Is indirect realism self undermining?
Indirect realism is probably the most prevalent ontological view in the world today. It goes a little like this:
The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place?
The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place?
Comments (1153)
I understand that.
Are there trees inside the blind person's head that they can see only after activating the biological machinery? If so, then all that is required for seeing trees is activating the biological machinery.
You think color is just in our head, right ?
I'm a scientific realist, not a scientific instrumentalist, if that's what you're getting at.
Colour is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, colour is real.
Pain is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, pain is real.
Apples don't have pain-properties. Trees don't have colour-properties. Fire doesn't have the property of being wet.
I get that. But what can the scientific realist mean ? Indirect realism looks like dualism, so why does math get to poke through the veil of images ?
Math is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, math is real.
Apples don't have math-properties.
That the entities described by our scientific models are real and discovered rather than just instrumentally useful fictions.
As I said before, if you argue for scientific instrumentalism over scientific realism then you might as well abandon direct realism and just be an idealist (or a transcendental idealist à la Kant).
Are apples real ?
I know that. I mean the claim is indeterminate in the context of dualism. I've studied some physics. It's a bunch of math and abstract concepts.
The issue is that you call everything brain activity except math and physics concepts, not explaining why this stuff is truly real but color and smell isn't. I understand there are pragmatic reasons for caring about one aspect of an object rather than another. But I don't see the metaphysical justification for letting math off the hook here.
Personally I think your hand is made of atoms and has a color. But I'm not a dualist. Color is a normative concept, not a immaterial experience in my view. A blind person could infer that an apple is read or that it weighs 230 grams or that it's radioactive from sitting in a bucket of uranium.
No I don't. I claim that the sensations which constitute conscious experience are brain activity. We know this from the fact that we can stimulate the appropriate areas of the brain, such as the occipital lobe, and the subject will see shapes and colours in response to this stimulation.
Isn't indirect realism about a mediating image or consciousness which is not the Real itself ? Presumably created by the nervous system ?
Sensation is the mediation. I am directly aware of feeling pain, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that pain I am indirectly aware of my hand being in the fire. I am directly aware of feeling cold, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that cold I am indirectly aware of the Arctic air surrounding me. I am directly aware of seeing red, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that red I am indirectly aware of the apple on the table.
Yes. Which is basically dualism, it seems to me. You experience sensation which you refer to (which represents or mediates) some forever hidden real.
No, because I'm saying that sensation is a type of brain activity. In the case of visual sensation, that brain activity involves the primary visual cortex.
Indirect realism has (1) images and (2) reality itself, right ?
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/
When I look at the coffee cup there is not a material candidate for the yellow object at which I am looking. Crudely: there is nothing in the brain that is yellow. Sense data, then, do not seem to be acceptable on a materialist account of the mind, and thus, the yellow object that I am now perceiving must be located not in the material world but in the immaterial mind. Indirect realism is committed to a dualist picture within which there is an ontology of non-physical objects alongside that of the physical.
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If there are non-physical objects then they are as much a part of reality as the physical is.
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I don't think it's committed to this. It's committed to a picture within which there are sensations, which are restricted to the brain, and things like apples and chairs. Many indirect realists may also be dualists and believe that sensations are non-physical, but that's not necessary. I'm explaining a non-dualistic indirect realism. I am simply arguing that colours are of the same kind of thing as pain; a type of brain activity, not a property of apples.
Do you believe in consciousness ?
Of course.
I'm not seeing how you get around dualism exactly.
Then everything is strings, which is what string theory argues. I don't understand what you're getting at.
So pain is strings ?
By not arguing that some non-physical substance exists?
If string theory is correct, yes.
Yes.
Is color strings ?
Yes.
So maybe our views aren't so far off.
It's not wacky, it's just wrong. It's like saying that fire is wet. A red colour occurs when the appropriate areas of the occipital lobe are activated. Roses don't have occipital lobes.
Presumably the concept of a string occurs when the brain is tickled just right.
Yes.
You are willing to project strings on all of reality but not color. Yet both are just the brain being tickled.
Does it require having seen red before?
I literally just said above that colour is composed of strings.
No, otherwise nobody could have ever seen red in the first place. At some point in my life I saw red for the first time.
And really it can only be reports of having seen red, I'd think, which is the application of a concept requiring language.
So, the very first time someone sees red, it does not require anything not in the head?
Something is fishy here. According to you, I'm guessing your last post was strings, but I shouldn't be able to see such tiny things. You are basically pretending that meaning doesn't exist. While one might say that the normative realm of meaning depends on strings (or atoms) and maybe even reducible to complex motions thereof, it has to be accounted for in any serious theory.
It seems to me that your view has collapsed into a monism of strings. The representative image is strings and yet represents still more strings. The meaning of your theory is...strings ! Logic must be strings too.
This is like when it became clear yesterday that scientific realism doesn't exist according to scientific realism.
It requires the appropriate areas of the occipital lobe to be activated which does not in principle require anything outside the head (notwithstanding the fact that the brain isn't an isolated system and energy has to come from somwhere).
In fact on this point you might want to look into the notion of Boltzmann brains.
Well, I do not think that seeing red requires language. Our discussion of it does. I'm just baffled by the claim that seeing colours and shapes does not require anything outside the head. That makes no sense. Or better yet, it leads to saying that everything is inside the head.
Does feeling pain require something outside the head?
Of course it does. Phantom limb pain requires once having had a limb. The limb is outside the head. As is any prior object that caused injury to the limb.
The position you're arguing for seems to completely neglect all the events that lead up to the ability to reactivate the biological machinery.
No it doesn't. I accept that we (usually) see red in response to electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of 700nm stimulating the rods and cones in our eyes, which then send signals which are processed by the occipital lobe. I just reject the claim that the red we see is a property of apples. Like the pain we feel, the red we see is "in the head". It's (usually) a response to things outside us, nothing more.
