Seeing things as they are

'Seeing Things As They Are' by John R. Searle, OUP, 2015.
He has a theory of perception which might help answer some of your questions.
Or not. I don't know.

The central question concerns the relation between the subjective conscious perceptual field and the objective perceptual field. Everything in the objective field is either perceived or can be perceived. Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings , whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field

Reply to leo
As a matter of interest, what have you experienced or read on the subject that gives rise to your issues ?
I haven't read much. However, you have piqued my curiosity.
I am going to leave this link here, in case it promotes a better understanding of the concerns :

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings , whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field

Then how does Searle know that there is a subjective field if it's not perceived? It almost sounds like Searle is saying the objective field and the subjective field are the same thing, which is how it seems to me.

Its why we can turn our knowledge and awareness back up on themselves of being aware of being aware and the knowing that I know.

Quoting leo

I see issues with the idea that we see external objects as they exist independently of us, that we see things as they are outside of us, yet it seems many people still assume it as if it was self-evident.

The problem is that by asking what something looks like independent of looking at it is an incoherent question. Its like asking if you can get the same result (how something looks) with different causes (the object doesnt refect light that interacts with your visual system). How does the object look when the lights are out, or when it partially submerged in a clear glass of water?

The correct way to phrase the question would be "what is the object like independent of looking at it?"

Doesn't science explain what something is like independent of looking at it - as if from a view from no where?

If we want know what it looks like, or what it is like when we do look at it, just look at. But remember that you're no longer taking about just the object. Youre talking about your perception of the object, which is the effect of several prior causes, and therefore different than talking about the object independent of perception.

Quoting leo

1. If we see things as they are, why don't we see the perceptions and thoughts of others? Is it that they don't exist?

You're confusing different ideas, seemingly based on a weird "literal" reading of "seeing things as they are."

No one is saying that we see "everything about everything," from every perspective. The very idea of that is incoherent. First off, any observation (in the scientific sense of that term, where it's simply referring to interactions of things) is going to be from a particular perspective or "reference point" and not from other perspectives (reference points). There are no perspective-free or reference-point-free perspectives/reference points.

So, you see x as it is from reference point y, say. That doesn't include reference point z, unless you change the observational reference point to z, and then you see x as it is from z, and not y.

X really is like a at y, and really like b at z.

The perceptions and thoughts of others are like perceptions and thoughts from the reference point of being the particular brain in question. If you're not that brain, you're not going to observe it from that reference point.

[quote]Quoting leo

If mind stems from the brain, why is our mind not a brain in a vat,

Say what? Why would it be?

Quoting leo

. If our concepts stem from our mind, such as the very concept of things, why say we see things as they are outside mind?

You're not thinking that anyone is saying that we observe concepts, are you? Concepts are ways that we think about particulars. It's a way of forming abstractions about them in order to make the world easier to deal with for survival purposes, because we'd not be able to deal with seeing everything as a unique particular (while trying to figure out if it's safe to approach, safe to do, safe to eat, etc.)

Quoting leo

4. If we see things as they are, why do some people not see things as they are (hallucinations, delusions)?

No one is claiming that there can't be perceptual problems, that we can't have hallucinations, etc. The entire way we arrive at the concept of a hallucination or perceptual problems in the first place is by being able to see things as they are and realizing that in some cases, something is going wrong, or proceeding unusually/differently. Otherwise it wouldn't even make any sense to talk about hallucinations.

Quoting Harry Hindu

The correct way to phrase the question would be "what is the object like independent of looking at it?"

Doesn't science explain what something is like independent of looking at it - as if from a view from no where?

You can't explain what an object is like independent of looking at it because what it is like cannot be described in any terminology other than sensation based language. That is, it smells like A, tastes like B, sounds like C, feels like D, and looks like E. Even such things as length and width cannot be described except in terms of how long it looks or feels.

As Locke attempted some time ago to draw a distinction between primary and secondary traits, with the former being of the object itself (like length and width) and the latter being those imposed by the person (like color or flavor), it became clear upon analysis that there really isn't any such distinction. All we know is what sense, and what we sense is subject to interpretation by our sense organs and brain. We have no reasonable basis to conclude that the apple we see in any way reflects some absolute reality.

As Kant noted, all we can reference is the phenomena, that which we perceive. We cannot even coherently discuss the noumena or the things in themselves. It makes no sense to ask what something really looks like without referencing what I subjectively see it to look like.

We should expect that our perceptions are geared toward our survival, but not in exposing us to absolute reality, whatever that even means. That is, the apple appears bright red and tastes sweet to us because that makes it noticeable and delicious to those who have eaten them and outsurvived those who did not.

All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. Name that tune.

Reply to leo We don't see things exactly as they are, or science wouldn't surprise us all the time. Clearly, our senses are limited. The big question is whether the way we perceive things is direct or has to be inferred. We might say we see a solid brown table as it is given our visual system. Then we can use tools like microscopes to see more of the table.

It gets tricky when we wish to describe the table independent of our perception of it. Is the table properly described as brown, solid and smooth? Or do we need more rigorous concepts backed up by data from our tools?

Quoting Hanover

You can't explain what an object is like independent of looking at it

Sure you can, because it's not different independent of looking at it, at least from the point of reference in question, and there are always points of reference.

You can't talk about the object sans particular points of reference, because the very idea of that is incoherent.

Quoting Hanover

All we know is what sense, and what we sense is subject to interpretation by our sense organs and brain

The only way you could know that what we sense is different than the object in itself is to know what the object is like in itself AND know what we sense, where you then note the differences. Otherwise, you'd have no basis at all to say that what we sense is any different than the object in itself.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Sure you can, because it's not different independent of looking at it, at least from the point of reference in question, and there are always points of reference.

All you can do is describe the sensations you have, and you can't even reliably say they are caused by the object. The incoherence is in speaking of the object in itself.Quoting Terrapin Station

The only way you could know that what we sense is different than the object in itself is to know what the object is like in itself AND know what we sense, where you then note the differences. Otherwise, you'd have no basis at all to say that what we sense is any different than the object in itself.

I've not said the perception is different from the object. I've said the object is entirely unknowable.

Quoting Hanover

I've not said the perception is different from the object. I've said the object is entirely unknowable.

The object is entirely unknowable based on what? What is the support for that claim?

Reply to Hanover

Ruunnn......rabbit run!!
Dig that hole, forget the sun....

(Sigh)

Quoting Terrapin Station

The object is entirely unknowable based on what? What is the support for that claim?

All I perceive is a phenomenal state. How can I assert something about the noumena if all I'm aware of is my phenomenal state?

What support do you have that the object is knowable?

Reply to Hanover

Try and walk through a wall. Try and lift a mountain.
When you attempt those things and fail, you are able to draw reasonable conclusions about some traits about those objects. No?

Quoting Hanover

You can't explain what an object is like independent of looking at it because what it is like cannot be described in any terminology other than sensation based language. That is, it smells like A, tastes like B, sounds like C, feels like D, and looks like E. Even such things as length and width cannot be described except in terms of how long it looks or feels.

Yes, but what does it mean for something to look and feel like anything? Isn't there an aboutness to how they look and how they feel? Are you not informed of something?

Aboutness is the relationship between cause and effect. You are able to get at the object, among other things, by looking at something. We can talk about our perceptions and still be talking about the world. Our perceptions are just another thing we can talk about directly. I can talk about what it is like to feel something, and I can talk about things that make me feel something. It just depends on what the focus of the discussion is.

Quoting Hanover

As Locke attempted some time ago to draw a distinction between primary and secondary traits, with the former being of the object itself (like length and width) and the latter being those imposed by the person (like color or flavor), it became clear upon analysis that there really isn't any such distinction. All we know is what sense, and what we sense is subject to interpretation by our sense organs and brain. We have no reasonable basis to conclude that the apple we see in any way reflects some absolute reality.

As Kant noted, all we can reference is the phenomena, that which we perceive. We cannot even coherently discuss the noumena or the things in themselves. It makes no sense to ask what something really looks like without referencing what I subjectively see it to look like.

Now, if I can communicate with you, using language, about my own perceptions and feelings, using objects in the world as the medium (ink and paper, computer screens, the atmosphere when I speak, braille, my hands with sign language), then how is it that we can understand each other if we can't really get at the objects in the world and perceive them similarly enough to communicate? How does language use work if we aren't using "external" objects in the world to communicate "internal" perceptions and feelings?


Quoting Hanover

We should expect that our perceptions are geared toward our survival, but not in exposing us to absolute reality, whatever that even means. That is, the apple appears bright red and tastes sweet to us because that makes it noticeable and delicious to those who have eaten them and outsurvived those who did not.

The bold part is you saying something about absolute reality. What is survival?

Your/My mind is part of absolute reality. Isn't the existence of your own mind the one thing that you can be sure of? If you want to quibble with terms and ask, "How do you know it's a "mind"?", then let's just say that something is happening - even if it's an "illusion". There are differences and changes. There is something rather than nothing and that something is what I am referring to - my "mind" - and that is either all of absolute reality (solipsism), or part of absolute reality (realism).

Quoting Hanover

All I perceive is a phenomenal state.

That's the claim you're supposed to be supporting. It's not at all a given.

To use the arboreal example that's so popular, let's say you see a tree. Possibilities include that you're perceiving a phenomenal state (which presumably you're saying amounts to "perceiving" mental content qua mental content), and that you're perceiving something external to you--namely, a tree.

You're going with option #1. Why?

Reply to leo If you’ve ever tried to draw from life with little to no drawing experience, you may notice the discrepancy between what our eyes see and what our mind ‘sees’. We will draw a line where we understand a boundary exists, even though our eyes see no such line. Many people who claim they cannot draw are simply unable to recognise or reproduce the difference between what their eyes see and what their mind tells them is there.

The Visual Reality Problem
by Gabriel Chiron

You are a subject, a self, a seer-of-objects. Your body is the object that allows you to see objects through your bodily eyes and nerves and brain at the optical center at the back of your brain. This is why a blow to the back of the head can cause blindness. Did you know that? Visual perception is at the back of your head in the visual perception center. Therefore the whole sensory environment or world that you see is nowhere but the back of your brain! This is neurocognitive non-duality. Get clear about this!

The next point is that your body is the first object you see at the back of your brain, so your entire body is actually nowhere but the back of its brain as it “sees” itself. Your body-object is simply neurocognitively interpreting itself as your body. You, the seer, cannot truly objectively see your body as it really is because you are using your body to “see” your body. Visual perception is not Absolute Reality, God or any other ultimate conceivable entity. How can an instrumental object see itself objectively? Try to be more conscious of this dilemma before you read further.

Human beings are deluded bodily so-called “seers” who share common hallucinatory optical illusions that they call “The Real World”. Just a little thought about optical cognition will cause the so-called objective-reality-of-the-world to collapse. This explains why there is very little inquiry and thinking about the realism of visual perception. You, just like everybody else, are going about keeping busy in an imaginary world projected like a hologram from the back of your head. You do not understand consciousness. You really don’t. You are deluded.

Everything you see is at the back of your head in your visual assemblage center in the rear brain. Yet, even that location is based on the holographic projection from that center. So it is itself a projection function from an unknown location. The brain is just its nearest imaginary topological orientation of object projecting false object. So where oh where is the actual assemblage center that puts together and projects the world we see?

Certain people in Mexico with subtle perceptual ability (extrasensory perception) have been investigating the Visual Reality Problem for centuries. In the subtle world, they discovered a subtle radiant egg of luminosity associated with the physical body but yet transcending it. They then perceived a glowing ball of perceptual projection at the back of that luminous egg which seems to project alternatively either the so-called physical world or the so-called subtle world. So they believed they had located the real center of visual perception there in the subtle world. They called it, the Assemblage Point. But unfortunately this is just a subtler pseudo-objective projection caused by the subtle instrumental object of visual perception. So, there is the First Attention of visual perception seemingly at the back of the brain and the Second Attention of subtle visual perception at the back of the subtle “egg” that seems to surround the physical body.

The Mexican Seers as well as certain Yogis in the East discovered a Third Attention where the Assemblage Point moves beyond the subtle into the time-space causal world as a “Bubble of Perception”, a “Cluster of Alternative Selfhoods”, and what some Siddhayogis call the Blue Pearl, sometimes believing it is the highest state and like Muktananda, deludedly trying to assert that his causal body of Third Attention is the more transcendental Fourth Attention. So, where is the center of visual perception in the causal bubble of perception? That seems to be like a bright white star at the back of the blue bubble. But that too is just an instrumental star-of-consciousness that can be detached from the entire bubble of perception, the blue pearl or causal body of Third Attention. This is where we leave those Mexican Seers behind and enter a Fourth Attention of advanced Yogis.

Where, then is the center of visual perception within a detached White Star of Superconscious Fourth Attention? And, is it final or is there another state of Beyond-the-Fourth, Turiyateeta?

