Naive realism is not this:

If I see a chair, then there's a chair and if I see injustice then there's injustice. — Cuthbert

I agree.

It's undisputed that bees perceive flowers differently than humans, and it's undisputed that both are fully able to navigate flowers successfully. That a flower is X to a bee but Y to a person begs the question of what is a flower. Is it X or Y? Is it whatever I believe it to be so long as it facilitates my survival? — Hanover

I think the person and the bee are interacting with the same thing (the flower). However, one is a person, and the other is a bee. It's unsurprising that our interaction with a flower (which results when we see it, smell it, grow it, etc.) differs from that of a bee and a flower. The difference is the result of the fact we're entirely different creatures, but living in the same world.

I cannot understand how the immediate and direct object of perception (the colour red) is the external world (the wavelength of 700nm).

How does the Direct Realist justify that the colour red exists independently of any observer in the wavelength of 700nm ? — RussellA

For me, there's no "external world." There's a world of which we're a part. There isn't one world for us and another world for everything else. We see red because we're a particular kind of living organism existing in the world which, when interacting with certain other constituents of the world, see them as having what we call a "red color." That takes place in one and the same world. It's a function of what the world is and what it encompasses.

My understanding is the rule of law refers to its equal application and enforcement as regards all persons and entities. I don't think the phrase is intended to refer to the quality of the laws, which are assumed to be good. The rule of law isn't "all laws must be good" in other words. It requires independent adjudication and enforcement.

It requires that you have parties. — James Riley

If only it did. Oh, you meant the other kind of parties.



Specific performance is an equitable remedy which may be applied in contract law. For example, X agrees to sell property to Y. X fails to convey the property to Y, but not because of any default by Y. A court may compel X to convey the property to Y. Generally, it's a remedy which isn't ordered where payment of money damages provides adequate relief.

From a lawyer's standpoint (well, this lawyer's standpoint) one of the problems with equitable relief is that the court has a great deal of discretion in fashioning a remedy. It's very difficult to successfully appeal a decision made by a court sitting in equity, because the appellate court will defer to the lower court's decision. It's necessary to show an abuse of discretion by lower court, which isn't easy to do.

I don't know whether specific performance may be applied in the case of treaties. Sometimes it won't even in contracts, especially where the remedies available to the parties is specified, and specific performance isn't one of them. My guess would be that the treaties made with native americans limited the remedies available, but I haven't read any of them.

Agreed.

That said, what I gleaned from Peirce is that he's not saying we should stop doubting for the reason skepticism is nonsensical but because he believes there's value in certainty in that it enriches our lives. I prefer pepsi to water but not because I hate water; it's just that pepsi is more interesting to my taste buds. — TheMadFool

What I think he's saying (and I don't pretend to be the last word on this), what I think he's criticizing, is similar in some sense to what Dewey would call the Philosophical Fallacy. That's the tendency to ignore the significance of context, which Dewey felt was prevalent in philosophy, and coming to conclusions in abstract. We can't just pretend to doubt everything and then apply as a maxim what we come up with in purporting to doubt what we clearly don't doubt. Dewey used to say we never really think until we encounter a problem. There's no problem until we have a real problem to solve or situation to resolve.

Although I suspect a Pragmatist--at least a classical Pragmatist--wouldn't speak of certainty, the value of the results of intelligent inquiry, the results of testing in practice and consideration of the results, the forming of a consensus based on the resulting evidence, would be of great, maybe the greatest, value.

The statement "the probability of rain is 95%" is either 100% true or 100%false i.e. even if rain is only probable, the forecast itself is certain. — TheMadFool

And yet it remains the case that the rain is probable, not certain.

faux doubt.
— Ciceronianus

What's that? — TheMadFool

It's what Peirce refers to in Some Consequences of Four Incapacities:

1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

2. The same formalism appears in the Cartesian criterion, which amounts to this: "Whatever I am clearly convinced of, is true." If I were really convinced, I should have done with reasoning and should require no test of certainty. But thus to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious. The result is that metaphysicians will all agree that metaphysics has reached a pitch of certainty far beyond that of the physical sciences; -- only they can agree upon nothing else. In sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory has been broached it is considered to be on probation until this agreement is reached. After it is reached, the question of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers. Hence, if disciplined and candid minds carefully examine a theory and refuse to accept it, this ought to create doubts in the mind of the author of the theory himself.