Okay. Then seeing red does require things outside the head.
It doesn't require it. It's just how it usually works. It only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the occipital lobe.
The evolution of seeing red...
You used "activation". I think it's better put as a "reactivation". The difference is one of evolutionary explanation of seeing red. There's no way to check, but I think it's much safer to claim that we could not induce seeing red for the first time with someone who was in the complete dark, had never seen red before, using only the means you're suggesting are required.
Why not? If electromagnetic radiation stimulating the rods and cones in someone's eyes can cause them to see red for the first time then why can't we (with a sufficiently advanced technology) do this artificially? Is there something unique about the electrical signals sent by the photoreceptors such that we cannot in principle replicate them?
In fact we're trying to do exactly that to enable the blind to see.
"Electromagnetic radiation stimulating the photoreceptors can cause someone to see red for the first time" is a gross oversimplification.
It is true that "The world is all that is the case", but is this the world of Indirect or Direct Realism.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein studiously avoids addressing this question.
Good luck in the absence of red things outside the head to play a role.
Mostly noting the similarity between bodies and space, and everything is some small one-dimensional entity traveling through a multitude of dimensions (as the pop accounts would have it --I don't claim to understand such stuff)
For Epicurus he thought there were very fine atoms which made the mind -- so the mind was a composite of atoms, which isn't too far off from the mind being a composite of neurons.
Later:
A fair interpretation of this translation is that Epicurus is a direct realist, in the sense that our perceptions and senses are directly connected to or apprehend real objects outside of the activity of the brain.
Nothing quite like bundles of properties, though, as I understand that. So different than your distinction where there are different properties, or maybe kinds of properties? Like a property-dualism?
That's the highest I went in terms of classes in physics. Very fascinating stuff.
What I found in reflection is that none of the sentences in QM meant something like what I might mean when I'm talking about anything in my life, such as "I went to physical chemistry class today".
Further, QM equations of systems more complicated than hydrogen using this model are not analytically solvable. So there'd be no necessary relation, at least, between these absurdly complicated systems (when we consider them expressed in scientific physical terms) and, say, me walking to physical chemistry class, or my memory of walking to physical chemistry class.
And lastly, absolutely no one really understood all this stuff in their day to day life. So while it's fascinating and reveals unexpected things about reality, it surely can't be the case that it is all there is to reality because we have to grasp reality well enough to have survived this far.
Not so much a refutation as sharing why I am doubtful of scientific realism.
The world is whatever we as philosophers are talking about.
'Deeper' than this or that contingent metaphysical thesis is the necessary or 'primordial' structure of philosophers articulating how it is whatever is the case.
The philosopher's intention to articulate the truth is intrinsically social and worldly in a strategically indeterminate sense. The details are what we philosopher's debate, and we can expect claims to be abandoned, revised, synthesized. Wittgenstein is trying to dig deeper, say something about 'eternal' logical-linguistic structure.
What's strange and yet familiar is that this same world is seen with the help of ('through') so many different pairs of eyes.
We have thinkers like Democritus brilliantly postulating that all the stuff of the world is made of indestructible pieces too tiny for us to see. So Democritus himself is made of such pieces. But this does not make the person or his reasons an illusion under which atoms hide. A tree is 'made of' leaves and branches, but the tree is no less real because we can consider it as a unity.
The redness of an apple is a property of that apple within an unshattered lifeworld that includes norms for the application of concepts. Some people mistakenly (or imprudently) insist that 'atoms and void' are on some separate and deeper and realer plane of existence like a substrate. But this forces us into a confused dualism and a reification of consciousness. Our concept of atoms-and-void in the normative realm is somehow supposed to also be radically other than concept.
Also, even 'private experience' happens within the world, as if in a room that only a particular room can access. This is because we include it in our inferences (folk psychology i the manifest image.) We explain a divorce in terms of a headache.
If one looks for meaning in terms not only of use but more specifically in inferential use (normatively governed), then all entities are 'obviously' in one and the same world.
The world is that which is the case. This ineluctably minimal concept of world is that which philosophers can be right or wrong about. It's the apriori target of claims. To deny this is to tell me I am wrong about something -- about what is the case ---which is only to support my point.
I suggest that we look at what the philosophical situation always already accepts (without noticing it) and work outward from that.
I think the focus on sight is a detriment to the discussion. So forget sight for the moment and consider the other senses. It's fine to say that we taste apples, but it's also correct to say that the tastes we taste are not properties of the apple. Tastes are a neurological response to stimulation of the gustatory cells by the chemicals in the apple. We might want to talk about apples having a taste even when not being tasted, but that is properly interpreted in the counterfactual sense of what it would taste like were we to taste it, not in the sense that it has in its own right some material property which is a property of taste. And the claim that there is a right or wrong way for an apple to taste is false. It's not right that sugar tastes sweet. It's just the case that, given the way the human body is, sugar tastes sweet to most humans in most situations. To a different organism (or a human with an uncommon body) sugar might not taste sweet, and that is no more or less correct.
The same with how an apple smells, and how an apples a feels, and how an apple sounds (were it to make a noise).
And the same with how an apple looks. Sight isn't special. The visual characteristics of an apple (such as colour) are a neurological response to stimulation of the photoreceptor cells by light, not properties of the apple. It's not right that apples look red (or green, depending on the apple). It's just the case that, given the way the human body is, apples look red to most humans in most situations. To a different organism (or a human with an uncommon body) apples might not look red, and that is no more or less correct.
But do people really share the same belief objects whether agreeing or disagreeing about the truth of a proposition? For how can linguistic conventions decide what the object of a proposition is?