Beyond-the-Fourth is like a Black Hole within the White Star of Fourth Attention. Because it is black and somewhat resembles a Shivalinga, advanced Yogis of the Lingayat Tradition in India called it Atmalinga, the Linga that is one’s own Supreme Self of Shivahood beyond the mere Atman or Self of the White Star Fourth Attention. But is this Black Hole Fifth Attention final? Oh no! It is rumored that there actually is a Sixth Attention and even a Seventh. Of course, all this becomes increasingly incomprehensible, inaccessible and nameless. Perhaps it is enough for you to know that you are presently living in a bullshit false reality, a world that has no real top or even a real bottom. So, like the poet Rimbaud, I have to say that I piss on your “Real World” from a great height! Even where you imagine you have great subtle perception like those Mexicans and others, it is still next-to-nothing. So, come off it and get more real about all this! We are just getting started, getting warmed up.

Quoting Terrapin Station

To use the arboreal example that's so popular, let's say you see a tree. Possibilities include that you're perceiving a phenomenal state (which presumably you're saying amounts to "perceiving" mental content qua mental content), and that you're perceiving something external to you--namely, a tree.

Assuming you're a realist, there is a tree "out there" that somehow is perceived by you. That leaves two things (1) the tree and (2) the perception of the tree. The tree is located in the woods and the perception is located in your head. Your knowledge of the tree is due to the light reflecting off the tree, the lens in your eye bending that light, that light affecting your neurons, and thorough some magic of consciousness, you perceive it. What else could you be perceiving other than some processed physical event in the world?

Quoting Hanover

Assuming you're a realist, there is a tree "out there" that somehow is perceived by you. That leaves two things (1) the tree and (2) the perception of the tree. The tree is located in the woods and the perception is located in your head. Your knowledge of the tree is due to the light reflecting off the tree, the lens in your eye bending that light, that light affecting your neurons, and thorough some magic of consciousness, you perceive it. What else could you be perceiving other than some processed physical event in the world?

Without addressing potential problems in this depiction, let's say those things wind up being the case under an assumption of realism.

That, however, is not your view. Your view is that you're "perceiving" mental content qua mental content. I'm asking you how you're arriving at that option. And the answer as to how you're arriving at it, why you're picking that option is?

Quoting Terrapin Station

That, however, is not your view. Your view is that you're "perceiving" mental content qua mental content. I'm asking you how you're arriving at that option. And the answer as to how you're arriving at it, why you're picking that option is?

My view is that I'm perceiving whatever has been transmitted from the tree to the eye to the brain to my consciousness. The light as it travels is not a perception the instant it hits my lens, and the tree itself never moves from the woods.

What's your view of what's going on?

Reply to Hanover Reply to Terrapin Station
Is consciousness divided into a perceiver and an object of perception, ie the Cartesian theatre, or is consciousness and perception one and the same? Isn't "awareness" a synonym for "consciousness"?

Where is the "you" that perceives?

Quoting Harry Hindu

Is consciousness divided into a perceiver and an object of perception, ie the Cartesian theatre, or is consciousness and perception one and the same? Isn't "awareness" a synonym for "consciousness"?

Where is the "you" that perceives?

Let's say not, but concede that the awareness is the consciousness. That still doesn't make the object and the perception the same thing, which appears to be TP's position (I think).

Quoting Hanover

My view is that I'm perceiving whatever has been transmitted from the tree to the eye to the brain to my consciousness. The light as it travels is not a perception the instant it hits my lens, and the tree itself never moves from the woods.

If you think that the tree itself is unknowable, then why would you believe that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree? What would be the basis of that?

What I think is going on is that you perceive the tree. Obviously that doesn't mean that the tree is in your brain, which is an inane misunderstanding/straw man that some people think is worth arguing against, as if anyone is claiming that. Perceiving the tree is seeing the tree as it is, from a particular point of reference, via the mechanisms of perception--receiving sensory data via light or sound or touch, etc. where nerve signals are sent to your brain, etc.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Is consciousness divided into a perceiver and an object of perception, ie the Cartesian theatre, or is consciousness and perception one and the same? Isn't "awareness" a synonym for "consciousness"?

Where is the "you" that perceives?

Consciousness is a general term for mentality, including awareness. Perception is one set of mental "modes." So is the notion of a self or "you." The location of all of this is your brain.

Quoting Hanover

As Kant noted, all we can reference is the phenomena, that which we perceive. We cannot even coherently discuss the noumena or the things in themselves. It makes no sense to ask what something really looks like without referencing what I subjectively see it to look like.

But yet somehow we can come up with the wavefunction and talk about black holes and quarks.

Quoting Terrapin Station

What I think is going on is that you perceive the tree. Obviously that doesn't mean that the tree is in your brain, which is an inane misunderstanding/straw man that some people think is worth arguing against, as if anyone is claiming that. Perceiving the tree is seeing the tree as it is, from a particular point of reference, via the mechanisms of perception--receiving sensory data via light or sound or touch, etc. where nerve signals are sent to your brain, etc.

If I see a tree as a goat and you as a hat, which is correct? Are you committing to the idea that whatever I see is correct because it's just a particular point of reference? The guy whose lens makes midgets appear as giants is just as accurately seeing the person as the one sees midgets as midgets.

Is it possible under your position to state that I have misperceived something?

Reply to Hanover

Again, this is why I don't like to do more than one thing at a time. What happened to the question I asked prior to what you're quoting?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Again, this is why I don't like to do more than one thing at a time. What happened to the question I asked prior to what you're quoting?

I did answer your question, which is to say that since you cannot determine if a tree is accurately perceived as a goat or a hat, then you can't say you know anything about the tree.

Reply to Hanover

What I'd count as an answer is something that begins like this, "I believe that I'm perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree because _______"

This is a different question, now asking me why I think the tree is the tree, although I said I could know nothing of the noumenal tree. But to answer that question:

I believe that I'm perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree because I have faith that what I perceive accurately reflects the external object I believe I am seeing

Since I lack that faith and lack a reasonable basis for for having such faith:

I do not believe that I'm perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree because since you cannot determine if a tree is accurately perceived as a goat or a hat, then you can't say you know anything about the tree.

Reply to Hanover

What? You have faith but you lack that faith?

Quoting Terrapin Station

What? You have faith but you lack that faith?

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena.

Your question directly asked me how I could know what I saw was the tree, which was in direct conflict with what I had been saying. So, to entertain your question, which was how would I know my perception was of the tree (and it must be "would" because I never claimed it did), I told you how it could be that I might hold the tree I saw was the tree that was there.

I actually thought your question thoughtful because if I were to state there were no way possible that I could know the tree I saw was the tree, then I might be speaking tautologically, which was what I thought you were getting at, So, my response was to allow for the possibility that I could believe my perception was the tree, but it would not be based upon empirical thought or rational evaluation, but just faith.

In reality, I don't have such faith, so that's why I clarified in the second portion of my post what my position actually was.

Quoting Hanover

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena.

The reason I asked is that you wrote this: "My view is that I'm perceiving whatever has been transmitted from the tree . . ."

So for the first part of that, you believe that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you. I'm not asking you about a hypothetical. I'm asking you about something that you said is your view.

Since you've said both that you believe things like trees are unknowable and that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you, I'm asking you what your personal basis for believing that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree. Again, this isn't a hypothetical. It's a question about things you've said that you believe, things you've said are your view.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Since you've said both that you believe things like trees are unknowable and that there's a tree that's transmitting something to you

Quoting Hanover

You asked your question, which you insisted be answered, in the hypothetical, as my position has never been that I know my perception is representative of the actual tree or that it emanates from the tree. As I've said, I cannot speak of the noumena.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Perceiving the tree is seeing the tree as it is, from a particular point of reference, via the mechanisms of perception--receiving sensory data via light or sound or touch, etc. where nerve signals are sent to your brain, etc.

Is it (is perceiving the tree) experiencing a mental picture of the tree?

Just wondering. Not planning any traps. Not that I could possibly hope to catch you in one. (Noble testudine.) Just curious where you stand on that question.

Hello to all philosophers,

Although one only ever experiences a model of reality in one's mind, this serves well enough for operational purposes. In general, many might think that we directly experience things, but no real harm befalls them. Nor does it matter much that only the slightly past is experienced. They may be astounded that there is light in the apparently dark brain.

Light peels information off objects for sight, and molecules bring us smell (shapes), taste (4-way vector), hearing (vibrations), and feel (forces), which elements tell us that what's 'out there' is really there.

The same mind model is used in night-dreams, but there may be inconsistencies as well as painting errors. My car is seldom to be found where I parked it, or anywhere.

My best guess as to what's really out there would be quantum fields, perhaps all even atop one another somehow (Rovelli's view).

When the tree falls in the forest unattended by us, it has no sound, no sight, and no experiential anything, but for perhaps a bug noticing something.

Reply to Hanover

That you never said your perception is representative of the tree is fine. I'm asking what your personal basis is for believing that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree.

Quoting bongo fury

Is it (is perceiving the tree) experiencing a mental picture of the tree?

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree rather than perceiving the tree.

Perception of the tree is an activity of the (embodied) brain which receives the sensory stimuli, and synthesises them into judgement 'tree'. But the mistake commonly made is to regard the 'idea of the tree' as itself an object, which it never can be, as we can never get outside the act of perception in such a way as to 'objectify' it. Usually when this is described, we will make the mistake of thinking that the idea is 'in the mind', as if 'the mind' is something we can describe or get outside of. In other words, we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.'

Quoting Wayfarer

But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.'

There may or may not be "two". The question is whether there is anything there independent of the perception that gives rise to the perception. The answer would seem to be that we simply don't, and cannot, know. We don't even know what it could be for something to be there independent of any perception of it. In the everyday sense it is just something taken for granted.

When we try to imagine what extra-perceptual conditions would be necessary to produce the obvious result, which is that we all see the same objects in the same relative locations in the same world, the only two remotely plausible explanations are that there is an independent reality structured such as to give rise to the common perception of objects and world, or there is a universal mind or God we are all connected to and the objects are like thoughts in that collective mind or God or whatever you might want to call "it".

So, beyond the everyday and in the philosophical context, people just believe whatever is most plausible to them, given their own particular set of prejudices and preferences. That is why most broadly speaking people are either realists/ materialists or they are idealists/ anti-realists. Personally I sit on the fence, and look both ways, but lean towards the realist side.

Quoting Terrapin Station

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree

Having / hosting / receiving / making / storing / processing / being a mental picture of the tree?

Any of those?

Reply to bongo fury

See this post of mine from a different thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/297414

As I explain there (specifically with respect to representationalism), the idea from the opposition (opposed to direct realists like me) is that you're only aware of (or only "perceiving," though I wouldn't say we're talking about perception in this case, hence the quotation marks) something created by your mind, where it's not possible to know how that mental content is really connected to anything else (assuming that the opposition is proposing something else in the first place--if they're representationalists, they are proposing something else; if they're idealists or solipsists, they may not be).

So the difference is between perceiving (or "perceiving")--so we're talking about on the phenomenal/awareness end of things--something that was created by/something that originates in our minds, so that we're literally "perceiving" mental content in this first case, versus something that wasn't created by/didn't originate in our minds, but that's rather external to us/external to our minds.

Another way to think of it is another analogy. We have a camera. The question about the photographs we produce with our cameras is this: is the content of the photographs that we produce solely the camera itself (is your supposed picture of a tree in your yard really just a picture of the camera?), where there's no way to know how the content of the photographs is correlated with a real, external tree, assuming that we're positing such a thing, or is the content of the photographs we produce something external to the camera? (Note that we're not asking if the photograph of a tree is literally/identical to a tree, we're asking if it's "directly" a photograph of an external tree, rather than a photograph of the (internal workings of the) camera.)

Quoting Wayfarer

Perception of the tree is an activity of the (embodied) brain which receives the sensory stimuli, and synthesises them into judgement 'tree'.

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.)

Quoting Terrapin Station

You're confusing different ideas, seemingly based on a weird "literal" reading of "seeing things as they are."

No one is saying that we see "everything about everything," from every perspective. The very idea of that is incoherent. First off, any observation (in the scientific sense of that term, where it's simply referring to interactions of things) is going to be from a particular perspective or "reference point" and not from other perspectives (reference points). There are no perspective-free or reference-point-free perspectives/reference points.

The perceptions and thoughts of others are like perceptions and thoughts from the reference point of being the particular brain in question. If you're not that brain, you're not going to observe it from that reference point.

It seems to me you're the one confusing things. There are some who seem to believe they have a "view from nowhere" about reality, a perspective-free idea of reality, but I'm not even restricting my discussion to them, my point applies more generally to all who think they see things as they are from a given perspective.

For instance you think that you see a rock as it is from your perspective, and then if you move around it or take it in your hand you're perceiving it from other perspectives, and presumably you think that if you perceived this rock from every possible reference point then you would see everything about this rock.

Now replace rock with brain. If you perceive a brain from various perspectives, if you measure its temperature, density, electrical conductivity, electrical activity, nothing tells you there that this thing perceives or thinks anything at all, even if you somehow observed it from all reference points.

So we're not seeing the perceptions and thoughts of others from a perspective, we're not seeing them at all, at least not with our eyes. Yet our perceptions and thoughts make up our whole existence, so we're missing something huge if we say that we see things as they are from a perspective.

