I'm going to be pedantic and point out that your question misrepresents Putnam. He wasn't trying to argue for skepticism but to argue against realism. From here:
1) If metaphysical realism is true, then global skepticism is possible
2) If global skepticism is possible, then we can be brains in a vat
3) But we cannot be brains in a vat
4) Thus, metaphysical realism is false
His defence of 3) assumes the causal constraint on reference that was supported by metaphysical realists at the time ("A term refers to an object only if there is an appropriate causal connection between that term and the object"):
1) Assume we are brains in a vat
2) If we are brains in a vat, then "brain" does not refer to brain, and "vat" does not refer to vat (via CC)
3) If “brain in a vat” does not refer to brains in a vat, then “we are brains in a vat” is false
4) Thus, if we are brains in a vat, then the sentence “We are brains in a vat” is false
Regarding 2), the point is that the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by a BIV person cannot refer to real brains and real vats because there is no appropriate causal connection between real brains/real vats and the BIV's language; instead the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by a BIV person refer to simulated brains and simulated vats.
I've seen a whole bunch of attempts to prove that we are not brains in vats. Putnam attempts to prove that we can never say that we are brains in vats and have that be true. This is because there isn't a causal connection between the vat in the 'real' world and us in the virtual envatted world. Without this causal connection we cannot refer to vats, to the sentence 'I am a brain in a vat can' not be true.
I don't believe there is a way out of the skeptical hypothesis. Once we take the view that we are somehow experiencing the mental, there is no way for us to use thought (further mental) to think our way to the 'real' world.
I don't believe there is a way out of the skeptical hypothesis.
By denying the realist's claim that "truth is not reducible to epistemic notions but concerns the nature of a mind-independent reality"[sup]1[/sup], which was Putnam's goal.
Reply to shmik If you deny the distinction between truth and epistemology then you avoid global skepticism, and if you avoid global skepticism then you avoid the brain-in-a-vat possibility.
For example, if the real world just is the world that we see and if we don't see that we are brains in a vat then we are not brains in a vat.
Reply to Michael By that sentence do you mean that we accept semantic externalism?
I don't think the argument can rule out a skeptical hypothesis, just rule out specifying the exact conditions of some skeptical hypothesis.
For instance, I could still say 'it's possible that when I was 12 a mad scientist placed my brain into a vat and I have been living in a vat ever since'. This formulation would allow me to refer to brains in vats.
Also a curiosity of the argument is that if we as a forum got together and decided to envat someone who had just been born. They would be a brain in a vat, but they would never be able to entertain the notion that they were a brain in a vat.
[quote=shmik]For instance, I could still say 'it's possible that when I was 12 a mad scientist placed my brain into a vat and I have been living in a vat ever since'. This formulation would allow me to refer to brains in vats.[/quote]
But given metaphysical realism it's also possible that you were always a brain in a vat. However, given the causal constraint on reference, you could never refer to the real brain in a vat that you are (and always have been), and so realism entails a necessary falsehood, refuting itself.
Terrapin StationSeptember 09, 2016 at 15:15#202560 likes
How can I know that I am really here typing this message and not just a brain in a vat as Putnam challenges us to prove?
You can't know the answer to questions like this with certainty. You can't prove empirical claims.
The issue instead, then, is this: Why should you believe one thing versus another? If one of the candidates for belief is the brain in the vat scenario, what would you take to be a good reason to believe that you're a brain in a vat?
hunterkf5732September 09, 2016 at 16:54#202960 likes
By denying the realist's claim that "truth is not reducible to epistemic notions but concerns the nature of a mind-independent reality"1, which was Putnam's goal.
Wouldn't you first have to show that there is a mind independent reality?
Reply to hunterkf5732 Who, the realist? Sure. But given that Putnam was trying to provide an argument against realism it's not enough for him to simply demand that the realist prove his position. You can't just assume falsity until proven otherwise as that would be as question-begging as the opposite.
instead the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by a BIV person refer to simulated brains and simulated vats.
In order that there could be simulated brains and simulated vats; there must be real brains and real vats. That's the objection I have always had to this silly 'thought experiment'. I'm not at all familiar with Putnam, but something like that objection seems to be what he is presenting
In order that there could be simulated brains and simulated vats; there must be real brains and real vats.
Not that it matters to Putnam's argument, but this isn't true. We have simulated unicorns and dragons without there being real unicorns and real dragons.
Once we take the view that we are somehow experiencing the mental, there is no way for us to use thought (further mental) to think our way to the 'real' world.
But the real world is conceptually articulated through and through; so why would we need to "make our way there"? On the contrary, it cannot be escaped...
That makes no sense. To simulate is to feign reality. If you simulate love you pretend to love when you do not love. If you put a cardboard cutout sheep in the paddock, so that it looks like a real sheep that is a simulated sheep.
What is a simulated dragon?
Reply to Terrapin Station It was the view that the majority of realists at the time supported, so on that account, assuming the validity of the argument, he successfully refuted their position. Of course, they could respond by denying the causal constraint on reference, but then they'd have to find some alternative way to explain how our words are able to refer to mind-independent things.
However, given the causal constraint on reference, you could never refer to the real brain in a vat that you are (and always have been), and so realism entails a necessary falsehood, refuting itself.
I wander about this - it's been a while since I've read Putnam so I might try to read an SEP article on it later. Why would realism entail that I always have access to / be able to refer to / mind independent reality?
None of this shows why realism is false, just that a certain way realist talk is false.
But the real world is conceptually articulated through and through; so why would we need to "make our way there"? On the contrary, it cannot be escaped...
By this do you just mean some kind of post-Kantian position in which the world is inseparable from us? Holding that cannot refute skepticism, you could still be a BIV.
EDIT: It also entails its own kind of skepticism. If we limit truth so that it's truth for us, we lose the great outdoors of the world apart from us.
I think it is indutiably true that everything we know and experience is a 'brain state', to use that inelegant expression. (On the one hand, neural reductionism seems to always want to say that; on the other, they don't seem to realise that, if it is true, then 'neural reductionism' is also a brain state! In other words, if you pursue the deflationary tactic of claiming that 'everything is simply patterns of neurochemical reactions', that also applies to that statement, so I can't see how it amounts to a truth claim.)
But I think it can't be denied that the mind is implicated in the knowledge of anything, even of so-called 'mind-independent realities'. But that doesn't mean that the world is 'all in the mind', either; simply that the mental is an inextricable pole or aspect of all experience.
I'm not a great lover of Kant's philosophy, although I do acknowledge its tedious brilliance. And I don't believe I can be a BIV, for the reasons I already presented.
I say we don't have "a world apart from us", and even if there were one, it could only be as nothing to us. The "great outdoors" is the very world we know so well. We lose that just when we incoherently try to reduce it in our imaginations to something utterly alien, unintelligible and meaningless to us, in the interests of an overweeningly dry and empty rationality.
Yes, it's an interesting irony that in order to support the view that the world is nothing more than a mental representation or brain state; a view purportedly antithetical to naive realism; the naively realistic belief that there are real eyes, real nervous systems and real brains is always the unacknowledged but indispensable supporting premise.
Reply to John We don't need for there to be real dragons for there to be simulated dragons, just as we don't need for there to be a real apocalyptic meteor strike on Earth for there to be a simulated apocalyptic meteor strike on Earth – and, you know, we have such things.
Reply to Michael That's a selective truth when referring to the book, but misleading when referring to Putnam's stance on realism. As I said, he ended up defending naive realism.
That's a selective truth when referring to the book, but misleading when referring to Putnam's stance on realism. As I said, he ended up defending naive realism.
He started as a naive realist, moved on to internal realism, and then ended up defending natural realism.
As explained here, he still embraced conceptual relativity and pluralism and denied the description-evaluation dichotomy and the correspondence theory of truth, "think[ing] that the idea of conceptual schemes, or Wittgensteinian language games, could explain the divergences between differing, but equally correct accounts of what there is". He "steers a middle course between the philosophical 'phantasies of metaphysical realism' and the idealist tendencies of internal realism."
Terrapin StationSeptember 10, 2016 at 18:10#205450 likes
they'd have to find some alternative way to explain how our words are able to refer to mind-independent things.
Well, reference is simply having something in mind for a signifier--it's what an individual is taking a signifier to be "pointing to" or "picking out." That can be a mind-independent thing.
This lame argument quite obviously fails simply because there are real meteorites and a real Earth, whereas there are no real dragons. The notion of simulation loses any sense if you cannot show the real objects that are purportedly being simulated.
Reply to jkop But he says of his "naive realism" (notice his scare quotes) in that chapter "what we
perceive depends on a transaction between ourselves and the environment, and ... the properties
we perceive depend on our nature as well as the nature of the environment.”
Traditional naive realism, as explained here claims that "objects ... retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent."
The difference, then, is that Putnam's "naive realism" makes for the truth of "the apple is red" (assuming colour is one of those properties that depend on our nature) to be perception-dependent, and so relative to the individual, whereas traditional naive realism doesn't, and so it's either red or it isn't – for everyone.
So which naive realism are you talking about? Putnam's "middle ground between ... metaphysical realism ... and ... internal realism", or traditional naive realism? Because if you mean the latter then Putnam isn't a naive realist. And if you mean the former then you lose much of the mind-independence that realists love so much.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 08:54#206230 likes
So which naive realism are you talking about? Putnam's "middle ground between ... metaphysical realism ... and ... internal realism", or traditional naive realism? Because if you mean the latter then Putnam isn't a naive realist. And if you mean the former then you lose much of the mind-independence that realists love so much.
I see it more as (a) admitting relativity, and (b) acknowledging that minds are part of relative "systems" or "equations" rather than losing mind-independence. The idea that either (a) or (b) are incompatible with "traditional naive realism" seems like a misunderstanding of naive realism to me.
The idea that either (a) or (b) are incompatible with "traditional naive realism" seems like a misunderstanding of naive realism to me.
Given that the naive realist view is that the properties we see things as having are mind-independent, and that our perceptions are only veridical if they show us this mind-independent property, how is it consistent with the view that the truth of "the apple is red" depends on our natures and how we each perceive the apple?
I see it more as (a) admitting relativity, and (b) acknowledging that minds are part of relative "systems" or "equations" rather than losing mind-independence.
How can it be both mind-dependent and mind-independent?