If you accept that the Earth isn't flat, then you presumably accept that a flat Earth cannot be the physical cause of a Flat-Earther's beliefs. In which case, how and in what sense can he be said to be referring to the Earth?
When you interpret a flat earther to be speaking about 'our earth', are you claiming to have knowledge about the speaker's beliefs, intentions, mental state, circumstances and so on? or are you merely referring to what convention says about the speaker's verbal behaviour?
The norms of linguistic convention are certainly correlated to facts about the world, for otherwise nobody would ever trust each other's remarks. But can this justify elevating the status of convention to the ground or justification of meaning? For don't our conventions often mislead and betray us about the facts of truth and meaning?
Our conventions continually evolve, precisely because they continually fail us in some ways. I think it's important to call them norms to emphasize their use. I appeal to norms in order to challenge them. I play some norms against other norms. Think of Kinsey offending sex norms by appealing to scientific norms. Think of an atheist when it was riskier to be one offending community religious norms while protected by the norms of individual freedom and rationality.
It'll be hard to understand me if you stick to a representationalist semantics. I like inferentialism, which I connect to something like neorationalism, (resource linked earlier in the thread if you are interested.)
I think what you say makes sense --- within your framework which I don't share.
Quoting Michael
To me red is a concept that's applied according to certain norms. Saying the apples look red sounds to me like dualism, as if one peels off the redness and leaves the real apple behind.
I've tried to summarize my metaphysics in a new discussion ( I invite you to join.) Our conversation has been great for me, by the way.
I embrace a flat ontology, no dualism. I lean toward understanding consciousness as just the world for a 'discursive' self. So consciousness is not its own thing. It's just the being of the world, which an organism is aware of with the help of eyes and noses, etc. But even dreams of organisms are in the world. We can talk of anger or any entity X as long as it's inferentially linked to all other entities.
In case it helps, I don't think of words like 'sweet' getting their meaning from this or that quale. Instead concepts are norms, even if in some sense they are aimed at quale (inferentially linked to 'quale.')
Here's an alternative view of meaning.
The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, “propositional” content, in the philosopher’s jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasons—that is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.
...
Pragmatism in general is the claim that pragmatics is methodologically, conceptually, and explanatorily prior to semantics—that one should understand the meaning or content expressed by linguistic locutions in terms of their use. The later Wittgenstein, who counseled “Don’t look to the meaning, look to the use,” is a pragmatist in this sense (though he didn’t use that term). Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising one’s authority to make oneself responsible.
Understanding someone’s utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they said—as well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.
It's no different to saying that apples taste sweet.
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Then how are we able to disagree on how an apple tastes?
And how does the person with synesthesia come to describe numbers as having colours, given that nobody else in his language community uses colour vocabulary that way?
A flat-earther would be committed to the implications of their view. So one could ask them what happens if one keeps going West forever.
We can look at what statements are accepted as premises and also at what inferences are tolerated. Concepts get their meanings from the claims they are used in in this approach.
I agree that everyday language is very squishy. I probably shouldn't emphasize the anti-dualism too much, because I can assimilate a folk-psychology of what the apple tastes like to Suzy. But the meaning of the-apple's-taste-for-Suzy does not get its meaning from a quale. I say instead that it gets its meaning inferentially. 'Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting, so she threw it out of the car.'
What does the word "disgusting" mean in the sentence "Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting, so she threw it out of the car"?
Fair point. Hopefully addressed above.
In my view, concepts are not semantic atoms. They get their meanings from the claims that include them.
Which inferences are allowed ?
To me that's central.
[ Also which premises are allowed ? ]
To make a claim is to assume a responsibility.
Ethics is first philosophy.
That's odd, because my attacks on conventionalism are precisely an attack on representationalism, including the idea that conventions tell us about what speakers mean.
If meaning is inferential, then the references of a speakers utterances are strongly identified with the local and proximal causes of the speakers utterances, and only weakly identified with distal causes that perfuse the convention the speaker is using in an optional capacity.
How do you reconcile your commitment to inferential semantics with your apparent claim to know the propositional content of speakers utterances?
1. Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting
2. Suzy threw the apple out of the car
We should be able to make sense of the meaning of 1) without reference to 2). Especially as there are any number of reasons that can explain 2):
3. Suzy thought the apple smelled disgusting so she threw it out of the car
4. Suzy thought the apple felt disgusting so she threw it out of the car
5. Suzy thought the apple looked disgusting so she threw it out of the car
6. Suzy is sexually aroused by littering so she threw the apple out of the car
Or even:
7. Suzy thought the apple tasted disgusting but she doesn't like to litter so she didn't throw it out of the car
How an apple tastes (or smells or looks) to Suzy is one thing, and her throwing it out of the car is a different thing entirely.
And I would say that how an apple tastes (or smells or looks) to Suzy concerns what's going on in her head (specifically, with her brain).
I claim that meaning is public. Claims don't represent claimant's meaning-as-hidden-stuff.
Quoting sime
'Content' sounds representational again. The point is to look at which inferences tend to be accepted. Let me emphasize that these norms are 'liquid', unfinished, an infinite task.
:up:
Yes !
So it's no single inference that gives 'disgusting' its meaning. It's all possible inferences involving claims involving 'disgusting.'
I think you missed the point. There's no inference that gives "disgusting" it's meaning. The meaning of "the apple tastes disgusting" has nothing to do with whether or not Suzy throws the apple out of the car.
I think Wittgenstein has already made a good case against that kind of representationism.
Chatbots are the nail in the coffin.
Well, I think he didn't. As I asked above, how does the person with synesthesia come to describe numbers as having colours, given that nobody else in his language community uses colour vocabulary that way?
I very much disagree. I don't think one can found meaning on private experience. Clearly bots can learn the structure of our language.
How does a heretic decide that God is love or tolerates incest ? We can postulate causes, and we'll need premises and inferences to do so.