Now you could say that a brain is how perceptions and thoughts of others appear to us from our perspective, but then our perspective shows us a tiny part of what's there, and looking at a thing from all possible reference points is still showing only a tiny part of what it is.

If by "reference point" we mean a particular location at a particular time, then if you looked at a thing from all possible reference points, you still wouldn't see all of it. And if you consider that the brain itself is a reference point, then "reference point" is not characterized by location and time alone but also by the brain present at that particular location and time.

And then if we make a model of reality where we see things as only depending on space and time, we're missing one dimension of reality, the brain, the mind, or however we call it. If we don't take into account the brain dimension, we're only modeling reality from the reference point of a particular brain, or from a set of brains that agree with each other.

And if we treat the brain as a dimension that makes up a reference point, then other brains have perspectives we don't have or can't have. And then it seems quite premature to classify a particular reported experience as some hallucination or delusion, rather than as an observation from a reference point we don't have.

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. And that brain dimension is missing in physics and in the minds of those who think they see things as they are from a particular location and time.

But we can communicate with one another to some extent, so let's make use of that ability to learn about what others see from their reference point, rather than dismiss everything they say that doesn't fit our own perspective, which is sadly what most people seem to do, and which in my opinion is responsible for a lot of the wrongs in this world.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Where is the "you" that perceives?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Consciousness is a general term for mentality, including awareness. Perception is one set of mental "modes." So is the notion of a self or "you." The location of all of this is your brain.

So "you" are just a perception in your brain? When you use the word, "I" you are referring to a perception in your brain? When "you" aren't being perceived in the brain but something else is, then what is doing the perceiving and where is that thing that is doing the perceiving?

These aren't trick questions. I really want to know what you think.

Reply to Janus, Reply to Hanover, Reply to Wayfarer, Quoting Terrapin Station

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.)

Exactly. Not to mention it undermines language use as we use objects in the world as the medium to communicate. If we can't get at the computer screen, how can I hope to get at the words on the computer screen, or the words in the ink on the paper?

What many here fail to talk about is the aboutness of the mind - which is a defining feature of the mind. It is talked about in other philosophy forums, but I don't know why it's not talked about here. Aboutness is what makes it feel like a perceiver and objects being perceived (the Cartesian Theatre) in the mind. There is no perceiver in the mind. The perceiver would be the whole body, or at least the entire nervous system which includes the senses.

How is it that we can get at the object that isn't a perception via a perception? How is it that we can talk about our perceptions as if they were objects? When we use words to refer states of affairs like objects and events, are we referring to the perception or the object? If the perception is already about the object in some way, can't we talk about the object by talking about the perception?

Quoting bongo fury

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree
— Terrapin Station

Having / hosting / receiving / making / storing / processing / being a mental picture of the tree?

Any of those?

All of those, then? But, like a photograph, it (the perception/mental picture) is a more or less direct trace of physical events, and the opposition are claiming otherwise? They are claiming it's less realistic, like a painting?

If so, then I have to be quite annoyingly arrogant and say "you're both wrong!" (like Homer Simpson, tragic I know.)

But yes. I say: "none of those". Mental pictures are a myth. One as old as real pictures, and probably responsible for all the mutual incomprehension in this kind of discussion. (I did warn you.)

Quoting leo

and presumably you think that if you perceived this rock from every possible reference point then you would see everything about this rock.

No, exactly NOT that. It's not possible to see "everything" about anything. There are a number of simple reasons for this, including that (a) at any given moment, you can only experience one perspective, and all perspectives are different at different points of time, (b) you can't experience any perspective that's not your own, and most are not your own. This includes that you can't observe the rock from the surface of the rock, you can't observe it from inside the rock, etc. (and each point on the surface, the inside, etc. is different anyway). You can obviously observe the surface and the inside, but you're not doing so from the perspective of being the surface or the inside. It's always from a perspective that's in an extensional relation to it instead.

Quoting leo

Now replace rock with brain. If you perceive a brain from various perspectives, if you measure its temperature, density, electrical conductivity, electrical activity, nothing tells you there that this thing perceives or thinks anything at all, even if you somehow observed it from all reference points.

This is wrong in that if you observe it from the perspective of being that brain, you experience the mental properties. If you're not the brain in question, you can't observe it from that perspective. If you are the brain in question, you can.

Just the same thing goes for the rock. You can't observe it from the point of reference of being the rock. Because you're not the rock.

Quoting leo

Now you could say that a brain is how perceptions and thoughts of others appear to us from our perspective, but then our perspective shows us a tiny part of what's there, and looking at a thing from all possible reference points is still showing only a tiny part of what it is.

Yes, you're always experiencing things from a very limited number of reference points. This does not at all imply anything like idealism however.

Quoting leo

other brains have perspectives we don't have or can't have.

Yes, obviously.

Quoting leo

And then it seems quite premature to classify a particular reported experience as some hallucination or delusion, rather than as an observation from a reference point we don't have.

It just depends on what is being claimed and the support for the claim.

Quoting leo

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain.

There's no difference there. "A particular location at a particular time" is always some location, some thing which is the point of reference. A brain is as good as anything there.

Quoting Harry Hindu

So "you" are just a perception in your brain?

No. The idea wasn't that "you" is a subset of perception. Perception was an example of a mental "mode."

The notion of one's self is an example of another mental "mode."

Quoting leo

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. And that brain dimension is missing in physics and in the minds of those who think they see things as they are from a particular location and time.

The way I see it, there are two additional dimensions: one relates to value, and the other to meaning. We experience the world not just from a particular perspective in spacetime, but also from a particular evaluative perspective. This perspective comes from the unique sum of our past interactions across spacetime. So too, we experience the world from a particular perspective that positions each of us uniquely in terms of how all our evaluations of experience interact to construct meaning.

Quoting bongo fury

All of those, then?

In my opinion the questions were kind of a mess in context and every term there would have to be sorted out, which would be a ridiculous amount of work that's not necessary if you're not clear on the idea. Hence why I referred to something else and explained it to you in another way instead.

Quoting bongo fury

But, like a photograph, it (the perception/mental picture) is a more or less direct trace of physical events, and the opposition are claiming otherwise? They are claiming it's less realistic, like a painting?

They're claiming that literally you're not perceiving something external to you, but instead, you're "perceiving" (that is, your mental awareness is of) something that's exclusively mental. Something that was created by (your) mind. And they're claiming that you have no way to be aware of anything other than things created by your mind, so you have no way at all of not only determining those mental creations' relationships to something external to you, but that you'd have no way of even establishing that there is anything external to you.

Quoting bongo fury

If so, then I have to be quite annoyingly arrogant and say "you're both wrong!" (like Homer Simpson, tragic I know.)

But yes. I say: "none of those". Mental pictures are a myth. One as old as real pictures, and probably responsible for all the mutual incomprehension in this kind of discussion. (I did warn you.)

My view is that there's no good way to reason to the idea that one is only experiencing something that's a mental creation (a "mental picture"), so there's no reason to believe that that's the case.

I wouldn't say that "mental pictures" are a myth with respect to imagining things, remembering them, etc.

But if you don't think that either some form of idealism or representationalism OR something like direct realism is how things work, then what would you say is going on/how would you say that perception (or whatever you figure it is) works?

Quoting Possibility

The way I see it, there are two additional dimensions: one relates to value, and the other to meaning. We experience the world not just from a particular perspective in spacetime, but also from a particular evaluative perspective. This perspective comes from the unique sum of our past interactions across spacetime. So too, we experience the world from a particular perspective that positions each of us uniquely in terms of how all our evaluations of experience interact to construct meaning.

Just to make it clear (I know you're not commenting on this, but I could see things going off track easily), when I use "perspective" in this context, I'm not talking about the conscious perspective of a person. I'm using the term in more of a "point of reference" fashion, which is why I often try to substitute that phrase instead.

Quoting Terrapin Station

So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument.

Well, it will certainly undermine the very basis of realist arguments. Realism assumes a great deal, and then forget what it has assumed.

Quoting Wayfarer

Well, it will certainly undermine the very basis of realist arguments.

How would it undermine a realist argument? If we're going to claim things about how brains etc. work, we need to be able to observe brains, other people, etc.

Quoting Terrapin Station

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't posit that we can simply observe external things like trees, we certainly can't posit that we can observe things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc. So one winds up undermining the very basis of one's argument. (At least if one is trying to formulate this argument on any sort of scientific grounds.)

This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we observe all those things; that has never been the point at issue. The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those things are always inextricably relative to our experience and tell us and say nothing definitively decidable about any supposed 'reality' beyond that. I say "definitively decidable" because obviously we can, individually, decide what we want to think about it, but that is, and can be, no more and no less than a preference-driven individual decision.

Both realists and idealists often act as though they think that the opposing or alternative view is simply, given the facts, mistaken or even incoherent. For me, this is myopic. one-sided thinking.

Quoting Wayfarer

In other words, we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.'

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain.

While we don't see a brain or anything as it really is, this doesn't undermine investigation, for we can be sure that the mind paints a useful face on the reality out there, else we wouldn't have lasted very long.

Quoting Janus

This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we observe all those things; that has never been the point at issue. The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those things are always inextricably relative to our experience and tell us and say nothing definitively decidable about any supposed 'reality' beyond that. I say "definitively decidable" because obviously we can, individually, decide what we want to think about it, but that is, and can be, no more and no less than a preference-driven individual decision.

I'm surprised that you're commenting authoritatively despite not actually understanding the comment.

Not really, though.

If you're just claiming something about stuff you're making up/imagining, it has little weight, little bearing on anything except for the fact that you're also imagining people who think you're consistently harebrained.

Quoting Marchesk

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain.

All of this is true of our situation as we perceive it but says nothing about any purported "reality" above and beyond our perceptions. You can go around in circles about this issue forever, but you are never going to know anything which is beyond our capacity to know, and the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate. let alone find an answer to.

Quoting Terrapin Station

I'm surprised that you're commenting authoritatively despite not actually understanding the comment.

What precisely have I said that leads you to think I don't understand the comment?

I think it's more the case that you are resorting to innuendo and insult because you have nothing cogent to counter my criticism of your comment.

Quoting Janus

the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate.

If you think you can't coherently formulate it then you can't make claims about not being able to know it.

Start with this: Quoting Janus

. Of course we observe all those things;

Of course we observe what things?

Reply to Terrapin Station How could you answer a question that cannot be coherently formulated?

Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independently, apart from the obvious "It's there when no one is around". We know what it means to say an object we perceive is there; we can see it. touch it and so on. We don't know what it means for an unperceived object to be there: the best we can say is that if we were there we would be able to see it, touch and so on. But that really amounts to saying nothing at all outside of the context of perception.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Of course we observe what things?

You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so? It should be obvious I was referring to to what Marchesky said:

Quoting Marchesk

there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside

Who's the "harebrain"?

Actually I thought the comment was to Marchseky but I checked I saw it was to you. So I was referring to:

"external things like trees... things like brains, eyes, nerves, other people (or even the surfaces of your own body), experimental apparatuses to test how perception works, etc.

Quoting Janus

You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so? It should be obvious I was referring to to what Marchesky said:

Geez. You passed that test of your understanding with flying colors. Exactly as I expected, lol.

You're an incorrigible yet ridiculously arrogant moron.

Reply to Terrapin Station More insult? Is that all you've got?

Reply to Janus

Should I follow your example instead? (Or maybe you'd prefer I be dishonest?)

Quoting Marchesk

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there.

Brain or mind? It makes a difference.

Physically there is a causal chain between brain and object. The separation of one from the other is somewhat arbitrary.

Reply to Terrapin Station If you mean follow the example of actually attempting to provide cogent arguments, then yes, obviously. But I don't expect you to do that; I have seen over and over how when confronted with arguments too difficult for you to counter, you resort to changing the subject or to insult. So I see you as far more incorrigible than I am, since I am prepared to consider both sides of the argument; whereas you are indeed to quote yourself "a ridiculously arrogant moron".

Quoting Marchesk

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain.

Quoting Terrapin Station

How would it undermine a realist argument? If we're going to claim things about how brains etc. work, we need to be able to observe brains, other people, etc.

Thank you both for missing the point so thoroughly, and yet concisely. :wink:

Quoting Janus

If you mean follow the example of actually attempting to provide cogent arguments

Sure. So let's start with this: This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we attempt to provide cogent arguments. That has never been the point at issue. You seem pretty obtuse sometimes; perhaps willfully so?

Is that how you mean?

Reply to Wayfarer It truly amazes me when people are apparently incapable of at least understanding both sides of the argument.

Quoting Wayfarer

Thank you both for missing the point so thoroughly, and yet concisely

No problem. Thank you for making the point so well. Good discussion.

Reply to Terrapin Station No I mean attending to what I have actually argued against your claims:

"The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those things are always inextricably relative to our experience and tell us and say nothing definitively decidable about any supposed 'reality' beyond that. I say "definitively decidable" because obviously we can, individually, decide what we want to think about it, but that is, and can be, no more and no less than a preference-driven individual decision.