That's just a contradiction. If the truth depends on the system, and if the mind is a part of the system, then the truth depends on the mind. If you take the mind – the perception – out of the picture then it doesn't make sense to argue that the object retains the property that was perceived. So it's not naive realism.
Reply to Michael That's a false dichotomy, for neither realism nor naive realism reject perception or its dependence to there being something with which we can perceive the world (e.g. a mind and certain background capacities). Realism (concerning ontology) states that what exists is not dependent on the existence of a mind. Naive realism (regarding perception) states that we perceive objects and states of affairs directly, i.e. not via some copy or picture conformed inside our minds. "Meanings just ain't in the head." with regards to Putnam. But one might add that without the head there ain't any perception.
Reply to jkop That doesn't address the issue I raised, and that is on whether or not the apple being red is perception-independent. According to the traditional naive realist, the apple being red is a perception-independent fact, and it is only if we then see the apple as red that our perception is veridical. But this isn't the sort of thing that Putnam argued for (in his later years, which is what we're discussing).
Reply to jkop And its theory on perception is that, in the veridical case, the properties we perceive an object to have are properties that the object has even when we don't see them. That's what makes it naive.
If, on the other hand, the properties we see things as having are products of perception then we do not know what the world is like when we're not looking, and so our knowledge claims of it are unjustified – and remember that these theories on perception were attempts to address epistemological questions, with naive realism being an attempt to explain that our claims are justified.
This lame argument quite obviously fails simply because there are real meteorites and a real Earth, whereas there are no real dragons. The notion of simulation loses any sense if you cannot show the real objects that are purportedly being simulated.
So because the parts are real (meteors and the Earth) then we can simulate a whole that isn't real (an apocalyptic meteor strike on Earth)? Then using the same logic, because the parts are (or were) real (horses and horns, or giant reptiles and wings) then we can simulate a whole that isn't real (unicorns and dragons).
And besides, imagine that you're playing a virtual reality game and you're using a sword to kill a dragon. You'd say that the sword is simulated but that the dragon isn't, because dragons aren't real? That would be useless pedantry – and would completely miss the point that Putnam was making, which is that if the causal constraint on reference is correct then the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by an envatted person wouldn't refer to real brains and vats but to these virtual-reality brains and vats, and given that we're not virtual brains in vats, our claim "we could be brains in vats" must be false.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 14:41#206500 likes
Naive realism is a stance in philosophy of perception.
The very concept of perception is that of us being situated-beings-in-the-world, taking in data external to us by our senses, and processing it mentally.
So no naive realist has a stance that does away with mind. Perception is necessarily mind-dependent, otherwise we're no longer talking about perception. The question is then just what the relationship is between our perceptions and the world.
For naive realists, the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived. Again, this does not make it that the perceptions are not mental. It's rather that the perceptions are accurate and direct--naive realists do not agree that something mental is normally "coloring" the perceptions and that we're only seeing the coloring, without any way of knowing just how that coloring correlates to the externals that led to the perceptions.
Relativism enters the picture because properties are factors of situatedness, too. They hinge on the materials, structures and processes involved, not only in the object-at-hand, say, but in the entire "system" relative to a given reference point. For perception, that reference point is us as perceiving beings. So properties depend on things like the angle between us and the object-at-hand, the atmospheric conditions between us and the object-at-hand, and so on.
For naive realists, the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived.
Then what does it mean to have an inaccurate perception?
This account you offer of naive realism appears to be entirely vacuous, and certainly isn't like traditional naive realism, which does argue that the properties of things, e.g. their colour, do not depend on perception or any other mental process; the apple can be red even if we're not looking at it, and even if we all see it as orange.
Naive realism is a stance in philosophy of perception.
Which, again, seeks to answer the epistemological question of whether or not our perceptions can be used to justify our knowledge claims. The indirect realist will agree with the claim that, given this particular situation and given the constitution of both the external world and my sensory system, this is what I see. So that's not enough to count as direct realism. The distinction is on whether the features of this experience are just products of the perception or whether they're features inherent in the external world, with the indirect realist arguing for the former, and so concluding that our knowledge claims about the objective world cannot be justified by perception, and the direct realist arguing for the latter, and so concluding that our knowledge claims can be justified.
This "naive realism" that you're arguing for seems to just take the substance of the indirect realist's position but to nonetheless describe perception using the direct realist's language.
And its theory on perception is that, in the veridical case, the properties we perceive an object to have are properties that the object has even when we don't see them.
Its theory of perception is obviously not a theory about the properties we perceive an object to have but about the nature of perception: that it is direct.
For example, that when we see a red apple we're not seeing an intermediate representation of an apple inside our minds but the real mind-independent apple as it is. This does not mean that the apple would somehow have to appear red also when we don't see it, in the dark, for instance. If this is what you believe of realism, then you simply don't understand realism.
What is mind-dependent is perception: e.g. seeing the apple is to be consciously aware of its presence in your visual field, for instance, and its colour. It's possession of the colour, however, only means that it will reappear under the same or similar conditions which satisfy the possibility to see colours.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 15:35#206680 likes
Then what does it mean to have an inaccurate perception?
For example, as I wrote, "something mental is normally 'coloring' the perceptions and that we're only seeing the coloring, without any way of knowing just how that coloring correlates to the externals that led to the perceptions."Quoting Michael
This account you offer of direct realism appears to be entirely vacuous.
I'd have no idea how you'd define "vacuous" if that's your assessment of what I wrote.
For example, as I wrote, "something mental is normally 'coloring' the perceptions and that we're only seeing the coloring, without any way of knowing just how that coloring correlates to the externals that led to the perceptions."
I don't see how that's an inaccurate perception. An inaccurate perception would be something like "I see it as X, but it's actually Y". How would that work given your account? Or is such a thing impossible?
I'd have no idea how you'd define "vacuous" if that's your assessment of what I wrote.
You're just saying "if we see it as red then we see it as red". That's vacuous.
Its theory of perception is obviously not a theory about the properties we perceive an object to have but about the nature of perception: that it is direct.
A theory of perception is exactly a theory about the properties we perceive an object to have. That's what it means to have a theory about the nature of perception, and that's how we explain what it means for perception to be direct (or not).
For example, that when we see a red apple we're not seeing an intermediate representation of an apple inside our minds but the real mind-independent apple as it is.
What does it mean to see the real mind-independent apple as it is? Would it be, for example, that we see a red apple, and there's a mind-independent apple that's mind-independently red?
This does not mean that the apple would somehow have to appear red also when we don't see it, in the dark, for instance. If this is what you believe of realism, then you simply don't understand realism.
I didn't say that it would have to appear red when we don't see it. I said that it would have to be red when we don't see it. Because according to the naive realist, colour isn't just an appearance but a property that objects have even when they're not being seen. That's how the naive realist distinguishes between a veridical and non-veridical perception. If it's orange but it appears to you as red then you're seeing it wrong.
If the notion of being red as distinct from appearing red is incoherent, then you're not a naive realist (about colour, at the very least). So I think that you don't understand realism.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 16:43#206780 likes
Well, you don't know if it's accurate or not. The alternative of representationalism, for example, if that you only know something that's mentally "colored" and can't know something else. Under that view, you can't get to "It's really x" because that implies that you're directly perceiving what something is really like. Quoting Michael
You're just saying "if we see it as red then we see it as red".
Well, you don't know if it's accurate or not. The alternative of representationalism, for example, if that you only know something that's mentally "colored" and can't know something else. Under that view, you can't get to "It's really x" because that implies that you're directly perceiving what something is really like.
I really don't know what you're talking about here. What I'm asking for is how non-veridical perception works under your account of perception. Is it possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red?
If only that had been what I said.
You said "the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived."
Which is saying that the properties we perceive are the properties that we perceive things to have. So you're just saying that when we see a thing as red we see a thing as red.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 16:57#206800 likes
I really don't know what you're talking about here. What I'm asking for is how non-veridical perception works under your account of perception. Is it possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red?
Then just ask that if it's what you want to ask. Yes, it's certainly possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red. That could be due to something like color-blindness, or maybe it coincided with someone getting hit in the head, which caused unusual brain states, etc.--there are a bunch of possible reasons why something like that could happen. It wouldn't be possible to enumerate every scenario why that might happen, but it would be a large number of different things that would affect either our sense in question (sight, hearing, whatever) or that would be an unusual brain state.
You said "the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived."
"As they are perceived" is stressing what I was saying about relativity: in other words, from a particular reference point, seeing the things involved as a system. There is no reference point-free reference point, so we always have to talk about properties from a particular reference point, as they're non-identical at each reference point.
I did. I asked what it means to have an inaccurate perception.
Yes, it's certainly possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red.
So whether or not a thing is red is independent of what I see. Colour is a perception-independent property.
"As they are perceived" is stressing what I was saying about relativity: from a particular reference point, seeing the things involved as a system. There is no reference point-free reference point, so we always have to talk about properties from a particular reference point, as they're non-identical at each reference point.
Then all you're saying is that, given this reference point, we see a red apple. This, alone, is consistent with both indirect realism and idealism.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 17:12#206830 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station I'm really not interested in arguing over the wording of my question. I'm interested in the fact that you now seem to admit that, according to naive realism, colour is a perception-independent property.
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 17:16#206850 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station I didn't say it was. Now, could you actually address the relevant issue rather than try to deflect?
Terrapin StationSeptember 11, 2016 at 17:23#206880 likes
Haha--you're still doing it.
I answered whether it was possible, which is what you asked at that point. And I said just ask me that ("Is it possible?") If that's what you want to know. You responded with: Quoting Michael
I did. I asked what it means to have an inaccurate perception.
"I did," in context, would imply that they're the same question in your view. But they're not the same question.
And if we're having such incredible difficulty conversationally sorting out something this simple--you won't even concede that the two questions are not the same, how in the world are we going to tackle something more complex?
If it's orange but it appears to you as red then you're seeing it wrong.
Seeing it directly means that it couldn't appear red when it is orange. Only appearance as representation could be wrong, but naive realism denies that perception would be representational. So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism.
The "perception" possessed by a brain in a vat would only be representational, i.e. a simulation.
[quote=jkop]Seeing it directly means that it couldn't appear red when it is orange. Only appearance as representation could be wrong, but naive realism denies that perception would be representational. So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism.[/quote]
Are you saying that it's impossible for a thing to appear red if it's orange; that if it's orange then ipso facto we will all see it as orange? All perception is veridical?
