of Little Heideggers in the world, though, and Little Hitlers for that matter.

Nothing is direct in the mental world, everything is abstract and mediated. — hypericin

How many worlds do you live in?

Would Heidegger be banned? — Cartuna

Only in my dreams, alas.

"A sound" might be a perception (experience, qualia), or a physical event. The former is in your head. — hypericin

Our heads are so crowded, then, it's remarkable we can know what's "in" them, let alone what's "out" of them. Is your perception of the ink blots you make in your head?

You can know many things without direct access to them. You must agree, or you would never read, and presumably make a terrible lawyer. — hypericin

You must refer to your perception of a lawyer, and what you believe a lawyer perceives when confronted with ink blots, or rather his perception of them, which are in his/her head, just as your perception of the lawyer and what you perceive he/she does when you perceive he/she is reading are in your head. I have a question, though. If you have a perception of a lawyer reading in your head, do you also have a perception of what he/she is reading in your head? If you don't, why do you maintain that what he reads, or if he reads (or rather what he has a perception of reading in his head, just as you have a perception of him reading in your head) makes any difference to whether the lawyer is a good lawyer or a bad lawyer? The lawyer may be pretending to read; may never have read anything.

If only unrepentant Nazis would be banned! Sorry. I repent, really I do.

But it's difficult for me to mourn the loss of someone who insists on flaunting his prejudice. There's something showy, if not exhibitionist, in such posturings.

Scientific evidence doesn't support the claim that we can't know, or interact with, the rest of the world in which we live. If we could not, we wouldn't be alive.
— Ciceronianus

The only word I disagree with in this post is the word "know." Remove that word, and we're in complete agreement.

Knowledge = Justified True Belief. Truth is the problem here. I see the flower as X, you as Y, the bee as Z, yet we're all seeing the same thing. What is that thing? Is it X, Y, or Z or an amalgamation of all of them? — Hanover

I think it's important to clarify what you're saying. Regarding your objection to the use of the word "know."

Do you claim we can't know what a flower is, or do you claim we can't know what it's color, or smell, or stem is?

Do you claim we can't know what a flower is because bees don't see flowers as we do?

Do you think you and I disagree regarding the nature of flowers?

Do you think we know something about flowers, but not other things about flowers?

It seems to me that you believe flowers (and everything else, apparently) cannot be known because they're part of the world in which we and other creatures live. We living organisms in some sense taint
the rest of the world, it would seem; we prevent it from being perceived in the isolation needed to support true knowledge. Would God know what the world is, or some being unlimited by the restrictions imposed on us?

I'd say we know a great deal about flowers as they're part of the world in which we live. For example, we know how they grow, we know how their pigment is determined through DNA, we know they're attached to soil, we know they're pollinated by bees, we know how to plant them. In what sense is it that we don't know these things? Why do you maintain that we're not justified in concluding that we do?

By the locked-in-the-library theory we can never know whether what's in each others' heads are sights and smells and sounds or something else or nothing. And we can't know about anything outside our heads, either. I can't see how I would ever get to know what's even in my own head or what a head is. — Cuthbert

Perhaps our heads are in our heads.

Does your position require that I actually believe bees and humans perceive in the same way? If it does, I think your position just fails to scientific evidence. — Hanover

Humans are humans and bees are bees and flowers are flowers. The interaction of a bee with a flower differs from our interaction with it because it's a bee, and we're not. The bee has characteristics we don't have, so of course its interaction with a flower is different from ours. How could it be (sorry) otherwise?

But it doesn't follow that the flower alters when approached by a bee, and then alters when subsequently approached by a human. Neither would a car, or a river, or a mountain, or anything else.

The world is inhabited by various kinds of living organisms. Each has evolved through interaction with the rest of the world over thousands if not millions or billions of years. Organisms differ as a result of that interaction. This is what is indicated by scientific evidence. Scientific evidence, in other words, supports the existence of a world which includes us and other creatures and that our interaction with the rest of the world is exactly what should be expected given our interrelationship with it. Scientific evidence doesn't support the claim that we can't know, or interact with, the rest of the world in which we live. If we could not, we wouldn't be alive.

You should know it. — hypericin

Why should I know anything, if what you say is correct?

Any perception is necessarily a co-creation of both the perceived and the perceiver. It cannot be any other way. — hypericin

What's this "perception" you refer to, and where is it? Granted that our lives are our interaction with the rest of the world, why does that mean the rest of the world is unknowable?

