Which is why I've tried, at length, elsewhere, to delineate between "to look", "to see" and "experience"
You look at something with your eyes, experience a representation, which is seen in the mind. — AmadeusD

That is not anything near being the direct realism account, nor is it entailed by it.

No, on second thought you are probably right, as I imagine there would be basic pragmatic forms of life common to all peoples, which are socially, if not culturally, mediated.

cidentally, I tend to think of forms of life hierarchically, as if there’s a multiply nested plurality all within the general human form of life. — Jamal

Would it not be better then to say "human forms of life", since the only common form of life is the basic biological form which, as basic, is not culturally mediated (even if our understanding of it is).

OK, so you don't think the world is presented to us via the senses?

I agree with you that @RusselA does not give an account which is in accordance with common usage and I said as much. I'm not sure if you misread me as saying that the little light we see is Mars representing itself rather than presenting itself.

I was saying rather that we see Mars as it presents itself to the body via light. I agree it is more parsimonious to simply say we see Mars, but I don't see a problem with including a little detail of what we know about the process of seeing.

Also I don't say we see a presentation, the seeing is the presentation.

The way I see it the "critical reflection" you speak about is the practice of phenomenology, not metaphysics (although interestingly as far as I understand it Heidegger equated metaphysics with phenomenology).

Indeed. I'm not arguing this. I'm just saying they are not propositional and are not as clearly beholden to local axioms as a more fully developed linguistic system is. My point was a minor one - that between silence and linguistic 'coherence' lies noise. — Tom Storm

:up: An excellent point!

As the word "house" is a representation of an object in the world, the dot is a representation of the planet Mars. — RussellA

I think it is less confusing to say that the little light you are seeing is Mars presenting itself, appearing, to you. Language may be representative, but seeing is not, and the analogy you present above is inapt.

Of course you can frame this differently, use the word 'representation' in a different sense and say that seeing is representative, but I think that would place you further from common usage, and so would be liable to create confusion.

We are not going to be able to drill down to some "absolute" picture of what's going on—the best we can hope for is to speak plainly and sensibly and in a way less likely to breed confusion.

And in those terms my reply might be something like that this is mis-phrased, and that seeing a thing consists in constructing a representation of that thing. In this phrasing one does not see the representation, one sees the thing. — Banno

:up: Yes, the seeing just is the representation of the thing, which would mean that saying we see representations is equivalent to saying we see seeings, which is nonsense.

No one else has done better. *shrug* I guess people think that perception, which is physically indirect, is direct in discussion. — AmadeusD

Can you give an example of something which is physically direct, and explain what you would mean by "direct" in that context?

Per above, on my account, there is still going to be this obstacle to establishing a direct link between the experience and the object, in any given case denoted to be 'direct' in a half/half system. So, my issue isn't so much 'what hypothesis is the most workable' and which one gets off the ground. — AmadeusD

Under your criterial demand the only "direct link" would be if the object was the experience. If the object is separate from the experience of it, then you would presumably say there is a gulf between them, and that this gulf justifies saying we do not experience objects directly. As others point out it all comes down to what is meant by "direct". I have long thought that experience can be thought about as direct or indirect, depending on the definitions and framing. So, the whole argument is undecidable in any absolute sense and is thus really a non-starter, another confusing artefact of thinking dualistically.

It’s not necessary that a metaphysical outlook be identically shared among members of a community. Each of those diverse humans you have encountered has an interpretive system for construing events which is partially unique to themselves. — Joshs

Yes, I agree and this in part is what I had in mind when I talked about "human diversity".

:ok:

But that, of itself, again doesn't warrant my view being egregious. — javra

When it comes to tendencies, attitudes, dispositions and so on, I have only encountered human diversity, so for me any view which characterizes people as all having the same tendency, attitude or disposition I find egregious.

OK, thanks for explaining.