Both realists and idealists often act as though they think that the opposing or alternative view is simply, given the facts, mistaken or even incoherent."

If you disagree with any of that then say so, and defend your saying so.

Reply to Janus

Again, you didn't at all understand the comment I made.

You won't accept that it's possible that you didn't understand it. When I started steps of demonstrating that you didn't understand it, you responded with insults rather than confronting the possibility.

Reply to leo

• To be mistaken requires that what you have in mind is distinct from what is out there. If the external world is not independent of your mind, how is it that you can be mistaken as to what is the case?
• You on occasions come upon a novelty. If the external world is not independent of your mind, where is it that something previously unknown comes from?
• There are some things you are prevented from doing. If the external world is not independent of your mind, why can't you do as you choose?
• If the external world is not independent of your mind, what place is there for other minds? How will you avoid solipsism?

I submit that the simplest explanation for these observations is that there is a world that is (in a sense) independent of the mind.

I think it might be worth considering if it could be the case that there is an independent world; and that one's dealing with that world are mediated. There is a world that is, as Davidson suggests, always, already interpreted.

Quoting Janus

All of this is true of our situation as we perceive it but says nothing about any purported "reality" above and beyond our perceptions. You can go around in circles about this issue forever, but you are never going to know anything which is beyond our capacity to know, and the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate. let alone find an answer to.

This would seem to put us into the same position as a brain in the vat. Meillassoux's anti-correlationist argument is similar to Putnam's argument that a brain that's always been envatted could not truthfully say it was envatted, because it couldn't mean that in the way the brain would actually be envatted.

Correlationism locks us in from truthfully saying dinosuars existed. We can say both, but we can't mean them truthfully. We can only mean them in a correlationist or envatted sense, which would be false.

Thus correlationism denies the truth of evolution. It can appear that we evolved, and it can be pragmatic to say we did, but it cannot be true.

Quoting Janus

No I mean attending to what I have actually argued against your claims:

Janus, perhaps you need to be clearer in your writing.

Quoting Terrapin Station

In my opinion the questions were kind of a mess in context and every term there would have to be sorted out, which would be a ridiculous amount of work that's not necessary

I was just curious to know whether you wanted mental pictures in the picture, at all. Evidently you did.

Quoting Terrapin Station

But if you don't think that either some form of idealism or representationalism OR something like direct realism is how things work,

It would be great not to get pigeonholed... for a few more milliseconds. But I guess you'll see where I'm getting it all from.

Quoting Terrapin Station

... then what would you say is going on/how would you say that perception (or whatever you figure it is) works?

That slash is significant? On one hand what's going on... what perception actually looks like and what's generally happening, i.e. the psychology / and on the other hand how it works... affords knowledge of the outside i.e. the epistemology. I didn't want to do any of the latter, just point out that IMO it was hopeless carried out against the background of a largely mythical psychology. But I bet a lot of the disputes in this thread could benefit from a separation according to this slash. I notice that a lot of it could be conducted well away from any brains. That is, I'd like to know what the two sides do claim about the forensic / evidential / epistemic reach of actual photos, paintings etc.

However, what's going on in perception if not mental pictures? Fair question. Thanks for asking. We should say instead that we get skillful in responding appropriately to stimuli, or on a more attenuated level, refining our readiness to select (appropriately) from repertoires of responses. For humans in particular, that involves playing with sub-vocal and sub-visual reactions that refine our readiness to select appropriate (real) words and pictures to point at things, and to establish agreement with each other regarding which words and pictures are pointing at which things.

Our excellence in this area outstrips, not surprisingly, our intellectual understanding of the skill, and it was natural to spread the myth of inner words and pictures, even before camera and early (pre-connectionist) computer technology showed us examples of actual inner words and pictures (in the form of retrievable film and text files), and tended to reinforce the myth. Maybe the myth helps us master the skill, in ways that make it even harder to unpick, objectively. But what's really going on is playing of a complex social game with symbols that are outside not in.

You may disagree. Stick an electrode in someone's cortex (or a madeleine under their nose), you say, and chances are the person accesses just the stored files, the pictures or other sensory images, that I presume to deny. Not necessarily. Think of the brain as a complex coil of coiled springs or elastic bands, disposed (by innate constitution and its history of environmental tweaking and prodding) to respond to stimulation (not least an electrode) with symbolic behavior. We can see in this way that recall isn't access to a more or less corrupted file, but a more or less convincing symbolic reaction. Perception likewise... kinda.

Anyway, why worry about the straw man of some literal inner woodland, which the opposition will rightly deny they ever implied, and will put down to misunderstanding and rhetoric, when we have this more urgent matter of, er, an iron man of error?? If you see what I mean. A man to whom all sides seem in thrall.

Reply to Amity Searle is a student of J.L. Austin, in whom I am well pleased.

The book on this topic is his Sense and Sensibilia

Reply to Banno What have you found unclear?

Quoting Terrapin Station

When I started steps of demonstrating that you didn't understand it, you responded with insults rather than confronting the possibility.

What "steps" were those?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Just to make it clear (I know you're not commenting on this, but I could see things going off track easily), when I use "perspective" in this context, I'm not talking about the conscious perspective of a person. I'm using the term in more of a "point of reference" fashion, which is why I often try to substitute that phrase instead.

Yes, I’m with you there. You can substitute ‘perspective’ with ‘point of reference’, and what I’ve written still makes sense to me. But you’re reducing ‘perspective’ to 3D physical space because this is where we commonly talk about seeing things ‘as they are’. It’s a static snapshot of the universe as it is, sure - but is that what we mean by ‘seeing things as they are’? Is our use of language restricting our capacity to understand ‘reality’?

Quoting Terrapin Station

It's not possible to see "everything" about anything. There are a number of simple reasons for this, including that (a) at any given moment, you can only experience one perspective, and all perspectives are different at different points of time, (b) you can't experience any perspective that's not your own, and most are not your own. This includes that you can't observe the rock from the surface of the rock, you can't observe it from inside the rock, etc. (and each point on the surface, the inside, etc. is different anyway). You can obviously observe the surface and the inside, but you're not doing so from the perspective of being the surface or the inside. It's always from a perspective that's in an extensional relation to it instead.

At any given moment, you can only experience one point of reference in 3D space. But unlike the rock, animals have the capacity to interact in 4D spacetime, to experience a temporal aspect of the world. Over time, and with the help of memory, most animals can develop a point of reference that enables them to ‘perceive’ and interact with the rock as a three dimensional ‘object’ in spacetime.

We only know that ‘all 3D perspectives are different at different points of time’ because we can perceive the world in 4D spacetime - we can make sense of the world regardless of our position in space. As we map space in relation to these different reference points of time and interact with everything in relation to how we experience time, we realise that our experience of the universe in relation to time is not universal - we interact with the universe in time from a particular reference point that determines our perspective of everything regardless of our position in spacetime. This reference point relates to how we evaluate each 4D event or interaction.

Science enables us to ‘observe’ or measure aspects of the rock from the surface of the rock or from inside it - to gain a perspective of what the rock looks like from the inside - because we have the capacity to perceive this evaluative aspect of the world. This is the aspect of hierarchy, of numbers and mathematics. This is how we can relate two events occurring at different times, giving us a broader understanding of the structure of the universe in spacetime.

So the question becomes: is 3D space really ‘as things are’, and everything else is in our minds, OR does the universe consist not of 3D things as they are, but of 4D events as they occur? Or does it in fact consist of 5D subjective interactions as they are observed/measured?

Is 3D space considered reality because everything else we can physically observe in time interacts with it in roughly the same way, thus verifying our perspective?

Reply to bongo fury Are you a philosophical zombie? Because you argue as if you have no conscious experiences. If I ask whether you experience pain, are you going to give me some functional/physiological response?

Quoting Marchesk

Correlationism locks us in from truthfully saying dinosuars existed.

I can't see that it does. We can say that conditions back then were such that, if we had been there we would have perceived dinosaurs. It's the same as saying that current conditions are such that we experience a world of objects and events. We know that we experience a world of objects and events, but we cannot say what constitutes the transcendental conditions that produce that experience, or even whether our concepts are apt outside the context of perception.

How could we ever know whether they are or not?. So, we could be "brains in a vat" but if that were so then there would be another external world where there are scientists and vats, so the problem is just pushed back one step. Are those scientists brains in vats in yet another external world? Infinite regress?

According to our best understanding, h. Sapiens is the product of billions of years of evolution. These thousands of millions of years, our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through billions of lifetimes in various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate and so on - in such a way as to eventually give rise to the mental capacities that we have today.

Meanwhile other scientific disciplines such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of ‘conscious thought’ (and perhaps beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science.)

Consciousness plays a central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ - and also the apparent coherence and reality of the 'external world'. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in reality dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, the bulk of which are unknown to us.

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ an object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will (hopefully) recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc).

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not a passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them (as per Locke’s tabula rasa). Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs [s]reality[/s] your lived experience partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on. And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science. (There’s an interesting scholar who writes about Kantian cognitive science, although I’ve never really delved into it.)

I was with you up to:Quoting Wayfarer

And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science.

Eggs are consistent with capitalism.

Reply to Banno The sentence before the one you quoted gives the grounds for the argument. Perhaps you can point out to me how it fails to do that.

Reply to Banno
:up:

Quoting Wayfarer

Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality your lived experience partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on. And this is the way in which the philosophy of idealism does indeed appear consistent with science.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think it is right to say that consciousness "constructs your lived experience (reality?)". I think it would be more correct to say that it is constructed by the mind, the body or the body/ mind, because its construction is certainly not something we are conscious of.

Idealism cannot explain how it is that we experience the same things unless it posits a collective or universal mind of some kind, which we are all connected to, unbeknownst to ourselves, so I don't think it is right to say that idealism appears to be consistent with science, since science has, and really can have, no truck with notions like universal mind.

Quoting Janus

Idealism cannot explain how it is that we experience the same things...

Sure it can. We all belong to the same species, and for that matter culture and language group. So the collective nature of mind can be explained in those terms, from a naturalistic perspective. And I'm sure as you and I have discussed previously, that sense of the collective nature of consciousness is found in Hegel (although thar be dragons, or rather, the opaque verbosity of Hegel.)*

There is a point I want to make from before in the thread:

Quoting Wayfarer

we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.'

So, the realist response to this is invariably, 'me, subject, here', and 'tree, object, there'. That's because the realist view is natural to us. We're accustomed to breaking reality/experience down into singular objects and then interrogating each of them, as you see here:

Quoting Marchesk

there is a brain here and an object over there.

Quoting Terrapin Station

If we're going to claim things about how brains etc. work, we need to be able to observe brains, other people, etc.

But I'm not talking science. Science assumes nature, or rather, it has a worldview in which the reality of empirical experience is already given, and is the basis on which all other explanations are sought.

Whereas critical philosophy seeks to deconstruct that sense of certainty by viewing it from another perspective - but that perspective is difficult to attain, it is something like a gestalt shift (in fact I'm sure those who worked out gestalt theory were indebted to this kind of thinking.)

Quoting Banno

To be mistaken requires that what you have in mind is distinct from what is out there. If the external world is not independent of your mind, how is it that you can be mistaken as to what is the case?

In Berkeley's dialogues, Hylas tries to argue on the basis of the 'bent stick' and Philonous has the answer:

Say we see an oar in water, Hylas says, and it appears bent to us. We then lift it out and see that it is really straight; the bent appearance was an illusion caused by the water's refraction. On Philonous' view, though, we cannot say that we were wrong about the initial judgement; if we perceived the stick as bent then the stick really must be bent. Similarly, since we see the moon's surface as smooth we cannot really say that the moon's surface is not smooth; the way that it appears to us has to be the way it is.

Philonous has an answer to this worry as well. While we cannot be wrong about the particular idea, he explains, we can still be wrong in our judgement. Ideas occur in regular patterns, and it is these coherent and regular sensations that make up real things, not just the independent ideas of each isolated sensation. The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

The other point I would make is that it's a mistake to believe that idealist philosophy can be understood in terms of what is in an individual mind, because again that assumes the perspective of treating the mind as an object, in terms of which other objects must then be understood. In other words, seeing mind from a point outside of it; but we're never outside of it, and it's never an object to us. (That last is not Berkeley, but Wayfarer, derived from Buddhist logic.)

-----

* 'according to Hegel, tension always exists between an individual’s unique knowledge of things and the need for universal concepts—two movements that represent the first and second of the three so-called modes of consciousness. The first mode of consciousness—meaning, or “sense certainty”—is the mind’s initial attempt to grasp the nature of a thing. This primary impulse runs up against the requirement that concepts have a “universal” quality, which means that different people must also be able to comprehend these concepts. This requirement leads to the second mode of consciousness, perception. With perception, consciousness, in its search for certainty, appeals to categories of thought worked out between individuals through some kind of communicative process at the level of common language. Expressed more simply, the ideas we have of the world around us are shaped by the language we speak, so that the names and meanings that other people have worked out before us (throughout the history of language) shape our perceptions.' Spark Notes.