Cartesian systematic doubt (Deus deceptor) & Harman's brain in a vat skeptical scenario (Evil genius) come to mind and given these rather disconcerting possibilities can't be ruled out with certainty, realism needs to be adjusted accordingly and what we leave behind is naïve realism and what get are fancier versions of realism. — TheMadFool

These "possibilities" are of no concern, to me. I'm with Peirce when it comes to the employment of faux doubt. I think we should have a reason to doubt before we doubt. But what is it you demand before possibilities are "ruled out with certainty"? Can anything be "ruled out with certainty"? If not, why impose such a standard when making judgments, decisions? We live in a world of probabilities. What the best evidence shows to be the case is acceptable to me. That means that new evidence may be discovered, of course, but for me that's not a disconcerting thing.

His complete epistemic self-confidence is that reason.
Once you see yourself as the arbiter of the truth about other entities, what's there to stop you, except perhaps a little common decency? — baker

The understanding that what's involved in making judgments regarding the existence and nature of a chair differs from what's involved in making moral judgments? Do you really think there are people who don't have that understanding, and that people who believe they see a chair necessarily can't recognize the difference involved? I'm quite certain I'm sitting on a chair this moment, but I'm also quite certain there's a difference between making that judgement a making a moral judgment.

Yet already popular phrases like "People see what they want to see" suggest there is a folk understanding that perception isn't the passive, reactive process we generally believe it to be. — baker

Rather, the salient point is that perception is an active, deliberate process. — baker

I agree.

Yet already popular phrases like "People see what they want to see" suggest there is a folk understanding that perception isn't the passive, reactive process we generally believe it to be. — baker

I don't think it's passive. There are circumstances when "people see what they want to see" and those circumstances, as I understand them, may involve an interpretation. But there's no reason to infer from that fact that we always interpret in our interactions with the rest of the world, if what is meant by that is that we can never make a reasonable, or the same, judgment regarding out interactions with the rest of the world.

As it is commonly agreed that that humans when observing a wavelength of 700nm consistently perceive the colour red, it is therefore not unreasonable to say that our perception of the world is valid and presents no concern. However, it does not necessarily follow from this that what we perceive, the colour red, is being caused by the colour red. In fact, it is being caused by a wavelength of 700nm. — RussellA

It isn't caused by a wavelength. It isn't caused by the color red, either. It's the entirely natural result of our interaction with another object in the world. I don't think it's appropriate to speak of a "cause" for our seeing the color red, unless we wish to be hyper-technical for a reason. It's what takes place in certain circumstances. If it's appropriate to speak of "cause" the cause isn't the wavelength. The cause isn't in other words "out there" or in the "external world." It's the interaction.

Science shows us that our perception of red has been caused by a wavelength of 700nm, so it is science that has "inserted" something between our perception and the external world, a science with its roots in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. — RussellA

I'd say we're responsible for the insertion (for science as well, in fact). If we're part of the same world, there is no insertion of anything. There's nothing (no thing) between us and the rest of the world that is the "red" of which we speak. This purported "thing" is something we dreamt up, I think.

"Entangled with and participating in"--yes. Well put. But I have problems with the use of "interpreting."
I think it implies a degree of intent or reflection that isn't normally present. I think it can also suggest that we misinterpret, i.e. that we're so encumbered by mental, cultural, social, physical, factors that we're incapable of making reasonable judgments regarding our interactions with the rest of the world.

Bah. I'M not the one who believes in the unknowable, lurking beyond us, forever a mystery. You throw a blanket between us and the world.

OK. I can accept that there are factors arising from our being a part of the world which may affect the accuracy of our perception and judgment.