Non-veridical experiences like hallucinations are not subjectively distinct from veridical experiences, that seem to represent what they actually represent. A dream is as subjectively real as your current experiences. These two are exactly the same to us. — Ashriel

That may be your experience, upon which you are apparently extrapolating and speaking for others. I can tell you that what is an hallucination and what is not has always been clear to me even when peaking on acid. Same with dreams—what I remember of them does not seem anything like waking experience.

Yes. Even if it were only this, that would be enough. But the fact is, if you radically alter the nature of your being, the way that you live, you can begin to see patterns of feedback from people, society, and the universe, that you did not before. To that extent, it can be 'scientific'. As I have said and will continue to say, the human mind is very limited, so to presuppose that there are not further dimensions to understanding is just poor reasoning. Evolution documents their emergence. — Pantagruel

Sure you can interpret things differently if you alter your consciousness, but it doesn't follow from that that anything determinate is the case about the nature of what is actual in contrast to what might seem actual to you in your altered state.

Such things cannot be scientific because to be scientific is to be intersubjectively assessable according to pragmatic criteria which are accepted by all those who wish to eliminate bias, merely subjective beliefs or ides based solely on imagination.

Where have I claimed there are no possible further dimensions to human understanding? You can take your own understanding wherever you like in the sense that you can believe whatever is believable to you. If you believe anything strongly enough it will alter your experience to be sure.

For just one example, were one to witness billiard balls randomly fall through solid table tops or else hover in midair, one would hold a confirmation bias in line with one’s core ontological understanding as to what is in fact possible. Most would assume it to either be stage magic or tricks of the eye precisely due to this confirmation bias. Whether or not miracles can occur is again determined by one’s core ontology’s confirmation bias. — javra

If youve never seen a billiard ball float in the air or fall through tabletops, then you might hold a view as to what is physically possible, and that might form a part of your general worldview as to what seems to be the case. What would you think if I told you I'd seen such things?

I don't think any of this has much to do with metaphysics. What you term "core commitments" I would simply characterize as 'habitual expectations based on what has been encountered and observed in the course of one's life'.

Are the examples I just provided to this very effect rationally or empirically in any way contradictory to - or else do they in any way not cohere to - reality as we all know it? — javra

I don't know, I don't know what examples you are referring to or what "reality as we all know it" refers to.

For one thing, a metaphysical worldview is a strictly conscious construct which is itself pivoted upon - and hence not equivalent to - some core conviction (or core set of convictions to be more precise) regarding the causal, spatial, temporal, etc. nature of the world, the later often enough not being consciously analyzable in fully explicit manners the way that the metaphysical worldview is. — javra

I don't deny that people may have unconscious or implicit metaphysical worldviews, whereas you seem to be doing so. What we variously might think "the causal, spatial, temporal, etc. nature of the world" (if we all have such a view, which is what I disagreed with and thought to be an egregious generalization) is
in my book nothing other than a metaphysical view. It seems we have different ideas about what constitutes a metaphysical view, so it looks like we are bound to disagree. I don't disagree that people generally have some basic orientation or other to the world, but I don't see those orientations as "core commitments" for those who haven't thought about it much.

comes down to an opinion that you can provide no meaningful justification for, outside of “it doesn’t sit well with my own intuitions”. — javra

Can you provide for your contention that people cling to “some core conviction regarding the nature of the world via which we assimilate all novel information"some "meaningful justification" for "outside of “it doesn’t sit well with my own intuitions”"?

Read more carefully what I actually wrote and you might find I never once mentioned that we cling to “metaphysical worldviews” but to “some core conviction regarding the nature of the world — javra

Can you explain the difference?

These are good questions and for me highlight esoteric ideas' reliance on faith (since you could hardly expect, even just based on definition, esoteric ideas to constitute demonstrable propositions). I think it has to be acknowledged that esoteric ideas just as religious faith and adherence to metaphysical views can change one's worldview and consequently experience.

As you've expressed in a post elsewhere last time we chatted, you don't care what I think. All the same:

1) I am speaking for myself: it's my established worldview. (Right up there with you not being a p-zombie.)