The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

But that raises the question of why there would be sensations of illusion if there are just experiences. We can give a good material explanation for the bent stick appearance, but the idealist one just has an appearance of refracted light for some reason.

The bent stick isn't the best example though as the idealist would probably say those optical experiences are what's need to construct a visual world. So what about disease and microbes? If our body is just a series of experiences, why should be getting sick from invisible microbes or cancers, that we've only learned to see in past couple centuries?

Why is it necessary that we should have bodily experiences of sickness and aging?

Quoting Wayfarer

Sure it can. We all belong to the same species, and for that matter culture and language group. So the collective nature of mind can be explained in those terms, from a naturalistic perspective.

Culture and language can explain how we talk about things we see in similar ways, or how we see some things and don't see others, but it can't explain (without the additional metaphysical notion of a truly collective, in the sense of interconnected in some unknown way, mind) how we see the same things. For example say I put a plate of food in front of you and ask you to describe what is on the plate. You say three boiled potatoes. two asparagus, two pieces of broccoli, and three lamb loin chops. I would be very surprised indeed if i saw something different on the plate. Culture and language cannot explain what we see, but only what we might not notice, or might not have the words for.

You seem to have interpreted the question as being about explaining the collective mind. I was not concerned with explaining that, naturalistically or otherwise, but with arguing that such a more than merely culturally "collective" mind is needed to explain the commonality of what is experienced, if we don't want to accept that there are physical existents which are totally independent of our perceptions of them.

Quoting Marchesk

So what about disease and microbes? If our body is just an experience, why should be getting sick from invisible microbes or cancers, that we've only learned to see in past couple centuries?

But the same argument applies - previously, we thought that diseases were caused by humours and phlegm, and then Louis Pasteur comes along and proves the germ theory. But all of this still takes place within the 'theatre of human experience', as it were.

Idealist philosophers aren't saying that anything you think is correct, just because you think it. If they were as naive as you depict them to be, then there would be nothing to discuss!

Reply to Janus Sure, we're all different individuals, but no man is an island. When I'm talking about mind, I'm not talking about your mind or my mind. We as individuals are different, but we also live in a domain of shared meanings. Science relies totally on that, if you brought an individual up in isolation from any education, then s/he could never fathom or participate in scientific work, as s/he wouldn't posses the concepts and skills which have been painstakingly imparted to graduates through their first 18 years of education.

Quoting Wayfarer

Idealist philosophers aren't saying that anything you think is correct, just because you think it. If they were as naive as you depict them to be, then there would be nothing to discuss!

Right, but it's a question of why we need to have certain experiences. It's like saying that if we're inside a simulation, what's the point of all the suffering? Why didn't the machines make a Utopia?

Oh wait, they did and the humans kept waking themselves up, because they couldn't accept a pleasant world.

Quoting Marchesk

It's like saying that if we're inside a simulation, what's the point of all the suffering? Why didn't the machines make a Utopia

The only parallel or image you can think in terms of is 'simulation' or 'artificial intelligence'. That kind of limits the ability to discuss it in terms of actual philosophy, in my opinion.

Reply to Wayfarer Sure, I don't disagree with any of that. But I was asking a different question. If there are no mind-independent existents then how do you explain why we both see, referring to the earlier example, three boiled potatoes, not four or not turnips, unless you posit a collective mind (in the metaphysical and not the merely cultural sense)?

Quoting Wayfarer

The sentence before the one you quoted gives the grounds for the argument. Perhaps you can point out to me how it fails to do that.

So:Quoting Wayfarer

Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality your lived experience partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of an enormous number of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on.

I don't see anything here that is incompatible with realism.

Reply to Banno It's the 'constructs' part; mind as 'active agent'. Locke, for example, thought that everything was 'received' by the mind which is a 'blank slate', tabula rasa. So the mind is not the passive recipient of Locke's philosophy. This is one of the grounds of Kant's criticism of empiricism.

Reply to Wayfarer Sure; and yet these questions remain.

Reply to bongo fury

Your response didn't make a lot of sense to me, unfortunately.

Also, you seem to be writing as if you think that I'm a representationalist or idealist? I'm not. I'm a direct (aka "naive") realist.

But I don't understand your answer to this: we see a tree. One option re views about perception is that we're simply seeing the tree--we're seeing something that's external to us. Another view is that we're seeing something that's actually created by our minds (presumably unconsciously) and then what we're consciously aware of is that unconscious mental creation, not the tree itself. You suggested that you had a third view that wasn't either of those alternatives. But it wasn't at all clear to me that you were suggesting a third view.

Reply to Janus

You responded to a post of mine where I mentioned observing things with:

"Of course we observe all those things."

That response continued in a manner that suggested you didn't actually understand the comment of mine that you were responding to. That included that you didnt understand the comments about observations. But you insisted that you did understand it. So I began with this quiz question, to test your understanding:

"Of course we observe what things?"

You didn't answer that beyond an insult.

Quoting Possibility

Science enables us to ‘observe’ or measure aspects of the rock from the surface of the rock or from inside it - to gain a perspective of what the rock looks like from the inside - because we have the capacity to perceive this evaluative aspect of the world.

No it doesn't. Imagining things from different points of reference isn't the same thing as being at that point of reference.

Quoting Wayfarer

But I'm not talking science.

That's fine, but you'd simply have to give how you're arriving at the view you're arriving at instead, without appealing to any standard scientific notions, etc.

Quoting Janus

Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independently, apart from the obvious "It's there when no one is around". We know what it means to say an object we perceive is there; we can see it. touch it and so on. We don't know what it means for an unperceived object to be there: the best we can say is that if we were there we would be able to see it, touch and so on. But that really amounts to saying nothing at all outside of the context of perception.

So what is your brain like when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Ive asked you this question several times now.

Also what does it mean to observe something? If you are saying that we cant get at the "external" object, then we're not observing in the first place, so you can't say we're observing something without getting at something about that thing. We would be imagining, not observing, so you are making a category error.

if we can never get at the object as it is independent of the Mind and what you're saying is there is no such thing as observations. There are only imaginations. But then how do we communicate our imaginations without using objects in the external world like computer screens? Ive also asked this question several times now.

Quoting Harry Hindu

So what is your brain like when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Ive asked you this question several times now.

Also what does it mean to observe something? If you are saying that we cant get at the "external" object, then we're not observing in the first place, so you can't say we're observing something without getting at something about that thing. We would be imagining, not observing, so you are making a category error.

if we can never get at the object as it is independent of the Mind and what you're saying is there is no such thing as observations. There are only imaginations. But then how do we communicate our imaginations without using objects in the external world like computer screens? Ive also asked this question several times now.

I'm okay with him calling it an "observation," but basically I agree with you. He's really just imagining something. Re communication, I don't know why he'd need it in the first place--doesn't his view necessitate that all other people are something that his own mind creates (or at least that's all he can know of other people).

Quoting Terrapin Station

Your response didn't make a lot of sense to me, unfortunately.

That's ok! Thanks for trying.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Also, you seem to be writing as if you think that I'm a representationalist or idealist? I'm not. I'm a direct (aka "naive") realist.

No, I get that!

I'm one too, I think... as long as I'm allowed to see plenty of the knowledge we get about the things out there as got via inference? You're not against that? It isn't about some notion of direct acquaintance that rules out intermediate steps?

Anyway, I was assuming that that (agreement on that point) was the case. But I wasn't joining battle. I thought I was invited to explain my skepticism about mental pictures? And the alternative. Which is where I might have implied a "third way": only in the arrogant claim that both sides should put their phones down and listen to my more important business!

Perhaps it was off topic anyway. No worries.

Quoting Marchesk

Are you a philosophical zombie? Because you argue as if you have no conscious experiences. If I ask whether you experience pain, are you going to give me some functional/physiological response?

Ha ha, I have wondered if I am transitioning into a consciousness-denier! I don't think so. I think I'm learning to recognise some wrong descriptions.

Is it the skepticism about mental pictures / symbols in the brain? Do you need them in your intuition of consciousness or perception? You can have pictures and other symbols in a camera or a computer, obviously. Presumably they aren't sufficient for consciousness or perception. Are they necessary?

Quoting bongo fury

Is it the skepticism about mental pictures / symbols in the brain? Do you need them in your intuition of consciousness or perception?

I just have them along with pains, sounds, tastes, thoughts, etc.

Quoting Marchesk

I just have them along with pains, sounds, tastes, thoughts, etc.

I meant literally?

Quoting Harry Hindu

Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independently, apart from the obvious "It's there when no one is around". We know what it means to say an object we perceive is there; we can see it. touch it and so on. We don't know what it means for an unperceived object to be there: the best we can say is that if we were there we would be able to see it, touch and so on. But that really amounts to saying nothing at all outside of the context of perception. — Janus


So what is your brain like when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep? Ive asked you this question several times now.

What do mean "what is your brain like or where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep"?

Can you explain what you think the relevance of this question (these questions?) is to what you have quoted me as saying above?

I'll hazard an answer in any case: for me my brain is not like anything, because I am not directly aware of its existence; I believe it exists via secondhand accounts that tell me that if my skull were opened there wold be brain to be found there.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Also what does it mean to observe something? If you are saying that we cant get at the "external" object, then we're not observing in the first place, so you can't say we're observing something without getting at something about that thing. We would be imagining, not observing, so you are making a category error.

I haven't said we can't observe things; we do it all the time. I haven't said we cannot "get at" (if by that you mean 'perceive') objects, either, so I don't know where this is coming from.

@Banno has suggested that I don't write clearly enough, and yet is apparently unable to point to anything unclear that I have written.

So, just to clarify what I have been arguing: Heidegger and quite a few other notable philosophers say the world is always already interpreted, and I agree with that assessment, and so even does @Banno:Quoting Banno

The world is always interpreted; that is, understood in terms of language. In this sense language and the world are one and the same.

.

So, our perception of things is always an interpretation, we perceive an always already interpreted world, in other words, and all our judgements are judgements of and about an interpreted world.

But when we think about it as naive realists, it seems commonsensically obvious that the external world is not, in itself, an interpreted world; and we can recognize this as being thought to be a corollary of any 'normal' physicalist or materialist standpoint. So the problem is that all our judgements are made of an interpreted world, and none of our judgements have anything to say about a purported world that is not interpreted (except for the judgement that it is not an interpreted world).

For an idealist (like Hegel for example) this problem disappears because he says that the interpreted world just is the real world, in other words there is no mind-independent physical uninterpreted world. But the corollary of this objective idealist view would seem to be that the world is constituted by mind, or something other than "brute" matter at least, something that allows it to be "in conceptual shape" to nod towards the contemporary philosophers Robert Brandom and John McDowell).

So, as I have been arguing with @Wayfarer, the thing that demands explanation is that we all experience the same things. A mind-independent "physical' reality can explain this, but such a reality cannot be determinate (because it is prior to any interpretation, or determination). I write ""physical" reality" because our notion of what "physical" means is evolved within the always already interpreted context, and we attempt to apply it outside that context (to a world purportedly prior to any interpretation) at our peril.

Where I depart from @Wayfarer, though, is that I don't think all this provides any definitive justification for concluding that the world is fundamentally mental. So, as I said before I sit on the fence, looking both ways (towards both idealism and realism) without committing to either.

I hope this clears it up for all parties concerned.

Reply to Terrapin Station I have no idea what you think you are trying to say here.

Quoting Terrapin Station

There's no difference there. "A particular location at a particular time" is always some location, some thing which is the point of reference. A brain is as good as anything there.

But I think there is something you're not taking into account.

If each brain has its own perspective, that not only depends on where it is but also on what brain it is, then you can't know what it's like to be another brain. Even if you somehow self-measured your brain activity and matched it with what you are experiencing, you wouldn't know whether your measure of another brain's activity would match what that brain self-measures, and so you wouldn't know whether the idea you have of what that brain experiences is really what it experiences.

And so even if you see a rock, another brain might see something else at that location, and then why say that the rock you see exists independently of you and of other brains if other brains might not even see it?

There are things that could exist for some people and not for others. And if you agree with this, then saying "we see things as they are from our perspective" reduces to saying "we see what we see", but that doesn't tell us whether others see what we see or even whether what we see exists independently of us. We see what we see, but not what it's like independently of us.

Quoting Amity

As a matter of interest, what have you experienced or read on the subject that gives rise to your issues ?
I haven't read much. However, you have piqued my curiosity.

They aren't really my issues anymore since I have stopped assuming we see things as they are independently of us, but I think there are issues in believing we see things as they are.

As to how I came to this view, it happened progressively. I think it started when I noticed that we interpret words differently, we don't assign the same meaning to the same word, a given word gives rise to different pictures in different people. For instance what I said to someone would be totally misinterpreted (even though my words were heard correctly), or sometimes we would disagree on something and later on realize that the only reason we were disagreeing is that we interpreted words differently, while deep down we were in agreement. Or sometimes it's the other way around, we believe we agree while under the hood we don't.

