If a tree falls in a forest...
What's everyone's position on this problem?
I'm looking to start a thread on theories of perception. Things like naive/direct realism, indirect realism, various types of idealism, even things like panpsychism, etc.
So, how do YOU answer the question?
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around, does it still make a sound?
I'm looking to start a thread on theories of perception. Things like naive/direct realism, indirect realism, various types of idealism, even things like panpsychism, etc.
So, how do YOU answer the question?
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around, does it still make a sound?
Comments (125)
As in, if there's nobody around then there's not even a forest.
However, the forest in this case is an assumption or axiom of an imagined scenario in someone's mind. "Given that I am imagining a forest with a falling tree in the absence of a human, would this falling tree make a sound." And so you'd answer in terms of the imagined scenario. You can answer how you want, because the forest is just an imagined scenario here.
But in ontological terms, there exists no forest in the absence of mind. At least that's my opinion.
Here's an outline of some of the other options:
Naive/direct realism: the tree 'looks' green, and produces the actual qualia of "TIMBER!" even in the absence of humans. All the ears and brain do really, is allow one to perceive the externally existing 'qualia'. Sounds, colours, smells, etc, are in the world which exists independent of mind.
Indirect realism: A bunch of atoms which make up what we call a tree, falls down according to physical forces (such as gravity) obeying physical laws, producing physical sound waves in the external world. As in, no actual noise or sound qualia is produced, but a physical sound wave is created by the falling tree and travels through the physical forest interacting with the environment. If somebody was around, the persons ear would convert the sound waves into neuronal impulses which would be processed by the brain into an internally generated experiential representation of the sound wave - the actual perception of noise, the sound of the falling tree.
Objective idealism: the tree and forest is dependent on minds, but even in the absence of human minds an all seeing mind 'holds' the forest and falling tree in existence, so that the qualia of the falling tree noise still exists even when no human is around.
What other options are there?
A good analogy to this problem is the peripheral vision and the para central vision. The para central vision is what we actually see while our brains fill in the peripheral vision with images we remember, as we scan our environment with our eyes. As our para central vision moves, it causes no ontological change on the objects we observe. I claim this as the simplest explanation, because the alternatives require extra axioms if we include the idea of multiple minds, with its differences and its imperfections.
I am willing to defend scientific realism in this regard, because I believe in multiple independent minds along the time spectrum.
Unless you are a stinky solipsist. That is a Sisyphean task that I am not willing to take.
I don't think that is objective idealism; it is more like Berkeley's view that the Universe continues to exist in God's perception, in the absence of other perceivers. That is the subject of the famous limerick:
Realists take the stance that the tree falls whether or not anyone is present. The meta-philosophical point that I would make is that even to posit an empty forest or uninhabited universe, still implicitly assumes a perspective. What is time, location, or scale, absent any perspective whatever? You could be considering 'the tree' from the perspective of a cell within it, or from the perspective of the planet that it is on, but you can't consider it from no perspective. So imagining an empty forest, with no observer to hear the tree fall, still amounts to a perspective. What would any scene or object be like, from no perspective?
It still makes compressive waves in the air. Without a mind, though, no sound is made. In the same way your alarm clock beeps for a while before you wake up. You only register a beep when you are conscious.
This brings to mind the phrase "God's eye view" which is said to be the 'view from nowhere'. I always found that a very silly notion; and in light of that incoherency I have preferred to think of the God's eye view in terms of a far more intelligible notion: the 'view from everywhere'.
Actually, 'The View from Nowhere' was a 1986 book by Thomas Nagel (although whether the saying has other meanings, I don't know.) Nagel's book is about reconciling the impersonal, quantified perspective that is arrived at via scientific analysis - that being 'the view from nowhere' - with the particular perspectives of individual lives; the book explores that question from a number of angles (and is on my 'must read' list.)
The 'God's eye view' is another matter - it is taken to mean that one purports to speak from a position of omniscience (interestingly, the very brief Wikipedia entry notes as an example 'In science, when a scientist ignores the way a subject-object problem affects statistics or an observer effect affects experiment.')
But what I was commenting on, is that if you imagine the primeval forest, millions of years before people existed - and I'm sure there was one, that is where coal comes from! - that act of imagination still smuggles in the human perspective. You're seeing it, in the mind's eye, perhaps even with expert knowledge of carboniferous flora. 'Of course', you will say 'billions of trees fell in those forests, and nobody ever heard any of them'.