I'll rephrase it.
If Wittgenstein is right then the person with synesthesia wouldn't describe numbers as having colours, given that his language community doesn't use colour vocabulary that way.
The person with synesthesia does describe numbers as having colours.
Therefore, Wittgenstein is wrong.
I don't accept that inference.
I think we can include an entity like synesthesia, but its meaning will be the role it plays in claims in inferences.
Synesthesia is the perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, e.g. seeing colours when sound waves stimulate the chochlea.
This common sense, scientific understanding is far more believable than the Wittgensteinian account you're pushing.
Yes. The key thing is that concepts of internal entities are still public norms. If Suzy claims to have synesthesia, then, all other things being equal, we'd expect her to be able to give an example.
Claims commit claimants to the implications of their claims. Selves are expected to avoid contradictions in the set of claims for which they are currently responsible. We can get lots of milage from this, I think.
Putting aside what privacy means, there are two very distinct ways of interpreting that claim.
A. Private Language is False.
This is a semantic claim . According to this interpretation, private language is a thinkable possibility that is nevertheless false in either theory or in practice. Often this interpretation assumes conventionalism about meaning, whereupon public convention is believed to undermine a speaker's ability to mean what he wants. Those who hold this view often attack a speaker for talking about "private language".
B. "Private Language" is Nonsense.
This is an ontological or meta-semantic claim. According to this interpretation, whatever might be called a "Private Language " is actually "public" as a matter of tautology. According to this interpretation, which makes no semantic claims, a speaker is free to say and mean anything he wants, because the act of speaking is always understood as referring to something that is happening in the world of the speaker, either via direct acquaintance with the speaker as in the case of "qualia", or indirectly with the speaker via some causal theory of reference. In both cases, the speaker is interpreted as referring to something true that is nevertheless "public", even in the case of "qualia".
Which claim are you making?
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So do you agree that social norms are generally a terrible way of inferring anything about an individual's behaviour?
The key thing is when the person with synesthesia talks about numbers having colours he's referring to some characteristic of his conscious experience, i.e. his neurological response to certain stimulation.
I view philosophers as imposing themselves on their community's rational norms --necessarily in terms of those norms. Following Brandom, I focus on which inferences are treated as valid. I then look for the meaning of concepts within the inferential relationships of claims involving those concepts.
Ethics is first philosophy.
Claims, not concepts, are semantic 'atoms.'
To make a claim is to make a commitment.
I radically disagree.
Social norms govern inferences in the first place. The situation is liquid enough, however, that an individual philosopher can get a new inference accepted / treated as valid. --- typically by using inferences which are already so treated along with uncontroversial premises.
I don't see a problem with reference, but the reference is not the meaning. The concept is not some conventional tag on a physical or psychological entity.
To refer to an entity is commit oneself in a certain way. If I say that X is a round, I ought not say that X is a square. I should not contradict myself.
But an object is the kind of thing that can't contradict itself ( squareness excludes roundness ).
Fundamental in principle, deduced and proved, in 1787.
My point from the start has only been that words like "red", "sweet", and "pain" refer to some characteristic of conscious experience, not to some property of the apple or fire.
I would still say that the apple is red. The point of 'nothing is hidden' (for me) is a rejection that everyday reality is a kind of appearance or paintjob on some Real that hides beneath.
I understand that we tend to explain something like the perception of redness in terms of the brain. That's fine. But the concept red tends to be applied to the objects. Since concepts are norms, I'd just appeal to how we tend to use the concept.
If this means “the apple looks red” or “the apple appears red” then I agree.
Quoting plaque flag
Applied wrongly. It’s the naive realist fallacy. The characteristics of conscious experience are falsely projected onto external stimuli. Much like in the case of phantom limb syndrome where a particular feeling is falsely projected onto an empty area of space. This is the illusion of conscious experience. It seems as if it extends beyond the body, which is physically impossible.
There's something iffy here. What is this illusion of conscious experience ? Are we back to dualism ?
Why is conscious experience not real ? If it's (as you say ) made of strings/atoms, etc. ?
By convention also : atoms and void ! Fascinating this willingness to treat shape as real and so much else as not real...geometric-platonistic bias ? Why not the nose for the one true access to the Real ? Ah because we need eternal objects...and smells won't stay put.
The characteristics of conscious experience create the illusion that they extend beyond the body. It seems as if the red colour I see a property of some external world stimulus, but it isn't. It seems as if my amputated arm is still there and hurting, but it isn't.
Quoting plaque flag
It is real.
What is an illusion ? And why isn't it real ? Why does the redness that sure seems to stick on the apple not 'really' there ?
Given that society rarely agrees upon anything and constantly changes its mind, not to mention the ever-changing customs of isolated Robinson Crusoes who have no access to society, I can't see what "social norms governing inferences" amounts to, nor do I see the ultimate relevance of social norms with regards to inferential semantics.
Do you mean that remark descriptively in the non-controversial general sense that philosophers are often influenced by their society, or do you mean it in the controversial prescriptive sense that philosophers ought to align with the prejudices of their society, because society gets to define what truth is, or that society must know better?
Even if that redness is causally connected to the brain, I don't see why you need to put it in the brain.
It's a characteristic of conscious experience, and conscious experience doesn't extend beyond the brain. Unless you want to argue for some non-physical mind that has some connection to the brain but ultimately reaches beyond it and out into the world?
Because you don't understand social norms governing inferences, I'm going to write a poem now about Frosty the Snowman (with help from Google's Bard.)
[i]Frosty the Snowman,
Could dance and he could sing,
And he loved to play,
In the winter snow,
With all the children of the town.
Frosty the Snowman,
Was a friend to all,
And he brought joy,
To everyone he met,
Until the day he melted away.[/i]
Quoting sime
Given !