Or is it possible for an orange thing to appear red and so, on that basis, our perception is mistaken?
Also, you didn't reply to this bit, which is the crux of the matter:
What does it mean to see the real mind-independent apple as it is? Would it be, for example, that we see a red apple, and there's a mind-independent apple that's mind-independently red?
So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism.
1. There exists a world of material objects.
2. Statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience.
3. These objects exist not only when they are being perceived but also when they are not perceived. The objects of perception are largely, we might want to say, perception-independent.
4. These objects are also able to retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent.
5. By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is. In the main, our claims to have knowledge of it are justified.
Reply to Michael All perception is veridical, unlike hallucinations, in which nothing is perceived, only experienced. It would be unnecessarily ambiguous to speak of 'non-veridical' cases of visual perception, for example, when there is no vision, only experience of vision. In veridical cases something is both seen and experienced.
Also optical illusions are veridical in the sense that something is both seen and experienced, such as light, reflections, refractions, atmospheric effects and so on. A brain in a vat would never see, for example, the optical illusion in a photo-realistic picture, because seeing the illusion requires seeing something which is really there, such as real light, real patches of paint etc..
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience.
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience.
I like "direct realism" as an opening move in the metaphysical chess game. But doesn't anyone else see (to some degree) that it's largely just a debate about how we should use words? Don't get me wrong. Style matters. There's a different feel to these positions. But that almost seems to be the point: there's an attachment to some end (or perhaps the middle) of the subjective-objective spectrum. Then there's the annoying pragmatist move of trying to jump off the spectrum altogether...
I suppose you could talk about all the real composite parts that make up the dragon being simulated, but I am still not convinced that it makes proper sense to speak about the dragon itself being simulated.
and would completely miss the point that Putnam was making, which is that if the causal constraint on reference is correct then the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by an envatted person wouldn't refer to real brains and vats but to these virtual-reality brains and vats, and given that we're not virtual brains in vats, our claim "we could be brains in vats" must be false.
But, it's really the same point. If there were real brains and vats in the real world inhabited by the simualtors, that the virtual reality brains and vats were simulations of, then the words would be causally connected to the real brains and vats insofar as the simulators would have made the simulated brains and vats to look the same and caused us to name them the same. But, in that case even if we and this whole reality were simulated then it would follow that there must be real things that are being simulated, otherwise it makes no sense to speak of simulation. Look at our own virtual realities; we cannot create any virtual reality that does not consist of simulated real things and/or composites made of simulated real things. So the whole silly thought experiment just displaces the problem of what is real one step up.
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience.
This is circular. I asked what it means to see a thing directly and you said it's to see a mind-independent thing as it is. I asked you what it means to see a mind-independent thing as it is and you say it's to see a thing directly. So, currently, the very notion of seeing a thing directly – of seeing a mind-independent thing as it is – is vacuous.
The way I understand it is the way I've already described (and mentioned; see point 4 above): we see a thing directly iff the thing we see and the properties we see it to have are perception-independent.
If when we see a red apple we're seeing a mind-independent thing as it is then there's a perception-independent apple that's perception-independently red.
All perception is veridical, unlike hallucinations, in which nothing is perceived, only experienced. It would be unnecessarily ambiguous to speak of 'non-veridical' cases of visual perception, for example, when there is no vision, only experience of vision. In veridical cases something is both seen and experienced.
In which case you're defining perception as "directly experiencing a (mind-independent) object", and so to say that perception is direct is a tautology. Furthermore, if you're defining perception in this way then the argument between the direct and indirect realist isn't over whether or not perception is direct but over whether or not we actually perceive, with the direct realist saying that we do and the indirect realist saying that we only ever have experiences.
But, it's really the same point. If there were real brains and vats in the real world inhabited by the simualtors, that the virtual reality brains and vats were simulations of, then the words would be causally connected to the real brains and vats insofar as the simulators would have made the simulated brains and vats to look the same and caused us to name them the same.
I don't think that kind of causal connection would allow for such reference-making. The type of causal connection that establishes the referent of the word "brain" is the one between the envatted person's language and the virtual-reality brains that they experience.
Reference is initially fixed with a dubbing, usually by perception, though also on occasion by description. Reference is fixed via perception when a speaker says, in effect, of a perceived object: "You're to be called 'N'."
The perceived object that they dub "N" (or in our case, "brain") isn't the real brain that they are but the virtual-reality brain. And so the envatted person's word "brain" refers to virtual-reality brains.
I like "direct realism" as an opening move in the metaphysical chess game. But doesn't anyone else see (to some degree) that it's largely just a debate about how we should use words?
I agree. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa. One person says "I see a woman", another says "I see a painting of a woman", and a third says "I see paint". They're all correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing. Similarly, one person says "I see an apple", another says "I see a mental representation of an apple", and a third says "I see qualia". They could all be correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing.
This is why I think the substance of the issue – the thing that actually addresses the epistemological question – lies with point 4 above. Do objects retain the properties we perceive them to have even when they're not being perceived? The naive realists were those who answered in the affirmative, and so concluded that our perceptions can be used to justify the claims we make about the objective nature of the world, and the indirect realists were those who answered in the negative, and so concluded that our perceptions can't be used to justify the claims we make about the objective nature of the world.
if you want to say that, then you are claiming that the link between word and object must be intentional, and in terms of the user of the name, not that it must be causal. If we are brains in vats that have been programmed to experience a virtual world with brains and vats, and programmed to call them 'brains' and 'vats' respectively, because that is the name the programmer chose for us virtual 'people' to use, and in fact programmed our en-vatted brains to use, because they are virtual copies of the real brains and vats in the programmers world, then there is the intentional (and causal) relationship between the names and the objects set up by the programmers and the causal relationship between us en-vatted brains and the names we use for what we 'normally' take to be real brains and vats, due to our being programmed to use those names.
If we are brains in vats that have been programmed to experience a virtual world with brains and vats, and programmed to call them 'brains' and 'vats' respectively, because that is the name the programmer chose for us virtual 'people' to use, and in fact programmed our en-vatted brains to use
But the language wouldn't have been chosen by the programmer. The programmer only choses what is experienced. The envatted people would develop their own language in the normal way, in response to the things they see and hear.
And besides, imagine that I'm responsible for the people trapped in Plato's cave. I hold up a ball behind them so that a shadow appears on the wall, point to the shadow, and tell them to call it "ball". When they use the word "ball", are they referring to the shadow or to the ball? I'd say the shadow. Are you saying that it would actually refer to the ball?
If that's the way you want to stipulate it, then does the name really matter anyway? The programmers would have chosen brains and vats as perceptible objects in the program, whatever thye might end up being called. Or if you want to stipulate that the program evolved its own brains and vats randomly due to some algorithm, and that the programmer had no idea the program would do that, it seems a bit implausible. Can we program a computer to randomly generate objects that don't even exist, and that are not at least composites of things that exist in 'our' world?
I agree. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa. One person says "I see a woman", another says "I see a painting of a woman", and a third says "I see paint". They're all correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing. Similarly, one person says "I see an apple", another says "I see a mental representation of an apple", and a third says "I see qualia". They could all be correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing.
Exactly. Because I think we all assume that everyone else is having the same experience of seeing the woman/painting/paint. I was attracted to pragmatism at first for its dissolution of merely linguistic problems. Quoting Michael
This is why I think the substance of the issue – the thing that actually addresses the epistemological question – lies with point 4 above. Do objects retain the properties we perceive them to have even when they're not being perceived?
We could also reframe the question in terms of action. Do we and should we act as if the apple we left on the kitchen table will still be red and delicious (for us, satisfying us) if we bother to walk downstairs? Can we emit strings of marks and noises that will allow us to work toward common goals successfully? I wouldn't exclude the fun of a metaphysical discussion from the set of such goals. It's actually pretty amusing to switch from the woman to the painting to the paint.
If that's the way you want to stipulate it, then does the name really matter anyway? The programmers would have chosen brains and vats as perceptible objects in the program, whatever thye might end up being called.
Sure. But it doesn't then follow that that kind of causal relation allows for the envatted person's use of the word "brain" to refer to real brains. However the experienced things came about, whether programmed or random, their words refer to things in the virtual reality, not to whatever things outside the virtual reality they may happen to represent (as per my example of Plato's cave).
But if the virtual brains and vats are modeled on real brains and vats in the programmers world, it wouldn't then seem to matter what words are used, because if the virtual person were somehow to be able to see a real vat he would still recognize it and refer to it with the same word; just as we do the other way around when we see virtual objects and refer to them with the same names as the objects they are simulating. What you are saying doesn't seem to take account of the fact that the same object has different names in different languages.
What you are saying doesn't seem to take account of the fact that the same object has different names in different languages.
This isn't a case of the same object having different names. This is a case of different objects having the same name. The envatted person's word "brain" refers to virtual reality brains, because it is virtual reality brains that they experience and dub "brain".
if the virtual person were somehow to be able to see a real vat he would still recognize it and refer to it with the same word
Yes, they'd use the same word, but the referent would be an entirely different thing.
I was saying something along the lines that, for example, if an envatted person calls a vat a 'tull' then if he was able to visit the real world of the programmer and was confronted with a vat, he would say "Oh, look, there's a tull". So the vat in both the virtual world would have the name 'vat' as used by the programmer and the name 'tull' as used by the envatted person.
For me, the salient point is that if vats exist in the programmer's world, and also in the world of the envatted, then they are the same kinds of object; one real and the other virtual. So for the envatted to think "I might be a brain in a tull", is only senseless if there are no real vats in the real world for her or him to be a brain in.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 18:47#208320 likes
1. There exists a world of material objects.
2. Statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience.
That explanation already has a problem in that second statement. Naive realism isn't a type of truth theory. One could be a naive realist and go with consensus, or coherence, or something else like that for their truth theory, where the truth relation thus has no special relationship to that person's naive realism.
That's the case for me as well. I'm a naive realist, but I have a subjectivist theory of truth (which is a bit of a meta theory that covers all truth relations from coherence to correspondence, etc. etc.) I personally use a correspondence relation for most truths, but since it's a subjectivist theory, it has no special relationship to my naive realism. It would work just the same if I were a representationalist or a solipsist or whatever.
That's like saying, in response to the claim that moral realism is the position that moral propositions are made true by objective features of the world, "moral realism isn't a theory on truth; it's a theory on morality". You can't make a separation like that.