While that is true, it doesn't really come to terms with the point of the question, which is more about the phenomenology of sound than about the empirical facts. So really that argument amounts to the same kind of objection as Samuel Johnson's to Berkeley's lecture, when he kicked a large rock, declaring 'I refute it thus'.
But long experience on internet forums tells me that this particular argument usually ends up like:
Start one? Sometimes it seems like all we're capable of talking about, in every friggin thread no matter what it was ostensibly about at the start, are (a) phil of perception, (b) the mind/body problem, and (c) idealism versus realism. It's like turning on a classic rock station and hearing "Stairway to Heaven", "Smoke on the Water" and "Iron Man". Yeah, let's do more of that!
Anyway, my view on the cliched question/koan in the subject line is that (I) it makes a sound, (II) the idea that there's anything "tricky" about the question is ridiculous, and (III) it has nothing to do with philosophy of perception.
And from this idealist statement it can only follow to be skeptical of the existence of other minds. What would keep you from taking that last step into solipsism? If you are skeptical of the existence of the forest without experiencing it, then you must also be skeptical of some other mind in the forest (essentially being part of this forest), for a sound to occur.
Idealists who haven't taken that last step into solipsism are inconsistent in that they claim to believe in the existence of things they have never experienced (other minds) while not believing in things that they have experienced before but aren't experiencing right now (trees).
When you begin to question the your mind being an effect of other causes, then you throw out the aboutness of the experience. You are no longer informed of anything because information is the relationship between cause and effect. You'd no longer be able to categorize sounds and visuals together because there would be no correlation between the sound of a friend and the visual of a friend because they can often occur without each other (you can hear your friend on a the phone but not see them) and they are different kinds of experience altogether (there is a brute distinction between a sound and a visual).
Einstein was bothered by the idea that, according to quantum mechanics, the moon is not necessarily in the sky when nobody is looking. To me, that's no more disturbing than saying there are monsters in my closet when nobody is looking.
It isn't necessary to got to the extreme of solipsism though if by 'there is no forest' we mean rather that something is there that only becomes a forest when observed by a forest-perceiver. This rightly puts the emphasis on the namer as the source of a thing's 'name' (by which of course I mean every aspect of identity) rather than any inherent quality of the thing itself.
If the old chestnut had been rephrased as 'if a tree falls and only a profoundly deaf person is there to hear it' then it is perhaps clearer that there is no sound though the observer experiences the event in other ways.
Woops, that's what I meant!
Quoting Harry Hindu
Does my mind need to be perceived by another in order for it to exist? No, so why would it be any different for other minds?
[quote=]Idealists who haven't taken that last step into solipsism are inconsistent in that they claim to believe in the existence of things they have never experienced (other minds) while not believing in things that they have experienced before but aren't experiencing right now (trees).[/quote]
But this argument only works if you conceive of the world you inhabit as being completely private to your perceptions, which would beg the question of solipsism. I think that when for example you 'meet someones gaze', it's a direct encounter of minds. And not say a private to myself perception of a person which may or may not be a representation of the actions of another person which exists in an independently existing 'mind-bubble', depending on whether you're a solipsist or not.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What about when you 'see someone talking to you'? Your experience was a cohesive whole, and the two senses only become separate afterward when you separate them intellectually.
The blue on the top face of the cube on the left, is the same colour as the yellow on the top face of the cube on the right.
And on both cubes the middle square of the top face is the same colour as the middle square of the front.
This is a problem for direct realists.
I'm pretty close to simply starting to say either "Hey moron" or "Hey liar" to you, because you seem completely incapable of learning, OR completely uninterested in doing anything other than promoting straw men for some reason.
Direct realists (and *sigh* about turning this into yet another discussion on phil of perception, by the way)--anyway, direct realists do not deny that there are illusions.
So, it's a non-issue, or a silly question, why would it be asked on a philosophy forum? What is it a reference to?
If a tree in the forest sang 'I get knocked down, but I get up again' would you believe it?
Haha--I literally laughed out loud at that.
Haha that you have no idea why your question would be funny.
I sure don't believe that.
OK then, I will take a shot - the question about 'if a tree falls in the forest...' is a joke, right? How can anyone ask that? Surely everyone knows that when trees fall they make a huge racket, whether or not anyone's around. It's a trick question, surely.