Underestimate norms granted for take don't or semantic.
I relate to the sense I think we all have of being behind our eyes. I also think awareness requires a functioning brain. But the redness of that distant apple is just as intuitive.
You call that experience of distant redness an illusion. What is this illusion ? How can the illusion, trapped in the brain, be of something red at a distance ? And why would shape not also be an illusion ?
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In order to assert anything about consciousness we must be able to access it. If we have an indirect access to whatever that is that is not consciousness, then it seems we have a direct access to consciousness by comparison. In this set up consciousness is a real illusion which is indirectly related to whatever it is that is outside of consciousness, while consciousness itself is direct.
For what is consciousness direct? What is on the other side of conscious experience such that the real illusion is a direct relationship, and the real whatever is outside of the illusion is an indirect relationship?
How does phantom limb syndrome work? I don't know how it happens, I just know that it happens.
Or as a more ordinary example, there is an apparent depth in flat images, e.g when watching TV. Various pixels on a screen being lit up in the right way creates the illusion of one person being behind another. This is even more evident in the case of "3D" films. It seems as if things are reaching out of the screen, but they're not.
Reactivated neural pathways in spite of no longer being complete. A consequence of the largely autonomous central nervous system simply doing it's thing in spite of its having lost most of the input mechanisms of those pathways.
Neural pathways are not just in the brain.
May have something to do with neuroplasticity as well(the biological machinery repairing itself by virtue of using different structures than before to perform some task/function that was once performed by the missing structures).
Severely damaged nerves can do weird things. I nearly cut off the end of my thumb once. Dr said that I was very unikely to recover much feeling in the part beyond the laceration due to the nerves being completely severed. Years later, for a brief time, I experienced odd pains in that area, despite there not having been anything external to me playing a role.
I don't think that in reality you are a Direct Realist, but someone who has the position that the world exists fundamentally in language. Perhaps a Wittgensteinian approach. This is what all the evidence points to. You say i) The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics ii) that what really matters are linguistic norms and iii) "to see the tree is more usefully understood as a claim to "I see the tree".
For the Direct Realist, the world we see around us is the real world itself. Things in the world are perceived immediately or directly rather than inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence.
As you say "A tree is 'made of' leaves and branches, but the tree is no less real because we can consider it as a unity", something the Indirect Realist would agree with, in that we have the tree as a concept in the mind. But the Direct Realist is also saying that this tree exists in the world exactly as we perceive it in our minds.
Using Wittgenstein as a starting position, from the Tractatus
1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things
Things in the external world are not static but change with time. For example, the life cycle of a tree has six main stages: seed, sprout, seedling, sapling, adult tree, and decline into coarse woody debris.
The world is all that is the case, and the world is the totality of facts. Facts are states of affairs that obtain in the world and about which we can make true propositions.
The sapling becomes a tree, but the process isn't instantaneous. It requires time for one fact to change into a different fact.
At an earlier moment in time, there is the fact that the sapling is short and we can say "the sapling is short" is true. At a later moment in time there is the fact the tree is tall and we can say "the tree is tall" is true. But there is an intermediary period when neither fact obtains, the fact that the sapling is short doesn't obtain, and the fact that the tree is tall doesn't obtain.
If Direct Realism was true, and we directly perceive things in the world as they are, then every observer will agree about the moment when the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact in the world changes into a different fact.
But we know that different observers will make different judgements as to the moment the sapling changes into a tree, when one fact changes into another fact over an extended period of time.
My question to the Direct Realist is, if all observers are directly observing the same facts in the external world, then why do different observers make different judgements about the moment when one fact changes into a different fact.
Is there no distinction to be drawn and maintained between a direct realist and a naive one?
:yikes:
Could you rephrase this question by dropping "facts" and "external world" out of it?
The world is much more than language, yes, but I have to use language to reason about it --- and language discloses / articulates / shapes the world in certain ways. I walk into a men's restroom, not just some room. We largely live in our symbols.
Quoting RussellA
People can disagree about the world and be wrong about the world, but they are seeing and talking about the world and not their images of it.
Now one can invent a weird language of internal images, and physicists have talked of phlogiston and ether (both eventually abandoned as useless), so it's not a matter of wrong or right but of better or worse.
:up:
This is the dualism I've been mentioning. The given is the image of the hidden.
But I say it's all on the same inferential plane, has to be to make sense.
One reason why and/or how is because each person brings their own worldview along. They each have their own sets of thoughts and beliefs about themselves and/or the world around them. It is through these respective worldviews that people 'see' the world. One's pre-existing belief system largely mediates how one comes to terms with the world and what happens in it(and in them). There are all sorts of preconceived notions at work in each of them, and these preconceived notions can and do influence the way the events are taken into account while being witnessed. Thus, any differences in testimony about what happened is often due to the differences in worldviews.
Eye-witness testimony has also been proven to be quite unreliable at times. It does not follow from the fact that different people have different accounts of what happened that they did not all watch the same set of events unfolding in real time.
Correct me if I am wrong about your view :
Apples aren't red, because redness is in the brain.
============================================
But why do you believe in the apple in the first place ?
Why should you believe that shapes exist outside of the brain ?
Why believe in 3D space at all ?
Why believe that elementary particles (strings, etc.), mere ideas of the imagination, are not only outside the brain but 'under' all appearance as their truth and reality ?
If everything is image (mediated), it's all 'really' in the brain.
I'm sure there is, but it is probably very subtle.
According to Wikipedia Naive Realism:
In philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, naïve realism (also known as direct realism, perceptual realism, or common sense realism) is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are.
Quoting creativesoul
I was trying to incorporate Wittgensteins 1.1 "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" in the Tractatus
By external world I mean whatever exists external to any mind. The IEP uses the term in their article Locke: Knowledge of the External World
Yeah, I should probably not continue here. My own position rejects both direct and indirect realism as it's currently defined. That is due to the stark ontological differences in what constitutes thought and belief, and subsequently... a mind.