If that's true, in what sense, and to what extent, should we be doubting ourselves and our ability to understand and interact with the world in which we live? How does it prevent us from doing what we do everyday, every moment? If it doesn't prevent us from eating, drinking, walking, sitting, driving, working, etc.--from doing what human beings do--why insist that we're in some sense necessarily ignorant in some sense of reality, of the world in which we live?

Naive realism simply isnt backed up by recent research in perceptual psychology or the more sophisticated thinking in A.I. — Joshs

So the chair I see (and sit on) isn't or may not be the chair I see (and sit on)?

I hesitate to question your historical expertise — unenlightened

Feel free to question it. I know some history fairly well, but only some.

But as a naive realist I would admit that our senses and our understanding and our recollection are all imperfect, and this leaves plenty of room for disagreement - though in practice arguments about how many legs a particular chair has are pretty rare. and tend to turn on semantic niceties such as whether a leg that has fallen off the chair still counts as a leg of the chair which is a conflict of ideas, not of realities.

What I wonder is how there can be evidence that the senses are false that does not rely on those very senses. — unenlightened

There has been and always will be disagreement. I don't maintain otherwise. But I don't think it exists because everyone sees something different when they look at something, or because we can't tell what we're really perceiving because we can't perceive the thing in itself, or because we can't know if there's really an external world. There are other, less odd and less absolute, explanations which can be provided, and which don't require us to believe we're hopelessly ignorant of the world in which we live.

Thank you, Tully. for providing something so agreeably sweet to accompany my morning coffee. — Banno

You're quite welcome. It's just something that baffles me, and has for some time.

Like I said,
A naive realist talks about moral issues with the same certainty as he talks about tables and chairs. — baker

Well, maybe I misunderstand you. Are you saying all moral realists do that? If so, why is that the case?

If they were to extend the limits of their self to the boundaries of the body, the implication that there is a barrier or buffer or Cartesian theater between them and the rest of the world begins to dissolve. — NOS4A2

It may be that what I call this "strange belief" is the result of mind-body dualism or some remnant of it, but I think it comes down to a kind of refusal to accept that we're active participants in the world (universe), like any other living organism.

The problem is thst a naive realist takes for granted that the same that goes for observing tables and chairs also goes for humans, for moral/ethical issues. To a naive realist, a sentence like
This chair has four legs
is epistemically the same as
Women are essentially inferior to men
or
Henry is an evil person.
or
Witches should be burnt at the stakes.

A naive realist talks about moral issues with the same certainty as he talks about tables and chairs. Do you see any problem with that? — baker

I don't see how someone who maintains that a chair has four legs, or that it is reasonable to believe what we see when we see a chair is, in fact, a chair is obliged, thereby, to make any particular moral judgments.

Would I be naive, in thinking there is no concern, at least generally speaking, because our perceptions are valid enough to establish our interactions with the rest of the world? — Mww

Naive in believing that our perception of the rest of the world is valid enough for their to be no concern, because our perceptions are valid enough to establish our interactions with the rest of the world? I don't think so, no. If our perceptions are valid enough, then I don't see how you could be naive in believing they'e valid enough for there to be no concern.

I think the rape scene is perverse a — AJJ

Money and rough sex seemed important to Rand. There's another such scene in Atlas Shrugged. As you might expect, the woman being portrayed actually enjoyed being ravished. She apparently wanted a brave man, wanted a cave man, like in the old Joanie Sommers song about Johnny, but with more bruises involved, it seems.

but I can accept what I’ve heard about it not being very good based on some of the stuff she has Roark say in The Fountainhead; but I enjoyed the literary account she gives of her beliefs in that book a lot and I think she gets people right. — AJJ

You should read the lengthy speech she gives her "John Galt" character in Atlas Shrugged. If you enjoy being lectured on the "virtue" of selfishness you'll be thrilled by that seemingly endless monologue appearing at the end of the book. That novel has amusing passages, though. I particularly liked the fact that the flag of the preposterously rich and brilliant renegades she dreamed up proudly displayed a dollar sign ($).