I'd say that it's a contradiction to be a truth-subjectivist but a naive realist.
Furthermore, you can always read that second proposition as something like "the nature of these objects can be known through sense-experience".
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 19:40#208340 likes
And moral realism is indeed not a theory of moral truth. It's a theory of moral ontology.
What would make it true, in your view, that naive realism is indeed a theory about what makes ontological claims (in general) true? In other words, I disagree that naive realism implies anything about what makes claims true. So how do you support that in fact it does imply that?
As I've already explained, the naive realist view is that, in the veridical case, the objects we see and the properties we see them to have are perception-independent. Given that the truth of "there is a red apple" depends on there being a red apple, the truth of "there is a red apple" is perception-independent. This then entails an objective notion of truth, where propositions of the kind "there is a red apple" are true if a perception-independent fact obtains (in this case, the fact that there is a red apple).
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 19:51#208370 likes
What's at issue isn't whether you've already given your characterization of naive realism, or that that's your view of what it is or anything like that.
I'm saying that your characterization is wrong.
You disagree that it's wrong.
So I'm asking you for your support that it's not wrong.
Reply to Terrapin Station I tried that but it didn't get anywhere as you refused to address the pertinent question. I'm not going through all that again.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 19:55#208390 likes
Our last exchange had absolutely nothing to do with whether your characterization of naive realism specifically as pertains to its relationship to truth theory was correct or not.
That last exchange grew out of it not being clear that you even understood the difference between naive realism as a theory of perception and an alternative such as representationalism.
Reply to Terrapin Station I explained in the twice-previous post the relationship between naive realism and truth. If there being a red apple is perception-independent (a requirement for naive realism) then it follows that the truth of "there is a red apple" is perception-independent.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 20:20#208420 likes
Do you understand that I'm not asking you to explain what you think the relationship is between naive realism and truth (theory)?
it's largely just a debate about how we should use words?
If there is ambiguity in our talk we should debate how we should use the words. Or else we'll just end up talking past each other, using words in different senses without realising it.
Reply to Terrapin Station I thought that you were saying that my characterisation of naive realism was incorrect, and asked me to defend it. I then referred back to our previous discussion where I tried to do just that, and then you responded in a way that suggested that this isn't what you're now asking for, hence why I then assumed that you were referring to my claimed relationship between naive realism and truth.
So, given that apparently I was wrong on both accounts, no, I don't know what you're asking. You're not being very clear at all.
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience. — jkop
This is circular. I asked what it means to see a thing directly and you said it's to see a mind-independent thing as it is. I asked you what it means to see a mind-independent thing as it is and you say it's to see a thing directly. So, currently, the very notion of seeing a thing directly – of seeing a mind-independent thing as it is – is vacuous.
There's "currently" a seeming circularity in your refereeing of my replies, but not in my replies.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 20:56#208520 likes
I thought that you were saying that my characterisation of naive realism was incorrect, and asked me to defend it.
I'm asking you what makes it correct and to support that it's correct factually. What makes it correct wouldn't simply be that that's how you (and only you) think about naive realism, would it? I would think some sort of empirical evidence would be what would make it correct factually, no?
Reply to jkop
I agree that ambiguity isn't generally desirable. But the "language on holiday" metaphor may be apt. There's something priestly, scholastic, unworldly in word-math detached from practice. I'm not confident that the fuzziness of language can be tamed except by such an appeal to practice. How do two positions vary as rules for action? We get equivalence classes of theories this way, with presumably more relevant (and by definition more worldly) differences. I want "worldly" philosophy. I like the image of the philosopher as impiety incarnate, the anti-priest, thought as a chisel against the real as that which resists our will. (But then I get my 'unworldly' fix from pure math.)
Seems ridiculous to ask someone for empirical evidence to support the correctness of their characterization of a metaphysical standpoint.Thinking about metaphysical standpoints is done best by testing their coherence and consistency by teasing out what they logically entail.
In attempting to do this, Michael has claimed that the naive realist view that the existence of things is perception-independent logically entails that the truth of all claim of the form " X exists" or "there is an X" must also be perception-independent. I would respond by saying that I think Michael will conflate two senses of perception in purporting to support this claim.
Empirical evidence has nothing to do with it.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 21:54#208620 likes
Seems ridiculous to ask someone for empirical evidence to support the correctness of their characterization of a metaphysical standpoint.Thinking about metaphysical standpoints is done best by testing their coherence and consistency by teasing out what they logically entail.
Aren't we talking about a stance that individuals have? Or in your view are we talking about something that somehow exists aside from that? In other words, can most naive realists believe something (that they're calling "naive realism") that turns out to not be naive realism after all?
Many people are naive realists to be sure; from that it doesn't follow that they have necessarily worked through all the logical concomitants of their metaphysical view. Many naive realists do not even think of their view as consisting in one metaphysical standpoint called 'naive realism', that exists alongside other alternative standpoints.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:01#208640 likes
So yes or no, you'd say that naive realism can be something other than what the people who call themselves naive realists believe?
Naive realism may logically entail things that some naive realists are not aware that it entails, so yes, their view might not be what they think it is.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:06#208660 likes
So would you say that it's impossible to have two different views that start at the same place but end up with different conclusions? For example, one person says that God exists and is omniscient but allows free will and another says that God exists and is omniscient but there is no free will. You'd say that it's just not possible for some people to have one of those views? (The impossible one being the one that you think doesn't follow logically,of course--I won't venture a guess which one you think that is.)
So yes or no, you'd say that naive realism can be something other than what the people who call themselves naive realists believe?
Sure. You can believe that the world is nothing but subjective sense-data but nonetheless call yourself a naive realist. Or you can believe in God but call yourself an atheist.
Anyone can call themselves anything they like.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:09#208680 likes
I'm not referring to using a term unusually. I'm referring to how a large number of people, if not most, use the term, especially those who self-identify as that term.
Reply to Terrapin Station I'd say that to call yourself a naive realist but to not claim that the objects we perceive and the properties we perceive them to have are perception-independent would be to use the term "naive realist" unusually.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:10#208710 likes
For the record, by the way, I couldn't disagree more strongly with the idea that a view can be something other than what the people who hold the view and partially self-identify by it says it is.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:11#208720 likes
Reply to Michael Which of course has nothing to do with truth theory--which is where the description you gave earlier and that you were supporting was incorrect.
Reply to Terrapin Station I've already gone over that. If the apple you see and it being red is perception independent then the truth of "there is a red apple" is perception-independent.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:13#208740 likes
You're telling me what you think. What you think has nothing to do with what "naive realism" is. What has to do with what naive realism is is what naive realists believe re their naive realism.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:14#208750 likes
That's the case even if you believe that their views are absurd or involve contradictions or whatever, by the way.
Reply to Terrapin Station Well, here's an article on naive realism. It describes it as I've described it (see the section "Theory"). So it's not just about what I think naive realism is. It's about what I've learnt naive realism to be.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:15#208770 likes
For example, Heaven's Gatists believed that they'd reach an extraterrestrial spacecraft following comet Hale-Bopp by committing suicide. That their view might be absurd or contradictory to some of us does not make it the case that Heaven's Gatists believed something other than that, or that "Heaven's Gatism" would be something other than that. If you posit it as something else, you're no longer talking about the Heaven's Gate cult.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:16#208780 likes
Reply to Michael Sure, so then we're going with that as an argument from authority.
Why aren't you going by my contrary view as an argument from authority?
Reply to Terrapin Station Because you're just one person. A long-standing Wikipedia article on a major philosophical issue is more likely to accurately describe the view as it has been historically discussed.
Furthermore, it's also consistent with the views I was taught at university.
And besides, you already admitted to this account of naive realism here where you said "Yes, it's certainly possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red.". How is that anything but a commitment to the view that the property of being red is perception-independent?
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:23#208810 likes
Well, the Wikipedia author might just be one person, too, plus we don't know what the heck the background is of anyone who contributed to it. Further, a lot of people--like me--don't bother trying to change anything on there, because it's a pain in the butt, it's highly "political" or at least cliquey, etc. (Which I know from the couple times I did try to change something there. It's just not something I'd spend any time on since those experiences.)
What I'm talking about is what I learned at university, and the views of the many naive realists I've interacted with over the years, etc. I wouldn't say that it's inconsistent in the sense of being incompatible with it, however. Naive realism is not a commitment to any particular truth theory. So it's going to be compatible with any approach to truth theory.
Naive realism is not a commitment to any particular truth theory. So it's going to be compatible with any approach to truth theory.
It's a commitment to a particular kind of relationship between what we see and what there (objectively) is, which entails a particular account of truth, whether it spells it out (or recognizes it) or not.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:25#208830 likes
Sorry--a couple big typos in that last post I just fixed by the way.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:26#208840 likes
Again, it's irrelevant if you believe it entails a particular approach to truth, which is why I'm spending no time arguing about that. What's relevant is what naive realists believe.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:27#208850 likes
What x-ism is has zilch to do with what someone who isn't an x-ist believes is entailed by what they understand of x-ism. What x-ism is is given by what the people who identify as x-ists say that x-ism is to them.
Again, it's irrelevant if you believe it entails a particular account to truth
Yes, it's irrelevant if I believe that it entails that but it's not irrelevant if it does entail that. And I'm trying to show you that it does. Given that "there is a red apple" is true iff there is a red apple, and given that there being a red apple is perception-independent (according to the naive realist), "there is a red apple" being true is perception-independent.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:28#208870 likes
Entailment is always belief.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:29#208880 likes
It doesn't exist aside from how individuals think about something. So there's not a FACT that something is entailed by something else.
It would depend on the conception of God you are concerned with and whether the logic of that conception is compatible with the logic of free will, determinism or both. I don't see what point you are trying to make.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:45#208940 likes
It would depend on the conception of God you are concerned with and whether the logic of that conception is compatible with the logic of free will, determinism or both. I don't see what point you are trying to make.
I explained it in detail above in my back and forth with Michael. Views aren't governed or delimited by what some set of individuals who don't hold the view believe is logically entailed by the view, where what they believe is logically entailed isn't something that the view-holders have expressed as the view.
X-ism might be something that a non x-ist believes is absurd or incoherent or inconsistent, etc., at least in some of its tenets. Nevertheless, what x-ism is is what people who identify as x-ists say that they have in mind by x-ism; it's not something other than that.