:up:
Yes. We might use the metaphor of a distorting lens. I might claim that you are biased, and you might claim that I am. But we look at apples, not at images of apples. We intend and talk about apples, not images of apples. (Of course we can talk about images of apples as philosophers debating indirect versus direst realism.)
:up:
Yes, and we can see it the grammar of the words. It's a different account of the same events. All of the accounts intend the same 'object.' But I'm just making conceptual norms explicit in saying so.
I've called it the worldly fingerprint placed upon each of us by virtue of natural language acquisition/adoption. That's another matter in its own right, and would be too far tangent to be considered on topic.
If all Direct Realists are immediately and directly seeing the same world, on what grounds can they disagree about what they see.
I can understand Indirect Realists disagreeing about the world, as they are not seeing it immediately and directly, but are dependent on personal interpretation.
Different positions in space, different sense organs, different personalities. The 'directness' is the absence of intermediaries and not (and never was) the assumption of an identical response ('experience'). Two people can see the same apple differently. Joe is nearsighted. Jane is colorblind. They don't see individual images of the apple directly. They both see the apple directly, but differently.
Well, this is where my actual beliefs differ from the more limited argument I've been making.
I believe in the existence of objects other than myself and that these objects have a causal effect on my experience. I am unsure as to whether or not I can say anything more about these objects than this, and so unsure as to whether or not I am something of a transcendental idealist à la Kant. Tentatively, I am a scientific realist. I think that something like the Standard Model (or string theory) might describe what Kant would call "noumena".
Given that the entities described by our scientific theories are unlike the entities that appear to us, I do not think it correct to say that the everyday objects we are familiar with (chairs and tables and apples) are reducible to the entities described by our scientific theories. On this account I consider myself something of an antirealist (with respect to everyday objects).
So strictly speaking it's not that I believe in the existence of a perception-independent apple that causes me to see a particular shape and colour but that I believe in the existence of perception-independent entities that cause me to see a red, round apple, and that our talk of these perception-independent entities as being the red, round apple is a pragmatic narrative à la fictionalism.
As to why I believe in the existence of objects other than myself, I suppose it's a parsimonious explanation for the occurrence and regularity of conscious experience. It seems to be more reasonable than solipsism.
OK, that was quite helpful.
I guess the delicate issue is whether the current scientific image (or any possible scientific image) makes sense as the Real which causes experiences of red apples. To me that 'image' would (in this context) just be more appearance, albeit organized conceptually in an impressive way.
I used to agree more with Kant, so I can relate. It's a tricky issue in any case.
All I am doing is interpolating from my own experiences whether or not the sentence "We are seeing the same object" meets my personal criteria of assertability.
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf
By giving a causal account of how ideas get formed in the mind as the result of the external world
pouring into us through the senses we can arrive at an epistemological account of how these ideas can be put together in knowledge. Causation here yields justification, or in Rorty’s description, “a quasi-mechanical account of the way in which our immaterial tablets are dented by the material world will help us know what we are entitled to believe” (1979, 143). The history of seventeenth century philosophy forwarded in Mirror has it that the legacy of modern philosophy is a Cartesian-Lockean metaphor in which minds are construed as representing machines whose units of representation are ideas.
...
What Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs. A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as “the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge” (Sellars 1956, 77). This led Sellars to the point that there is no way to draw a direct link between the supposedly immediate (or non-conceptual) givens of perception and the mediated (or conceptualized) takings of knowledge. For perceptual inputs (e.g., sensations) to be in any way relevant to processes of justification and hence of knowledge they must already be conceptual in form so as to occupy some place in what Sellars called “the logical space of reasons” (1956, 76). Sellars’s claim, upon inspection, is a rather modest one: every conclusion in belief stands in need of
reasons as supporting premises. Modesty, of course, is often a high virtue in philosophy. And in any event, its appearance can be deceptive. In this case, a modest point calls into question the very project of epistemological foundationalism. For what Sellars is suggesting is that as-yet-unconceptualized
perceptual inputs cannot play a determinative role in justificatory practices involving classificatory concepts. The Jamesian “blooming buzzing confusion” of raw sensation may find its way into our experience on occasion but it cannot play any direct justificatory role in so doing.
...
Perceptions are of course conceptually classifiable but not for that reason justifiers of any particular conceptual classification. Every perceptual given is always amenable to a multiplicity of conceptual takings – this is Quine’s thesis of ontological relativity or inscrutability of reference, made memorable in his example of the ‘Gavagai-Rabbit’ translation (Quine 1960, §7ff.). It follows that concepts by themselves do not yield justifications. Concepts are not, merely in virtue of being concepts, justifiers for any other concepts, even though (as Sellars showed) only a conceptually-laden belief can justify a conceptuallyladen belief. Quine’s claim also seems rather modest. But the view it leads to is the radical divorce of epistemology and ontology which follows from the insight that, as Rorty put it, “there is no such thing as direct acquaintance with sensedata or meanings which would give inviolability to reports by virtue of their correspondence to reality, apart from their role in the general scheme of belief”
(1979, 202). Rorty takes Quine to show that perceptions do not enter into us one at a time, but rather as part of complex webs of theory and practice such that any perception is always bundled together with many other perceptions as well as many other beliefs.
I directly see the apple, and you directly see the apple, but the apple I see is different to the apple you see. My private experience of the apple is different to yours.
I directly see the colour red, and you directly see the colour red, but the colour red I see is different to the colour red you see. My private experience of the colour red is different to yours.
Then how can there be a public language about apples and the colour red if our private experiences of apples and the colour red are different.