2) On what rational or empirical grounds do you affirm that what I previous expressed is "an egregious generalization"? (Hint: that "I don't like it" is not such a justification.) — javra

I don't care what anyone thinks meaning that what I think is most important to me. If you say all people have metaphysical worldviews and cling to them in the grip of confirmation bias I say you are not speaking for yourself but for all people and what you are according to your own argument clinging to is not a metaphysical worldview but a general psychological assessment of human nature.

I think that assessment is an egregious generalization based on my own experience of people. Maybe we simply move and mix in different circles. No empirical or logical grounds can be adduced to support or deny the contention. It comes down to how you see people and whether in this particular connection you see uniformity or diversity.

Does that seem rational? Or is it just more rational than accepting the possibility that we are most likely Boltzmann brains? — Michael

I had already seen the argument and commented on it previously. I like to keep it simple. The Heat Death may be the most favored current scenario, and it may be more rigorously supported than the idea of random particles forming Boltzmann Brains. So I don't think the two necessarily go hand in hand.

If we were Boltzmann brains all bets would be off and none of our theories would have any support. I see that as a simple refutation of the idea. If you don't agree that's fine then we are not going to agree is all. Does it even matter whether we are Boltzmann brains or not? Would it change anything about how you live your life?

Don't bother, your memory of it will be an illusion anyway.

That's just something programmed into my false memories. — Patterner

How do you know that, or even how to understand what I am asking you, if all your memories are false?

Memories are stored, are they not? In the brain, in some physical manner. — Patterner

No, that is a false memory of some knowledge you imagined you had.

Not we. It's just me. The rest of you are false memories. — Patterner

There are many memories of me, whether false or not, and you don't have hardly any of them.

If our scientific models entail that we are most likely Boltzmann brains, and if our scientific models are correct, then we are most likely Boltzmann brains.

If our scientific models entail that we are most likely Boltzmann brains, and if we are not most likely Boltzmann brains, then our scientific models are incorrect. — Michael

Both these sentences above are mere tautologies.

If we are most likely BBs then our scientific theories are most likely incorrect, which means that their entailing that we are BBs is most likely incorrect, the point being that we cannot coherently use scientific theories to draw the conclusion that we are most likely BBs. As far as I can tell, and in the absence of any cogent counterargument to this, that is the end of the story.

We all consciously or unconsciously cling to some form of what Mircea Eliade termed an axis mundi when more abstractly appraised—some core conviction regarding the nature of the world via which we assimilate all novel information, without which we would loose our bearings, around which all of what we interpret to be the world pivots, and which, because of all this, we either implicitly or explicitly consider to be sacred (at the very least in relation to ourselves). — javra

I think this is an egregious generalization—all I can think of to say in response is "speak for yourself".

My belief that it is a worthwhile issue. It is pretty common sense: if several smart(er than me) people work on something, is it not rational to conclude that there is something to it? — Lionino

Certainly, in relation to science or mathematics or any subject where much information has to be incorporated into a coherent understanding of the field. Not so much in relation to philosophy, which is potentially a pursuit for everyone, and the questions are naturally accessible to any intelligent and thoughtful person.

Is a question without a decidable or even satisfying answer worth pursuing? Perhaps is would be better, once one has become aware of and thought about such questions and their possible answers enough to realize they cannot be definitively answered, to move past them.

And do we not come to understand the world through reason? — Lionino

I'd say we come to understand the world via the background presuppositions that underpin human life and reason itself and that understanding may be elaborated and augmented by reason. In any case is not the world presupposed in any attempt to come to understand it?

Is it more rational to believe that an infinite multiverse in which every metaphysical possibility is realized is less probable? — Michael

What determines what is metaphysically possible? Is it merely what is logically possible? Are they the same? is any possible universe governed by logic?

It wasn't quite an argument. You asked me why I think something is worthwhile, I gave one of my reasons why — rather, I agreed that what you said is indeed one of my reasons. — Lionino

You gave it as a justification for your belief.