The problem is that if there are a whole lot of naive realists who all believe different things, as you claim, then there could be no coherent view that we could call 'naive realism'.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 22:54#208970 likes
I didn't actually say anything like "they all believe different things."
At any rate, what you should be doing when you refer to naive realism is describing the views of particular people who call themselves naive realists. "Particular people" can be a large number of them, especially if what they believe as naive realism is similar.
That's what we do when we write dictionary/encyclopedia/"companion" articles on views, by the way. We describe what particular people who identified as an x-ist believed with respect to their x-ism, and typically we spend part of the time picking out different species of the view, especially popular or influential species.
What's not the case is that they believe something that someone else who doesn't identify as an x-ist believes is entailed by (parts of) the view. That's fine territory for criticism of the view from whatever other perspective, but it doesn't "draw" the view itself.
Views aren't governed or delimited by what some set of individuals who don't hold the view believe is logically entailed by the view, where what they believe is logically entailed isn't something that the view-holders have expressed as the view.
This is quite wrong. If some naive realists don't see some logical entailment of their view and posit that as part of it, and other naive realists do see the said logical entailment and posit it as being part of their standpoint, what then? which ones are the naive realists?
On the other hand, even if all naive realists have not realized that some logical entailment of their view holds because it is implicit in it; that wouldn't change the fact that the logical entailment holds, because if it really is a logical entailment, it must hold.
What's not the case is that they believe something that someone else who doesn't identify as an x-ist believes is entailed by (parts of) the view. That's fine territory for criticism of the view from whatever other perspective, but it doesn't "draw" the view itself.
This is again nonsense. If someone is looking out on a view of the mountains and there is say a cabin which is clearly visible; but she simply doesn't notice it; it does not follow from that that the cabin is not a part of the view.
Views aren't governed or delimited by what some set of individuals who don't hold the view believe is logically entailed by the view, where what they believe is logically entailed isn't something that the view-holders have expressed as the view.
This is wrong. Pointing out what is entailed by someone else's position is a big part of arguing against that position. Realists might argue that idealism entails solipsism, that solipsism is false, and so on that grounds idealism is false. Putnam argues that realism entails global scepticism, that global scepticism is false, and so on that grounds realism is false.
It doesn't matter if you believe X but not Y. If Y follows from X then to avoid contradiction you must either accept both or deny both.
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 23:05#209040 likes
This is quite wrong. If some naive realists don't see some logical entailment of their view and posit that as part of it, and other naive realists do see the said logical entailment and posit it as being part of their standpoint, what then? which ones are the naive realists?
You're quite wrong that it's quite wrong.
The first problem there is that you believe there are facts whether something is logically entailed by something else, and the right people, the ones who get the facts right, are the ones with the license to claim a view.
First, the idea that there are facts re entailment is wrong.
Secondly, even if that weren't wrong, that's not actually how this works in practice. People believe that different things are entailed by the same foundational claims, and that's one thing that creates splits so that you wind up with x-ist(1s) and x-ist(2s) and so on--that is, different species of x-ists. Re "which ones are the x-ists" that simply works via a combination of popularity, influence and stature. What tends to be left out is views that are very different that are neither popular nor influential or that are not held by someone of stature.
It's also worth pointing out that not at views are something like logical arguments in the first place, so entailment isn't even apt for those.Quoting John
There is either one 'correct' version of naive realism or there are various versions of it.
I'd never say there are correct versions of a view. Just popular and/or influential versions. What can be incorrect, however, is to say that "x-ism is F" when (almost) no one who identifies as a x-ist says/believes F.
Yes. Logic is nothing more than how individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations.
This is incomplete, it should read "Logic is nothing more than how all individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations, when they think coherently.
Logic is binding because it is the intersubjectively universal and binding law of discourse. If someone refuses to admit that their utterances are subject to logical critique; they are simply refusing to play the inter-subjective game and are basically playing with themselves, mentally masturbating in other words, instead of engaging in intercourse with others
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 23:09#209070 likes
This is incomplete, it should read "Logic is nothing more than how all individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations, when they think coherently.
Haha--but that would be wrong.
"Intersubjective" doesn't amount to anything other than the fact that people can agree with each other and act in concert with each other, by the way. And to claim that such agreement makes anything correct is to claim an argumentum ad populum.
It seems to me you're not interested in serious discussion at all, just in mouthing off. As such, there is no point engaging with you. I wonder how many times you've heard that? Hopefully, for your sake one day it might sink in. :-}
Terrapin StationSeptember 12, 2016 at 23:10#209090 likes
Haha. Someone not agreeing with you or accepting you as a relative authority etc. is "not interested in serious discussion at all." Nice one.
If you want to claim that views and the claims they make are not necessarily logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose entailments that logically followfrom them, then that amounts to claiming that views just are what they are in total isolation and that any attack of a view is reducible to merely saying 'that's wrong'.
Of course this must also apply then to the things you claim. What you say also must not be subject to any logical critiques of its emtailments, simply because there aren't any. This also means that your claims by your own lights have no significance or implications beyond themselves. In that case they warrant no further response.
Terrapin StationSeptember 13, 2016 at 11:26#209830 likes
If you want to claim that views and the claims they make are not necessarily logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose entailments that logically followfrom them, then that amounts to claiming that views just are what they are in total isolation
That would only be the case if you define "total isolation" as "views 'and the claims they make'" (what's the difference between the two, by the way?) "are not logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose (i) entailments (ii) that logically follow from them" (isn't (ii) redundant with (i) by the way?). If that's what you mean by "isolation," then sure, that conditional would work. After all, If P, then P. If you'd have something else in mind by "isolation," then I don't agree that it follows that "views are in total isolation" in that case.
Of course, the fact that I disagree that that follows if it's not tautologous doesn't imply that it's not your view, or that your view is something different than that. You view is indeed just what it is, as you've stated it, because that's what you believe. That's what makes it your view, that particular view, etc.
Of course this must also apply then to the things you claim. What you say also must not be subject to any logical critiques of its emtailments, simply because there aren't any.
Which nicely shows that you don't understand my views (both as my views and if you prefer, per what logically follows from them, if, per my understanding of logic, you have any decent ability with it whatsoever). First off, no one ever said anything resembling "there aren't any entailments." What I said was that (let's use names instead of variables for a moment) Joe's beliefs about the entailments of Frank's views, where Frank does not have present-to-mind the supposed entailments, are not themselves Frank's views. Maybe they'll become part of Frank's views, as Frank thinks about them and agrees with them, or maybe Frank will disagree, and they won't be part of Frank's views. What there "isn't any of" is views that no one thinks. And there aren't any logical entailments that no one thinks. But that doesn't imply that there are no logical entailments.
What Frank says is subject to Joe's logical critique of its entailments (and I had already explicitly pointed this out in an earlier post, it would take me a few minutes to find it, though, as I don't recall the exact wording I used), because Joe is of course going to give his take on it and tell us why he disagrees if he does. Joe might think that q is implied by Frank's belief that p, whereas Frank might disagree with Joe on that in a variety of ways. Joe thinking that q is implied by Frank's belief that p doesn't make it the case that Frank's view is that q. And every view is someone's. Again, views do not exist outside of people holding them. At any rate, so then we know that Joe doesn't agree with Frank's view because Joe believes that it implies that q, and Joe doesn't believe that q, whereas Frank believes differently. And then each person is going to decide for themselves, if they're interested in it, whether they agree with Frank or Joe or neither of them. Often it's neither--those are the two "laws" of philosophy after all: (1) For every philosopher, there is an equal and opposite philosopher. (2) They're both wrong. ;-)
This also means that your claims by your own lights have no significance or implications beyond themselves.
Significance and implication are ways that people think about things. My comments have that insofar as people think about them in those ways (and then they have those things to those particular people), and they do not have them insofar as people do not think about them in those ways.
In any event, you don't need any sort of elaborate justification for not replying to me if you're not interested in what I say and you don't want to reply to me. You can simply choose to do something else instead. It's fine with me either way. I'll continute to do my thing regardless.
In my opinion, most of what I'm pointing out above is so obvious and basic that it seems odd that I have to spell any of it out. Of course, I've long been familiar with logical (and mathematical and general abstract existent) realists/platonists, but it never seemed to me that there were actually view realists/platonists around, because that seems so absurd to believe . . . but I've run into a couple of you (not just on this site) in the last couple days. I suppose I should have figured that there were view realists/platonists around, since there are folks who believe just about every other imaginable absurd thing (and that's a lot of what attracted me to philosophy in the first place), but I just hadn't run into someone who had made their view realism/platonism explicit prior to the last couple days.
None of what you say here shows that you have the least understanding of what I have been saying or that you are making any effort to genuinely engage. It's simply not worth making any effort on my part; I have better things to do. From what I have seen of your posts on this site and the old PF, they don't reflect much undrestanding of the issues at all, and mostly amount to nothing more than empty sophistry. I won't trouble you again.
Terrapin StationSeptember 13, 2016 at 22:42#210830 likes
None of what you say here shows that you have the least understanding of what I have been saying or that you are making any effort to genuinely engage. It's simply not worth making any effort on my part; I have better things to do. From what I have seen of your posts on this site and the old PF, they don't reflect much undrestanding of the issues at all, and mostly amount to nothing more than empty sophistry. I won't trouble you again.
At least you have confidence I suppose. Well, or at least attitude/arrogance. Not sure that's the same thing.
Comments (135)
His defence of 3) assumes the causal constraint on reference that was supported by metaphysical realists at the time ("A term refers to an object only if there is an appropriate causal connection between that term and the object"):
Regarding 2), the point is that the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by a BIV person cannot refer to real brains and real vats because there is no appropriate causal connection between real brains/real vats and the BIV's language; instead the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by a BIV person refer to simulated brains and simulated vats.
I don't believe there is a way out of the skeptical hypothesis. Once we take the view that we are somehow experiencing the mental, there is no way for us to use thought (further mental) to think our way to the 'real' world.
By denying the realist's claim that "truth is not reducible to epistemic notions but concerns the nature of a mind-independent reality"[sup]1[/sup], which was Putnam's goal.
[sup]1[/sup] http://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/#H1
It doesn't prove that someone isn't a brain in a vat.
For example, if the real world just is the world that we see and if we don't see that we are brains in a vat then we are not brains in a vat.
I don't think the argument can rule out a skeptical hypothesis, just rule out specifying the exact conditions of some skeptical hypothesis.
