Also true. There are continuities between Aristotle and Kant, after all, Kant adopted Aristotle's categories nearly unchanged. — Wayfarer

Not true. Do a little research.

It is obvious that your eyes see and that the objects are there, and are real. That's not where the uncertainty is. It's in this, my expression of that hypothetical event, and, with respect, it's in yours. We do not disagree that when we look we know and see that we have hands. As to what "your" or simply "knowledge" of that event is, that's where we differ. — ENOAH

It's not apparent to me just what your skepticism consists in with regard to the example. Can you explain?

If "my" skepticism about that must be relegated to "radical skepticism," so be it. — ENOAH

I don't see how your skepticism in this example could be radical or in other words global, I think it is possible to play at doubting, in the radical sense, anything, but I don't think it is possible to doubt everything at once or that such doubt based on merely imaginable alternative possibilities, whose only quality that could recommend them is that they are not logically contradictory, is significant or interesting. For example, I might claim to doubt I have hands by citing the possibility that I am a brain in vat or being deceived by a demon, but those possibilities depend on their being brains and vats or deceptive demons, so I can't at the same time doubt the existence of whichever of those I am using to support my radical skepticism.

Either way, your OP was perhaps more interesting to some than you might have intended/expected. Sincerely, Thank you. — ENOAH

I appreciate your kind words, but I can't take credit for the OP. It was Chet's suggestion to start a new thread in which to question his position if I wanted him to explain his ideas. I think he has failed to explain anything. Anyway, thank you for your interest and participation.

I should have added that radical or global skepticism can be entertained, but not without holding some things certain, from which it follows that such skepticism cannot ever be what it purports to be.

So, when I look at my hands I cannot but be certain that I have hands, and the kinds of 'evil demon' or 'brain in a vat' objections hold no water for me, I just can't take them seriously and I don't believe anyone bar possibly the mentally ill really does either.

Why not? I see no problem with a man choosing ones wants. That's what we learn how to do in moral training, mastering our habits. — Metaphysician Undercover

The first point is that what is significant to you, what is important to you, conditions your desires. We all have first order desires for pleasure, satisfaction, gratification, stimulation and so on. But in case those desires lead to habits that are unhealthy, they may be countermanded by stronger concerns like personal health, social harmony, or even simply by introjected moral prescriptions and proscriptions.

The second point is that what you desire in the first order sense; food, warmth, shelter, sex, and so on simply is what it is. You are thrown, so to speak, into the midst of these kinds of desires, and some people have stronger desires than others, or a different balance of desires. For example, food might be more important to you than sex. We are also thrown by our educations into the midst of our second order desires. We may be able to cultivate those desires and we each have different capacities for change, for re-inventing ourselves.

The third point is that each person's capacities just are that person's capacities—some are more capable than others at overcoming their compulsions or addictions. Some people simply don't and cannot, feel empathy, for example—they cannot force themselves to care for others, although is they are smart, they may at least be able to bring themselves to act as though they do.

To sum up we are free to act according to the dictates of our natures at any point in our lives, (and the dictates may change with or without our conscious intention) but we do not create ourselves, so the radical libertarian notion of free will and absolute moral responsibility is absurd.

Is that not, then dependant upon our definitions of certainty? Assume 100% is a fitting adjective. I.e., that there is absolutely no room for doubt or possibility. Still? I personally cannot see that anywhere — ENOAH

When I explore my environment I do not find any room for doubt that the things I perceive there are actually there.

claimed (1) that everyday material objects, such as caterpillars and cadillacs, have mind-independent existence (the “realism” part); (2) that our visual perception of these material objects is not mediated by the perception of some other entities, such as sense-data (the “direct” part); and (3) these objects possess all the features that we perceive them to have (the “naïve” part)
— https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0340.xml

The issue is that people will easily reject 3, many will reject 2, few will reject 1. — Lionino

I accept 1. and 2. With 3. it would depend on what is mean by the objects possessing all the features we perceive them to have. Imposing the caveat that at least some of those perceptible features are characteristic only of perceived objects, or objects insofar as they are perceived, makes it acceptable to me.