That is a possible argument against solipsism, that all the body of knowledge produced so far is generated/contained by/in my mind, and yet we struggled with Abstract Algebra 2.
But that is not what the person said, I didn't even understand what he said as it is not clearly written, so that is why I said it is unsuccessful; but there is nothing extraordinary about coming up with symbols for concepts, people make up conlangs all the time. — Lionino

I don't know who you are referring to nor do I understand what you are trying to say in your second sentence.

Questioning is a process that involves reason. Does it presuppose the outside world when we use reason? I don't think so. — Lionino

Reason is nothing without its basic presuppositions, which are not themselves arrived at, or justified by, reason.

If our scientific models entail that we are most likely Boltzmann brains, and if our scientific models are correct, then we are most likely Boltzmann brains. This is a straightforward modus ponens. — Michael

I get that, but if we are BBs then our scientific theories are incorrect; this is straightforward paradox, it has something in common with the "Liar' sentence.

If our scientific theories are correct, we are most likely to be Boltzmann brains.
If we are Boltzmann brains our scientific theories are incorrect.

Do you not see the problem?

You're just doubling down and are still ignoring the fact that if we are BBs our scientific models are incorrect; illusory because based on illusory memories.

A metaphysical position is closely related to a scientific paradigm. To empirically confirm a paradigm is just to tighten up the definitions and boundaries that were formed prior to confirmation . Such validating procedures allow us to identity what it is we are overthrowing when we eventually dump that paradigm in favor of another. But the movement from one paradigm to another is not driven by confirmation. It is driven by a wholesale qualitative reconceptualization of premises, the fabricating of a new world. This does not have to do with what is ‘true’ but with how the world can be organized to make sense in a qualitatively different way. Truth is then a secondary procedure within the newly created frame. — Joshs

I think you are confusing yourself by thinking in terms of paradigms...that's not how science works. In any case I think that way of thinking about it is wrong-headed so there is little point presenting arguments to me in those kinds of terms.

Therefore, either our scientific models are correct and we are most likely Boltzmann brains or we are not most likely Boltzmann brains and our scientific models are incorrect. — Michael

No, you have it backwards, if we are BBs our scientific models are necessarily incorrect (assuming that it would even be possible for BBs to have scientific models, which is extremely questionable), as I already explained.

Then I'll make it clear: I'm not saying that therefore all science is completely wrong and that all the facts may be utterly different than what we believe them to be. — Michael

If we are Boltzmann brains—random quantum fluctuations will false memories—then it stands to reason that all our science is completely wrong because based on false memory. But since it is our science that (purportedly) tells us that we are Boltzman brains and that hence all our science is wrong, why would it be rational to believe such a self-eliminating conclusion? It is precisely this problem that you have so far completely failed to address.

Also, Caroll in your post above seems to be saying that it is only in the unimaginably far future that BBs will arise in any case, so, given that, why is it likely that we are BBs now?

I'm not assuming it. It's what physicists like Boltzmann, Eddington, Feynman, Sean Carroll, Brian Greene, and others say. I'm deferring to their expertise. — Michael

So, an argument from authority then? Even worse, it seems that they are not really saying what you seem to want them to be saying.

I'm closer to saying that there is no metaphysical speculation; it is rather metaphysical imagination. We speculate only about that which might later be confirmed or disconfirmed. Much of metaphysics consists in playing dialectically with language—what if such and such (such and such that is the dialectical opposite of what we actually encounter) is really the case.

For example, we appear to be mortal...but...what if we are really immortal? We appear to be finite intelligences...but... what if there is an infinite intelligence...and further what if that is our real nature? We appear to encounter only the physical...but...what if what appears physical is really mental? And so on.

The problem is we have no idea what the physical really being mental could mean. We have no idea what a disembodied, immortal life could be. We have no idea what an infinite intelligence could be. All these ideas only gain the illusion of having any sense at all insofar as they are dialectical opposites of what does make sense to us. So, it really is all just a case of "pouring from the empty into the void". It may have some poetical value, but philosophical value, not so much.