For instance, I could still say 'it's possible that when I was 12 a mad scientist placed my brain into a vat and I have been living in a vat ever since'. This formulation would allow me to refer to brains in vats.
Also a curiosity of the argument is that if we as a forum got together and decided to envat someone who had just been born. They would be a brain in a vat, but they would never be able to entertain the notion that they were a brain in a vat.
But given metaphysical realism it's also possible that you were always a brain in a vat. However, given the causal constraint on reference, you could never refer to the real brain in a vat that you are (and always have been), and so realism entails a necessary falsehood, refuting itself.
The issue instead, then, is this: Why should you believe one thing versus another? If one of the candidates for belief is the brain in the vat scenario, what would you take to be a good reason to believe that you're a brain in a vat?
Wouldn't you first have to show that there is a mind independent reality?
In order that there could be simulated brains and simulated vats; there must be real brains and real vats. That's the objection I have always had to this silly 'thought experiment'. I'm not at all familiar with Putnam, but something like that objection seems to be what he is presenting
Not that it matters to Putnam's argument, but this isn't true. We have simulated unicorns and dragons without there being real unicorns and real dragons.
But the real world is conceptually articulated through and through; so why would we need to "make our way there"? On the contrary, it cannot be escaped...
That makes no sense. To simulate is to feign reality. If you simulate love you pretend to love when you do not love. If you put a cardboard cutout sheep in the paddock, so that it looks like a real sheep that is a simulated sheep.
What is a simulated dragon?
If there were a lion in such a game we could say that it is simulating a real lion.
If there were a dragon in such a game what exactly is it that you think it could be said to be simulating?
I wander about this - it's been a while since I've read Putnam so I might try to read an SEP article on it later. Why would realism entail that I always have access to / be able to refer to / mind independent reality?
None of this shows why realism is false, just that a certain way realist talk is false.
By this do you just mean some kind of post-Kantian position in which the world is inseparable from us? Holding that cannot refute skepticism, you could still be a BIV.
EDIT: It also entails its own kind of skepticism. If we limit truth so that it's truth for us, we lose the great outdoors of the world apart from us.
Show me a dragon that is real then. If there are no real dragons then it makes no sense to speak of simulated dragons; it's simply nonsensical.
But I think it can't be denied that the mind is implicated in the knowledge of anything, even of so-called 'mind-independent realities'. But that doesn't mean that the world is 'all in the mind', either; simply that the mental is an inextricable pole or aspect of all experience.
I'm not a great lover of Kant's philosophy, although I do acknowledge its tedious brilliance. And I don't believe I can be a BIV, for the reasons I already presented.
I say we don't have "a world apart from us", and even if there were one, it could only be as nothing to us. The "great outdoors" is the very world we know so well. We lose that just when we incoherently try to reduce it in our imaginations to something utterly alien, unintelligible and meaningless to us, in the interests of an overweeningly dry and empty rationality.
Yes, it's an interesting irony that in order to support the view that the world is nothing more than a mental representation or brain state; a view purportedly antithetical to naive realism; the naively realistic belief that there are real eyes, real nervous systems and real brains is always the unacknowledged but indispensable supporting premise.
Putnam decisively refutes the skeptic idea that we might just be brains in a vat. For example, in Reason, truth, and history (1981).
Apparently it's available online at https://www.archive.org/stream/HilaryPutnam/PutnamHilary-ReasonTruthAndHistory_djvu.txt
The irony here is that in Reason, Truth, and History Putnam's intention is to refute realism.
He started as a naive realist, moved on to internal realism, and then ended up defending natural realism.
As explained here, he still embraced conceptual relativity and pluralism and denied the description-evaluation dichotomy and the correspondence theory of truth, "think[ing] that the idea of conceptual schemes, or Wittgensteinian language games, could explain the divergences between differing, but equally correct accounts of what there is". He "steers a middle course between the philosophical 'phantasies of metaphysical realism' and the idealist tendencies of internal realism."
This lame argument quite obviously fails simply because there are real meteorites and a real Earth, whereas there are no real dragons. The notion of simulation loses any sense if you cannot show the real objects that are purportedly being simulated.
..or in his own words: How to Be a Sophisticated "Naïve Realist" (2011)
perceive depends on a transaction between ourselves and the environment, and ... the properties
we perceive depend on our nature as well as the nature of the environment.”
Traditional naive realism, as explained here claims that "objects ... retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent."
The difference, then, is that Putnam's "naive realism" makes for the truth of "the apple is red" (assuming colour is one of those properties that depend on our nature) to be perception-dependent, and so relative to the individual, whereas traditional naive realism doesn't, and so it's either red or it isn't – for everyone.
So which naive realism are you talking about? Putnam's "middle ground between ... metaphysical realism ... and ... internal realism", or traditional naive realism? Because if you mean the latter then Putnam isn't a naive realist. And if you mean the former then you lose much of the mind-independence that realists love so much.
Given that the naive realist view is that the properties we see things as having are mind-independent, and that our perceptions are only veridical if they show us this mind-independent property, how is it consistent with the view that the truth of "the apple is red" depends on our natures and how we each perceive the apple?
How can it be both mind-dependent and mind-independent?
That's just a contradiction. If the truth depends on the system, and if the mind is a part of the system, then the truth depends on the mind. If you take the mind – the perception – out of the picture then it doesn't make sense to argue that the object retains the property that was perceived. So it's not naive realism.
Category error. Being is not seeing. Apples are seen as red. Naive realism is a theory of perception, recall, not ontology.
If, on the other hand, the properties we see things as having are products of perception then we do not know what the world is like when we're not looking, and so our knowledge claims of it are unjustified – and remember that these theories on perception were attempts to address epistemological questions, with naive realism being an attempt to explain that our claims are justified.
So because the parts are real (meteors and the Earth) then we can simulate a whole that isn't real (an apocalyptic meteor strike on Earth)? Then using the same logic, because the parts are (or were) real (horses and horns, or giant reptiles and wings) then we can simulate a whole that isn't real (unicorns and dragons).
And besides, imagine that you're playing a virtual reality game and you're using a sword to kill a dragon. You'd say that the sword is simulated but that the dragon isn't, because dragons aren't real? That would be useless pedantry – and would completely miss the point that Putnam was making, which is that if the causal constraint on reference is correct then the words "brain" and "vat" as spoken by an envatted person wouldn't refer to real brains and vats but to these virtual-reality brains and vats, and given that we're not virtual brains in vats, our claim "we could be brains in vats" must be false.
Naive realism is a stance in philosophy of perception.
The very concept of perception is that of us being situated-beings-in-the-world, taking in data external to us by our senses, and processing it mentally.
So no naive realist has a stance that does away with mind. Perception is necessarily mind-dependent, otherwise we're no longer talking about perception. The question is then just what the relationship is between our perceptions and the world.
For naive realists, the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived. Again, this does not make it that the perceptions are not mental. It's rather that the perceptions are accurate and direct--naive realists do not agree that something mental is normally "coloring" the perceptions and that we're only seeing the coloring, without any way of knowing just how that coloring correlates to the externals that led to the perceptions.
Relativism enters the picture because properties are factors of situatedness, too. They hinge on the materials, structures and processes involved, not only in the object-at-hand, say, but in the entire "system" relative to a given reference point. For perception, that reference point is us as perceiving beings. So properties depend on things like the angle between us and the object-at-hand, the atmospheric conditions between us and the object-at-hand, and so on.
Then what does it mean to have an inaccurate perception?
This account you offer of naive realism appears to be entirely vacuous, and certainly isn't like traditional naive realism, which does argue that the properties of things, e.g. their colour, do not depend on perception or any other mental process; the apple can be red even if we're not looking at it, and even if we all see it as orange.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Which, again, seeks to answer the epistemological question of whether or not our perceptions can be used to justify our knowledge claims. The indirect realist will agree with the claim that, given this particular situation and given the constitution of both the external world and my sensory system, this is what I see. So that's not enough to count as direct realism. The distinction is on whether the features of this experience are just products of the perception or whether they're features inherent in the external world, with the indirect realist arguing for the former, and so concluding that our knowledge claims about the objective world cannot be justified by perception, and the direct realist arguing for the latter, and so concluding that our knowledge claims can be justified.
This "naive realism" that you're arguing for seems to just take the substance of the indirect realist's position but to nonetheless describe perception using the direct realist's language.
Its theory of perception is obviously not a theory about the properties we perceive an object to have but about the nature of perception: that it is direct.
For example, that when we see a red apple we're not seeing an intermediate representation of an apple inside our minds but the real mind-independent apple as it is. This does not mean that the apple would somehow have to appear red also when we don't see it, in the dark, for instance. If this is what you believe of realism, then you simply don't understand realism.
What is mind-dependent is perception: e.g. seeing the apple is to be consciously aware of its presence in your visual field, for instance, and its colour. It's possession of the colour, however, only means that it will reappear under the same or similar conditions which satisfy the possibility to see colours.
I don't see how that's an inaccurate perception. An inaccurate perception would be something like "I see it as X, but it's actually Y". How would that work given your account? Or is such a thing impossible?
You're just saying "if we see it as red then we see it as red". That's vacuous.
A theory of perception is exactly a theory about the properties we perceive an object to have. That's what it means to have a theory about the nature of perception, and that's how we explain what it means for perception to be direct (or not).
What does it mean to see the real mind-independent apple as it is? Would it be, for example, that we see a red apple, and there's a mind-independent apple that's mind-independently red?
I didn't say that it would have to appear red when we don't see it. I said that it would have to be red when we don't see it. Because according to the naive realist, colour isn't just an appearance but a property that objects have even when they're not being seen. That's how the naive realist distinguishes between a veridical and non-veridical perception. If it's orange but it appears to you as red then you're seeing it wrong.
If the notion of being red as distinct from appearing red is incoherent, then you're not a naive realist (about colour, at the very least). So I think that you don't understand realism.
I really don't know what you're talking about here. What I'm asking for is how non-veridical perception works under your account of perception. Is it possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red?
You said "the properties that we perceive are normally accurate--those are properties that the things in question have, as they are perceived."
Which is saying that the properties we perceive are the properties that we perceive things to have. So you're just saying that when we see a thing as red we see a thing as red.