There is a more fundamental thinking that penetrates beneath the idea of a world as a container with ‘parts’(existing beings) of which we are just one more. Rather than the world being just object beings that are presented before a subject being ( who is also an object within that world), the world ( including the subject) is enacted , produced , synthesized rather than just mirrored and represented. From this vantage , ‘being’ isn’t the existing parts, it’s the synthesizing, enacting , producing activity that creates and recreates the subject and object poles. The being of this world is in its becoming, and our own indissociable becoming. ( Is that obscure enough for ya?) — Joshs

As parts of the world, though, we're active participants in it. We aren't mere observers. As products of evolution, we're even in a sense are created by the world, which is to say we developed--we became human, and took on the characteristics of humans--by our interaction with the rest of the world over time. No world, no humans. The conditions of the rest of the world shape us, and we shape certain parts of the rest of the world. Speaking of Being, how do we explain why and how human beings exist if we doubt the existence of the rest of the world or doubt we can know or understand it? Do we resort to God or magic of some kind?

If we are parts of the world (universe) along with everything else, including (as I believe) our thoughts, values, feelings, culture, conduct, societies, institutions, biases, prejudices...all being human is...what would that mean regarding "Being" and ontology? Are they, along with other non-ethical philosophical questions, dependent on a belief that we, and what we think, do, feel, etc. aren't parts of the world? A question.

What an effort is needed to deny, or render questionable, what our day-to-day conduct establishes we reither deny nor question! There's something fantastic in this rejection of the world and our active participation in it. Like a belief of a fundamentalist in the supernatural.

The three guys are looking at a field, it's not that they are in the same spot and one sees a field, another a mountain and the third a river. "They're looking at the same scene"—your words. They see "different things" only in that they see different potential uses, or things to discover, or to gained, there. The field is there; we didn't "construct it". — Janus

Verily. Verum est factum. What peculiarity of ours leads some of us to claim otherwise? Though of course we don't actually "see" potential uses; we consider that what we see may, in the future, be used in certain ways.

Not only do each of live in our own ‘world’ with respect to others, but from one moment to the next our own ‘world’ changes into a néw one. — Joshs

If I understand you correctly, then, you're speaking metaphorically when you claim we each live in different worlds. If that's so, well and good, but I'd prefer not to, as I think it merely leads to confusion in these circumstances, and can be misleading.

I don't think of myself as independent from the world, or apart from it. I think we're all part of the world (or universe, if you prefer). That means, to me, that I'm not "independent" from the world. I'm inseparable from it. Nor is it "independent" from me if that means that I'm separate from it. I'm not somewhere outside the world. I'd say you're not, either, nor is anything or anyone else.

Because we're parts of the world, our lives are a series of interactions with the rest of the world.

If someone disappoints you, violates your moral
principles , rejects you, humiliates you , embraces political views you find dangerous and cruel, acts in seemingly irrational, incoherent or inappropriate ways, ‘same world’ means there are external sources of standards of rationality . ‘Same world’ provides the basis of norms of empirical correctness , which we can then use to determine individual rationality. Since everyone is experiencing this ‘same world ‘ , everyone has the opportunity to test their understandings of the facts of the world using this external existing ‘same’ world as the universal yardstick of truth. This leaves no room for the idea that the facts we perceive are determined by a larger network of values, so that , try as we might, we cannot get your sense of meaning of the facts to align precisely with mine. — Joshs

I'd say it's incorrect to speak of "external sources" because nothing is external to us in any significant sense. We don't find standards somewhere "outside" of us. What we think, do, value, feel, all takes place in the universe. Our thoughts, values, conduct, feelings, desires, etc., are parts of the universe and are interrelated with it as they arise from living in the world as a part of it. So are our cultures. We don't find anything in the world (considered as separate from us); we discover things about the rest of the world and discover things about ourselves and others.

It isn't necessary to think of each person as living in their own worlds to explain disagreements. Those can be explained by various things, all a part of the world, which relate to living as parts of the world. The environment or culture in which we live will influence our way of thinking, our values, our desires, etc. So will our education, our social status. There's nothing special about this; it's the natural result of being a living organism that's a human being.