Concepts are public. Concepts are norms. How else could you even ask me that question with a sense of being entitled to an answer ? A tacit commitment to the philosophical situation is prior to every other issue. I touch on that in my new thread, if you want to join.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14264/nothing-is-hidden
https://philpapers.org/archive/KOORLT.pdf
Rorty’s argument was that the Quine-Sellars combine poses an enormous problem for a representationalist empiricism which makes use of two claims that seem unproblematic but turn out to be enormously puzzling once submitted to scrutiny: the first claim being that simple ideas come into the mind in the form of nonpropositional awarenesses, the second claim being that these ideas once in
the mind somehow get converted into something that can stand in inferential relations to propositions in the mind. Lockean ideas had always tried to play the double role of representations of an outside world and justifications for other inner ideas. But explaining how ideas can in fact do this double work is a task that may be impossible. Even the most obvious counterexamples stemming from cultural variance, perceptual illusion, and even just plain ignorance are enormously difficult to explain away. The rain outside may cause me to believe that the Gods are conspiring against me, but that belief is not therefore justified, especially if my audience for justification in this case is a group of evidence obsessed meteorologists, or perhaps neurosis-analyzing psychiatrists). Sellars helps Rorty show that nothing except a conceptually-structured belief can count as a justification for another belief (thus the physical fact of rain by itself justifies nothing) – only concepts are capable of being justifiers. Quine helps Rorty show that our being caused to believe something does not for that reason alone justify that belief (thus the rain causing me to further faith the conspiracy by itself justifies nothing) – no concept by itself can be an unimpeachable justifier. Thus taken together, as Rorty showed us to take them, Sellars and Quine break the link between causation and justification at the heart of modern epistemology.
How have (or could) you establish “my private experience of apple is different to yours”?
Individual differences in visual science: What can be learned and what is good experimental practice?
What Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” helped Rorty to show was that a belief can be shown to be justified (or unjustified) only on the basis of another belief or set of beliefs.
The Direct Realist argues that they perceive immediately or directly things in the world.
If a belief can be justified only on the basis of another belief, and beliefs only exist in the mind, then there can be no connection of any kind between the mind and the world. This is more an argument for Idealism than Realism.
A belief cannot be shown to be justified (or not) on the basis of what Sellars mocked in his essay as “the unmoved movers of empirical knowledge” (Sellars 1956, 77).
There is a causal chain from the external world through my senses to my mind
When I see the colour red, I don't believe that I see the colour red, I know without doubt that I see the colour red. I don't need to justify my belief as it is not a belief in the first place.
IE, the Indirect Realist doesn't need to justify what they perceive through their senses.
True, its an assumption, but a reasonably strong assumption.
But if I was a South African cab driver and you were an Icelandic doctor, the chances that our private experiences of apples are exactly the same is highly remote.
From https://scitechdaily.com:
It’s a question that arises with virtually every major new finding in science or medicine: What makes a result reliable enough to be taken seriously? The answer has to do with statistical significance — but also with judgments about what standards make sense in a given situation. The unit of measurement usually given when talking about statistical significance is the standard deviation, expressed with the lowercase Greek letter sigma (?). The term refers to the amount of variability in a given set of data: whether the data points are all clustered together, or very spread out.
I probably have a six sigma level of confidence.
You are forgetting uncontroversial or undisputed basic statements. We might all believe the same witness, and reason from her testimony, to justify some more complicated claim.
Personally I wouldn't put beliefs 'in the mind.' Language is worldly. It is marks and noises of a certain kind.
Quoting RussellA
Do you see claims through your sense organs ? I think not. You don't bother to justify claims to yourself unless you feel doubt. Others may or may not expect justification.
That concepts are norms isn't the same as saying that concepts are public. These are two distinct semantic claims.
I have only had a precursory glance at Brandom's introduction to inferentialism but I suspect you might be misreading, or at the very least dramatically oversimplifying his views, which to a large extent is understandable given this is an abbreviated public forum space where people speak with highly constrained time and space and without knowing of each others prior knowledge and agendas.
In Chapter 5, "A Social Route From Reasoning to Representing" , Brandom makes generally non-controversial arguments that language serves as a medium of 'representation' in the context of social norms.
So, when speaking in the context of language being a medium for representation , then qualia - which by definition is said to refer to only what an individual speaker could know - gets the chop.
But what Brandom doesn't do in that passage is insist that meaning is essentially representational or that meaning and knowledge are necessarily public affairs. Indeed, that interpretation of Brandom would contradict the very idea that Brandom was an non-representational semanticist at heart. I suspect that Brandom, much like Wittgenstein, makes no negative semantic, metaphysical or mentalistic claims regarding the meaning or existence of "private language". I suspect that all he means, is that private concepts aren't being used representationally and hence beetles in boxes aren't an extensional aspect of the social representations inculcated by social norms. Nevertheless Beetles do matter when it comes to the perspectival and idiosyncratic aspects of language that are relative to each individual who must individually adapt their mother tongue in a bespoke inferential fashion to match their own worlds; such beetles are necessary, but lie beyond the aperspectival limitations of social norms and communication.
i.e. an idiolect.
Either the public body is a set of individuals, meaning that concepts only exist in the minds of the individuals making up the public body, or, the public body supervenes on a set of individuals - a non-reductive physicalism - meaning that concepts exist in the public body and not in the minds of the individuals.
As I personally find non-reductive physicalism hard to believe, my belief is that concepts can only exist in the minds of the individuals.
Quoting plaque flag
:up:
I think it's cool that you looked into Brandom. I've put a fair amount of time into his work, but of course I've only used a few key concepts of his, for my own purposes. I don't feel constrained by my influences, naturally.