Then just ask that if it's what you want to ask. Yes, it's certainly possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red. That could be due to something like color-blindness, or maybe it coincided with someone getting hit in the head, which caused unusual brain states, etc.--there are a bunch of possible reasons why something like that could happen. It wouldn't be possible to enumerate every scenario why that might happen, but it would be a large number of different things that would affect either our sense in question (sight, hearing, whatever) or that would be an unusual brain state.
Quoting Michael
"As they are perceived" is stressing what I was saying about relativity: in other words, from a particular reference point, seeing the things involved as a system. There is no reference point-free reference point, so we always have to talk about properties from a particular reference point, as they're non-identical at each reference point.
I did. I asked what it means to have an inaccurate perception.
So whether or not a thing is red is independent of what I see. Colour is a perception-independent property.
Then all you're saying is that, given this reference point, we see a red apple. This, alone, is consistent with both indirect realism and idealism.
"What does it mean to have an inaccurate perception" is different than "Is it possible to have an inaccurate perception," isn't it?
I answered whether it was possible, which is what you asked at that point. And I said just ask me that ("Is it possible?") If that's what you want to know. You responded with: Quoting Michael "I did," in context, would imply that they're the same question in your view. But they're not the same question.
And if we're having such incredible difficulty conversationally sorting out something this simple--you won't even concede that the two questions are not the same, how in the world are we going to tackle something more complex?
Seeing it directly means that it couldn't appear red when it is orange. Only appearance as representation could be wrong, but naive realism denies that perception would be representational. So, evidently, you have yet to understand naive realism.
The "perception" possessed by a brain in a vat would only be representational, i.e. a simulation.
Are you saying that it's impossible for a thing to appear red if it's orange; that if it's orange then ipso facto we will all see it as orange? All perception is veridical?
Or is it possible for an orange thing to appear red and so, on that basis, our perception is mistaken?
Also, you didn't reply to this bit, which is the crux of the matter:
What does it mean to see the real mind-independent apple as it is? Would it be, for example, that we see a red apple, and there's a mind-independent apple that's mind-independently red?
I already understand it. It's as explained here:
Also optical illusions are veridical in the sense that something is both seen and experienced, such as light, reflections, refractions, atmospheric effects and so on. A brain in a vat would never see, for example, the optical illusion in a photo-realistic picture, because seeing the illusion requires seeing something which is really there, such as real light, real patches of paint etc..
To see "..the real mind-independent apple as it is..." means to see it directly. The apple of your mind-dependent experience is the mind-independent apple that you experience.
Quoting jkop
I like "direct realism" as an opening move in the metaphysical chess game. But doesn't anyone else see (to some degree) that it's largely just a debate about how we should use words? Don't get me wrong. Style matters. There's a different feel to these positions. But that almost seems to be the point: there's an attachment to some end (or perhaps the middle) of the subjective-objective spectrum. Then there's the annoying pragmatist move of trying to jump off the spectrum altogether...
I suppose you could talk about all the real composite parts that make up the dragon being simulated, but I am still not convinced that it makes proper sense to speak about the dragon itself being simulated.
Quoting Michael
But, it's really the same point. If there were real brains and vats in the real world inhabited by the simualtors, that the virtual reality brains and vats were simulations of, then the words would be causally connected to the real brains and vats insofar as the simulators would have made the simulated brains and vats to look the same and caused us to name them the same. But, in that case even if we and this whole reality were simulated then it would follow that there must be real things that are being simulated, otherwise it makes no sense to speak of simulation. Look at our own virtual realities; we cannot create any virtual reality that does not consist of simulated real things and/or composites made of simulated real things. So the whole silly thought experiment just displaces the problem of what is real one step up.
This is circular. I asked what it means to see a thing directly and you said it's to see a mind-independent thing as it is. I asked you what it means to see a mind-independent thing as it is and you say it's to see a thing directly. So, currently, the very notion of seeing a thing directly – of seeing a mind-independent thing as it is – is vacuous.
The way I understand it is the way I've already described (and mentioned; see point 4 above): we see a thing directly iff the thing we see and the properties we see it to have are perception-independent.
If when we see a red apple we're seeing a mind-independent thing as it is then there's a perception-independent apple that's perception-independently red.
In which case you're defining perception as "directly experiencing a (mind-independent) object", and so to say that perception is direct is a tautology. Furthermore, if you're defining perception in this way then the argument between the direct and indirect realist isn't over whether or not perception is direct but over whether or not we actually perceive, with the direct realist saying that we do and the indirect realist saying that we only ever have experiences.
(Although this is veering too far off topic)
Quoting John
I don't think that kind of causal connection would allow for such reference-making. The type of causal connection that establishes the referent of the word "brain" is the one between the envatted person's language and the virtual-reality brains that they experience.
As explained, here:
The perceived object that they dub "N" (or in our case, "brain") isn't the real brain that they are but the virtual-reality brain. And so the envatted person's word "brain" refers to virtual-reality brains.
Quoting Hoo
I agree. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa. One person says "I see a woman", another says "I see a painting of a woman", and a third says "I see paint". They're all correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing. Similarly, one person says "I see an apple", another says "I see a mental representation of an apple", and a third says "I see qualia". They could all be correct; they're just different ways of thinking and talking about the same thing.
This is why I think the substance of the issue – the thing that actually addresses the epistemological question – lies with point 4 above. Do objects retain the properties we perceive them to have even when they're not being perceived? The naive realists were those who answered in the affirmative, and so concluded that our perceptions can be used to justify the claims we make about the objective nature of the world, and the indirect realists were those who answered in the negative, and so concluded that our perceptions can't be used to justify the claims we make about the objective nature of the world.
if you want to say that, then you are claiming that the link between word and object must be intentional, and in terms of the user of the name, not that it must be causal. If we are brains in vats that have been programmed to experience a virtual world with brains and vats, and programmed to call them 'brains' and 'vats' respectively, because that is the name the programmer chose for us virtual 'people' to use, and in fact programmed our en-vatted brains to use, because they are virtual copies of the real brains and vats in the programmers world, then there is the intentional (and causal) relationship between the names and the objects set up by the programmers and the causal relationship between us en-vatted brains and the names we use for what we 'normally' take to be real brains and vats, due to our being programmed to use those names.
But the language wouldn't have been chosen by the programmer. The programmer only choses what is experienced. The envatted people would develop their own language in the normal way, in response to the things they see and hear.
And besides, imagine that I'm responsible for the people trapped in Plato's cave. I hold up a ball behind them so that a shadow appears on the wall, point to the shadow, and tell them to call it "ball". When they use the word "ball", are they referring to the shadow or to the ball? I'd say the shadow. Are you saying that it would actually refer to the ball?
If that's the way you want to stipulate it, then does the name really matter anyway? The programmers would have chosen brains and vats as perceptible objects in the program, whatever thye might end up being called. Or if you want to stipulate that the program evolved its own brains and vats randomly due to some algorithm, and that the programmer had no idea the program would do that, it seems a bit implausible. Can we program a computer to randomly generate objects that don't even exist, and that are not at least composites of things that exist in 'our' world?
Exactly. Because I think we all assume that everyone else is having the same experience of seeing the woman/painting/paint. I was attracted to pragmatism at first for its dissolution of merely linguistic problems.
Quoting Michael
We could also reframe the question in terms of action. Do we and should we act as if the apple we left on the kitchen table will still be red and delicious (for us, satisfying us) if we bother to walk downstairs? Can we emit strings of marks and noises that will allow us to work toward common goals successfully? I wouldn't exclude the fun of a metaphysical discussion from the set of such goals. It's actually pretty amusing to switch from the woman to the painting to the paint.
Sure. But it doesn't then follow that that kind of causal relation allows for the envatted person's use of the word "brain" to refer to real brains. However the experienced things came about, whether programmed or random, their words refer to things in the virtual reality, not to whatever things outside the virtual reality they may happen to represent (as per my example of Plato's cave).
But if the virtual brains and vats are modeled on real brains and vats in the programmers world, it wouldn't then seem to matter what words are used, because if the virtual person were somehow to be able to see a real vat he would still recognize it and refer to it with the same word; just as we do the other way around when we see virtual objects and refer to them with the same names as the objects they are simulating. What you are saying doesn't seem to take account of the fact that the same object has different names in different languages.
This isn't a case of the same object having different names. This is a case of different objects having the same name. The envatted person's word "brain" refers to virtual reality brains, because it is virtual reality brains that they experience and dub "brain".
Yes, they'd use the same word, but the referent would be an entirely different thing.
For me, the salient point is that if vats exist in the programmer's world, and also in the world of the envatted, then they are the same kinds of object; one real and the other virtual. So for the envatted to think "I might be a brain in a tull", is only senseless if there are no real vats in the real world for her or him to be a brain in.
That explanation already has a problem in that second statement. Naive realism isn't a type of truth theory. One could be a naive realist and go with consensus, or coherence, or something else like that for their truth theory, where the truth relation thus has no special relationship to that person's naive realism.
That's the case for me as well. I'm a naive realist, but I have a subjectivist theory of truth (which is a bit of a meta theory that covers all truth relations from coherence to correspondence, etc. etc.) I personally use a correspondence relation for most truths, but since it's a subjectivist theory, it has no special relationship to my naive realism. It would work just the same if I were a representationalist or a solipsist or whatever.
That's like saying, in response to the claim that moral realism is the position that moral propositions are made true by objective features of the world, "moral realism isn't a theory on truth; it's a theory on morality". You can't make a separation like that.
I'd say that it's a contradiction to be a truth-subjectivist but a naive realist.
Furthermore, you can always read that second proposition as something like "the nature of these objects can be known through sense-experience".
And moral realism is indeed not a theory of moral truth. It's a theory of moral ontology.
What would make it true, in your view, that naive realism is indeed a theory about what makes ontological claims (in general) true? In other words, I disagree that naive realism implies anything about what makes claims true. So how do you support that in fact it does imply that?
As I've already explained, the naive realist view is that, in the veridical case, the objects we see and the properties we see them to have are perception-independent. Given that the truth of "there is a red apple" depends on there being a red apple, the truth of "there is a red apple" is perception-independent. This then entails an objective notion of truth, where propositions of the kind "there is a red apple" are true if a perception-independent fact obtains (in this case, the fact that there is a red apple).
What's at issue isn't whether you've already given your characterization of naive realism, or that that's your view of what it is or anything like that.
I'm saying that your characterization is wrong.
You disagree that it's wrong.
So I'm asking you for your support that it's not wrong.