We do quite a few things based on understandings about the rest of the world successfully. Sometimes, we're unsuccessful. Lack of success doesn't mean that we don't or can't know anything about the world of which we're a part.

I've always preferred Aristotle to Plato, if only because Aristotle was less mystical, less totalitarian.

No two people ever see the exact same ‘object in the same way, so we say that each of us perceives a different appearance of the ‘same’ object. In everyday life this leads to no major misunderstandings because the objects we interact with are defined in very general terms. — Joshs

I see a mouse. You see a mouse. What is the different appearance I see, compared with the different appearance you see? Do I see if from the side, and you see if from the front? Why does this indicate we see a "different reality"? Why doesn't it merely indicate I'm seeing the mouse from the side, and you're seeing it from the front?

Every misunderstanding, frustration, annoyance, disappointment we experience in dealing with one another reveals the fact that we are not living in the same world, but interpret according to different vantages and perspectives — Joshs

Can't we have different vantages and perspectives and yet live in the same world? When I look at a mouse from the side, am I living in a different world than the world you live in while looking at it from the front? Does someone looking at the mouse from the back inhabit yet another world?

Our differences arise from the fact that we live in the same world but have different desires, different thoughts, different resources which sometime conflict or provide some of us with advantages or disadvantages others don't possess in competing with one another for resources or opportunities existing in the same world we all inhabit. If we lived in different worlds, there would be no conflicts. If they conflict, how would they be different from one another?

Am I wrong to try and understand her philosophy? Is there no wisdom within it? — OscarTheGrouch

Well, I think there are better uses of your time, but by all means try to understand it if you would like to do so. As to wisdom, I think you'll find that much of her thought is derivative, especially of Aristotle, and in the nature of a reaction against communism as it came to develop. One can be an individual without being wealthy and primarily concerned with self-gratification or glorification.

I wonder to what extent these views, if accurate, matter to us in our day-to-day lives--what Goodman calls our "everyday world." There may be instances where they're significant, in which case they should be considered and accounted for, but in others I think they're what James (supposedly) called differences which make no difference (that may be a paraphrase).

How often are we disturbed by, or do we even contemplate, "the myth of the given"? Are we fearful the chair we sit in will turn out "really" to be something deadly to us, something utterly unlike a chair? Do we wonder while driving whether the highway we drive on may really be a river? When has it turned out to be one, or a lava flow? Do we find it difficult to communicate with each other or understand what's taking place when confronted with a plate of ravioli? Do we hesitate to piss, wondering what the urinal-in-itself really is? Not at all. We have more important things to baffle and frustrate us.

Certainly there are cases where we disagree, and for various reasons. Those become problems we may or may not be able to solve. But if we can't resolve them chances are it won't be because what we think is something we use every day turns out not to be real.

It is almost a guarantee that he will come across as deliberately unclear if the reader has failed to comprehend a host of necessary precursors. This includes Hegel, Nietzsche. Wittgenstein and Husserl ( a background in Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard wouldn’t hurt either ). — Joshs

I try to imagine saying the same thing regarding other philosophers. Does Aristotle come across as deliberately unclear if we haven't read Plato; does Hume if we haven't read Hobbes; does James if we haven't read Peirce? I don't think so. Perhaps it's merely a personal preference, but if I philosopher can't even produce sentences one can read without referencing the work of other philosophers as a kind of dictionary or thesaurus, I don't think that speaks well for the philosopher.

As John Austin said, legal positivism merely provides that:

The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry.

Whether a law or system of law exists, therefore, has nothing to do with whether it's good or bad, or whether it should be modified, or amended or repealed, or perpetuated. I'm not sure what you mean by "value-laden" but suspect that it's the equivalent of saying everything that human beings do is value-laden because human beings are human beings, and everything which human beings do is necessarily value-laden, which doesn't strike me as a useful insight.

It's the point of view of a practitioner, not a moralist, not a liberal, or conservative, or Marxist or anarchist. or revolutionary. Physicians don't seek to perpetuate the "status quo" of a person. Lawyers don't seek to perpetuate the "status quo" of the law.