The problem of induction is that there is no reason to be sure that the future will be like the past, or simply that we can't derive a "will be" from a "has been". We agree on that? — Lionino

Yes, as I said, inductive inferences, unlike valid deductive inferences, are not logically necessary.

If we do, according to your proposal that "something should be thought to be less likely if it is less plausible in light of our experience", the problem of induction dissolves. — Lionino

I don't think so. All we have to go on in order to decide what is more or less likely to happen is prior experience, Is the Sun more or less likely to rise tomorrow? It's really not a question of deductive certainty at all.

I understand what you say about consistency with our past experiences, but in this one case I don't think it applies, since we are questioning the background of our experiences. — Lionino

Questioning the background of our experiences is incoherent, since it presupposes the background of our experiences in the very act of questioning.

For the most part, yes, people who are just as smart as or smarter than me are still arguing about it. And for them it is profession, not hobby. So it leads me to conclude it is not something that we can brush aside easily. — Lionino

For me, that is an argument from authority, which I don't accept, so we are going to disagree on this.

Another, the argument from language is bad, — Lionino

Actually, I think the argument from language(s) makes solipsism most highly implausible. Did you invent the English language and write all the poetry and literature that exists without even being aware of doing it, using many words you don't even know the meaning of.

Did you invent all of mathematics and science, which use countless concepts and theorems you don't even understand, without being aware of having done so? What about all the other languages?

I didn't see what the memory question was. — Lionino

The question wasn't addressed to you, but it was this: apparently the theory of Boltzmann brains entails that our memories are illusory, cannot be trusted; if this is so how could we trust our scientific theories, or even trust that we remember them correctly, or that they were ever really formulated? The other question was as to how distant do your memories have to be to be illusory: a year, a month, a day, an hour, a minute, a second?

That works in practical everyday life. But if we are to go by that, we would simply do away with the problem of induction, for one; we would do away with so many things that are still considered worthwhile in philosophy. Experience is not the goal to end all goals. — Lionino

There is no "problem of induction"; Hume merely showed that induction is not deduction, that inductive inferences are no necessary. All we have to go on is experience, on what other criteria could we ever justifiably decide to place our faith? You might say logic or mathematics, but they don't tell us anything definite about things, except insofar as their pronouncements and predictions are found to obtain.

What are the "so many worthwhile things" you see in philosophy and why do think they are worthwhile? Is it just because they are still around, because some people are still arguing about them?

All the ones I rebutted to and that at the end of the discussion I did not acquiesce to the person's point. — Lionino

You mean all the ones you, in your opinion, successfully rebutted? That isn't helpful at all and you should be able to cite at least one or two of those arguments and explain why you think they didn't stand up to your purported rebuttals. I suspect you think you rebutted them simply because they did not achieve 100% certainty.

Agreed, we cannot be 100% sure of most things, or perhaps any. Though to rule something as less likely we need some successful arguments against it, I am pointing out that many of the arguments raised in this thread are not successful as they seem. — Lionino

The way I see it is that something should be thought to be less likely if it is less plausible in light of our experience, less consistent with that experience, and to my way of thinking solipsism seem way less likely, in fact improbable in the extreme, in light of that experience.

Which arguments in this thread do you see failing and on what basis do you assess them as failures?.

That just begs the question by assuming that our scientific theories show that we are most likely Boltzmann brains, it doesn't explain how a random fluctuation like a Boltzman brain could come up with consistent and coherent scientific theories that show that it is most likely a Boltzmann brain, nor does it answer the questions I posed about memory.

Sure, if you want to add math to the equation, after all what is metaphysics but mental gymnastics — kindred

Gymnastics, like math, is constrained, disciplined, and logical inconsistencies may have poetic value, and that's the way I see metaphysics: as poetry which introduces only novel thoughts in the way of flights of the imagination and multiplies no entities, since the latter belong only to the empirical.