The implication being, it is possible experience is not in the brain, which is the same as outside the brain, or in a place where the brain is not. If one maintains that he experiences things in the world, in conjunction with the implication his experiences are not in the brain, and, if he maintains all his experiences belong to him alone, then it is necessarily the case he himself is not in his own brain.

I’m sure you do not hold with that perfectly justified logical deduction, or at least its conclusion. So which is the false premise? — Mww

I'm not sure what you are asking me here. Are you asking if I agree that we are not in our own brains? If so, then the answer is yes.

What if we said our ideas of the self or our thoughts about ourselves are in our own brains? Well, perhaps we could reasonably say that, but I don't want to because I don't like to assign locations to things like ideas or experiences— I think that is an inaptitude. Of course, thoughts and even experiences are associated with the brain, but it doesn't seem to follow that they are in it.

So I don't even want to say that mental states are in the brain, but I will admit that neural activity is. I am no dualist, though, except when it comes to our thinking and judging. That would seem to make it hard to get our dualistic ideas to accord with a non-dual reality.

A neat pair of summations of the alternative views.

An interesting sidenote is that @Michael seems to take scientific knowledge to be definitively showing us that the indirect realist picture (as he understands and deploys it) represents the real situation, rather than being one possible interpretation of those scientific results.

When "they" were expectations, were they "belief." And now that your expectations have been affirmed, are they knowledge? — ENOAH

To expect something, to think it most likely, is not necessarily to believe it will happen. Of course you could say that it is a belief that it is most likely to happen. Once the expectations are met, and one observes that they have been met, then that would count as knowledge. I might expect that it will rain, and when it does rain, if I see it raining, or stand in the rain and get wet with it, I could say that I know it is raining.

Sorry, I regret any part I may have had in meeting your expectations. That was my lame attempt at returning to the root. — ENOAH

No need to apologize. We all follow our inclinations, and far be it from me to proscribe against such investigations. My characterization of "wankfest" is nothing more than the way I interpret the goings on; I'm not claiming there is any right or wrong, or fact of the matter there.

But never mind we cannot know with 100% certainty. That reveals another eerie fact about our experience. We cannot know truth period. — ENOAH

This is where we disagree—I think we can know many things with certainty.

Thanks for your response, but I'm afraid I don't get what you are driving at.

What does "presymbolic language" mean? Isn't all language by the meaning of "language", symbolic in some way? Adding "symbolic" to language, to say that human language is "symbolic language" is just redundancey. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the case of symbolic language symbols stand for something they don't physically resemble and they have no causal relationship with what they signify. A pictograph, for example, resembles what it stands for. Smoke indicates, is a sign for, fire. Animals may have language, that is they emit sounds or perform gestures that might be indicative of danger or an aggressive attitude or their desire to mate, and so on, but those sounds or gestures are signs, not symbols. It is with symbols that generalization and abstract thought becomes possible.

We have body language and musical language which are not symbolic. And in the visual language of painting, for example, the subjects do not symbolize what they resemble or evoke, but represent it.

We have good reason to believe in intelligibilities because it does not seem like they should spring up uncaused or be the sui generis results of a magical human power. We should believe in them particularly from a naturalist frame. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We know things are intelligible to us and to other animals. They need to be intelligible otherwise we and they could not survive. I see intelligibility as being primally and primarily dependent on pattern, on form. It's all about similarities and differences.

I agree that we should understand them from a naturalistic perspective, the whole notion of real, independent transcendent forms or essences is most plausibly a fantasy, I think.

That may be so, but it doesn't follow that experience is in the brain.You are courting solipsism.

I think you're misleading yourself by claiming that experience exists within the brain. I don't know about you, but I experience things out in the world, not in my brain.