Quoting dukkha
This isn't consistent with what you said in the "See-Through" thread. You argued in that thread that your experience is always indirect. So how can you have a direct encounter with minds? When you look into someone's eyes, you are having a direct encounter with a representation of their body. You never experience someone's mind. You can experience it indirectly via their body's behavior, just as you infer the existence of atoms from the behavior of matter on the macro scale.
Quoting dukkhaYou missed the example of talking to them on the phone. You don't separate them intellectually then. You do link the two sensations together intellectually because you've established a pattern of seeing them speak before. But my point was that if solipsism/idealism is the case and sounds and visuals aren't representations of other things, then they aren't representations but real things themselves. Are you the same dukkha that I was conversing with in the "See-through" thread because you are basically contradicting everything you said in that thread.
If there is anything out there that exists independently of the mind's experience of it, then that is realism, not idealism/solipsism. It doesn't matter if the experience is different than what the thing is (this would be indirect realism). If the thing continues to exist when I'm dead, then realism is the case, not idealism/solipsism.
No, that's not at all what I found funny about your comment. What was hilarious about your comment was that it was at least phrased as if being presented on a philosophy forum would be sufficient for something to not be silly, stupid/moronic, etc.
How do you account for minds inferring that forests existed before minds to think about them as forests? If the world only exists for minds, then why does it seem like the world existed prior to minds? Why is it that minds find themselves to be dependent on the world?
You can't equate idealism with solipsism. As we've gone over many times before, they're not the same thing. The idealist's position is that all things are mental in nature; it's not simply the position that all things are a product of one's own mind. There can be other minds, each with their own thoughts and experiences, that continue to exist even when you're dead.
This is true, and it has been defended many times. But I can't get over the fact that the idealist is making an exception for other minds, epistemologically speaking. The idealist is hand-waving the issue away by asserting that of course other minds exists. Don't be silly.
The solipsist is more consistent. We only know about other minds the same way we know about objects, which is via perception. And if to be is to be perceived ...
How is it making an exception? The idealist presumably uses the same inference that the materialist uses to confirm the existence of other minds. They just don't think that this inference can be used to confirm the existence of some non-mental substance from which minds sometimes (but not always) emerge.
To be is to be perceived. I perceive a rock, so it exists. But it doesn't exist outside being perceive. I perceive you so you exist, at least while I'm perceiving you.
Now I can imagine that you continue to perceive the world as a good idealist once I'm no longer perceiving you, but then I'm just pulling a realist stunt by making an exception for other minds. You can say it's different, because it's other minds. Fine, but I only know about them via perception, so it's an epistemological problem for the idealist.
That doesn't follow. "To be is to be perceived" is not the same as "to be is to be perceived by me". The rock doesn't require that I perceive it. It exists if someone perceives it.
So other minds (perceiving themselves) is consistent with "to be is to be perceived".
But my knowledge of other minds comes from perception, just like my knowledge of rocks. So there is a skeptical problem for the idealist that the solipsist recognizes, and the idealist pretends isn't an issue.
Furthermore, the idealist doesn't even perceive the other minds, just their bodies. The other mind is a mental inference. It's an ontological commitment the solipsist would never feel warranted in making.
What's the sceptical problem?
Of course, But it's a mental inference that (according to the idealist) can't be used to infer the existence of some non-mental substance.
I perceive a rock. I perceive you talking about having perceived a rock when I wasn't around. I create a mental model of you perceiving stuff in my absence.
The skeptical problem is how I can know you actually exist outside my mental model when I'm not perceiving you. The idealist solution is just to assert that of course other minds are around perceiving when I'm not perceiving them. Solipsism avoided. But it's just an assertion. There is no sound epistemological basis for that assertion.
As you say, it's an inference; the same one that the materialist uses. The idealist just rejects the claim that one can use this reasoning to infer the existence of some non-mental substance from which objects are made and which exists even when nobody is perceiving it. This proposed substance is, to the idealist, as unintelligible as magic or the soul. Although we understand thoughts and experiences and so can make some sense of such things happening independently of us, we don't really have any understanding of the so-called "physical" (our imagining of such things is actually imagining the (disembodied) experience of things), and so claims of such a thing are actually meaningless.
To be is to be apprehended with the intellect, not to be perceived by the senses. There is a big difference here. I understand with my mind, that other minds exist. I do not perceive other minds with my senses. However, I do apprehend that there is a separation between my mind and other minds, and I need my senses to navigate this separation. But real being is what lies beyond this separation, that which can only be apprehended with the mind.