Quoting sime
To me private concepts is an oxymoron, but I'm open to something like a continuum. Philosophers try impose upon current norms, usually by appealing to norms which are not currently being challenged. They want an eccentric candidate inference or world-disclosing metaphor to become widely recognized. If one thinks concepts get their meanings from claims, then concept modification will often involve using familiar concepts in new inferences, thereby mutating the concepts. We also have an expressive enough language to talk about concepts directly, and such claims might be accepted as explication (obvious upon hearing, etc.)
I personally avoid talking about 'pure' or 'internal' meaningstuff which is contained in expressions. I suggest that equivalence classes of expressions are a nice alternative to the idea of this meaningstuff. Different sentences can be used for pretty much the same purpose, so they have the same meaning (as use). Eccentric uses are advertised and defended by philosophers for admission as standard uses.
Some hold that idiolects in this sense do not exist or that the notion is useless or incoherent, but are nonetheless happy to use the word “idiolect” to describe a person’s partial grasp of, or their pattern of deviance from, a language that is irreducibly social in nature.
I'm happy with the bold part. In fact that's probably all of us as individuals. But we push toward a center. The philosopher as such manifests a truthbringing intention. I'm not sure that's the best way to put it, but there's a motive, a push, a project. It is deeply social, essentially outward and self-transcending.
Just as a coherent self is an infinite task, so is the community's co-articulation of the world.
Hegel denies the intelligibility of the idea of a set of determinate concepts (that is, the ground-level concepts we apply in empirical and practical judgment) that is ultimately adequate in the sense that by correctly applying those concepts one will never be led to commitments that are incompatible according to the contents of those concepts. This claim about the inprinciple instability of determinate concepts, the way in which they must collectively incorporate the forces that demand their alteration and further development, is the radically new form Hegel gives to the idea of the conceptual inexhaustibility of sensuous immediacy. Not only is there no fore-ordained “end of history” as far as ordinary concept-application in our cognitive and practical deliberations is concerned, the very idea that such a thing makes sense is for Hegel a relic of thinking according to metacategories of Verstand rather than of Vernunft.
All that he thinks the system of logical concepts he has uncovered and expounded does for us is let us continue to do out in the open, in the full light of self-conscious explicitness that lets us say what we are doing, what we have been doing all along without being able to say what was implicit in those doings.
Concepts don't exist in the head. They exist in the movements of the body, including the movements of mouth and hand and all the [ other kinds of ] action that claims are used to justify, explain, predict.
This is one of the problems with indirect realism. It's dualist ! You are trapped in your head. But I say we perform conceptuality, primarily in the time dimension, for we are the timebinding primate. What Hegel calls Geist ('spirit') is just complicated patterns in the Nature from which it emerged. What is called consciousness is, in my opinion, better understood as the being of the world for a [discursive] self. A 'conscious' person sees the world and not immaterial meanings and sensations, etc.
To me anyway that makes more sense, but I didn't start here.
If my belief that it will rain tomorrow isn't in my mind, how can I know that this is my belief.
Quoting plaque flag
[i]The first claim being that simple ideas come into the mind in the form of nonpropositional awarenesses
The second claim being that these ideas once in the mind somehow get converted into something that can stand in inferential relations to propositions in the mind[/i]
As regards claim one, true. I can see many things without knowing its name.
As regards claim two, partly true. Some things I see I do know its name.
Now that you mention it, I think beliefs would largely (maybe usually ) function inferentially in the usual way of folk psychology. A guy on LSD jumps off a building, because (we speculate) he believed he could fly --even without articulating that belief. But we articulate in our attempt to explain.
Note that we attribute beliefs to dogs and cats too.
If you claimed to believe P, people could still argue you were lying. You might fear that you are lying to yourself. Or you could be very confident, say it out loud, etc. So it's a rich issue.
What is needed is claims, propositions, premises --- though classification will often lead in that direction.
Where in my body is my concept of open government.
Quoting plaque flag
If trapped in my head, how have I managed to survive X years in a harsh, brutal and unforgiving world.
Look in the dimension of time.
Can you summarize that concept in a sentence ?
Imagine a photograph taken of a dancer. It's just a frozen pose and not the dance. We are the most intensely temporal creatures we are aware of.
That's why (I claim) you aren't trapped in your head with immaterial meanings and imaginary apples. [ Or at least I argue for direct realism. ]
I think I'm tracking -- you're not a dualist in terms of substance or properties. Maybe a simpler way to put it: some entities which we speak about exist, and some entities which we speak about don't.
And upon coming to find out strange things like the dress, or the various other phenomena which have been mentioned to point out a difference in individual experience, one has a reason to doubt that our experience is like what we thought it was before, whatever that may have been.
Quoting RussellA
Because they're seeing different parts.
Suppose our senses are represented by a circle on a plane -- everything inside the circle is our mental-bodily-insides, and the outside surface of the circle is our sensual limit. This is a world defined by shape, line, space, and relative position. As the surface conforms to other geometric shapes we'll get a different description. In fact, one would actually have to be [s]me[/s] the same circle to get the exact same description. But because all reality is perspectival, an unfolding surface, that's impossible. I'm tempted to claim that a phenomenological direct realism predicts that we'll see things differently, but that's not right either (because if it were a transcendental phenomenology, it'd be the opposite)
For me the inferential plane is just a metaphor that emphasizes that all entities (angels, attitudes, anvils, aardvarks) have meaning in the first place because they are related to other entities (keeping in my the semantic basis of the proposition in which concepts embedded). I can claim that repressed terror causes toothaches. I can claim that god caused the world. Whether or not the claim is plausible or accepted is secondary here to its meaning. Note that God can be the highest entity in terms of status and still be just on the plane in terms of the interdependent semantics I'm trying to make explicit.
All roads lead to Rome, and all concepts and claims lead back to the inferential philosophical-practical situation. In more practical situations, I explain my actions by giving reasons. Here on the forum, it's almost entirely about justifying or explicating claims.