For something to be consciously perceived, it must be mapped onto a perceptual plane. This perceptual plane is contingent, and has everything to do with the perceiver, nothing to do with the perceived. — hypericin

If that's what you maintain, then it seems strange you believe "any perception is necessarily a co-creation of both the perceived and the perceiver."

When you hear a pure 440hz tone, it sounds a certain way to you. But that sound in your head has nothing to do with the vibration in the air. — hypericin

There's a sound in my head? Are sights and smells in there as well?

You can't get out into the world itself, ever, the doors to the library are locked. — hypericin

It's true we can't get out of the world. But you think the world is much smaller than I do.

Is the flower the way I see it or the way the bee sees it? — Hanover

You assume that the flower must be one thing for us, another thing for the bee.

There's a flower. We interact with it the way humans do. The bee interacts with it the way bees do. There's no reason to think it becomes something different depending on whether a human or bee is involved in the interaction. There's no reason to think it is something different than what we interact with and what a bee interacts with. There's not one flower for us, another for the bee.

Yet Descartes didn't reject the world in which we live, so that must not have been the implication of the evil demon thought experiment. — Hanover

I think an evil demon was having a bit of fun with him from the beginning.

Ok, but it keeps coming back. Descartes has been dead a long time and we still worry about brains in vats. The flies get out of the bottle and then a whole new generation of flies gets in. — Cuthbert

The fact so many are enamored by the thought of being brains in vats is disturbing, as it seems to amount to a rejection of the world in which we live.

To clarify my analogy: the flower is the passing car and my internal experience is the blinking light. That is, a flower elicits a physical response and it is my phenomenal experience. Is that experience the flower? I'd say no, unless you're willing to commit to the idea that the side blinking light is a passing car? — Hanover

This seems to be to simply beg the question. Why should we assume the blinking light is all we see?

It seems to be a given in Western cultures to think there is oneself, and then there's the external world. — baker

Western culture has been fundamentally selfish for some time, it's true. The concern with individual rights, individual salvation, individual status, comfort, power, wealth, has been overwhelming. Self-love seems to me to be a narrow basis on which to assess the universe.

I think when we refer to an "external world" which "exists independently of the mind" we've already accepted a dualism I reject.

But why do you reject it? Based on what? — baker

Because I don't accept that our "minds" are separate from us, and think we're not separate from the rest of the world. I don't think it can be doubted on any reasonable basis that all we do is the result of our interaction as living organisms with the rest of the world.

How do you explain mental illness? — baker

As a particular kind of illness, or disorder, we suffer from. I'm not sure I understand what you mean, though.

Words have meanings, and as regards the phrase "external world" in the context of a discussion about the philosophy of the mind, external means external to the mind and world means the world we live in, not another world outside our world in the multiverse. — RussellA

That would seem to me to make the mind the "internal world." Words have meanings, you see.

I believe we both acknowledge that we exist in the world, as do other living organisms and things. You clearly think that those other creatures and things are "external" to us. If by that you mean they exist in the world along with us, in addition to us, I agree. If you mean they exist in a world that is outside us, I don't agree.

When I see a flower, I don't see a perception of a flower. I see a flower. Do you claim I see something else?

You just like philosophers with the surname "Austin" — Banno

I like the two I know of, anyhow.

If a "constituent" is a part, it is distinct from other parts, which logically demands that bees, flowers, and people are apart from each other. By "apart" I mean not a part of, which means it's separate from me, thus being external.

It is my experience that my perceptions cease upon my unconsciousness, yet it seems the object of my perception is unaffected by unconsciousness. Do you believe otherwise? When I sleep, does my bed cease to exist now that I no longer perceive it? — Hanover

There are humans and there are bees. I'm a human. I'm not a bee. So, if that is what you think makes a bee "external" to me, that's fine, but I think calling it "external" is inappropriate. I would simply say something like "There are bees in the world" much as I'd say "There are humans in the world" or "We're in (or are a part of) the world." If I'd even say such things. I don't think it would occur to me to do so.

And that may be the salient point. If we accept we're part of the universe along with everything else, how does the question whether there's an "external world" even arise? Obviously, we wouldn't think there was another world or universe. We wouldn't think our minds are independent from the rest of the universe. We wouldn't wonder whether the rest of the universe really exists, or if the rest of it would go away if we were asleep.

Nor, I think, would we wonder whether a flower is really a flower, or whether it's really something different from a flower--or think that what it truly is cannot be known.