A wise man once said, and keeps saying:

Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion.

So every philosopher has a cult following? — Xtrix

Not all of them, no. I think there are conditions which must be met to acquire cult status. Not all of them are satisfied by the philosopher alone.

Obscurity is needed. The philosopher must sometimes seems to be deliberately unclear. The philosopher's must be difficult to understand, even difficult to read. The fact that others, in despair, give up the effort to read the works of the philosopher is taken by the philosopher's adherents to establish the greater worth of the writings and those who read them to the end.

The writings of the philosopher must be interpreted, translated in effect, for the benefit of those unable to read them. Interpretations and translations may differ, with some claiming preference for one over another. Esoteric pronouncements of seemingly profound and vast import must be made. The philosopher takes on the aspect of an oracle.

Sometimes, the obvious is made to appear of titanic significance; sometimes the mundane is the subject of contempt. Claims are made regarding what is "really" the case. The fact that we experience the rest of the world exactly as humans must experience it, being the kind of creatures we are, is declared to be a colossal insight, for example--sometimes more by the philosopher's adherents than the philosopher. The fact that a pine tree will look different to someone 15 feet away from it than it will to someone 100 feet from it leads some to question whether we're capable of knowing anything.

Which is to say that the extent to which a philosopher's adherents believe him/her to be surpassingly insightful is significant in determining whether a cult exists.

So Heidegger represents for you a morally flawed personality , and any wider sociological analysis is seen by you as excuse making. — Joshs

We were both raised Roman Catholic, and it seems in similar economic circumstances. He stayed with the faith quite a bit longer than I did, though, and apparently took it quite seriously; studied theology for a time at Freiburg. I'd maintain this tells us little or nothing about either of us, however. No doubt he felt angered and betrayed by the Treaty of Versailles as did many Germans. Again, though, what does this tell us about the person that's beyond supposition? Romanticism and a peculiar sense of German worth and superiority (and a belief in "secret missions" of being) characterizes his writings that I've read (not Being and Time, which I don't think I can read). Perhaps this tells us as much about him as any German of his time, but unless we're to consider individuals as part of a collective in judging their worth, it isn't a basis on which to do so. Such factors may provide insight into one's character but provide no rationale (or justification) for one's conduct.

I mentioned your legal background because we all tend to choose a profession that reflects our ways of understanding the world. I chose psychology and philosophy as consonant with my belief system. It seems to me that you view personal behavior primarily from the vantage of character and individual responsibility and choice — Joshs

I've always maintained that the law is, quite simply, the law, and nothing else. It's not morality; it's not justice. I'm a sort of legal positivist. If someone violates the law, it isn't necessarily the case that an immoral act has taken place. We lawyers are often accused of seeing things as grey rather than black and white. Someone famous, I forget who, condemned lawyers who said that nobody is guilty of a crime until the law (a court) decided they were. But that's merely the case. Someone who murders someone isn't guilty of the crime of murder until convicted of murder. Someone who's convicted of the crime of murder isn't necessarily a murderer.

So a legal background doesn't necessarily mean that a lawyer sees all as matters of responsibility and individual choice. A Catholic might do so, however.

So, I think, would an aspiring Stoic or any other adherent of virtue ethics, and perhaps other kinds of ethics as well. Much as we're influenced by psychological and sociological factors, there are certain things which are substantially, at least, within our control. We can make judgments for good reasons and bad. Joining the Nazi party wasn't forced upon Heidegger. He wasn't forced to praise Hitler so extravagantly. He wasn't compelled to treat Husserl so shabbily. His condemnation of the Jews as being calculating hustlers without Dasein isn't something that issued unthinkingly from his brain and pen. he made judgments and choices and bears responsibility for them.

I've read his essay called (in English) The Question Regarding Technology and thought it so Romantic as to approach silliness. I've read his What is Metaphysics and am inclined to agree with Carnap's view of it. I think I'd feel the same about those works even if he had been a saint instead of a Nazi. I doubt I'd be impressed by Being and Time.