I started thinking that if we all used the same definition for each word then there wouldn't be a problem. But then I realized the problem: each word in the dictionary is defined in terms of other words, which themselves are defined in terms of other words and so on and so forth, so fundamentally each word is defined in terms of itself, and using the same definitions doesn't suffice if we don't already have the same picture in mind for the words that make up the definition of a word.

So language cannot tell us what others perceive and think, it only generates an idea in us of what they perceive and think. And there is plenty of evidence that we perceive differently, be it colors, sounds, tastes, smells, but also what we see in a scenery, what we see happen, how it makes us feel, what we focus on. So the more natural assumption would be that we all have our own reality, rather than us all experiencing the same reality.

And then I realized, if someone has an experience that I've never had, how could they communicate it to me? They could try to explain it in terms of experiences I've had, but if it is too different from them all then I wouldn't know what they are talking about. In a similar way that a blind person doesn't know what colors are. And then I thought, if we were all blind except for a few people, and these people tried to communicate to us what they see, wouldn't we label them as crazies, as delusional, as hallucinating?

We're quick to label what we don't understand as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, and I think there's some danger in that. I think we'd be better off assuming that others have their own reality, that there is not one single reality out there that we're all seeing. And then we would listen more to each other, attempt to understand what others see and think, instead of imposing our own reality onto them, which gives rise to all kinds of conflicts.

Quoting Terrapin Station

No it doesn't. Imagining things from different points of reference isn't the same thing as being at that point of reference.

Haha - no, having a point of reference isn’t the same thing as being at that point of reference. We can’t fully experience (in a human way) what it looks like from inside the rock - neither can the rock, mind you. I recognise that we are creating a perspective based on information we’ve already integrated from other experiences/sources, but isn’t this what we do whenever we perceive a ‘rock’?

This ‘point of reference’ you refer to forms only a part of perception. The mechanisms of perception - receiving sensory data via light or sound or touch, etc where nerve signals are sent to your brain, etc - do not constitute perception of a rock. They do, however, constitute sensory data, which is integrated with existing information within the system, and together these form a human perspective, from which a ‘rock’ is perceived.

What I’m trying to say is that, while I agree that something exists outside of our minds, and it is not ‘unknowable’ as such, it is not a rock, either. From as broad a perspective as I can imagine, it is closer to a subset of interacting events than it is to a rock. I’m not saying we shouldn’t call it a rock, but I think we should at least acknowledge that we’re not ‘seeing things as they are’: that ‘rock’ is a human perceptual concept of the world that both informs and limits our understanding of what we are seeing.

Quoting bongo fury

I meant literally?

What other way would it be? Figurative pain? Metaphorical pleasure? Abstract taste? Well, maybe that one for some people. Non-literal feelings?

I dream of platonic reds and functional sounds.

Reply to leo

Thanks for reply. Interesting to read of how you see the world of people, their awareness and understanding - or lack thereof.

So, if there is a possibility of not understanding your perspective, we need to listen and ask pertinent questions.

I'll try to do this by numbering specific points in turn.

1. Quoting leo

I think there are issues in believing we see things as they are.

What are the implications of holding this view ?

2. Quoting leo

what I said to someone would be totally misinterpreted (even though my words were heard correctly), or sometimes we would disagree on something and later on realize that the only reason we were disagreeing is that we interpreted words differently,

The problem of misinterpretation. Yes, there seems to be quite a bit of that, especially in philosophy forums. Not enough listening with some too eager to put their own message out. Of how they see the world. So, again - important to take time to read carefully and respond to key points, asking for clarification.

3. Quoting leo

the problem: each word in the dictionary is defined in terms of other words, which themselves are defined in terms of other words

Yes. It can be frustratingly circular. However, not always and it is important to get a fix on which best describes your point. What does it mean 'to have a belief'.

4. Quoting leo

So language cannot tell us what others perceive and think, it only generates an idea in us of what they perceive and think.

I think language is a necessary tool to progress best understanding of another person's perspective.
We don't need to keep a dictionary in our pocket to do this. Most words in common use are understood.
The difficulty lies in giving clear answers to some difficult questions. That can take time and patience.
Not knee-jerk responses.

5. Quoting leo

So the more natural assumption would be that we all have our own reality, rather than us all experiencing the same reality.

Hmmm. So, what do you mean by 'reality' ?
My own view is that we are all part of the same world but we have different perspectives and beliefs.
Part of this is examining what exists (what is going on), or what we imagine is the case.

6. Quoting leo

if someone has an experience that I've never had, how could they communicate it to me?

People attempt to do that all the time. Story telling. Just as you have done.

7. Quoting leo

if we were all blind except for a few people, and these people tried to communicate to us what they see, wouldn't we label them as crazies, as delusional, as hallucinating?

Good use of speculative imagination.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-favourite-philosophical-hypothetical-question-conundrum

8. Quoting leo

We're quick to label what we don't understand as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, and I think there's some danger in that.

Is that your experience ? It's not mine. Not everyone is so quick to stick labels on people.

9. Quoting leo

think we'd be better off assuming that others have their own reality, that there is not one single reality out there that we're all seeing. And then we would listen more to each other, attempt to understand what others see and think, instead of imposing our own reality onto them, which gives rise to all kinds of conflicts.

Even if we agree that everyone has their own perspective, it doesn't follow that we would listen more to each other. Close listening and wish to better understand is an interpersonal skill important in effective communication. Not everyone is capable of putting their own views on backburner until this is established.

10. To improve communication. One example:

Quoting Melanie Pinola

Be brief, yet specific

There’s actually a BRIEF acronym—Background, Reason, Information, End, Follow-up—to help you keep your emails short without leaving anything out. It’s a good policy for both written and verbal communication (I’ve always felt that my job as a writer was to clearly get the point across and then get off the page as soon as possible. Just two more items on this list!) Clear and concise are two of the 7 Cs of communication, along with concrete, correct, coherent, complete and courteous.

That's the best I can do for now...
Hopefully jargon- free and understandable. All the better to argue the toss :smile:

Quoting Janus

I write ""physical" reality"

As soon as you have to use quotes around “physical” then it’s game over for physicalism :grin:

Reply to Wayfarer I would do the same for "mental", in relation to an idealist claim that the "real as it is in itself" is mental. From an unbiased standpoint physicalism and idealism are on an equal, some might say equally incoherent, footing.

Now you are going to say that it's game over for the "real as it is in itself" I suppose?

Quoting leo

And so even if you see a rock, another brain might see something else at that location, and then why say that the rock you see exists independently of you and of other brains if other brains might not even see it?

When someone else doesn't see it, which is relatively rare, we'll be able to diagnose what's going on with them in terms of perceptual and cognitive problems. This isn't hypothetical, by the way.

Reply to Amity

Sadly it seems that you misinterpreted a lot of what I said.

Quoting Amity

1. What are the implications of holding this view ?

I mentioned several in my previous post, and I mention some in this post.

Quoting Amity

3. Yes. It can be frustratingly circular. However, not always and it is important to get a fix on which best describes your point.

My point was precisely that it is always circular. If you look up the definition of a word (let's call it W), and that definition is made of words W1, W2, ..., Wn, and the definition of W1 is made of words W11, ..., W1n, and the definition of W2 is made of words W21, ..., W2n, and W11 is made of words W111, ..., W11n and so on and so forth, at some point one of these words will be W, and so W is always defined circularly.

What breaks the circularity is associating a word with a mental image, but the fundamental issue is we can't know whether the same word elicits the same mental image in different people. And that becomes obvious when we attempt to discuss what a given word means to us, people come up with all kinds of different stories.

Quoting Amity

4. I think language is a necessary tool to progress best understanding of another person's perspective.
We don't need to keep a dictionary in our pocket to do this. Most words in common use are understood.
The difficulty lies in giving clear answers to some difficult questions. That can take time and patience.
Not knee-jerk responses.

Again I feel you misinterpreted me, see my answer to 3. Using the same definition for a word doesn't solve the underlying problem. The same word can elicit different images, different feelings, different thoughts in different people, even if they're using the same definition. The words I say do not convey what's in my mind, they convey your idea of what's in my mind based on what the words mean to you.

Quoting Amity

5. Hmmm. So, what do you mean by 'reality' ?
My own view is that we are all part of the same world but we have different perspectives and beliefs.
Part of this is examining what exists (what is going on), or what we imagine is the case.

By one's reality I refer to everything that a given being experiences. Your reality is everything you experience, my reality is everything I experience.

What's the difference between imagination and reality? You classify some experiences as 'real' and some experiences as 'imaginary', what criteria do you use to make that distinction?

There are plenty of things that people used to see as 'real' that they now see as 'imaginary', and plenty of things that people used to see as 'imaginary' that they now see as 'real'. There is this idea that there is a separation between the two, but imagination influences reality and reality influences imagination, they influence one another, they are a whole rather than two separate things. People arbitrarily decide what they call reality and what they call imagination, experiences do not come with a label that says 'real' or 'imaginary', people apply that label themselves.

Quoting Amity

6. People attempt to do that all the time. Story telling. Just as you have done.

I was referring to experiences that are very different from others, for instance spiritual experiences. If you've never had them, you wouldn't understand them based on your own experiences, in a similar way that a blind person doesn't understand the experience of color. Many people dismiss spiritual experiences as hallucination or imagination, in other words as something that doesn't really exist, because they haven't had them.

Quoting Amity

8. Is that your experience ? It's not mine. Not everyone is so quick to stick labels on people.

It's not what I do, it's what many people do, it's what society does all the time. If your idea of what's 'real' doesn't match the social consensus on what's 'real', then you are deemed to be delusional. People get locked up and forcefully drugged because they are 'delusional'. People's experiences are dismissed as hallucination/imagination if they do not match the consensus 'reality'. Examples are everywhere.

Quoting Amity

9. Even if we agree that everyone has their own perspective, it doesn't follow that we would listen more to each other. Close listening and wish to better understand is an interpersonal skill important in effective communication. Not everyone is capable of putting their own views on backburner until this is established.

Again I feel that my point is missed, lost somewhere in the space between you and I.

Many people believe they have access to the one 'reality' that applies to everyone, to "the way things are" that applies to everyone, and use that as a justification to impose things onto others, to tell others what to believe in and what not to believe in, to ridicule those who believe differently or to label them as mentally ill, to force them to agree with "the way things are" because that's the way things are, no matter what they might say, if they protest and refuse to submit then that's because they're really sick or really stupid, and if they don't agree that they are objectively inferior beings then that's all the more reason to force them into submission, because how can they not see the one reality in front of them? Well, it's not that they don't see reality, it's that they don't see your reality.

Granted people could agree that others have a different reality and still not care about the reality of others, but I think it's easier to listen when we don't pretend to know what others experience and what they don't, what's real and what isn't.

Quoting Janus

So, our perception of things is always an interpretation, we perceive an always already interpreted world, in other words, and all our judgements are judgements of and about an interpreted world.

Are you also saying that because of language a la Banno (who was agreeing with Wittgenstein, wasn't he?) or are you saying it for some other reason? (I couldn't say why Heidegger thinks it, by the way.)

The language comment is extremely confused in my view. If there's another reason you're saying this, though, what's the reason, and what would be the support of it?

It seems a bit odd to me to use the word "interpretation" in a sense that isn't connected to meaning, but I can't imagine that you have a view that perception can't obtain without assigning meaning to what's perceived.

Quoting Janus

Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independently, apart from the obvious "It's there when no one is around". We know what it means to say an object we perceive is there; we can see it. touch it and so on. We don't know what it means for an unperceived object to be there: the best we can say is that if we were there we would be able to see it, touch and so on. But that really amounts to saying nothing at all outside of the context of perception.

Quoting Janus

What do mean "what is your brain like or where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep"?

Can you explain what you think the relevance of this question (these questions?) is to what you have quoted me as saying above?

I'll hazard an answer in any case: for me my brain is not like anything, because I am not directly aware of its existence; I believe it exists via secondhand accounts that tell me that if my skull were opened there wold be brain to be found there.

If you're questioning an object's existence independent of some perception of it, then I ask you what your mind is like when no one is perceiving it. How is it that your mind can cease to exist and then come back retaining its memories and sense of self? Notice that I haven't used the word, "brain". Your mind is an object in the world that others can perceive. If we couldn't then how did it ever come to pass that someone made the claim that other minds exist? You might say that I don't know that other minds exist, but unfortunately solipsism brings its own baggage that make it untenable.

Why can I still see your body when you are asleep and dreaming, that seems to behave as if you are having a dream? If dreaming were a different reality, then why is your body still here in this one and why would I see you acting out your dream in this world (talking in your sleep, moving your arms and legs, sleep walking, etc.)? Your brain in this world still has a hold of your consciousness in some way even when you mind is off in another. By looking at your brain, I can get a clue of whether or not you are using sensory data supplied by the senses or the brain itself.


Quoting Janus

I haven't said we can't observe things; we do it all the time. I haven't said we cannot "get at" (if by that you mean 'perceive') objects, either, so I don't know where this is coming from.

Well then, what do you mean by "observe" and "perceive"? Where is the perception relative to the perciever?