That last exchange grew out of it not being clear that you even understood the difference between naive realism as a theory of perception and an alternative such as representationalism.
Quoting Hoo
If there is ambiguity in our talk we should debate how we should use the words. Or else we'll just end up talking past each other, using words in different senses without realising it.
So, given that apparently I was wrong on both accounts, no, I don't know what you're asking. You're not being very clear at all.
There's "currently" a seeming circularity in your refereeing of my replies, but not in my replies.
I agree that ambiguity isn't generally desirable. But the "language on holiday" metaphor may be apt. There's something priestly, scholastic, unworldly in word-math detached from practice. I'm not confident that the fuzziness of language can be tamed except by such an appeal to practice. How do two positions vary as rules for action? We get equivalence classes of theories this way, with presumably more relevant (and by definition more worldly) differences. I want "worldly" philosophy. I like the image of the philosopher as impiety incarnate, the anti-priest, thought as a chisel against the real as that which resists our will. (But then I get my 'unworldly' fix from pure math.)
Seems ridiculous to ask someone for empirical evidence to support the correctness of their characterization of a metaphysical standpoint.Thinking about metaphysical standpoints is done best by testing their coherence and consistency by teasing out what they logically entail.
In attempting to do this, Michael has claimed that the naive realist view that the existence of things is perception-independent logically entails that the truth of all claim of the form " X exists" or "there is an X" must also be perception-independent. I would respond by saying that I think Michael will conflate two senses of perception in purporting to support this claim.
Empirical evidence has nothing to do with it.
Many people are naive realists to be sure; from that it doesn't follow that they have necessarily worked through all the logical concomitants of their metaphysical view. Many naive realists do not even think of their view as consisting in one metaphysical standpoint called 'naive realism', that exists alongside other alternative standpoints.
Naive realism may logically entail things that some naive realists are not aware that it entails, so yes, their view might not be what they think it is.
Sure. You can believe that the world is nothing but subjective sense-data but nonetheless call yourself a naive realist. Or you can believe in God but call yourself an atheist.
Anyone can call themselves anything they like.
Why aren't you going by my contrary view as an argument from authority?
Furthermore, it's also consistent with the views I was taught at university.
And besides, you already admitted to this account of naive realism here where you said "Yes, it's certainly possible to see a thing as red but for it to not be red.". How is that anything but a commitment to the view that the property of being red is perception-independent?
What I'm talking about is what I learned at university, and the views of the many naive realists I've interacted with over the years, etc. I wouldn't say that it's inconsistent in the sense of being incompatible with it, however. Naive realism is not a commitment to any particular truth theory. So it's going to be compatible with any approach to truth theory.
It's a commitment to a particular kind of relationship between what we see and what there (objectively) is, which entails a particular account of truth, whether it spells it out (or recognizes it) or not.
Yes, it's irrelevant if I believe that it entails that but it's not irrelevant if it does entail that. And I'm trying to show you that it does. Given that "there is a red apple" is true iff there is a red apple, and given that there being a red apple is perception-independent (according to the naive realist), "there is a red apple" being true is perception-independent.
No, entailment is one proposition following from one or more others according to the rules of logic.
It would depend on the conception of God you are concerned with and whether the logic of that conception is compatible with the logic of free will, determinism or both. I don't see what point you are trying to make.
X-ism might be something that a non x-ist believes is absurd or incoherent or inconsistent, etc., at least in some of its tenets. Nevertheless, what x-ism is is what people who identify as x-ists say that they have in mind by x-ism; it's not something other than that.
The problem is that if there are a whole lot of naive realists who all believe different things, as you claim, then there could be no coherent view that we could call 'naive realism'.
At any rate, what you should be doing when you refer to naive realism is describing the views of particular people who call themselves naive realists. "Particular people" can be a large number of them, especially if what they believe as naive realism is similar.
That's what we do when we write dictionary/encyclopedia/"companion" articles on views, by the way. We describe what particular people who identified as an x-ist believed with respect to their x-ism, and typically we spend part of the time picking out different species of the view, especially popular or influential species.
What's not the case is that they believe something that someone else who doesn't identify as an x-ist believes is entailed by (parts of) the view. That's fine territory for criticism of the view from whatever other perspective, but it doesn't "draw" the view itself.
This is quite wrong. If some naive realists don't see some logical entailment of their view and posit that as part of it, and other naive realists do see the said logical entailment and posit it as being part of their standpoint, what then? which ones are the naive realists?
On the other hand, even if all naive realists have not realized that some logical entailment of their view holds because it is implicit in it; that wouldn't change the fact that the logical entailment holds, because if it really is a logical entailment, it must hold.
There is either one 'correct' version of naive realism or there are various versions of it. Which one do you want to claim?
This is again nonsense. If someone is looking out on a view of the mountains and there is say a cabin which is clearly visible; but she simply doesn't notice it; it does not follow from that that the cabin is not a part of the view.
This is wrong. Pointing out what is entailed by someone else's position is a big part of arguing against that position. Realists might argue that idealism entails solipsism, that solipsism is false, and so on that grounds idealism is false. Putnam argues that realism entails global scepticism, that global scepticism is false, and so on that grounds realism is false.
It doesn't matter if you believe X but not Y. If Y follows from X then to avoid contradiction you must either accept both or deny both.
The first problem there is that you believe there are facts whether something is logically entailed by something else, and the right people, the ones who get the facts right, are the ones with the license to claim a view.
First, the idea that there are facts re entailment is wrong.
Secondly, even if that weren't wrong, that's not actually how this works in practice. People believe that different things are entailed by the same foundational claims, and that's one thing that creates splits so that you wind up with x-ist(1s) and x-ist(2s) and so on--that is, different species of x-ists. Re "which ones are the x-ists" that simply works via a combination of popularity, influence and stature. What tends to be left out is views that are very different that are neither popular nor influential or that are not held by someone of stature.
It's also worth pointing out that not at views are something like logical arguments in the first place, so entailment isn't even apt for those.Quoting JohnI'd never say there are correct versions of a view. Just popular and/or influential versions. What can be incorrect, however, is to say that "x-ism is F" when (almost) no one who identifies as a x-ist says/believes F.
This is incomplete, it should read "Logic is nothing more than how all individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations, when they think coherently.
Logic is binding because it is the intersubjectively universal and binding law of discourse. If someone refuses to admit that their utterances are subject to logical critique; they are simply refusing to play the inter-subjective game and are basically playing with themselves, mentally masturbating in other words, instead of engaging in intercourse with others
"Intersubjective" doesn't amount to anything other than the fact that people can agree with each other and act in concert with each other, by the way. And to claim that such agreement makes anything correct is to claim an argumentum ad populum.
It seems to me you're not interested in serious discussion at all, just in mouthing off. As such, there is no point engaging with you. I wonder how many times you've heard that? Hopefully, for your sake one day it might sink in. :-}
If you want to claim that views and the claims they make are not necessarily logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose entailments that logically followfrom them, then that amounts to claiming that views just are what they are in total isolation and that any attack of a view is reducible to merely saying 'that's wrong'.
Of course this must also apply then to the things you claim. What you say also must not be subject to any logical critiques of its emtailments, simply because there aren't any. This also means that your claims by your own lights have no significance or implications beyond themselves. In that case they warrant no further response.
Of course, the fact that I disagree that that follows if it's not tautologous doesn't imply that it's not your view, or that your view is something different than that. You view is indeed just what it is, as you've stated it, because that's what you believe. That's what makes it your view, that particular view, etc.
Quoting John
That's basically the case anyway; we just often flesh out the reasons that we feel something is wrong.
Quoting John
Which nicely shows that you don't understand my views (both as my views and if you prefer, per what logically follows from them, if, per my understanding of logic, you have any decent ability with it whatsoever). First off, no one ever said anything resembling "there aren't any entailments." What I said was that (let's use names instead of variables for a moment) Joe's beliefs about the entailments of Frank's views, where Frank does not have present-to-mind the supposed entailments, are not themselves Frank's views. Maybe they'll become part of Frank's views, as Frank thinks about them and agrees with them, or maybe Frank will disagree, and they won't be part of Frank's views. What there "isn't any of" is views that no one thinks. And there aren't any logical entailments that no one thinks. But that doesn't imply that there are no logical entailments.
What Frank says is subject to Joe's logical critique of its entailments (and I had already explicitly pointed this out in an earlier post, it would take me a few minutes to find it, though, as I don't recall the exact wording I used), because Joe is of course going to give his take on it and tell us why he disagrees if he does. Joe might think that q is implied by Frank's belief that p, whereas Frank might disagree with Joe on that in a variety of ways. Joe thinking that q is implied by Frank's belief that p doesn't make it the case that Frank's view is that q. And every view is someone's. Again, views do not exist outside of people holding them. At any rate, so then we know that Joe doesn't agree with Frank's view because Joe believes that it implies that q, and Joe doesn't believe that q, whereas Frank believes differently. And then each person is going to decide for themselves, if they're interested in it, whether they agree with Frank or Joe or neither of them. Often it's neither--those are the two "laws" of philosophy after all: (1) For every philosopher, there is an equal and opposite philosopher. (2) They're both wrong. ;-)
Quoting John
Significance and implication are ways that people think about things. My comments have that insofar as people think about them in those ways (and then they have those things to those particular people), and they do not have them insofar as people do not think about them in those ways.
In any event, you don't need any sort of elaborate justification for not replying to me if you're not interested in what I say and you don't want to reply to me. You can simply choose to do something else instead. It's fine with me either way. I'll continute to do my thing regardless.
In my opinion, most of what I'm pointing out above is so obvious and basic that it seems odd that I have to spell any of it out. Of course, I've long been familiar with logical (and mathematical and general abstract existent) realists/platonists, but it never seemed to me that there were actually view realists/platonists around, because that seems so absurd to believe . . . but I've run into a couple of you (not just on this site) in the last couple days. I suppose I should have figured that there were view realists/platonists around, since there are folks who believe just about every other imaginable absurd thing (and that's a lot of what attracted me to philosophy in the first place), but I just hadn't run into someone who had made their view realism/platonism explicit prior to the last couple days.
None of what you say here shows that you have the least understanding of what I have been saying or that you are making any effort to genuinely engage. It's simply not worth making any effort on my part; I have better things to do. From what I have seen of your posts on this site and the old PF, they don't reflect much undrestanding of the issues at all, and mostly amount to nothing more than empty sophistry. I won't trouble you again.