Where have I said that? — Wayfarer

You haven't. That is why I wrote "unspoken premise". It is also why I wrote that if you don't hold that unpsoken premise, then we have nothing to argue about. You don't seem to be a very close reader.

All that said, the impression I have had from years of reading your posts is that you do believe in a spiritual reality and even hierarchy (which would, if it were actual. amount to a supernatural influence).

I agree that h. sapiens evolved and that language also evolved but my argument is that we've crossed an evolutionary threshold which sets us apart from other animals. We are able, among many other things, to interrogate the nature of being through philosophy, or the size and age of the Universe, through science. — Wayfarer

All of that is just on account of symbolic language, and no one with half a brain would deny that we do those things that other animals don't. But I believe you want to infer from that a supernatural influence, and that is really the unspoken premise in your complaints about modern culture.

If you are not wanting to infer a supernatural influence, then we have nothing to disagree about. And note, I'm not outright denying the possibility of a supernatural influence, I'm just saying we have no valid warrant for such an inference, and that we have no way of making discursive sense of the idea.

So it really comes down to how you feel about it, it comes down to your intuitions or what "feels right" to you, and that is not a basis for argument at all, because it is a personal matter.

Are you referencing the problem of induction? — Michael

No, I'm not talking about inferences to the explanations for observed phenomena, I'm talking about observed phenomena. Things are experienced and that is how we comes to know their characteristics and attributes. If we were not able to observe, interact with, act upon and be acted upon by things we would know nothing about them. But that is not the case, things are experienced by us, and we do know things about them.

So it seems absurd to say that things are not constituents of our experience. This is the only salient issue, not the pointless debate about preferred parlances between 'direct' and 'indirect', either of which can be rendered as a coherent way of speaking about what we know about perception (and if we didn't know anything about distal objects, we would not know anything about perception). It all just depends on context.

Ontology is concerned with classification of types, not the enumeration of all the different kinds of things. — Wayfarer

As I understand it ontology is concerned with the nature of being and with the different kinds of entities. — Janus

How is "classification of types" not equivalent to being concerned with the different kinds of entities?

That while h. sapiens is clearly descended from a common ancestory with simians, reason, language, self-consciousness, and so on, make us different from other animals. Why this point has to be laboured, why it is controversial or needs argument, I confess that I don't understand. — Wayfarer

I believe other animals are capable of reasoning and presymbolic language. The only difference I see is the advent of symbolic language with humans. I also think this is pretty much the standard view, so I'm not sure why you seem to think it isn't the standard view.

The other point is that all kinds of animals are different to the other kinds, more or less. Human ability to use symbolic language does make us unique, but I see no reason to think that signals any kind of supernatural influence, if that is what you think is missing in the modern view.

I would have thought an obvious difference between humans and animals, is that we're capable of moral choice (unless you accept determinism, which I don't.) — Wayfarer

Symbolic language allows us to reflect on our experiences, actions, lives and deaths. This is where the idea of moral responsibility comes into play. I see no reason to believe in any libertarian idea of free will—as Schopenhauer puts it " "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", which I take to mean that, apart from external constraints, you are free to do whatever you want but you are not free to choose what it is that you want.

.

As I said, it is as I expected it would be. So, the expectations were neither flawed nor optimistic.

:up:

I didn't say that we don't have reliable knowledge. I said that we don't have direct knowledge. — Michael

How could we have reliable knowledge of objects if they were not experienced by us?

This is all just hand-waving and insinuation. When you present an actual argument I'll address it.

While I didn't skip over the line before this one, this strikes me as giving up. It's all that matters for every-day consideration, but within this thread that is wholly inadequate, I think. — AmadeusD

The point is that attempting to frame what we (reliably?) know about perception in a way that undermines the very assumption of reliability we are relying upon is a self-defeating exercise. And attempting to frame things in absolute terms, as though there is a real fact of the matter, rather than merely competing or alternative interpretations and their attendant ways of speaking is a lost cause in any case.