Quoting leo

Sadly it seems that you misinterpreted a lot of what I said.

It 'seems' or I did ? It is not so very sad, is it?

I don't think you are expressing your personal situation and frustration as honestly or succinctly as you might. It's perhaps easier to generalise about people or the many. Or to block or detach by intellectualisation as per OP.

Quoting leo

The words I say do not convey what's in my mind, they convey your idea of what's in my mind based on what the words mean to you.

Say again ?

Quoting leo

What's the difference between imagination and reality? You classify some experiences as 'real' and some experiences as 'imaginary', what criteria do you use to make that distinction?

There can be a difference between what I think or imagine is the case and what is actually the case or state of affairs. The gap can be filled with facts and knowledge about the world.

Quoting leo

Many people dismiss spiritual experiences as hallucination or imagination, in other words as something that doesn't really exist, because they haven't had them.

Yes. That can be the case. It still doesn't stop people telling their stories or others listening to them.
Sometimes to understand, other times to scoff. We can't directly experience such, only indirectly.
Sometimes we are helped by imagination or empathy.

Quoting leo

If your idea of what's 'real' doesn't match the social consensus on what's 'real', then you are deemed to be delusional. People get locked up and forcefully drugged because they are 'delusional'

Has that been your experience ?

Quoting leo

Many people believe they have access to the one 'reality' that applies to everyone, to "the way things are" that applies to everyone, and use that as a justification to impose things onto others, to tell others what to believe in and what not to believe in, to ridicule those who believe differently or to label them as mentally ill, to force them to agree with "the way things are" because that's the way things are, no matter what they might say, if they protest and refuse to submit then that's because they're really sick or really stupid, and if they don't agree that they are objectively inferior beings then that's all the more reason to force them into submission, because how can they not see the one reality in front of them?

Is this your experience ? Have you been so labelled ?

Quoting leo

I think it's easier to listen when we don't pretend to know what others experience and what they don't, what's real and what isn't.

I think listening comes first. I am not sure that people pretend to know. They are trying to see things from another perspective and that isn't easy. Sometimes it can frustrate when others in an attempt to offer sympathy say ' I know how you feel ' or ' I've been there'. They don't and haven't.

However, they might have experienced something similar. And are only trying to make some kind of a connection. It might be 'sad' or unfortunate if the connection fails...either the sender, the message or the receiver crackles white noise and gets lost in translation...
We can only do our best.

Anyway, I have just experienced deja vu. You know what that's like ? A similar conversation, another time, another place.
I will end it here.

Best wishes.

Quoting Marchesk

What other way would it be? Figurative pain? Metaphorical pleasure? Abstract taste? Well, maybe that one for some people. Non-literal feelings?

I dream of platonic reds and functional sounds.

Ok... I mean, SUPPOSING all that were ok... how do you answer the inevitable, literal-minded question, "where are they, then?"

Are they in a brain?

Quoting Terrapin Station

It seems a bit odd to me to use the word "interpretation" in a sense that isn't connected to meaning, but I can't imagine that you have a view that perception can't obtain without assigning meaning to what's perceived.

Perception is always already meaningful; it is not a matter of "assigning anything". You remain unable to think outside the dualistic box, it seems.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Notice that I haven't used the word, "brain". Your mind is an object in the world that others can perceive.

I disagree with this. Stick with the brain; that is what we have been talking about. We can, not normally, but via either surgery or various sensory augmentations, perceive other's brains, but not other's minds.

Quoting Harry Hindu

I haven't said we can't observe things; we do it all the time. I haven't said we cannot "get at" (if by that you mean 'perceive') objects, either, so I don't know where this is coming from. — Janus

Well then, what do you mean by "observe" and "perceive"? Where is the perception relative to the perciever?

What do you mean what do I mean by "observe" and "perceive"? I mean why the question? To observe is to see and to perceive is to sense and recognize. We all know that. As to your question. I don't think it makes any sense to ask it, so to attempt to answer it would be even more senseless.

Reply to Janus

Thank you for the clarification. Perhaps we can stop agreeing so vehemently.

I would just draw attention to one aspect: "our perception of things is always an interpretation".

Notice that it is a perception of things. Denying this is the error made by @Wayfarer and others, in claiming that there are only perceptions, not perceptions of things.

I have added to your list of problems for such idealism:

Quoting Banno

• To be mistaken requires that what you have in mind is distinct from what is out there. If the external world is not independent of your mind, how is it that you can be mistaken as to what is the case?
• You on occasions come upon a novelty. If the external world is not independent of your mind, where is it that something previously unknown comes from?
• There are some things you are prevented from doing. If the external world is not independent of your mind, why can't you do as you choose?
• If the external world is not independent of your mind, what place is there for other minds? How will you avoid solipsism?

Otherwise, perhaps we agree.

Quoting Terrapin Station

It seems a bit odd to me to use the word "interpretation" in a sense that isn't connected to meaning...

So don't. Treat meaning as use. The world is always already interpreted in terms of the things we can do in it.

Quoting Banno

I would just draw attention to one aspect: "our perception of things is always an interpretation".

Notice that it is a perception of things. Denying this is the error made by Wayfarer and others, in claiming that there are only perceptions, not perceptions of things.

Yes, I agree that "it is a perception of things"; it could even be said that things just are interpretations. And yet they are not just interpretations, because we don't create thingsex nihilo, so there is something that is being interpreted. That's why I say that logic tells us that there is a world prior to interpretation. My main point is that we cannot get at the uninterpreted nature of the world, because all our 'getting ats; are interpretations.

As to your list of "problems" I think @Wayfarer may respond that he is not saying the world is created by or is "in" your mind or my mind, but that it is fundamentally mind, not matter. I have tried to get him to explicitly admit that his view is that all individual minds are, at some level beyond our ken, interconnected, and that that interconnection explains why we all see the same things 'out there" in the world. But he continually evades being pinned down to that, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps he sees himself as emulating, remaining true to, Gotama's kind of paraconsistent logic. You know: "It neither exists nor does not exist"; that kind of thing?

Quoting Janus

Perception is always already meaningful; it is not a matter of "assigning anything". You remain unable to think outside the dualistic box, it seems.

What would you say that meaning is if you view perception as always meaningful?

Quoting Janus

My main point is that we cannot get at the uninterpreted nature of the world, because all our 'getting ats; are interpretations.

Hmm. Better: there isn't an uninterpreted nature to the world. The distinction is senseless.

Reply to Janus I think @Wayfarer's reply would come down to something very similar to what we seem to have agreed on here. He must in some way admit to error, limitations and novelty, and it would take a brave philosopher to move to panpsychism or solipsism.

Quoting Banno

it would take a brave philosopher to move to panpsychism or solipsism.

I think the best philosopher admits to a limited understanding of consciousness and its place in the universe.

Quoting frank

I think the best philosopher admits to a limited understanding of consciousness and the its place in the universe.

Do I?

:razz:

Quoting Banno

Do I?

Of course. :love:

Quoting Banno

Hmm. Better: there isn't an uninterpreted nature to the world. The distinction is senseless.

The problem is that to say this amounts to saying there was no nature of the world prior to human life. Or it is to say that there is no uninterpreted world, period. Does this mean that there is nothing if there are no humans, or if there is something, that it has no nature?

Quoting Terrapin Station

What would you say that meaning is if you view perception as always meaningful?

Meaning is of many kinds. Have you ever perceived anything utterly meaningless?

Quoting Janus

The problem is that to say this amounts to saying there was no nature of the world prior to human life. Or it is to say that there is no uninterpreted world, period. Does this mean that there is nothing if there are no humans, or if there is something, that it has no nature?

I don't see why. Can you set this out?

Reply to Banno OK, so you said there is no uninterpreted nature to the world. Interpretation is an activity exclusive to humans, so prior to humans there was no interpretation, from which it seems to follow that there was no nature of the world prior to humans.

Reply to Janus We can't interpret the world we see around us in order to understand what happened in the past?

There's a bit of a flick in the words you use. The world is always already interpreted became there is no uninterpreted nature to the world.

I'm not sure that works.

Reply to Janus

The world is always already interpreted amounts to the same thing as Wittgenstein's "The limits of our language are the limits of our world"

Perhaps then there is some difference in how we understand interpretation. For me it is plain that the past is part of our world, requiring no special ontology.

That is, there was no one around to talk about dinosaurs when there were dinosaurs; but we can talk about them now. Not a problem.

Quoting Janus

As to your list of "problems" I think Wayfarer may respond that he is not saying the world is created by or is "in" your mind or my mind, but that it is fundamentally mind, not matter.

I think the inextricable aspects of reality that mind contributes are scale, perspective and temporal duration. They are not 'given' but are part of the architecture of experience (as per Kant's 'primary intuitions'). So whilst it's true that objects are indeed 'mind-independent', they're nevertheless only comprehensible by virtue of being situated temporally and spatially; they exist somewhere and somewhen. And without such an organising principle, there can't be a 'somewhere' or 'somewhen'.

The problem is that this part of what the mind contributes is forgotten about, as it's not conscious, as it's part of what it takes to be conscious of anything. So again, it is what Kant and Husserl describe as 'transcendental' i.e. 'that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience. 1 ' (I'm wondering if it's correct to say we actually see through these concepts, which is why we can't look at them.) So this is why I argue that even picturing dinosaurs or the primeval earth contains an implicitly human perspective - it's impossible to picture anything or imagine anything from no viewpoint. The mind organises its cognitions that way, and what we say and think is organised around that as well. Whether there's something outside that, or other than that, is an exercise in futile speculation, for reasons that ought to be obvious (which I think is nearer to W's meaning above.)

That's why the questions about 'doubting the age of the Earth' are somewhat irrelevant. The point is, such questions are meaningful within the context of our agreed understanding. That's the sense in which nothing is really 'mind-independent' - but in saying that, I'm not referring to your mind or my mind, but the shared "lebenswelt" of meanings, references, and so on, that we all inhabit.

So when I say it's fundamentally 'mind', it's not as if 'mind' is an objective reality or even a substance (in the philosophical sense). It's simply that whatever we know or say is dependent on the mind, not that the mind is a constituent of objects. I hope that distinction makes sense, as many depictions of 'idealism' seem to be based on the misconception that it posits 'mind' as an objective substance, which I'm sure it never could be (in other words, 'epistemological idealism'). 'Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself', said Schopenhauer.

Reply to Wayfarer

I don’t know so much about Husserl, but I’m pretty sure Kant wouldn’t go so far as to say the transcendent is necessary for experience.
————————————-

t + 8hrs: either you fixed it or I read it wrong initially. Either way....now I’m at peace with the world as It appears to me.

Quoting Janus

Meaning is of many kinds. Have you ever perceived anything utterly meaningless?

Yes. It's not possible to perceive meaning on my view. Meaning is something mental that we do. Namely, it's the mental process of associative thinking, of thinking about something so that it implies, refers to, connotes, denotes, suggests or "pushes" or "leans towards", etc. other things. It's not possible to perceive this. Even when you observe things like others literally pointing at something, or you read dictionary definitions, you need to think about those things in those associative ways. This is why the paper that a definition is written on, for example, can't do meaning. You can't perceive thinking about something in those associative ways. In fact, you can't literally perceive others thinking period. We rather abductively conclude that others are thnking.

Quoting Banno

We can't interpret the world we see around us in order to understand what happened in the past?

There's a bit of a flick in the words you use. The world is always already interpreted became there is no uninterpreted nature to the world.

I'm not sure that works.

Basically what he's asking you, although I don't know on what grounds as he's not a realist, is how the world was interpreted when the "timeline" is turned back to 3 billion years ago, for example.

Quoting Banno

There's a bit of a flick in the words you use. The world is always already interpreted became there is no uninterpreted nature to the world.

They were your words:

Quoting Banno

Hmm. Better: there isn't an uninterpreted nature to the world. The distinction is senseless.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Yes. It's not possible to perceive meaning on my view.

I wasn't speaking about "perceiving meaning" but perceiving meaningful things or perceiving things meaningfully. Have you ever perceived anything meaningless?

Quoting Banno

The world is always already interpreted amounts to the same thing as Wittgenstein's "The limits of our language are the limits of our world"

Perhaps then there is some difference in how we understand interpretation. For me it is plain that the past is part of our world, requiring no special ontology.

That is, there was no one around to talk about dinosaurs when there were dinosaurs; but we can talk about them now. Not a problem.

I agree there is no problem for our present talk about the age of dinosaurs insofar as we can say that if we had been there there we would have seen, that is there would have been, dinosaurs. But, if the world prior to humans was not an interpreted world, and there being dinosaurs is interpretative, then there would seem to be an inconsistency.

So I prefer to avoid the inconsistency and say that the uninterpreted, indeterminate conditions during what we call the Mesozoic were such that, if we had been there, we would have seen dinosaurs. I think all we could be arguing over here are two different ways of talking about the same thing.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think the inextricable aspects of reality that mind contributes are scale, perspective and temporal duration. They are not 'given' but are part of the architecture of experience (as per Kant's 'primary intuitions').