If one believes that only mental phenomena occur, it's difficult to figure how one could know that any mental phenomena are not simply one's own, or how one could be justified in claiming that any mental phenomena are not simply one's own. This goes just as well for people who assert ontological realism but who are something like representationalists on philosophy of perception, or in other words, who at least pay lip-service to ontological realism but who are effectively epistemological idealists.
Of course, some versions of idealism are looser stances where folks are simply emphasizing the importance of ideas. Those are a different issue. Those stances are not making exhaustive ontological inventory claims.
Classical idealism assigns priority, or a higher level of reality, to the realm of ideas than to the realm of material existence. You might consider that idealism and materialism both developed as forms of dualism. As dualisms, they would each accept the reality of both ideas and matter. However, idealism would assign priority to ideas, claiming that Forms are a necessary condition for material existence, and materialism would assign priority to matter, saying that matter is a necessary condition for the existence of ideas.
It is only under the modern trend toward monism, which attempts to simplify things, that a materialist might dismiss the reality of ideas altogether, or some forms of solipsistic idealism might attempt to dismiss material existence altogether. It should be quite evident that monism is the cause of these problems, not idealism or materialism per se. So to choose monism over dualism, as a way to avoid the question of which is prior, matter or Forms, is a mistaken choice.
What do you mean by "making a sound"? Do you mean it produces a sound "quale" or do you mean it generates a "sound" as defined in physics (i.e. pressure wave within the air)?
I think it's actually just a rhetorical question.
OK, so your explanation of idealism is that idealism is actually realism in that things continue to exist even when no mind is accessing it via the senses. It's just that the primary substance is mental rather than physical. Is every realist then a materialist or physicalist? Your definition seems to make idealism into realism with the only difference being the what the primary substance of reality is (and does this even matter the label we use in naming the primary substance if it follows scientific laws?)
So if everything is mental and can exist without senses accessing them, then does that equate to direct realism or indirect realism? The problem with this is why do I experience your text on a screen and not your mind if everything is mental? Does your posts exhaust everything about your mind? When I read your posts, am I reading your mind?
You only experience other bodies, or their text that they type, and then infer that these bodies and text are evidence of other minds. You never experience other minds directly.
What about when you look in a mirror? Why is it that you don't see your own mind? Why do you see a body?
That's objective idealism, yes. But that's not what I meant. What I meant is that the (non-objective and non-solipsistic) idealist can accept that only minds exist without having to accept that only one's own mind exists. So you exist and I exist and seven billion other people exist, all with our own independent thoughts and experiences (but which are able to causally influence one another), but that a material world of trees and rocks does not exist independently of anyone experiencing them.
Seeing a body is just the occurrence of mental phenomena. It's a bundle of qualia that is then interpreted as being a single object (in the same sort of way that the materialist will say that a bundle of subatomic particles is interpreted as being a single object).
You do not know any perception other than yours. You can at least see rocks, you can't see other perceptions; so if you conclude that things only exist in so far as they are perceived, and you only know your own perception then you should conclude that rocks exist and perceptions other than your own do not.
So then what is the medium in which these other minds exist? To say that other minds exist implies a separation of minds. What is it that divides minds apart from each other? What exists between minds if not a shared world? By using the term, "other", you automatically imply the existence of some medium that separates them.
Quoting Michael
My point was that you don't see other minds, only other bodies.
And my point is that it doesn't matter. I don't need to see other minds for there to be other minds. The idealist's claim isn't simply "only the things I see exist". Rather it's "only mental phenomena exists", with us seeing bodies being the occurrence of a particular type of mental phenomena.
No I don't. That one thing is not another thing does not require some third thing to separate them. Else what fourth thing separates this third thing from the first two things? And so on.
Then you don't need to see other trees for there to be other trees. This is why the idealist is inconsistent until he follows his own arguments where they lead - to solipsism.
The only mental phenomenon you have access to is your own. How do you know that other mental phenomenon exists besides yours? And then how is your answer not also applicable to other things, like trees and forests?
Quoting MichaelLike I said, use of the term, "other" implies the existence of something to separate these things. If I don't use the term "other" in describing a world, then I'm not implying a 4th thing to separate worlds. It is you using the term other to describe minds. No one has used the term, "other" to describe worlds. If they did then they'd have to explain what it is that separates worlds. But no one has, so your point is ridiculous.