Our thinking is inevitably dualistic, and we have no reason to think reality is dualistic, so we have to accept our limitations and uncertainty if we want to be intellectually honest. So, we have every reason to reject the whole debate as being wrongheaded from the get-go.

This seems to betray the idea that we have some 'direct' relationship with those objects, no? — AmadeusD

No it just shows how inadequate the 'direct/ indirect' parlance is, and how pointless it is to be arguing over what amount to merely different ways of talking in different contexts.

We have a reliable relationship with those objects, and with the world, and that is all that matters.

Veridical experiences are caused by some appropriate proximal stimulus, e.g. seeing the colour red when light with a wavelength of 700nm interacts with the eyes, or feeling pain when putting one’s hand in a fire. — Michael

What you're missing is the fact that light carries a great deal of information about distal objects, from which it follows that, contrary to your claims, we do have reliable knowledge of distal objects. Perhaps you're trading on the absurd demand for certainty. We have reliable, certain in the relative but not certain in the artificial "absolute" sense, knowledge of external objects.

Unfortunately, this thread has degenerated into a wankfest. It was to be expected, though.

Not quite. All kinds of sciences deal with 'different kinds of entities'. Ontology strictly speaking is about kinds of beings. It might be considered obsolete by some. I'm not appealing to Schumacher as an authority, simply as an example of what I consider a valid ontological schema. — Wayfarer

What's the difference between "kinds of entities" and "kinds of beings"?

Why do you consider this obviously anthropocentric 'great chain of being" idea a valid ontological schema? I mean on what logical, conceptual or empirical grounds apart from simply preferring it because it accords with how you would like things to be.

In more traditional terms, ontology is usually associated with metaphysics and questions about the meaning of being. — Wayfarer

As I understand it ontology is concerned with the nature of being and with the different kinds of entities.

In this case, I think the differences between humans and other animals are manifold. Apart from language and rational ability, there's also abstract skills like mathematical reasoning, art and science. — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you would say that abstract skills, mathematical reasoning, art and science are not abilities attendant upon symbolic language, or why rational ability is not just a part of what is enabled by symbolic language.

We're also existential animals - we have a grasp of our own mortality that is generally absent in other creatures (although mention might be made of elephants who seem to have quite a vivid awareness of death.) — Wayfarer

I don't know what you mean by "existential animals". If it means that we exist, well so do all the other animals. We are aware of our own mortality, perhaps due to langauge, or perhaps it would be possible anyway due to viusal memory and the automatic assumption that what happens to others will also happen to me. If the latter is the case, other animals may also be aware of their mortality. Since they can't tell us, how would we know?

Plainly humans are biological phenomena, but I argue, and I think Schumacher would argue, we're under-determined by biology in a sense that other animals cannot be. Of course, I also think that is the original intuition behind philosophical dualism, such as that of the Phaedo, and whilst I don't agree that such dualisms are literal descriptions, nevertheless they convey something symbolically real about human nature. — Wayfarer

You are yet to present an argument as to why you think we are underdetermined by biology in a sense that other animals are not or cannot be, and absent such an argument Schumacher's agreement is either irrelevant or an appeal to authority.

Why do you think that philosophical dualism conveys anything more about human nature than its being due to our linguistically enabled capacity for binary thinking?

Please explain what you mean by "ontological gap", and why you think our existence is of a different kind to the other animals, as opposed to merely our perceptions and experience being different.

I acknowledge that due to the acquisition of symbolic language that humans are capable of a kind of linguistically mediated memory and self-reflection that animals would presumably not be. But how would that amount to an ontological difference rather than just a different mode of consciousness?

As to your charge that I am biased by naturalist presuppositions, that is not true. I have come to naturalist conclusions because I see no good reason to posit anything other than nature and culture at work in humans. Do you have good reasons that you can clearly lay out for thinking that something beyond nature is needed to explain human life and experience?