Where I disagree with this is that I don't think it is right to say that the mind is not a part of what is given. It is part of the given insofar as it is something that, as Heidegger says, we find ourselves "thrown" into. Reality just is this givenness and there is no determinate reality beyond this givenness. It seems obvious that there is an indeterminate real, but that real could never be a reality for us.

So, the real is undecidable, and all religions and philosophies, whether idealist or realist, physicalist, anti-realist, or nominalist have their genesis in acts of deciding, and as such always miss the mark. There really is no mark to be hit or missed, but missing the mark consists in thinking that there is a mark to be hit or missed.

Reply to Janus touché!

Quoting Terrapin Station

...how the world was interpreted when the "timeline" is turned back to 3 billion years ago

I understand that. It shows a misunderstanding of what is being said. That the world is always already interpreted means that there is a world to be interpreted.

Quoting Janus

So I prefer to avoid the inconsistency and say that the uninterpreted, indeterminate conditions during what we call the Mesozoic were such that, if we had been there, we would have seen dinosaurs. I think all we could be arguing over here are two different ways of talking about the same thing.

If you like. I'd just shorten that to "There were dinos in the Mesozoic".

Reply to Banno Leaving aside any desire to analyze the situation to discover philosophical caveats I totally agree. I mean what sense could it possibly have, other than the sense of nonsense or ignorance, to say there were no dinos in the Mesozoic, right?

Quoting Janus

all religions and philosophies, whether idealist or realist, physicalist, anti-realist, or nominalist have their genesis in acts of deciding, and as such always miss the mark

whereas you don't, right?

Reply to Wayfarer Don't what?

Reply to Janus miss the mark!

There is principle in Indian philosophy, and probably in traditional philosophy generally, that philosophical teachings, generally, are simply an antidote to an ailment. But the ailment is endemic to the human condition, and if you reject the treatment whilst still suffering the ailment, then cure is impossible.

Reply to WayfarerWell I could not miss the mark if I fail to fire the imaginary arrow at the imaginary target, could I? In any case I doubt we would agree about what either the ailment or the antidote are.

I would say the "ailment" which you say is "endemic" to human life isn't really endemic to human life at all; it is shared also by animals. The ailment is simply the inevitable decay and illness that comes with organic life. We humans are doubly cursed insofar as we are, courtesy of symbolic language, reflexively aware of our plight. This awareness greatly amplifies the suffering; we suffer even when nothing in particular is wrong; we suffer just because we realize we are mortal, and all the more so the more we think about it!

On a more philosophical level, which arguably does not concern the majority of our fellow humans, the exacerbation of the ailment consists in the attempt to find an imaginary cure, that is to hit an imaginary mark, rather than simply learning to live with it and accepting our share of ordinary suffering. In this sense most salvific religions and philosophies are, apart from their conceptual beauty and interest, nothing more than systems of life denial.

That is my view, anyway, for what it is worth. "Not much" I can almost hear you saying!

Quoting Janus

I wasn't speaking about "perceiving meaning" but perceiving meaningful things or perceiving things meaningfully. Have you ever perceived anything meaningless?

Things have meaning only because and only insofar as people think about them in the associative way I outlined.

So the only way I can make sense of a "meaningful thing" is that either we're talking about perceiving something that we then think about in the pertinent associative ways (though it's not literally the thing we're perceiving that's meaningful, but the way that we think about what we perceive), or we're talking about perceiving the sorts of things that ascribe meaning to things--namely, other people.

Quoting Janus

This awareness greatly amplifies the suffering; we suffer even when nothing in particular is wrong; we suffer just because we realize we are mortal, and all the more so the more we think about it!

easy to say, but very difficult to see!

Reply to Terrapin Station You still haven't answered the question: have you ever perceived anything that is meaningless to you ( IE, you didn't know what it is)? This is just to say that the world is always already interpreted. Things are always seen as something. This is the inherent meaningfulness of things prior to any further subjective ascription of meaning.

Quoting Janus

You still haven't answered the question: have you ever perceived anything that is meaningless to you ( IE, you didn't know what it is)?

The vast majority of things that I perceive I do not think about in a way that involves meaning.

If that's what you're asking.

I can't imagine that anyone thinks about things in terms of meaning for most things they perceive.

Reply to Wayfarer I don't know about you, but I see or feel that process in myself more or less constantly.

Also, when I do think about things I perceive in ways involving meaning, that's not wrapped up in the perception--well, at least not usually. It's ancillary to it.

Reply to Terrapin Station It's not a matter of thinking about it; Things are meaningful, in the sense that we identify them, or better, recognize them, prior to any thought.

Quoting Janus

It's not a matter of thinking about it;

Meaning is a way of thinking about something. So, yes it is. I already explained this above.

Re identifying things--for example, if you're thinking about applying a name to something (which is a way of thinking about it), I do not think about what I name the vast majority of things that I perceive. Again, I can't even imagine how someone could do that. For example, where I'm sitting at the moment, I can see hundreds of things. There's no way I could think about the names of all of that at the same time. Yet I see all of that stuff.

Quoting Banno

That the world is always already interpreted means that there is a world to be interpreted.

"3 billion years ago, there is a world to be interpreted"

wouldn't normally be saying the same thing as

"3 billion years ago, the world is already interpreted"

"to be" in the above sentence would be future continuous tense.

"already" suggests something that has happened in the past. If you wanted to say it's "all ready to be interpreted" that would be different.

Reply to Terrapin Station Given your belief in meaning as mind-furniture, I don't see where a discussion with you would be helpful.

We can talk about the world of 3 billion years ago. That is considerably earlier than the Mesozoic, for instance.

Were there folk around 3 billion years ago who could talk about their world? I don't know.

What's Terrapin worried about? Not sure. He seems to think he is showing something...

Quoting Terrapin Station

Meaning is a way of thinking about something.

No, it isn't.

Reply to Terrapin Station You are misunderstanding the different ideas of meaning. I have already explained it; the inherent meaning of things consists in us knowing what they are, which includes but is not limited to knowing what they are called. Animals know what the "affordances" in their environment are without needing names. We don't have to consciously or deliberately name things or think about them as being named for this meaning to be there in the objects themselves.

Quoting Banno

Were there folk around 3 billion years ago who could talk about their world?

No. Hence why I specified that as the time frame.

Quoting Banno

What's Terrapin worried about?

Just trying to get us to say things that make sense.

Quoting Janus

You are misunderstanding the different ideas of meaning. I have already explained it; the inherent meaning of things consists in us knowing what they are, which includes but is not limited to knowing what they are called. Animals know what the "affordances" in their environment are without needing names. We don't have to consciously or deliberately name things or think about them as being named for this meaning to be there in the objects themselves.

But I don't buy that there is any inherent meaning. That notion is incorrect.

"Knowing what something is" is another way of talking about a person applying the name they use to things. That's often influenced by what other people call things, but it's still just what individuals call things. It's a conscious process.

Re "affordances" I don't understand the way you're using that term. If you're using it in a "should" sense, the only animals that think about anything that way are animals with mental capacities.

The notion that the names of things are somehow in the things is wacky and very wrong. Names are part of your concept of the thing in question. It's a way that you think about whatever it is.

Quoting Banno

No, it isn't.

Yeah, it is.

Quoting Terrapin Station

The notion that the names of things are somehow in the things is wacky and very wrong.

You thinking I said that is what is "wacky and very wrong". Knowing what things are is not (just or even necessarily) knowing what they are called; it is knowing what kinds of things they, what uses they have, what they look like and so on.

An example of an affordance is a dog knowing what its food bowl is. The bowl has meaning for the dog insofar as it recognizes it as the place food will be presented.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Just trying to get us to say things that make sense.

Me, too.

@Janus seems now to be arguing that the Mesozoic was interpreted because the dinosaurs interpreted it.

That seems a bit odd to me.

Quoting Janus

I don't know about you, but I see or feel that process in myself more or less constantly.

that's what keeps us on philosophy forums, isn't it? :wink:

Quoting Banno

Janus seems now to be arguing that the Mesozoic was interpreted because the dinosaurs interpreted it.

That seems a bit odd to me.

That's not really what I have been arguing, although I can see why you might be led to think that by the 'dog and bowl' example. I imagine the dinosaurs would have interpreted their environment, at least to some minimal animal degree, but I wouldn't say that they interpreted it in any human sense such as to be consistent with the statement "there are dinosaurs".

It's a fairly silly, pedantic thing to be arguing about anyway, given that what or how much animals do or do not interpret is a matter of mere speculation, don't you think? To return to the more pedestrian 'dog and bowl' example, would you say that the dog's bowl has no meaning, in the basic sense of significance, for her?

Reply to Wayfarer Yes, it's probably one factor at least... :smile:

Reply to Janus but it's not that silly. H. Sapiens alone really 'interprets' things, because of language, abstraction and reason. Only humans can be subject to delusion as a consequence. Dinosaurs might have fallen victim to some kind of cognitive disorder, but never a delusion.

Reply to Wayfarer That's true; I think it would be absurd to attribute delusions to animals. Cognitive disorders or mistakes certainly.

Heidegger actually distinguishes between interpretation and understanding. So, in line with Heidegger humans and animals have basic understandings of their environments on which further interpretations are based.

I don't see anything wrong or inconsistent in thinking that the basic understandings of both humans and animals are interpretative, although not (obviously in the case of animals) and not always or necessarily (in the case of humans) linguistically so. But again it comes down to terminological preferences more than anything else, I think.

Quoting Janus

again it comes down to terminological preferences more than anything else,

that's what all your 'plain language' philosophers would like to think. It brings the whole issue down from airy-fairy meta-nonsense to the kinds of things sensible chaps can write on whiteboards.

Anecdote: I studied David Hume under David Stove, who became quite well-known posthumously. He was a great guy and very good lecturer. But I was a starry-eyed, new-age type, and he gently took me aside one day and said, in his own gruff kind of way, 'I can see what you're looking for - some healing type of understanding. Marvelous. But you won't find what you're seeking in the philosophy department, you know'. Wink. I went on to major in comparative religion, although I found it only indirectly there, also.

Reply to Wayfarer I wasn't referring to philosophy generally as being merely a matter of terminological preferences, but specifically had in mind the the terms "understanding" and "interpretation" in the context in which I have been arguing.

As long and as much as I have been aware of the existence and character of David Stove I always associated him with Stove's Gem and thought he was a sexist, conservative, perverse and generally bigoted philosopher. But what do I know?

Reply to Janus Well, I have a pretty poor opinion of Stove's Gem but the reason I liked him is because he was very courteous to me (as they all were). Although I have heard that he's been criticized for sexism.

Reply to Wayfarer Fair enough indeed!

For some reason your mention of healing reminded me of these words in the poem by Jim Morrison:

[i]"Words got me the wound and will get me well
If you believe it"[/i]

Full poem here: https://genius.com/Jim-morrison-lament-annotated

Quoting Janus

Knowing what things are is not (just or even necessarily) knowing what they are called; it is knowing what kinds of things they, what uses they have, what they look like and so on.

An example of an affordance is a dog knowing what its food bowl is. The bowl has meaning for the dog insofar as it recognizes it as the place food will be presented.

But the way I see it, the dog doesn’t know what its food bowl is - it may respond to ‘its food bowl’ in relation to the meaning you attribute on its behalf based on your observations, but it doesn’t follow that the dog is aware of meaning inherent in the object, because there is no meaning inherent in an object. The meaning is attributed by us as observers to the relationship between the dog and the object as a special bowl or place.

But to the dog, it could simply be an objective relationship of value connecting the organism to a food stimulus, and/or to a valued source of that food stimulus (ie. its owner).

Quoting Janus

it is knowing what kinds of things they, what uses they have, what they look like and so on.

That's referring to one's concept of the thing in question, one's interest in it, etc. Again, that's thought about it, and that's not at all necessarily attendant with perception. It certainly won't be attendant with hundreds of things at the same time. It's also not the same thing as perception when it's attendant with it, just to make sure that that's clear (for anyone reading this, not just you).

Quoting Janus

The bowl has meaning for the dog insofar as it recognizes it as the place food will be presented.

Insofar as the dog thinks in an associative way about the bowl, sure, it will have meaning for it. Otherwise no.

Reply to Banno

3 billion years ago there were only single-celled organisms. So how would anything be already interpreted then?

Reply to Terrapin Station What you're missing is that no thought of a reflexive nature is necessary to recognize and feel the significance of objects, for either humans or animals. Everything you encounter in the world has meaning to you, because you see all things as somethings. In this way the world is familiar, and it has meaning simply in virtue of its familiarity.

Even if you encountered something of which you had no idea what it was, it would have meaning to you in the sense that it stands out as something you cannot identify. This is impossible anyway, because it would necessarily have some features; colour, shape, tonality, weight, texture and so on, which are meaningful to you.

Quoting Janus

Everything you encounter in the world has meaning to you, because you see all things as somethings

The point is precisely that you don't see all things as "somethings." There's no way that you perceive hundreds of things at the same time as "somethings." Most things you simply see, hear, etc. , without any thought, awareness, etc. of what you call them, what you might use them for, etc.