Sorry, I wanted to explore the implications of what you posted in it's own thread. It always struck me as the strongest objection to realism. Didn't mean it to be explicitly about the tree.
Is the photon from a distant star one minute away not yet perceived real, or only conceptual until we perceive it?
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse
I'll read it here in a minute. Wheeler is also the physicist who proposed it from bit, I believe.
Do you mean lie was the cosmic microwave background real before we predicted it, planned to look for it, but discovered it by accident anyway?
So Wheeler proposes a delayed choice double slit experiment using photons from a distant quasar with gravitational lensing involved by galaxies in between. Very interesting.
Question though, what if alien minds existed in that distant quasar. Does that change the outcome?
At least Wheeler allows for inanimate detectors to decide quantum outcomes. Lindren goes all the way to conscious observers only determining the history of the universe. What distinquishes us from the cat in the box? If ancient aliens have put Earth inside a box, perhaps with a quantum object that has a 50/50 chance of turning into a black hole that consumes Earth, are we in a state of destroyed/not destoryed before they look?
What strikes me, is the adjective 'tiny'. Sure, we're physically 'tiny' - but we're also that 'patch of the universe' that actually can weigh and measure the universe! Only we know how 'tiny' we are, but we only know that because we know what 'big' means!
All of these things are the source of bamboozlement. Feynmann said something like 'don't ask how it can be that way, it simply is that way, and if you ask why you will fall into a hole that nobody has ever gotten out of.' And that's true. The only moral I take from the whole story is that scientific or transcendental realism is likely not to pan out. It's a useful attitude for scientists and engineers, but don't mistake it for a metaphysic.
The idealist doesn't claim otherwise. They just claim that trees need to be seen for there to be trees. It doesn't require that I'm the one doing the seeing. For the umpteenth time, there's a difference between "to be is to be perceived" and "to be is to be perceived by me".
It's an inference; the same inference that the materialist makes.
For the same reason that the materialist's answer isn't applicable to other things like magic or souls or eldritch abominations. That there's evidence for other minds is not prima facie that there's evidence for something else, i.e. a non-mental substance that constitutes a world of objects that exists independently of anyone seeing them.
We can make sense of other minds because we have our own thoughts and experiences. But this supposed non-mental physical substance is actually a vacuous concept, as evidenced by the fact that when trying to imagine a physical thing we just imagine the (disembodied) experience of such a thing.
And for the umpteenth time, there needs to be a consistent shared world for you to mean anything when you use the term, "other", or else there isn't other minds, only one mind.
How is it that we both experience the same tree from different perspectives (I can see your eyes looking in the same direction as mine and we both agree that there is a tree.) Where does your post on this forum reside when no one is reading it? How does it keep it's spelling, grammar and meaning when no one is looking at it for these things to appear when someone does read it? There must be some way that your post exists and maintains its properties for me to read it and understand what you are attempting to communicate.
Quoting MichaelThere must be something else because I don't direct access to your mind. There is some barrier preventing me from accessing your mind. I can only access it indirectly through your posts or seeing your person. Again, for me to believe there are other minds means I must also believe in something separating them that isn't a mind.
Will a camera suffice, or does it need to be a human.
"To be seen" is not a proper way of putting it. "To be apprehended by a mind" is better. That is because we can conceive of things without seeing them.
nobody cares.
Unless your house was directly beneath the tree.
Of course, there's no way of knowing that a giant didn't accidentally step on your house and then tried to cover it up by strategically placing a tree in the indentation. Since we weren't there to see it, after all. :-}
Do minds need to be experienced (not sure how we see 'em) for there to be other minds?
If not, then you admit of the existence of that which is not experienced. Which is equivalent to materialism - materialist's call it "matter", you call it "mind stuff". This is what HH is trying to make you understand.
To claim that "mind stuff" is different from "matter" is to claim knowledge of that which you can never know. It is base speculation, nothing more. In fact, by your own admission, if trees are "mind stuff" (i.e., experiences only), then it seems that they should be subject to the same persistence as other minds.
In the sense that includes minds experiencing themselves (i.e. self-awareness), sure.
Sure. But the point is that they persist (if at all) as someone's experience, and not as some mind-independent object (where "mind-independent" refers to being independent of all minds, not simply being independent of my mind).
What exists is the experience of a photograph of a forest.
What's the realist's really simple explanation? Because there's a forest? Then why is there a forest and not some other thing? The realist has the same questions to answer as the idealist, just pushed further back along a proposed causal chain.