Agree that humans and other species are on a biological continuum, but I also believe that humans crossed a threshold with the advent of language, tool use, and so on, and that it is a highly signficant difference, that though we're related to other animals, we're more than 'just animals'. — Wayfarer

That's your favored way of thinking about it because your Buddhist presuppositions require humans to be "more" than other animals. We can equally say that humans are, in respect of language and tool use, merely unique among, rather than "more than", the animals, which I think is a more balanced and modest assessment, and which eschews the dangers of hubris inherent in notions of human exceptionalism.

Just to be clear I feel no certainty except in the most mundane of matters. Beyond that I find it better to accept uncertainty and even cultivate it.

But I find little value in trying to parse the chaos and complexity of human life in terms of simplified concepts like fear, anger and desire. And of all delusions I think free will the most persistent and pernicious, based on the fear-based illusion of autonomy as it seems to me to be.

The irony is that in trying to neatly encapsulate and work it all out in terms of the enneagram typologies and fear, anger, desire and free will, you are behaving exactly as you would characterize a fear type who cannot cope with uncertainty. You apparently need your tidy little system to cope with the messiness of life.

No I just don't think speaking about experience being located anywhere makes sense.

I don't agree that experience is located in the brainbody, so where does that leave us?

If, "already interpreted" is a prerequisite of there being such a thing as "the world", and minds do the job of interpreting, how would you dismiss the proposition that the mind also creates the world, being prior in time to the world? — Metaphysician Undercover

The bodymind interprets what is given to it precognitively. It doesn't create what is given, at least I find it most plausible to think that it doesn't. There are two senses of 'world' here.

Experience exists within the brain. Distal objects exist outside the body. Therefore distal objects (and their properties) do not exist within experience.

The first premise is supported by neuroscience. The second premise is true by definition. The conclusion follows. — Michael

The first premise is not unequivocally supported by neuroscience, it is one interpretation of neuroscientific results.

If all you mean by saying that distal objects are not in the body or brain, well so what? Every child knows that...that's just what is meant by "distal objects".

The way I see it the world is always already interpreted, so we are not going to agree about this.

Our interpetations are constrained by the nature of the world including ourselves, so it's not right to say that we create the world.

No, representing the world to ourselves just is interpreting it. It's a precognitive process, though, not a deliberate act.

:up:

Makes sense.

If I removed the thinking subject then the whole corporeal world would have to go away, since this world is nothing but the appearance in sensibility of, and a kind of presentations of, ourselves as subject. — Critique of Pure Reason, A383

I read that as making the point, since the empirical world appears to us, that without us it would not appear (that is it would not appear to us but it would to other animals). It is not to say that that which appears to us, as distinct from its appearances to us, would not exist without us.

s usual, you, an order-apologist demand certainty or 'determinable' right and wrong. Too bad that that is not the way reality works. You are allowed to demand these things but you will never be realized in that demand. You have to take truth in part on faith. — Chet Hawkins

I don't demand determinable, metaphysical rights and wrongs, I observe that such are impossible.

There are determinable rights and wrong in the everyday empirical context, and that's all I've been pointing out.

You have descended into posturing rhetoric, have offered absolutely no cogent arguments or explanations of your beliefs, and I'm not interested in trying to engage with that kind of approach, so I think we are done here.

I meant that the transcendental can only ever be discursively "known" via ideas (the provenances or aptness of which are indeterminable). And those ideas being essentially dualistic, do not really constitute a knowing, but merely a conceiving, and a blind conceiving at that.

"I" references "self", which makes no sense if there isn't "not self". You cannot identify what is you and what is not, if there isn't anything besides you. It can't be done. Distinctions can only be made with space and time. — Bob Ross

I agree with you and just want to add something about the "it" in 'I don't understand it': it must be something separate from I, and separation is incoherent without reference to either space or time, as others have noted.

My point was crystal clear. — Corvus

And very clearly wrong.