He is addressing the question whether all his experience might be a mere figment of his imagination, including his own hands. — Cuthbert

I think it's a question which shouldn't arise, frankly, and I assume it does only if one takes faux doubt of the kind which so famously was indulged in by Descartes seriously. Our every act, our very existence, establishes we don't seriously believe our hands are figments of our imagination.

One aspect of Direct Realism is that the external world exists independently of the mind. As you propose that there is no "external world", am I correct in thinking that your view is neither Naive Realism nor Direct Realism, but something else, such as Idealism, as Hanover suggests ? — RussellA

I don't think so, no. When I say there's no "external world" I'm simply saying there's a single world, and that we're a part of it, not apart from it. I think referring to an "external world" is confusing as it implies there's some world outside of us in which we don't participate, and perhaps even in which we don't exist, but simply observe.

I think when we refer to an "external world" which "exists independently of the mind" we've already accepted a dualism I reject. We assume the existence of a mind separate from the world. I don't think our minds are separate from the world; I think they're parts of the world just as we are (necessarily so, of course). So, the question "Is there an external world which exists independently of the mind?" seems to me to be...well, weird.

This is Stoic doctrine, and we know you're a Stoic. Okay.

There is no "thing" called a perception which exists somewhere inside of us.

But this I don't understand.
Are you referring to Stoic epistemology, epistemology according to Stoicism? — baker

No, there's nothing particularly Stoic about that (as far as I know, in any case).

That comment is more along the lines of Austin, or ordinary language philosophy. I think we can deceive ourselves when we start referring to a perception as if it's a kind of "thing." In particular in this case, as if it's something separate from an "external object" like a flower, and, it seems, something that varies from person to person or creature to creature encountering the "external object." I suppose it's the result of the dualism that induces us to think of ourselves as separate from the "external world." It's like referring to sense data as if it's a kind of thing, although as I understand it that kind of thing is a thing which separates us from the rest of the world.

What I'm arguing is that the approach of the OP is not naive (direct) realism. It sounds Kantian to me. Per the OP and subsequent clarifications there are said to be external objects and then there are perceptions. How the perception correlates to the external object is left to the unknown. It's being argued that bees have phenomenal states of flowers and people do as well, but they need not be at all similar. — Hanover

Here's what I'm proposing, regardless of whether it comports with anyone's idea of naive realism or direct realism. There are many constituents of the world. Some are human, some are bees, some are flowers. None of them exist in an "external world" apart from anything else. None of them is an "external object" in that sense. There is no "thing" called a perception which exists somewhere inside of us.

There must be an "external world" if pain, love, colour, consciousness, etc are attributes of human beings, yet not attributes of the universe. — RussellA

I'm not sure we're speaking of the same thing. Are you saying there must be an "external world" unless the universe feels pain (for example)?

How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’ (‘Proof of an External World’ 166)" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/ — Cuthbert

Interesting. But I've never thought of my hands as "external objects" or as parts of an "external world" and I'm uncertain what is meant when it's claimed that they (or any other parts of my body) exist "independently of my experience" if that's what he's saying.

If there is no "external world", then human experiences are just part of the world's experiences. IE, all the attributes of the mind - pain, love, colour, consciousness, etc - are also attributes of the world. As consciousness is a human experience, then consciousness must also be an experience of the world. — RussellA

I think they're attributes of human beings, and so are part of the world in that sense, but don't know that it follows that they're attributes of the universe, if by that you mean that the universe is something which possesses). Birds are parts of the universe, but it doesn't follow the universe has wings and builds nests.

The spirit of G E Moore is upon my shoulder. If there is no external world, then I'm not posting these words on PF. — Cuthbert

I'm not certain what you mean by this, but if you mean that there are parts of the world in addition to human beings, I agree. If you mean that we're not part of the world in which those other parts exist, I don't agree.

What do you mean by "the same world"? This implies the flower is the same to me and the bee, but you've said otherwise. The question then is to describe those features of the flower that are the same regardless of the perceiver. — Hanover

I mean simply that you (and me and everyone else) and the bee, and the flower, are parts of the same world--we all are parts of the universe. That doesn't mean that we're all the same. That doesn't mean we all have the same characteristics, nor does it mean our characteristics fluctuate. It means that we all interact, differently, but the interaction takes place in the universe; it's part of the universe. The exact characteristics of what we interact with is a matter of study, investigation, testing, and use.