Cause of the Big Bang. There are entire fields of science to explain how the forest got there.
So your explanation is that there just is world of material objects that performs steps A, B, and then C.
And how is that any different to the idealist's explanation that there just is a world of mental phenomena that performs steps A, B, and then C?
The objective idealist can do that. I don't see how the subjective idealist can perform those steps. It's just a brute fact of experience that a lot of stuff appears to have happened in between minds perceiving things.
What do you mean by "appear" here? Obviously you can't mean it in the sense that we see something happening that isn't being seen?
I mean we experience the world as if stuff happens when nobody's around. I used the word appear to avoid realist sounding language. The subjective idealist can deny that anything actually happens. We only perceive it as if it did.
Quoting Michael
Why is it a photograph of a forest, and not a photograph of an ocean?
Are there times when a mind is not self-aware? (I.e., during non-dreaming sleep, coma, or unconsciousness?) Perhaps you do not believe that a mind can ever be non-self-aware. OK. But if you do believe that there are such times, then what happens to that person when everyone leaves the room? Where do they go? No one (including themselves) is experiencing them.
Also, there are qualia suggestive of other minds. But I have never actually experienced another mind. It seems that I must infer that which I have never experienced. How is the certainty of other minds ever achieved?
I don't think it's ever certain. It's just an inference.
I'd say not. I'm inclined to equate the mind with self-awareness.
Just to be clear : When I stagger home drunk and my wife hits me in the head with a rolling pin, and I go down for the count, I am still self-aware. Is that correct? I mean, obviously my brain is present, but what am I thinking about?
When do babies become self-aware? Does a new-born continue to exist when you put it down for a nap? How far back along development does self-awareness go? Birth? Conception?
And by the way, how - besides base speculation - do you know any of this?
It seems to me that people make way too much of "self-awareness."
Mentality is awareness. Self-awareness is simply thinking something like, "I'm aware, or I have mental phenomena, of seeing a hawk" (or whatever it might be that one is aware of, including strictly internal phenomena). There's not much to that. It's not much different than simply having awareness of a hawk.
If you're down for the count then, no, you're not self-aware.
This is the problem. You're trying to make sense of idealism while assuming realism. If you want to make sense of idealism then forget the notion of there being some physical thing present (e.g. the brain, or a foetus) that exists even in the absence of mental activity.
How do I know what? That idealism is true and realism isn't? How does the realist know (according to him) that realism is true and idealism isn't? Because it seems the most reasonable position.
But the veracity of idealism isn't the issue here. The issue is whether or not idealism entails solipsism.
I'd say for one because we experience real things.
We also experience unreal things, so the realist needs something more to justify what's considered real.
And the idealist would agree. They'd just say that the real things we experience (trees, cups, etc.) don't continue to exist after the experience ends.
But what makes a perceived tree more real than a dream tree for the idealist?
What do you gain by adding that much complexity, plus the added problem you have of non-observed-therefore-non-existent reality creating records.
What's complex about it? Mental phenomena exists and behaves in certain ways. How is it any different to saying that physical things exist and behave in certain ways? I'd say it could even be simpler, being that the mind-body problem, for one, doesn't arise.
And even if it's more complex, the idealist will likely argue that the (simpler) alternative doesn't even make any sense at all; that if you take away the look and feel and smell of the world then there's nothing left to imagine. They'll say that the world as being composed of something other than experiential qualities is unintelligible, and an unintelligible notion, no matter how simple, isn't a correct one.
Things coming into and out of existence depending on whether they are being perceived by a consciouses or not, is hugely complex.
Also, while non-existing, reality clearly creates records. How does it do that while it doesn't exist?
So pain coming into and out of existence depending on whether it's being perceived by a consciousness or not is hugely complex? Seems simple to me. What would be more complex (or, incoherent, really) is there being pain even when it's not being perceived by a consciousness and that we just happen to sometimes interact with it and so feel it.
What you're doing seems to be the same thing that others are doing; trying to combine realism with idealism. You're trying to think of things coming into and out of existence in the realist sense, i.e. as external objects, depending on whether it's being perceived by a consciousness or not. Obviously that's going to be problematic.
I have no idea what you're talking about here.
But that is the issue. To defend idealism against the charge of solipsism, you wish to make a special claim for consciousness - that other minds persist (but trees do not) because they are self-aware (i.e., experience themselves). I am trying to examine that claim. If another mind can ever be shown to be non-self-aware (i.e., not experiencing itself) then it would appear to be no different from trees in terms of its continued existence when not being experienced by me.
Let us accept for the moment that minds persist when unconscious or in non-dreaming sleep. I assume then that you must hold the belief that (higher order) animals also persist when not being perceived by humans, for surely the mental ability of a wakeful dog is the equivalent of an unconscious human. To believe otherwise seems to me to be a case of special pleading.
The "to be is to be perceived" motto is a bit misleading. The idealist claim is just that only mental phenomena exists. So whatever exists, be it minds or trees or colours or pain, is mental phenomena. The question, then, is whether it makes sense for minds as mental phenomena to exist without being perceived and whether it makes sense for trees as mental phenomena to exist without being perceived and whether it makes sense for pain as mental phenomena to exist without being perceived. I don't think that an affirmative answer to one entails an affirmative answer to the rest. If, for example, you can show that minds can exist without being perceived (not even self-perception), does it then follow that pain can exist without being perceived? I don't think so. And so it also doesn't follow that trees can exist without being perceived.
So even if you can show that minds can exist without being perceived it doesn't follow either that trees can exist without being perceived or that trees aren't mental phenomena. And by the same token, if you can show that trees can't exist without being perceived then it doesn't then follow that minds can't exist without being perceived.
It's a simple fact that idealism just doesn't entail solipsism. You can't go from "only mental phenomena exists" to "only my mental phenomena exists". And you can't go from "the mental phenomena of trees can't occur without a perceiving mind" to "other minds can't exist unless I see them". They're invalid inferences.
What is a mind to you? To me it's a cohesive collection of thoughts and memories and experiences. Does it make sense for there to be unconscious thoughts and memories and experiences? I don't think so. Which is why I won't accept that minds persist when unconscious. The mind is consciousness.
Ah, so minds are not continuous (since, seemingly, a person may be unconscious for a time).
Or perhaps you are arguing for a discrete existence that only appears continuous to the observer who is "inside" that existence. I mean, should I become unconscious for a time, that time does not actually exist for me. In other words, consciousness is like a song on an old cassette tape that stops when you press the STOP button, and starts up again from the exact same point when PLAY is pushed. To the song (i.e., the consciousness) no time has passed at all.
Except that when the song status up again, it appears as if stuff was going on while the song was stopped. The time on the clock, the snow on the ground, the latest news, etc.
And when I leave a room full of people then walk back in a few minutes later, it is as if the conversation went on without me. Weird.
I think that's God's way of trolling us.
:D
Berkeley's Prime Perceiver having a bit of fun?
Quoting Michael
I think the idealist claim is, that our knowledge of the [tree/star/chair/] is itself an idea. What we know any thing to be, is based solely on the fact that we have an idea in our minds - that is what knowledge consists of.
Berkeley refutes the notion that things go in and out of existence depending on whether they're perceived by saying that they are always 'perceived by God' and are therefore in some sense 'ideas in God's mind'. (In fact such ideas have considerable pedigree in Western philosophy.)
However there is another way of dealing with the objection. This is that things don't pass in and out of existence at all. We can't say anything about 'non-perceived things', because to say anything about them, is to perceive them, even if only in the mind's eye.
If we try and imagine their non-existence, then we're simply imagining their absence; we form an idea of their supposed non-existence. So the objection that 'idealism means objects blink in and out of existence' really doesn't come to terms with the idealist argument. If idealism had said that, actually nobody would have reason to have taken any notice of it in the first place. Yet it's interesting how many people refute on that kind of basis.
Whatever we say about [x] - even if we analyse them scientifically - whatever statement we make, is a statement of our knowledge of [x]. My argument is that [X] doesn't exist in itself or in its own right; that to speak of any [x] is to situate it in a context and a perspective which is provided by the mind of the observer. That is the sense in which no [X] is mind-independent; it doesn't mean that absent my particular cognitive act, the universe doesn't exist. It means that everything we know or conjecture about, is in some real sense a cognitive or intellectual act, and we can't absent ourselves from the picture in the way that science assumes that we do.
Isn't that what many (physicalist) realists would say? Presumably for the most part they don't equate the mind with some persistent immaterial soul. They're likely to say that the mind is identical to (or emerges from) certain brain activity. If that brain activity stops, or reduces to a lesser type of brain activity (a kind that doesn't amount to a mind) then there is no mind (anymore), and it is only when that kind of brain activity returns that the mind returns.
Of course! But the realist believes that the world continues while the brain lies dormant. Unconsciousness, sleep, etc. are no problem for the realist. But for the idealist, they must either believe unconscious minds are self-aware, or that minds can somehow be discrete (non-continuous) entities.
That's like saying that some cards are hearts and some clubs, so you need something more to justify that some cards are hearts.
No, it's like saying I directly experience hearts, but sometimes dream of, hallucinate, have the illusion of, falsely remember, imagine, clubs.
Then you're not talking about the same thing that I am. My dreams, hallucinations etc. are nothing like experiences of real things. That's why the fact that we also experience dreams, hallucinations etc is irrelevant to the fact that we experience real things. Maybe you have unusual dreams and hallucinations, though, or unusual experience of real things.
That would make that person a realist with an unusual ontology of how real things "behave" rather than an idealist.
No it wouldn't. A realist believes that the things we see continue to exist even when nobody sees them. Believing that the things we see are real doesn't entail believing that the things we see continue to exist even when nobody sees them.
The pain I feel is real, even though it doesn't continue to exist even when I stop feeling it. This equating of "real" with "mind-independent" (which I assume you're doing) is a mistaken one.
You're not a realist if you don't believe that, because otherwise, your position is no different from anti-realism, as I'm sure Michael well tell you, or SEP, if you look. The central point of realism is mind-independence.
I recall reading something interesting about Schizophrenia were schizophrenics lose the ability to tell the difference between what's in their heads, and what they're perceiving. Apparently, the brain flags stuff that's generated internally.
That's highly suggestive, if it's true. I did come across that article in Scientific American or Nature years ago.
You could phrase it differently: A realist holds that, if according to the simplest explanation, an entity is complex and autonomous, then it is real.
An autonomous entity does no come into and go out of existence depending on whether a human happens to be looking at it. And no one who thinks it does can be described as a realist.
I answer, you may so, there is no difficulty in it: but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpose: it only shows you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind; but it doesn't show that you can conceive it possible [that] the objects of your thought may exist without the mind: to [show] this, it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind; though at the same time they are apprehended by or exist in itself. [/quote]
Of the Principles of Human Knowledge: Part 1 Pp 22-23
Quoting Terrapin Station
That wouldn't satisfy most realists, who most certainly do believe that things continue to exist unperceived.
I would have thought the fundamental issue of schizophrenia was the ability to recognise one's thoughts and internal states as being one's own. Hence 'a voice told me to do it'. What appears to be lacking is the integrative facility, i.e. the facility that integrates different thoughts, sensations, perceptions and judgements into a coherent whole; hence the popular (but frowned-upon) expression 'split personality'.
Sure, but the interesting thing is losing the ability to discriminate what's going on in your head from some potential outside source, so that it seems like the TV is putting thoughts into your head, or you're hearing or seeing something out there which other people don't.
It's as if a normal functioning brain needs to discriminate between the source from external and internal, and if it doesn't then your perception of reality breaks down and the two overlap. That sounds like a potential challenge to direct realism.
It's only tangentially related to the philosophical question, though. I mean, if you study Freud, as far as he was concerned the aim of psycotherapy was integration into normal society, the ability to form loving relationships and work. There's nothing the matter with that, but I don't think it has anything to say about the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge. Freud was a committed scientific materialist, whereas Berkeley's motivation was criticism of materialism.
Yeah, mind-independence but that does not imply that the item in question continues to exist when we are not aware of it. Certainly most realists, including me, believe that real things continue to exist when we're not experiencing them, but that view is not implied by simply being a realist. This is no different than the fact that most atheists buy evolution, but that atheism does not imply a belief in evolution.
The difference between realism on x and antirealism on x is that realists believe that x exists extramentally. Antirealists do not believe this. They that believe x only exists mentally, if at all.
That would be quite separate view from realism, even if the vast majority of realists believe it.
Most realists believe that, but it isn't implied by being a realist.
???
Direct realism doesn't posit that perception is infallible, that there is no mental dysfunction, etc.
The view that autonomous and complex entities are real, is isomorphic with realism. Sorry.
If only that had something to do with temporal extension, then your comment would be relevant.
Right, another one of your many 'well, what I mean by it is ...' But then, as meaning as subjective, then every realist has different beliefs, right? And that's OK, right? There are no 'real realists', then. Each one is different.
How about quoting what you're responding to, since I just posted a bunch of different things.